A recent Variety article and subsequent tweet about Ryan Coogler’s latest movie ‘Sinners’ has stirred up controversy surrounding what’s considered profitable at the box office in 2025. While reporting on the initial box office numbers for both ‘A Minecraft Movie’ and ‘Sinners,’ Variety said that despite Sinners making $63.5 million in its global debut, “profitability remains a ways away” due to the high costs the movie accumulated.
Sharareh Drury, a freelance entertainment journalist, addresses the impact of people moving away from watching movies in theaters and instead waiting to watch them from the comfort of their own home on a streaming service.
“You might have a film that you know doesn’t perform well at the box office for months and months, but the minute it hits streamers, it gets renewed life,” says Drury. “I think that’s the tricky thing with profitability now is that there’s so many different ways for movies to become profitable, and sometimes it just takes them a little big longer.
Due to change and uncertainty, the last decade in the movie industry has been tumultuous. These major shifts both within the industry and with viewers’ movie watching habits have changed the way we look at the box office numbers and what makes a movie profitable.
Industry standard considers a movie profitable if it makes back at least double their entire budget. Sinners, for example, cost $90 million before global marketing expenses. In order for the movie to be profitable, they must make back double their expenses. That exact number is up for debate, with some sources saying that number is around 170 million and others saying it could be up to 225 million. Drury describes how there can be confusion in the industry because there is no uniform opinion on profitability.
“Different people have different perspectives of what is profitable simply because of how things perform at, you know, at a theater or in a movie theater on opening weekend, versus how things are doing, you know, six months from now,” explained Drury.
The press coverage a movie receives before its release is instrumental for hyping up viewers and encouraging them to take the time to see the movie. This coverage is not always consistent across all movies because films by people of color can receive harsher scrutiny than their counterparts.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to whether it’s a bipoc led film, or if it’s just like, maybe the film has whatever kind of cast, but it’s a non white director, or a majority non white film,” explained Drury. “At some point, unfortunately, I think there’s just a lack of understanding and more questioning that comes into play about whether a film is going to be received well, whether it’s going to be enjoyable, successful or profitable.”
While films with primarily non-white casts tend to get treated differently in the way they are written about and perceived in the box office such as Variety’s article on Sinners’ opening box office numbers. Some believe, based on their opening box office numbers, a film like Sinners still has the legs to be a modern blockbuster. Heading into its second weekend in theaters, it currently sits at 71 million dollars at the box office. Whether or not it will see the same profit from weekend one roll into weekend two is up for debate, but word of mouth and the internet seems to be working so far.