In most cases of a film this size, the marketing and distribution budgets never exceed the production budget. The Village had a marketing budget estimated around $40 million, so to be a bit liberal - let's say The Happening cost $57 million to
produce and $50 million to
market and
distribute. That means for Fox and UTV to break even, they need a worldwide take of $107 million - and given all current indicators, The Happening should reach that point in the next week or two.
Then you have DVD sales, DVD rentals, and TV rights. Of course there will be some new costs involved with some of that stuff, but very minimal compared to the money that stuff will bring in. I think we can ballpark rental gross for The Happening in the $35 million range, with DVD sales matching. Then TV rights could be sold anywhere from $5 million to $12 million maybe.
20th Century Fox, UTV Motion Pictures, and Shyamalan will be seeing profit on this, have no doubt.
