Potential Middle Earth movies in the future?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Andsigil

David Lynch did "Dune" back in 1984. It's taken 33 years for another shot at it in cinema, this time with Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario", "Blade Runner 2049", "The Arrival") as the director, and it's going to be a trilogy.

Kuruharan was right when he said it will take a generation before we see more Tolkien films.

The difference is, the Lynch-DiLaurentis Dune was a commercial flop, indeed a box office disaster, whereas PJ's Rings flicks are some of the biggest moneymakers in history. That makes a big, big difference to the studio suits when evaluating a return to the well.

[Andsigil]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

The difference is, the Lynch-DiLaurentis Dune was a commercial flop, indeed a box office disaster, whereas PJ's Rings flicks are some of the biggest moneymakers in history. That makes a big, big difference to the studio suits when evaluating a return to the well.

What was "The Hobbit"'s ROI?

[Zigûr]

Wikipedia claims that it made $2.93 billion on a $745 million budget (Wikipedia itself says a $623 million budget, but every source for that claim says $745 million).

That would suggest a profit of almost $2.2 billion, although one should deduct several hundred million more for marketing.

Nevertheless, it's a quantity which probably exceeds Smaug's wildest dreams of avarice. I wonder if they saved or lost money by splitting the project into three films when it was originally meant to be two.

Percentage-wise, however, it's far less than the return the Lord of the Rings trilogy made, which seems to have made almost ten times its cost (depending on marketing and other factors).