Here's an excerp from an article I pulled off the net several years ago. It gives an idea about the average gross to be expected from a low budget film, based on relatively old data. Note that low budget was defined as 1.5 Mil or less to make, and that the 'deal' films are medium budget films, which generate higher returns, especially in the cable and pay-per-view markets ...
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Low Budget Feature Track Record
Using data on 253 low budget features and extrapolating this data for 1996 dollars, the average gross of each picture was well over $9,002,030 - theatrical income only. The top 8 pictures made more than $30,000,000 each and the top picture made $70.4 million. Averaging these 8 pictures gives an UPSIDE AVERAGE of $48,175,478. The bottom 8 pictures made less than $2 million each and the lowest picture earned only $1,593,848 for a DOWNSIDE AVERAGE of the 8 lowest pictures of $1,872,552 each.
If these 16 UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE pictures are completely deleted from the sample of 253 pictures, we get an average gross of the remaining 237 pictures of well over $7,920,377 each. Call this the NORMAL GROSS.
For our computations in computing projections, we modified the UPSIDE AVERAGE and the DOWNSIDE AVERAGE figures with the NORMAL GROSS and got a conservative $28,047,927 for the AVERAGE UPSIDE and $4,896,464 for the AVERAGE DOWNSIDE on the theatrical market alone.
A feature is released on video cassette after the initial theatrical run. Even if revenues generated in this medium are only 5% greater (and they are more) than the theatrical market, this gives an upside of $29,450,323 and a down side of $5,141,287. Next release is cable (such as HBO and CINEMAX) and this market earns over 15% of the theatrical market. This generates $4,207,189 on the upside and $734,470 on the downside. Pay-per-view (such as found in motels, hotels and resorts) is the next market. We used a figure of 5% of theatrical revenues giving an upside computation of $1,402,396 and a downside of $244,823 for this market. When these four markets are added up and the upsides and downsides are averaged, we get a bottom line figure of $37,062,440 for each low budget feature. This is the Short Term gross return at the Exhibitor level.
Syndication, the selling of a movie to each of the thousands of individual television stations across domestic U.S., Canada and abroad, is a form of exhibition that may proceed for 15 years or longer. This can and usually does generate about 200% of what theatrical revenues were and ordinarily commences about 3 years after release in the cable markets. Any film, no matter how bad or good, can be syndicated -as you can readily illustrate to yourself by taking a look at some of the films on local late-night TV. Gross income from syndication, based on the average of the upside and downside theatrical revenues, may be as high as $32,944,391 for each low budget feature over the course of 15 Years.
None of the above revenues include network or ancillary sales which can be immense for medium and high budget films. Take a look at the toys generated from BAT MAN and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. Now, even low-budget feature producers are getting involved with local merchants for ancillary sales.
Thus the above data indicates that the total long and short term gross for one feature motion picture is estimated to be $70,006,831 over an 18 year period.
Past Decade Returns
The Hollywood Reporter and Entertainment Data Inc. present the following data:
The top grossing independent feature, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES,
released by New Line Cinema, earned $135.3 million in domestic U.S. The Top 40 pictures averaged $28.87 million. Foreign rentals are about equal to domestic gross bringing the top grossing picture to $270.6 Million and the average to $57.74 million.
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I know the above has been surpased by 'The Full Monty' which made over 200 Mil in the theaters alone (cost to make was 3.5 Mil).
A good example of a former G&G film is 'The Delta Force' which grossed 17 Mil in the U.S. theaters alone --- in 1986. |
