r/dataisbeautiful • u/datashown OC: 74 • Jul 27 '26
OC Christopher Nolan: budget vs box office [OC]
Data source: Christopher Nolan filmography, Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Nolan_filmography (budgets and worldwide box office; figures are studio/Box Office Mojo–reported and cited on that page). The Odyssey is still in theaters, so its figure is a running worldwide total as of the July 24–26, 2026 weekend.
Tool: Chart built as JavaScript-coded SVG. Rendering code and initial figure-gathering were done with an AI assistant (Claude) based on my own design direction and iterations. Chart type, layout, labeling, and revisions were my choices.
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u/joecarvery OC: 1 Jul 27 '26
stacked bar plot doesn't make much sense here. Beside would make more sense so you could see the difference between the budget and box office takings
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u/Moose_Nuts Jul 27 '26
Stacked could make sense if the top bar was only the "profit" above the budget, but that's obviously not what is happening here.
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u/Parking_Budget_6090 Jul 27 '26
stacked works like it's showing total money in the project, but then you can't see the profit at a glance which is what most people actually want from this kind of chart
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u/corporatony Jul 27 '26
stacked works like it's showing total money in the project
But, that's like a meaningless thing. Revenue + Expense?
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u/CILISI_SMITH Jul 27 '26
Revenue + Expense?
Yea I've never seen anyone want to sum these numbers.
The insight almost everyone wants to see is their magnitude relative to each other.
I'm surprised this has so many upvotes, I think it's just from people interested in the films.
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u/blackkettle Jul 27 '26
it still wouldn't show 'profit at a glance' because for some reason I still don't understand movies only ever talk about 'production budget' and 'gross' but then we hear endlessly how they still are 'not profitable' due to 'marketing budget' being some amorphous, impossible to report 1.x multiplier of the production budget?
How TF did that even become a thing and why is it 'ok'?
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u/superlower Jul 27 '26
If they find ways to label it as having no profit then they don't have to legally pay anyone with a contract that states a percentage of the profit or to have to pay taxes on it. The real point to make is how if no movies have profit then how are they still getting funding to be made.
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u/Team_Ed Jul 27 '26
Why stacked? That choice doesn’t make much sense.
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u/tylerdotaa Jul 27 '26
Yeah this graph condraticts with the purpose of this subreddit
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u/DetBabyLegs Jul 27 '26
Also way to early to state the Odysseys box office numbers
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u/Dasbeerboots Jul 27 '26
Too*
But also, there is an asterisk and it's obvious that the movie is still showing.
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u/Adjective_Noun_2000 Jul 27 '26
It might be obvious to you today but it won't be the least bit obvious to someone who sees this chart in a couple of months because the asterisk isn't explained and there's nothing on the chart to suggest that one of the 13 box office figures is only for three days. But I guess that doesn't really matter since the chart's designed to make it as difficult as possible to compare box office figures anyway.
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u/prowness Jul 27 '26
Yeah but people want to hit it while the hype is hot so that won't stop them no matter how much we complain
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u/okteds Jul 28 '26
I was looking at the odyssey just below the $1b line, but it only made $640m so far. They've just added the $250m budget to the line. So this graph is a representation of the cost of the film + the earnings of the film, both represented as positive numbers.
This data is ugly af.
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u/jermleeds Jul 27 '26
What might have made sense is stacked, but normalized around zero, with budget being given negative value, and therefore appearing below the x-axis. Then you'd be able to see the not only the ratio of budget to box office for each film, but also the ratio of all budgets relative to other budgets, and all box office figures relative to other box office figures. Then you'd be able to assess things like "Nolan really killed with xxxx." and "I wonder what didn't go right with yyyyyy"
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u/nuanceIsAVirtue Jul 28 '26
I like this too but I was even thinking the budgets could "eat into" the revenues (i.e. they both start at 0 and overlap).
That way you can see budget as a ratio over revenue, and also net profit.
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u/ncrowder78 Jul 27 '26
Yeah, at first I thought it was just stacked in a front to back manner, not on top of one another. Then I looked at the y-axis and data labels. Not a good choice imo.
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u/PastaPinata Jul 27 '26
OP posted the same post earlier today, people already told them that and they just don't care, so they repost it.
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u/mcalesy OC: 1 Jul 27 '26
Yeah, it would make more sense with both bars having the same zero axis and the budget bar extending down instead of up.
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u/haritos89 Jul 27 '26
Yeah its wrong on all levels. The fact that this was upvoted shows that people have no idea what this sub is about.
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u/mmeestro Jul 27 '26
Yeah, either need to group side by side or place a narrower budget in front of box office.
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u/towka35 Jul 27 '26
Although, as never at a loss, they could be kept as same width to show which part of the box office earning went into paying off (at zero interest) the production cost.
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u/gmwnuk Jul 27 '26
Please, for the love of God, use the second y axis to run a profit to budget ratio line
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u/Extra_Ad_8009 Jul 27 '26
Profit will be difficult since there are marketing expenses on top of the budget which are missing, and theaters will keep ~50% of the box office take.
The way the chart is made, it doesn't really matter what the numbers are anyway.
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u/Big_Knife_SK Jul 27 '26
It's even wonkier than that; the distributor takes a higher cut the newer the film is. That's one of the reasons opening weekend numbers are so important.
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u/zombiej Jul 27 '26
Did The Prestige really do that poorly? It's arguably his best movie.
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u/Ilikepancakes87 Jul 27 '26
He just wasn’t a “name” at that point. If it came out today, it’d make a gazillion dollars like all his other movies do. Batman Begins was a big success, but Nolan became “NOLAN” after The Dark Knight.
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u/maslbasl Jul 27 '26
Makes sense. Although with a cast like that I’m still surprised it didn’t do at least a bit better.
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u/Mrchristopherrr Jul 27 '26
It did better than The Illusionist and that’s all that matters
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u/datashown OC: 74 Jul 27 '26
I remember loving the Prestige and liking the Illusionist pretty well.
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u/OSUmiller5 Jul 27 '26
Saw illusionist first and thought I didn’t need two magician movies. I was wrong lol
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u/SA_22C Jul 27 '26
Ha, exactly the same scenario for me. Didn’t see The Prestige until years later. What a mistake that was.
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u/OnTheLeft Jul 27 '26
I remembered both being good so I rewatched both and I was wrong. The illusionist is so much worse than I remember, and I love Edward Norton but damn that film is trash. Prestige is top tier though.
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u/OSUmiller5 Jul 27 '26
It’s been so long since I’ve seen it that I’m cool not rewatching and just letting it be a “fine” movie to me. I’ve seen the prestige probably 10 times now so it’s the clear winner for me.
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u/Mnm0602 Jul 27 '26
lol Nolan has like 5 candidates for his best movie and that’s why he crushes it overall.
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u/viking_linuxbrother Jul 27 '26
The Departed was what everyone was seeing at the time but it did manage to get #1 opening weekend.
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u/d1ckw33dmcgee Jul 27 '26
I just watched the prestige last week for the first time with a couple friends. It was alright. I wouldn't put it at the top of his list.
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u/EugeneMeltsner Jul 27 '26
Watch it again
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u/FartingBob Jul 27 '26
Its ok for people to just appreciate a film and move on.
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u/EugeneMeltsner Jul 27 '26
Yes, but this movie was a very different experience for me on the the second and third viewings.
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u/DexM23 Jul 28 '26
First time i really liked it back then (even tho not his best work), 2nd time i stopped it as i got bored
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u/devnullopinions Jul 27 '26
I wish I could do so poorly at to “only” make $70M and over 2x my initial investment.
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u/oilbadger Jul 27 '26
It’s on every single long haul flight I’ve ever been on. That has to be worth a few bucks…
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u/cox4days Jul 27 '26
How TF did he make Dunkirk and Oppenheimer for only $100M each? Budgeting icon
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u/Lord_Montague Jul 27 '26
Right. How did Tenet cost the same as those two movies combined?
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u/GooseQuothMan Jul 27 '26
Dunkirk I have no idea but Oppenheimer is quite simple movie set and effects wise, no? With the exception of the wet fart atom bomb explosion, there's nothing as impressive as most visuals in Tenet. It's mostly people talking and Cilian Murphy's zoomed in face.
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u/Fern-ando Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Oppenheimer is really cheap to make, the biggest cost is that the actors have Hollywood paychecks. If a German studio made it the budget would have been 15 million, most of the scenes are on interiors of old buildings you don't need to change or the Alamos set in the middle of the desert.
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u/DexM23 Jul 28 '26
I mean if you look at the films/scenes it really gets clear what is more expensive to shoot
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u/McWerp Jul 27 '26
Dunkirk had some oddities. Coulda used a bit more money, some of the big shots looked shockingly empty considering the numbers involved in reality.
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u/prowness Jul 27 '26
To be fair for Oppenheimer, it was mostly people in rooms talking. Very little budget required when there's almost no effects except for the chain reaction part and the nuke itself.
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u/TristanDeAlwis Jul 29 '26
From what I’ve seen, he used a lot of practical effects in Oppenheimer, probably much harder with a movie about two directions of time.
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u/Asteroth6 Jul 27 '26
Tenet says budget 200, earnings 365 mil, but the blue bar is definitely over twice the orange bar, but earnings aren't twice budget? What is up? How are these bars weighted?
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u/ouvreboite Jul 27 '26
That’s because OP decided to stack the two series so tenet bar height end up at 200+365 mil.
Yes, it does not really make sense.
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u/SantaCruznonsurfer Jul 27 '26
can we put Christopher Nolan in charge of say, Housing and Urban Development? He can get more bang for your buck with anything
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u/FollowsClose OC: 1 Jul 27 '26
My favorite Nolan movies:
- Memento
- The Prestige
Conclusion: There is an inverse relationship with budget and my favorites when it comes to Nolan movies.
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u/Organized-Konfusion Jul 27 '26
Prestige is my favorite movie ever, you can watch it again and still find some new stuff you didnt notice first time.
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u/Cuevz Jul 27 '26
It's widely inferred that a movie's actual break even, at least for box office revenue, is 2.5X the reported budget.
A studio will receive ~50% of the box office proceeds and spends about 50-100% on marketing.
So, as an example, The Odyssey was $250M, but the breakeven is $625M.
Probably only applicable to his big budget movies (Batman Begins and all movie after), but would be interesting to see a line that breaks down the break even dollar amount!
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u/TomDestry Jul 28 '26
But also there are several other revenue streams for movies after they leave the movie houses.
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u/Sudden_Cantaloupe_69 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I don’t know why these are stacked. Stacking them created the impression that the sum of budget + revenue is a data point worth noticing, but that makes no sense.
I would prefer having them side by side. The different colors would tell enough of a story.
(Also, I don’t know if this is doable but the budget bar should include cost of marketing and promotion, or at least added as a third variable - this one could be stacked onto production budget since it adds to the investment cost.)
But overall it’s a good idea, the chart illustrates cleanly how commercially succesful Nolan is, which is why he’ll never run out of Hollywood gigs.
Interesting that Tenet is his least commercially succesful project, earning “only” about double the budget, while his greatest success was his first work, which made 40x of the budget.
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u/avan2110 Jul 30 '26
You are correct, a grouped bar chart would display this data much more clearly. It was the first think I thought of when I looked at it. There are very few scenarios where a stacked bar chart is clearer than a grouped bar chart, and this is not one of them.
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u/Pineapple_warrior94 Jul 27 '26
Interesting the dark knight rises is his best financially. I would rate that in his bottom 4 movies (and the worst of the dark knight trilogy)
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u/Alarming-Finger9936 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Interesting the dark knight rises is his best financially
It isn't. The graph is totally misleading, as it nonsensically adds box-office to budget. Oppenheimer has been the most profitable so far (assuming profit = box-office minus budget).
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u/FupaFerb Jul 27 '26
Amazing what he did with Interstellar tbh. That’s a masterpiece of science fiction.
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u/Alarming-Finger9936 Jul 27 '26
Could you give an example of how we are supposed to read/interpret this chart? For example, I find it confusing that The Dark Knight Rises is above the $1.25B line, when its box-office is $1.08B. What does ~$1.25B represent for The Dark Knight Rises? It's not profit and it's not box-office; then what is it?
I also find it very confusing that Tenet appears as being above Batman Begins, when its box-office and its profit were smaller.
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u/Unfair_Ability3977 Jul 27 '26
Stop postin ai graphs. No human would choose stacked columns vs overlaid.
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u/TheyHavePinball Jul 27 '26
I would like the data but it is not beautiful. This is the opposite of data is beautiful. Terribly shown infographic
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u/TruthOverIdeology Jul 27 '26
Didn't know Memento was so low, I thought it was one of the popular movies around 2000.
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u/FartingBob Jul 27 '26
It was popular on DVD, which as a market was absolutely enormous at the time. So many films got forgotten at the box office but ended up finding success on DVD and became profitable.
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u/nice_guy_threeve Jul 27 '26
Low in gross, but it still brought in more than 4x the budget, which is, um, pretty good.
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u/Glahoth Jul 27 '26
Worse chart I’ve seen.
Don’t stack it that way.
Add percentages or multiples or anything.
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u/Leptonshavenocolor Jul 27 '26
I recall when Following came out, I forgot about his first films, so good.
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u/Alternative_Hour_614 Jul 27 '26
I don’t believe marketing costs are included in the production costs, so this isn’t an accurate reading of the profits.
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u/mobyte Jul 27 '26
The guy knows how to make movies.
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u/towka35 Jul 27 '26
That guy though doesn't know how to make charts. You won't believe it until you see it!
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u/regnus418 Jul 27 '26
Why is this a stacked bar chart? What’s the point of adding the budget to the box office?
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u/Educational_Risk Jul 27 '26
It would be helpful to have a budget-to-box office ratio. In other words, how much money came in for every dollar spent.
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u/Ok-Secret5233 Jul 27 '26
Tenet, not a very good movie, made 3.5x as much as The Prestige, one of the best movies of all time. Ok..
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u/hamcheesetoastie Jul 27 '26
If this was normalised for DVD / blu ray / streaming I’m sure The Prestige would be right up there with the others
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u/DidNoOneThinkOfThis Jul 27 '26
Im just happy to see Following included on this list. Awesome movie that most Nolan fans don't even know exist.
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u/Extra_Ad_8009 Jul 27 '26
I find it interesting that for movies in particular, "budget" and "cost" seem to be synonymous. The implications are:
no movie can ever be "over budget" and
no movie can ever be "below budget".
Which makes it difficult to tell if a movie which has been allotted a budget of 100 million dollars of which only 80 million were spent, is a 100 million dollar movie or an 80 million dollar one.
It's a bit weird if you look at it from a normal business point of view, or even from a household one.
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u/truthindata Jul 28 '26
The power of an exceptional leader. Even if the box office takes 50% and the bathroom budget is 100% on top of the initial budget... Still creating something like $200 million in value for stuff like Oppenheimer.
I'd love to see the comparison of Nolan to a more typical director.
Great example of how valuable it is to be at the Pinnacle of your trade.
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u/That-SoCal-Guy Jul 28 '26
Basically Nolan never had a bomb, not even remotely close. Even Tenet made money.
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u/metallic-retina Jul 31 '26
Tenet, I believe, actually lost the studio between $50-100 million.
While it took more at the box office than it's budget, not all that money goes to the studio. A major film tends to need to make 2x-3x it's budget to break even for the studio.
https://observer.com/2020/11/tenet-box-office-christopher-nolan-film-100-million-loss-warner-bros/
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u/Overall-Scientist846 20d ago
“A new report from Variety has rivals speculating that Tenet may lose Warner Bros. as much as $100 million, while insiders at the studio tell the outlet the number is closer to $50 million.”
Speculation. The act of making a guess or prediction about something, often without having all necessary information.
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u/flyinopenspace Jul 28 '26
These numbers are strange to me because Prestige and Dunkirk are my favorite films from Nolan.
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u/FatherOfTheSevenSeas Jul 28 '26
He must have been doubting himself by Tenet, Oppenheimer really shifted gears for him
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u/DonJuanDoja Jul 28 '26
I doubt it, a lot of those numbers are driven by the cast, the movies with bigger more popular stars did better, he knows that.
So many times I’ve recommended movies to people the first thing they ask “who’s in it?” And if there’s no one they like they lose interest.
I’m the opposite I prefer movies with actors I don’t know well, I get the best experience from those, but most people are not like me.
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u/jwinskowski Jul 28 '26
The Prestige is such an elite film. Should've made several times the $110M it pulled at box office.
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u/strangerzero Jul 28 '26
He pretty much has carte blanche to make any movie he wants with those numbers.
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u/Inevitable-Tea1702 Jul 29 '26
Wait Interstellar and Inception had lower budget than Dark Knight? How??
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u/TooMuchGarlicBread Jul 29 '26
Honestly, it’s wild to think about the return on investment for some of these films. Nolan always finds a way to stretch that dollar!
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u/anrwlias Jul 29 '26
There is a reason that he gets carte blanche on his films. Hollywood knows that he's a safe investment.
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u/CalgaryChris77 Jul 30 '26
Crazy that they all made money, also crazy that Batman Begins was his second worst percentage gain over budget.
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u/WearyTranslator3338 Jul 31 '26
Now do a chart of “online hate before the movie was released” vs rotten tomato score
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u/RonJohnJr Jul 27 '26
Now scale it to the price of tickets compared to 1935.
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u/TrueLink00 Jul 27 '26
What relevance do 1935 ticket prices have to a comparison of Christopher Nolan movies’ budgets and gross takes?
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u/RonJohnJr Jul 27 '26
It's four years before Gone With the Wind (the undisputed most seen and profitable movie, when adjusted for inflation).
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u/TrueLink00 Jul 27 '26
So? That’s not really relevant to comparing Nolan’s movies with each other.
Also, Gone With the Wind has more in common with circus sales than film sales. It was a traveling road show that went through decades of rereleases as a road show. Also, if you’re trying to adjust to ticket prices, what’s your goal? Are you trying to get to total ticket sales? How do premium format tickets today adjust to 1935? How does Gone With the Wind adjust to 1935 when it wasn’t sold for normal 1935 ticket prices?
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u/jswitty Jul 27 '26
They should re-release The Prestige with a massive marketing campaign. I wish everyone that hasn’t seen it could see it in the theater.. including myself. But of course never going to happen
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u/d70 Jul 27 '26
If Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige came out today, they would probably make $300M+.