Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Is It a Success for the Producers?

Movie producers are the deal makers. They find a screenplay or have one written, raise money to make the movie, and hire the director. Once “the film is in the can,” the producers raise the money to distribute it. This may be by making a deal with a company that specializes in distributing movies, or they may raise the money and pay a distribution company to distribute it.

(Caveat emptor! I have no connection to the movie industry. This post is based on snippets of information I have accumulated as a movie fan and on wild speculation!)

“Distribution” includes making deals with theaters, advertising, making prints of the movie (for Expelled: 1-1/2 hours of 35 mm color film at 24 frames per second times 1,052 theaters–a major expense), and getting the prints to and from theaters.

For distributors, it would be better if Expelled opened in more than 1,000 theaters (2,500 to 3,500 theaters is typical for a wide release). They are satisfied, however, because they are paid for the services they render and do not have much of a stake in the success of the movie.

With a typical movie, the producers have everything riding on the movie’s financial success. Producers, like the director, writer, and principle actors, get a percentage of the profits. Unlike the others, they only get a percentage of the profits.

Although most producers have a production company that pays them a salary, the real money is in the profits. The first weekend, the theater only keeps around 20% of the money it takes in. Each week they keep a little more, until after four or five weeks, they keep most of it.

A movie that cost $25 million to make and distribute, as does an average movie today, could bring in far more than $100 million–or lose everything. Prom Night (2008), which is just as bad a movie as Expelled, cost an estimated $18 million to make and distribute. In it’s first weekend, it brought in $21 million, and after two weeks it had earned in $32 million! The producers are rolling in the dough!

Expelled brought in $3.0 million in its first weekend. About 80% of that, $2.4 million, went to the producers and the people they pay a portion of the profits to (distributor, director, actor)

IMDB does not have budget figures for Expelled, but I read somewhere it cost $3.5 million to make. [I don't know how reliable that figure is, but it sure looked like it would be cheap--talking heads, stock footage, and simple (mostly) animations.]

The advance screenings used to promote the movie were very inexpensive. All the producers paid for were travel expenses for one or two people for a few weeks–maybe a hall rental here and there. Presumably, they lost no income from people who stayed away from the movie because they had seen an advance screening. I say that because the purpose of these screenings was to generate publicity, that is, to bring in more people than they kept away. I assume they know from research or experience that the gains would outnumber the losses.

The producers paid nothing at all for the free attention the movie got as a result of the controversy it generated. In fact, the shouting and name-calling from well educated liberals must have fed the ardor of many “lightly educated” conservatives among the target audience. (Note that I did not say they should not have vociferated about this movie.)

Expelled was advertised nationwide. I saw one commercial on a major cable network (USA?), but I don’t know what advertising may have been done on other networks or in other media. I don’t know how much cost to assign to advertising. I’m going to make a blind guess that $5 million would pay for a nationwide multimedia campaign directed at half the population. I say “half” because Expelled was released in 1,052 theaters while the usual wide release is to 2,500 to 3,500 theaters.

I also don’t have figures for the cost to distribute a film. Let’s guess $1,000 per screen or $1 million total.

So the unreliable figures for costs are: $3.5 million to produce, $5 million to advertise, and $1 million to distribute, for a total of $9.5 million–may as well round up to $10 million.

At separate points in the movie, Expelled contains 25 seconds of the John Lennon song Imagine and about one minute of animation that closely duplicates animation produced by XVIVO. Yoko Ono has filed a lawsuit to stop distribution of the movie, so long as it contains the Lennon piece. Presumably, XVIVO will also.

The producers of Expelled claim that the quote from Imagine is subject to the Fair Use Doctrine because the quote is brief and they are using it in a work of criticism. If I recall correctly, the movie played only two lines, or 8% of lines, from the 26-line song: “Nothing to kill or die for; And no religion, too.” Looked at another way, the copied passage lasts 25 seconds, or 14%, of the song’s 184 second playing time. I’m no lawyer, BUT, I think 10% is the usual criterion for “brief” in Fair Use cases. On the other hand, “criticism” usually means applying literary criticism to the quoted work, which the movie does not do. It looks to me that Ono is likely to win the lawsuit, but that it is not a sure thing.

=====

Addendum, April 26, 2008: Excellent discussion of the Fair Use Doctrine in relation to Expelled will be found at Shots from the Battery.

April 27, 2008: An excellent and very readable discussion of Fair Use comes from Stanford University.

=====

The internal workings of the cell are almost too complicated to comprehend. To make this animation, XVIVO had to leave out most of what is happening in the cell. The copy of the XVIVO animation (click on Animation > Medical Education > Inner Life of the Cell) changes colors and makes minor changes in the positioning of the features depicted. The odds that Expelled and XVIVO would independently include the same small fraction of cell activities, and furthermore, illustrate the remaining activities in the same way, are nil. The changes that Expelled made are trivial. Expelled plagiarized the XVIVO animation and should pay. (For a chuckle and a better understanding of the issue, see The Official Expelled Paternity Test.)

So, the producers will need to deduct the judgment from at least one, and probably two lawsuits from their profit. How much will they have to pay? In these cases, the plaintiffs are likely to forbid Expelled from using their works at all, plus ask for payment for the stolen work. If they succeed, this will leave Expelled with 1,000 prints of their film that cannot be used until the offending parts have been replaced by splicing replacement film in. (I assume splicing would be less expensive that making new prints.) This might cost (blind guess) $200 per print and they might have 500 prints fixed for $100,000.

Judgments usually in this type of case are usually for damages plus a punitive judgment. The damage is the amount of money that the owners would have earned if Expelled had payed reasonable usage fees. Let’s guess that that might be $1,000 per second or $25,000 for Imagine and $100,000 for the XVIVO animation. In cases of egregious violations, as the XVIVO copy seems to be, punitive damages usually top out at about three times actual damage. So this might mean a $400,000 judgment for XVIVO.

The Imagine case is more marginal. They might be judged to have quoted a brief passage, and the judge might be lenient, assuming that they made an honest mistake based on errant legal advice. Maybe the punitive judgment would equal the damages, making my guess at the settlement for Ono $50,000 plus legal fees.

Of course, Expelled might settle out of court, dramatically reducing, and hiding from public knowledge, the amount of the settlements.

So, let’s tally up the expenses and income. I already guessed (above) that production cost $10 million. Add to this the guess that lawsuits will cost $450,000 (plus legal fees, let’s say, $100,000) and the cost of removing the plagiarized portions from 500 prints, $100,000. That yields a guess at total costs of $10.65 million.

As I guessed above, the producers received perhaps $2.4 million from the first weekend. The usual drop in revenue from week-to-week is about 1/3. That would give a prediction of about $1.6 million for the second weekend and $1.1 million for the third. Because of the heavy emphasis that promotion placed on attending the movie in the first weekend, expenses and revenue can be expected to drop precipitously in coming weeks. I doubt that the movie will be in theaters very long. In fact, I would bet that a lot of theaters do not carry it for three weeks. So, I am being charitable the above figures to get a guess at in-theater revenue of $5.1 million.

With costs of more that $10 million and revenue at something like $5 million, the producers are going to take a hit at the end of the theatrical release.

Will they care? Expelled is not a typical movie. It is propaganda produced, it is safe to guess, by wealthy, conservative, Christian zealots; why else would their identities be kept secret? The producers may consider $5 million to be a bargain price for all the attention they brought to their cause.

Well educated liberals may think that the movie is insignificant because it did not prove its points. However, it is the “lightly educated” conservatives who were targeted by this movie. Their doubts about evolution have been reinforced merely by the fact that this movie was made, and those 500,000 or more who will have seen it, will have had their anti-evolution positions hardened by its deceitful rhetoric.

=====

Added May 1, 2008: “Nearly $4 million was spent on producing the movie and “a multiple of that” in distribution and marketing so far, Mr. Craft says.To make a profit, Expelled needs strong enough attendance to land an all-important DVD deal. Mr. Craft says six companies have approached Premise so far.”

Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/chall/stories/DN-Hall_27bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4655452.html

=====

Rocky

Links for the posts in this series:

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Is It a Critical Success?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Is It a Success for Theater Owners?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Is It a Success for the Producers?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Is It a Success for Creationists?