When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources.
THE FILM
In 2015, the second-highest-grossing animated film was Pixar’s Inside Out, a crazy romp that takes place inside the mind of a young girl. The brainchild of Up‘s Pete Doctor, the film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and climbed all the way to sixth place in profitability for all films. Here’s how the numbers play out:
THE BOX SCORE
Here are the costs and revenues as our experts see them:
THE BOTTOM LINE
Inside Out premiered in Cannes and then opened June 19 to an opening weekend of $90.4M, the highest ever for an original animated film. It was among the best reviewed films of the year, animated or live action, and scored 98% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. The film cost $175M and grossed an outsized $856M globally. It became the second biggest domestic grossing Pixar film behind Toy Story 3. The participations, residuals and off-the-tops cracked $50M, but it didn’t matter. Inside Out still brought Disney a whopping $279M in net profits, a Cash on Cash Return of 1.58, and an Oscar. It re-established Pixar atop the animated film pyramid, as well.
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