Avatar is an example of a movie that made substantial money many weeks after its opening. Its opening weekend was not proportional to the massive financial success it turned out to be. Strong word of mouth ensured that the drop off from week to week was exceptionally low. As you say though, it is an exceptionally rare phenomenon.
And word of mouth from the few people who have seen the new Charlies Angels movie typically includes the words such as "boring" "laughless" and "joyless."
When did they make a Charlie’s Angels movie?
There was a theory that the bigwigs
knew that they had a box office dud on theirs hands, so they drastically cut the marketing budget. Supposedly it's
only $50 million. Under ideal circumstances, the movie might make $50 million if the "no publicity such thing as bad publicity" principle holds true. In which case all the entertainment media sites talking about
Charlie's Angels bombing causes people to see the movie out of curiosity.
Supposedly the movie cost $48 million to make. So that's $98 million counting marketing.
The movie is
not going to make $98 million dollar. Opening week, counting international box office returns the movie is estimated to have brought in $32 million gross. But that's the gross
before the movie theaters get their cut and the distributors get their cut and in China, the CCP officials involved in movies get a bribe, and there is the literal cost of the film reels and who knows what else.
Even if the movie somehow brings Sony Studios $98 millions, it's
still a failure because about half of the budget was spent in 2015 and it's now 2019.
If a reasonable person fronts money and gets it back in four years, a reasonable person wants interest. The movie would need to make Sony about $120 to $140 million in order for Sony to consider the film breaking even in real financial terms.
Another fun fact. Each movie, each studio, and each theater is slightly different but on average a movie theater gets to get about 20-25% of the box office ticket sales during opening week. The rest goes to the studio. A movie that has been out for three or four weeks, the movie theater gets to keep about 70-80% of the ticket sales with the remainder going to the studio.
In a lot of cases, your local movie theater operates at a loss on opening week if nobody buys popcorn and soda.
That all means if you are the movie studio, you make a lot more money from $1 in the first week than a $1 in the third week.
Even if the word of mouth for
Charlies Angels is really postive and a bunch of people go see the movie later, Sony will only get a fraction of that box office total.
For Sony to make $120 million or so, the movie will probably have to gross about $400 million at this point. That means four or five times more people need to see the movie. Not even
Avatar rebounded like that.
Some cult classics find a big fan base in DVD/Blue Ray sales. That gets dicey because by the time a movie gets on blue-ray a different company might own the video distribution rights. Also, in the age of streaming and redbox, blue ray sales are falling.
I doubt Netflix would pay more than a few million for streaming rights. It is unlikely that a streaming service other than Netflix would bother to stream
Charlie's Angels (2019) because Netflix seems to be the favorite stomping ground for Sony's intellectual property.
