Generally speaking, all benchmarking techniques can be defined as ranking of a process or a product against another process or a product with similar specific metrics of known values. Financial benchmarking in particular focuses on the comparison of the financial results with a purpose of assessing overall competitiveness and productivity. The beauty of this research tool is in its potential to uncover some underlying reasons behind the comparative results.
While it's difficult (yet not impossible) to apply generic correlative methodologies to such subjective, ambiguously immeasurable, and predominantly qualitative characteristics as artistic values of cinematic products, fiscal aspects of the movie-making are not only comparable (as previously outlined in Arts & Entertainment by the Numbers III), at this point they are the chief driving force behind the big-screen output. It's that competitiveness, y'all! "C.r.e.a.m get the money. Dolla Dolla bill y'all."
Let's not forget that financial results are accounting reflections of the micro-economic patterns of supply and demand. Movies, being consumer products, specifically depend on the behavior of the consumer market; even more categorically - on the tastes of the viewing audience.
With that in mind, I would like to sketch out a simplified financial benchmarking exercise based on the most recent installments of two movie franchises (identical products competing in the same markets) that came out on the same day, 05/15/15 (another identical metric) - Mad Max: Fury Road (a terrifyingly believable upgrade of the post-apocalyptic high-octane series with Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, and Nicholas Hoult) and Pitch Perfect 2 (a hard-to-believe Cinderella-type contemporary chick-flick-with-singing about an a capella group on the road to stardom with Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, and Elizabeth Banks; the latter also produced and directed).
Mad Max opened on more screens: 3702 vs. 3473, yet Pitch Perfect 2 made $69.2 million (230% of its rumored $30 mil budget) during the opening weekend – $23.8 mil more than Mad Max whose $45.4 mil barely returned 30% of its $150 mil budget. Here, in our blessed USA, the fiscal gap between the two movies keeps only expanding: As of yesterday, Mad Max's domestic gross ($143 mil) was already trailing Pitch Perfect 2's by $34 mil.
Numbers don't lie: A handful of them is all we need to clearly show that American general public prefers to see a movie full of inexplicable plot turns and dialogue pearls akin to
"Fat Amy: Listen, I don't want you guys to fight. You're Beca and Chloe, together you're Bhloe and everyone loves a good Bhloe."
instead of taking a hard and honest look at the future that already awaits us around the proverbial corner, notwithstanding the high cinematic standards, tight script, awesome directions in all divisions of the process, and NO CGI (!!!)
Of course, making back multiples of the budget and fattening the pockets of producers and distributers pretty much guaranteed Pitch Perfect 3, which is already set to be released in 2017. On the other hand, if people behind Mad Max: Fury Road had to rely only on the US distribution, the $7 mil deficit would pretty much kill all the chances for the filming of the next installment - Mad Max: The Wasteland. Thankfully, there are international distribution channels.
And overseas results are quite opposite to what we observe here at home. The universal appeal of Mad Max's sci-fi realism yielded the film $202.5 mil of foreign revenues, making the total box office as of yesterday $346.10 mil.
On the other hand, I can't even imagine how translators deal with that Bhloe crap in the subtitles. So, it is not surprising that Pitch Perfect 2 made only $94.5 mil outside of US, with 51% of that coming from English-speaking countries of UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. In many countries the movie stayed in the theaters only for the opening weekend. As the result, its worldwide box office now totals $272 mil, or $74.1 mil less than its competitor in this example.
That's gross, of course. Nowadays, it's hard to overcome a $120 mil budgetary differential. Thus, the singing chicks are still $46K more profitable than the depiction of our damaged Planet and her marred inhabitants.
One can argue that today $150 mil worth of resources is too high of a price for any movie, good or bad. And I agree, but spending any resources at all over and over again on crap that furthers the process of human degeneration is simply criminal.
The Frustrated CFO 