You had to figure that Disney's live(ish)-action Snow White reboot would lose money, but even my eyes watered when I read this morning that the oft-derided musical lost about $170 million. But get this, had Disney not produced the movie in the U.K. — and received a reported $65 million (!!!) in tax credits — then Snow White would have lost the Mouse House a jaw-dropping $235 million...
...and entered the Hollywood Hall of Shame as one of the 10 biggest money-losing movie of all time, somewhere between Disney's 2012 stinker, John Carter, and Peter Berg's Battleship from the same year.
I could go over all the reasons with you again — bad concept, Rachel Zegler, bad script, Rachel Zegler, bad casting, Rachel Zegler, bad new songs, Rachel Zegler, budget-busting reshoots, Rachel Zegler, budget-busting (and unnecessary) CGI dwarves, and also Rachel Zegler — but we've been over all this before.
Instead, let me ask one vital question that nobody at Disney seems to have asked themselves or one another: How is it even possible to lose that much money on a picture that could have been shot for probably $100 million, with another $50 million in marketing costs?
That's an easy one: Disney spent a well-reported $336 million to produce a frickin family musical, and another estimated $100 million to market it. Factor in those U.K. tax credits and the movie theater's take, Snow White needed to sell around $740 million in tickets for Disney to break even.
That's almost Star Wars money. For a family musical. Absurd!
At a more reasonable budget — back when studios still cared about that kind of thing — Disney would have started making money at something closer to $260 million.
Had there been any grownups in charge at Disney able to enforce some cost-discipline, a $100 million Snow White would have been a much better movie than the one they made for more than three times that much. Budgets — real budgets — force everyone involved to deliver value. Disney's reckless corporate bosses just sign the checks and pray for the best, it seems.
But there's a bigger story to tell.
Let's look at another big loser, John McTiernan's The 13th Warrior. It's impossible to say exactly where it places on the list of All-Time Box Office Bombs, thanks to Hollywood's notorious accounting gimmickry. It might have lost as "little" as $130 million (adjusted for inflation), or as much as $243 million (ditto). John Carter might be the biggest flop of all time at $274 million in today's dollars, or maybe in 11th place at $153 million.
Nobody can say for sure because nobody actually knows, not even the people who signed the checks.
That's Hollywood for you, but Snow White wasn't shot in Hollywood.
In order to qualify for the U.K.'s lavish film-production tax credits, studios like Disney must follow the U.K.'s accounting rules — and the Brits don't put up with the tricks that we do. So you can pretty much take it to the bank that Snow White did indeed lose $170 million.
But here's the biggest part of the story.
Adjusted for inflation, and applying a bit of Kentucky windage to account for Hollywood accounting witchery, eight or maybe nine of the biggest box-office losers of all time were released in just the last 15 years.
Probably seven of the next 10 did, too.
In fact, out of the 139 biggest box office bombs listed on Wikipedia (for losing about $100 million or more in today's dollars), 123 of them were made since 2000.
Folks, Hollywood as we know it was born in the 1920s, and those studios basically printed money for 80 years.
I think I know what happened — and it isn't just one thing — but I'd love to read your theories in the comments.
Recommended: FCC to Newsom: Hey, Where'd the $450 Million Go?
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