Operation Finale, Another Holocaust Movie Flop

Operation Finale is officially a box office flop, with box office receipts falling well below the production budget.

The movie was advertised heavily.   A large number of theaters were lined up. Critics were as respectful as possible. All with dismal results.

The average box-office revenue per theater for September 17 was a pitiful $85.90

Domestic Total as of Sep. 23, 2018: $17,165,252.  A Production Budget of $24 million

Not much of that $ 17,165,252 will return to the investors.   

Hollywood accounting is complicated and obscure with producers fudging figures to make their results look better; any analysis involves a certain amount of speculation.

Three main items reduce the return to investors in a movie:

• Production overhead: Studios, on average, calculate production overhead by using a figure around 15% of total production costs.
• Marketing overhead: To determine this number, studios usually choose about 10% of all advertising costs although Operation Finale was probably much greater.
• Distribution overhead: Film distributors typically keep 30% of what they receive from movie theaters ("gross rentals"). The interesting thing is that the amount of money kept by the distribution company (again, which is then divided between itself and the production company if it's different) shifts the longer the movie is on the market. Typically, slightly more than half of all dollars sold in tickets goes to the studio/distributor for the first few weeks of its release. 

Operation Finale joins Son of Saul, Denial, and Boy in the Striped Pajamas as a ridiculous dishonest bending of history Holocaust Movie Flop.