Grr. Arg.

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Industry | March 30, 2010 |

MGM, the source of that classic lion’s roar embedded in our cultural consciousness is drowning in debt. There have been pieces of news over the last year that allude to MGM’s financial difficulties, it’s become standard for any news on an MGM film to include some reference to the studio’s hopes that this will be the film to start to turn it all around. Cabin in the Woods got delayed unexpectedly for a year in order to convert it to 3D. Bond 23 and The Hobbit have both been nudged further and further down the pipeline, because there simply isn’t any money available to start work in earnest. The studio only managed to release 3 films in 2009 and 3 are slated for 2010, after releasing over a dozen in one capacity or another in 2008. One begins to wonder if even essentially completed projects are being pushed off in order to make the studio more attractive to potential buyers.

Here’s the basic financial rundown: MGM has over $3.7 billion in debt, and the best offers to purchase the company have come in at just $1.5 billion. Those two numbers are pretty damned far apart.

Just to put things in perspective, here’s a rough rundown of all the films that MGM has put out over the last decade, with budget, revenue and net. This is very rough since the incestuous nature of Hollywood releases means that you’ll often see a half dozen different companies with hands in the mix due to production, distribution, etc. Additionally, this doesn’t include the other dozen things a company like MGM does on the side, like straight-to-video, television series, and money laundering. The numbers are culled from Wikipedia and IMDB and as such shouldn’t be used for any book reports, but they give a good idea of the scale of MGM’s operations. Numbers are all in millions.

Year	Film	Budget	Revenue	Net
2000	Supernova	90	15	-75
2000	Return to Me	24	8	-16
2000	3 Strikes	3	10	7
2001	Original Sin	26	16	-10
2001	Antitrust	30	11	-19
2001	Josie and the Pussycats	22	15	-7
2001	Hannibal	87	352	265
2001	Hart’s War	70	19	-51
2001	Legally Blonde	18	142	124
2001	Jeepers Creepers	2	59	57
2001	Bandits	80	42	-38
2001	What’s the Worst that Could Happen?	45	32	-13
2002	Barbershop	12	77	65
2002	Crocodile Hunter	13	33	20
2002	Die Another Day	142	432	290
2002	Rollerball	70	19	-51
2002	Windtalkers	100	70	-30
2003	A Guy Thing	20	17	-3
2003	Agent Cody Banks	28	59	31
2003	Anything Else	18	3	-15
2003	Luther	31	29	-2
2003	Legally Blonde 2	45	125	80
2003	Uptown Girls	20	45	25
2003	Jeepers Creepers 2	17	63	46
2004	Good Boy	17	38	21
2004	De-Lovely	20	13	-7
2004	Agent Cody Banks 2	26	28	2
2004	Walking Tall	56	46	-10
2004	Barbershop 2	37	66	29
2004	Sleepover	10	9	-1
2005	Be Cool	53	95	42
2005	The Brothers Grimm	88	105	17
2005	Into the Blue	50	18	-32
2005	Yours, Mine and Ours	45	53	8
2005	The Amityville Horror	19	108	89
2006	Nanny McPhee	34	122	88
2006	The Pink Panther	80	182	102
2006	Basic Instinct 2	70	39	-31
2006	Stormbreaker	40	24	-16
2006	Casino Royale	150	594	444
2006	Harsh Times	2	3	1
2006	Rocky Balboa	24	156	132
2006	Clerks II	5	27	22
2006	Flyboys	60	18	-42
2006	School for Scoundrels	35	24	-11
2007	Premonition	20	84	64
2007	The Flying Scotsman	11	1	-10
2007	1408	22	130	108
2007	Mr. Brooks	20	48	28
2007	Who’s Your Caddy	7	6	-1
2007	Death at a Funeral	9	47	38
2007	Rescue Dawn	10	7	-3
2007	Halloween	15	80	65
2007	Lions for Lambs	35	63	28
2008	Charlie Bartlett	12	5	-7
2008	Superhero Movie	35	81	46
2008	Pathology	8	1	-7
2008	Deal	5	0	-5
2008	College	7	6	-1
2008	The Longshots	23	12	-11
2008	Vicky Christina Barcelona	15	96	81
2008	Igor	25	31	6
2008	Quantum of Solace	200	586	386
2008	Soul Men	40	12	-28
2008	Valkyrie	90	200	110
2009	Taking of Pelham 123	100	150	50
2009	Fame	18	70	52
Total		2661	5177	2516

Ah, some of those bombs bring back memories, and you can see the blockbuster mentality buried in that profit column. A full 45% of the profits came from the three James Bond films alone.

So they’ve managed to rack up more debt than they even had expenditures in making films, even though the films themselves have made money overall. Just what the fuck are they spending all that money on? Somewhere in the ballpark of $2.7 billion spent making films, and $3.7 billion of debt. It’s largely a rhetorical question, it doesn’t really matter if the money was lost because the MGM Grand fell into a sinkhole or they borrowed money in order to finance their secret underground war with Disney’s cybernetic mice. The point is that one of the big original film companies has managed to detonate its eighty-year-old self by doing stuff other than making films.

They’ve got the rights to the James Bond franchise and the two films of The Hobbit, which is basically a license to print money. Owning the rights to those and going bankrupt is like dying of scurvy when you live in an orange juice factory. There’s mismanagement, there’s incompetence, and then there’s truly epic level stupidity.

(source: The One Ring)