Negative word of mouth With the advent of
social media platforms such as
Facebook and
Twitter in the 2000s,
word of mouth regarding new films is easily spread and has had a marked effect on box office performance. A film's ability or failure to attract positive or negative commentary can strongly impact its performance at the box office, especially on the opening weekend.
External circumstances Occasionally, films may underperform because of issues largely unrelated to the content of the film, such as the timing of the film's release. This was one of the reasons given for the commercial failure of
Intolerance,
D. W. Griffith's follow-up to
The Birth of a Nation. Owing to production delays, the film was not released until late 1916, when the
widespread antiwar sentiment it reflected had started to shift in favor of
American entry into World War I. Another example is the 2015 docudrama about
FIFA entitled
United Passions. A glowing portrayal of FIFA, which had mostly funded the film,
United Passions was released in theaters in the United States at the same time
FIFA's leaders were under investigation for fraud and corruption. The film grossed only $918 at the US box office in its opening weekend. Sometimes, a film's performance may be adversely affected by national crisis or a disaster, such as the
September 11 attacks in 2001,
Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and the
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021.
High production costs Box-office gross numbers are not always reflective of profit as not all money is returned to the film studio. Some of the gross is kept by the film exhibitors and the film distributor. A
rule of thumb for making an estimate of a studio's portion of the gross is that the studio usually gets half. Sometimes a film will fail financially, even when it performs reasonably well at the box office. For the 2005 film
Sahara, its budget ballooned to US$281.2 million for production, distribution, and other expenses. In 2012, Disney reported losses of US$200 million on
John Carter. The film had made a considerable US$234 million worldwide, but this was short of its $250 million budget plus worldwide advertising. The 2007 film
The Golden Compass had a production budget of US$180 million. To be able to fund the film,
New Line Cinema had to sell all of the film's international distribution rights to various film distributors around the world. The film underperformed domestically, but was an international success; New Line Cinema did not have a cut of the international box office. These events were major factors in New Line Cinema becoming a division of
Warner Bros. Pictures. == Recovery ==