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Last night I was thinking about how it's amazing that in five years, there have been five "Saw" films made. That led to me thinking about why so many horror movies - usually to the dismay of "hardcore" horror fans - have sequel after sequel (after sequel after sequel) made.
Well, like most of you expected, it's because they keep making money. The more we buy tickets (and the more money the studios make) the more films there are to be made.
While that seems obvious, what many people just might not realize is how incredibly profitable many of these horror franchises have become. In many cases, money grossed in comparison to money invested for these franchises really rivals the returns on some of Hollywood's biggest "blockbuster" films.
In other words, it seems that it's much harder to gamble and make a movie like The Dark Knight and have a huge return than it is to milk a horror franchise, like "Saw," that has a much smaller production budget and make an even larger return.
I did a little number crunching, and this is what I found out about the "Saw" films:
"Saw"
Budget: $1,200,000
Gross: $55,153,403
"Saw 2"
Budget: $4,000,000
Gross: $87,025093
"Saw 3"
Budget: $10,000,000
Gross: $80,150,343
"Saw 4"
Budget: $10,000,000
Gross: $63,270,259
"Saw 5"
Budget: $10,800,000
Gross: $40,000,000 (to date)
Total budgeting: $36,000,000
Total grosses: $325,599,098
Profit is just over being 800% of the initial investment.
That means, the franchise has made over eight times the money in ticket sales as it spent on production budgets. As of today, the franchise is running at better than an 800% profit.
To break it down a little more, that means the franchise has netted $289,599,098.
Now, the reason why I bring this up is only 34 "blockbuster" movies have ever had better gross returns on their budgets as the "Saw" series has netted as a franchise.
What's even more amazing is the actual "percentage" return for the "Saw" franchise in comparison to some of the individual "blockbuster" releases over the last few years. For example:
"The Dark Knight"
Budget: $185,000,000
Gross: $527,822,235
Profit was just under being 200% of the initial investment.
"Titanic"
Budget: $200,000,000
Gross: $600,779,824
Profit was just over being 200% of the initial investment.
So what does this all mean? Well, if you own a studio and you're looking to make a ton of money, you'd be better off taking a small chance on a low-budget horror film with an interesting story than you would rolling the dice (big time) by casting Hollywood's biggest stars in a blockbuster that'll cost you hundreds of millions of dollars.
It also means that if you want sequels to stop, you have to stop buying tickets. Otherwise, all you're doing is enticing studios by granting them huge profits on tiny investments. You're telling them that you're still going to buy a ticket to see their low-budget cash cow.
The next time you find yourself frustrated that one of your favorite characters or movies is being sucked dry, consider why it's happening. Instead of asking, "ANOTHER sequel?", only to see the movie anyways, consider sitting the movie out. If enough people do, there won't be another, and perhaps we can start saving some of these original films before they're bundled in with their terrible sequels.
Originally Posted by steelba
