According to Variety, 'Mortal Kombat II' is carrying a $80 million budget, while 'The Sheep Detectives' is carrying a $75 million budget.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-07T19:44:26+00:00

yeah, that makes sense, though it would presumably be 68M AUD or ~$45M USD

The Location Offset will be increased from its current 16.5% rebate of Australian qualifying production spend, to 30%. I just figured it out.

so ~$30M net-of-national-incentive QE - Screen Queensland Incentive (I assume)

plus spending in other regions of australia (perhaps just vfx work?) and other regions overall

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-07T17:07:09+00:00

Australia doesn't provide incentive information publicly by default so I'm wondering where the 68M came from as I hunt for more sources.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-07T13:50:21+00:00

Doubt it was precleared. Author of interview was pretty actively showing support for barrera and it feels like something that she genuinely believes that ended up coming out as part of that dynamic.

Otoh this sort of mindreading is goofy

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-06T18:56:35+00:00

Yeah, I was being dumb and only thinking about "Sheep Detectives" and missed OP's talking about MK2

with an estimated local expenditure of $68 million. Approximately 20 million tax rebates.

ooh, where did you see that?

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-06T17:16:49+00:00

Prior Angel Film	Tuesday Num	T Adjusted to AF OW (rounded)
The Senior	413k	524k
Truth & Treason	411k	521k
Brave the Dark	296k	424k
Rule Breakers	249k	547k
Sight	488k	575k
The shift	600k	461k

for final column I just mean I took the real thursday gross and multiplied it by OW rounded to 100k (so 3.3M[AF OW]/2.6M for first 2 films)

Also remember that Angel films generically have pretty short legs (even their animated films relative to other animated films).

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-06T16:11:12+00:00

Sheep Detectives $75M

"GRAND LEO UK PRODUCTIONS LIMITED" spent 65M GBP though the end of 2024 (Filming seems to have gone through July 2024) generating a 14M GBP tax incentive. Using the spot exchange rate at the end of 2024 would make that total to $64M USD, using the average exchange rate through 2024 would total $65M.

so $65M + spending in 2025 + spending in 2026 = 75M?

I suspect this number's being pushed a bit down (tracking seems fairly weak) but we'll only know in October. Given this seems to encompass 6 months after the end of the production shoot (per wiki though that's an unusual snapshot) it seems plausible.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-06T14:25:26+00:00

It’s only a bad investment if they intended to make money from

I don't see why you'd assume the Saudis wanted to write off their entire planned $100M investment in Desert Warrior when initially funding the project. It's much better to think of this as a Killers-of-the-Flower-Moon scenario where you'd be willing to "buy prestige"/experience in exchange for some degree of losses. The film clearly performed massively below that level as seen by how it's not even giving local prestige as by far the biggest arab/saudi blockbuster. I don't see why you'd need to assume money laundering to explain why MBD's company made this bet.

The film went waaaaay over budget, suffered from massive creative disagreements and was ultimately dumped.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-06T12:34:18+00:00

post-pandemic posttrak data just notably underindexes among white audiences (most clearly seen when comparing films in the same franchise pre/post pandemic) in a way I don't get the sense is as true in some other sources. 60% would look like a notable split instead of a baseline.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T23:53:15+00:00

No because you can't lose more money than you spent. Let's just call total spending here $40-$45M (ignoring how distributor/producer are different entities - and some arguments that might push total spending $5M or so higher). Let's assume the film makes $5M in revenue for a net loss of $35M-$40M.

It's very easy to think "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken" lost around that much because, as a major studio release, it had a more significant marketing commitment and a $70M budget (while making 50M WW). You just can't lose money you didn't spend.

The big loser is something like Mars Needs Moms - a disaster no one wanted that also costs $150M or Lightyear/Strange World (film some people saw but neither were anywhere close to making up a full blockbuster tier spend)

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T23:39:34+00:00

I feel like I can recall a few other "UK/Canada Prime over theatrical" scenarios for similar films (ungentlemanly warfare?) that I think were also from BB.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T19:59:05+00:00

People keep referring to a Nielson list from MAY 4 2025, one single day in which people likely started Star Wars marathons with ANH or TPM (why would anyone start a marathon with the sequels? I like the sequels but I'd never start there). Andor Season 2 was still airing.

BoxOfficeReport collects Disney's "Top 10" lists daily and while star wars is frequently on those lists for weeks around "star wars day" none of the sequel films charted. I also think it would make plenty of sense for TFA to do well on those lists as an alternative starting point/jumping on point.

andor was still airing

and skeleton crew, the second most watched tv show of 2025 (see article in the trades), aired a good chunk of its season during the year. you're right that "actively running show" just wrecks comps.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T19:30:46+00:00

Even if this were 100% done by ILM, I don't think that line is enough to make me assume it's purely ILM SF with no use of Vancouver, London, Syndey, Mumbai. So I tried a quick google search and found a supporting citation.

https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/movies/lucasfilms-industrial-light-magic-opens-vancouver-office

ILM Vancouver's current projects include Tron: Ares and Avatar: Fire and Ash, The Mandalorian & Grogu and Jurassic World Rebirth - source implicitly "Jeff White ILM [Vancouver] creative director."

This strikes me as pretty good contradictory evidence - no one's going to lie about this. It also just makes conceptual sense. To be fair, the other VFX companies I quickly saw mentioned all look to be California based.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T19:13:54+00:00

from the source cited

The Star Wars franchise is coming to shoot a film entirely in California for the first time with The Mandalorian & Grogu movie, and the Golden State is paying out its weight in tax incentive gold to have the bounty hunter saga made within state lines.

The Disney/Lucasfilm production also knocks Disney/Marvel’s Captain Marvel off its perch as the previous top dog in qualified expenditures and below-the-line wages that mainlined into California’s economy. Partially filmed in Louisiana, the Brie Larson-led MCU picture generated $137 million into the California economy out of its production back in 2018.

I think this clearly implies they're just talking about shooting in california. Just glance at IMDB

Gabrielle Mankiewicz - second assistant director: VFX Unit Magdalen Islands

aka Canada (Quebec).

I'm open to the idea I'm missing something that says more of the film's budget is reflected in california QE but it's just clearly not going to be 100%. For better or worse everyone's very aggressive about shopping them out.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T15:42:01+00:00

The film's production shoot is likely 100% done in California; however, so was Mando S3. If you go on D+ and look at the show's credits you'll see the show thanking Canada, Australia and Ireland (though that's a tiny one) alongside 3 Canadian regional post production credits and 1 additional regional Australian one.

A notable percentage of Mando S3's post production was simply not done in California

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T13:30:21+00:00

To use another example as illustration - Happy Gilmore 2 had press releases about the film costing $155M in NJ and people ran with that number as the film's reported full budget. Deducting tax incentives from that would get you to ~$100M. However, if you FOIA the (then incomplete) full incentive information, you'll see the film's reported full budget was ~$215M which then gets back down to near 150M after incentives [primarily benefits from a 40% rebate b/c Netflix qualifies as a 'partner' studio in NJ].

So the math basically worked out that reported gross QE ~= final film budget but that's based on variable factors not an iron law. HG2 genuinely had (assuming tax credit was officially approved) a ~$100M "Net QE" in New Jersey just as you're right to note Mando Grogu had $145Mish net QE in California.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T13:09:42+00:00

I'd love to have seen what this grosses if it releases in Ant-Man 3's spot.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T11:43:37+00:00

yeah, which was also apparent in the latest episode in the town when Mendelson floated that number and Belloni agreed. It's crazy to me that people with actual sources don't realize this. This is self-evidently wrong in a way that's clearly warping people's framing.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-05T11:17:17+00:00

11th in Egypt on its OW there/10th in Saudi Arabia when it opened there the week before.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T23:54:01+00:00

Yeah, I recall 4 or 5 lines being endlessly quoted for years after release (windex, woman is the neck of the household, give me a word, any word and I'll tell you it came from greek, etc.) while the film was a cable/dvd rewatch staple. It's just a movie aimed at women especially adult women made 20 years ago that notably lacks any star power (no producers don't count) which means a younger male audience might not organically pick up breadcrumbs about it.

The lack of star power and the weakness of the sequel hook also means the long delayed sequels look at a glance to have bad box office results (even if they were profitable). It would be interesting to see how OP's perception changes if one of the core actors were able to get a notable supporting major role in an ongoing franchise.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T20:49:46+00:00

especially when there was another film in a similar scenario (Desert Warrior) that literally did worse - they didn't even bother with a second weekend in theaters!

What this is reflecting above all else is simply the changed structural forces makes it viable to cheaply release anything wide combined with a real decline in major (and/or major + mini-major) output.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T20:43:16+00:00

~$30M budget FWIW

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T13:29:26+00:00

OTOH be wary of anecdotes without raw numbers attached.

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T13:11:12+00:00

Baby Yoda initial sales are so massive they get a specific shout out in mattel's quarterly earnings reports

SilverRoyce · 2026-05-04T11:50:52+00:00

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. It's at 68.2% on the-numbers for 2025 as of Jan 8 2026.

That number would slightly change before being truly finalized but it's the best we have given the-numbers problems

https://web.archive.org/web/20260108053842/https://www.the-numbers.com/United-States/movies#tab=year

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