PrintOctober 13, 2007
Some inconvenient numbers
Steve Hargreaves of CNN/Money writes of Al Gore's planned $100-200 million a year ad blitz for energy conservation, supposedly financed by "donations and proceeds from Gore's 2006 ‘An Inconvenient Truth.'"
When I took a closer look at the numbers in this article, however, those donations look like they will have to be substantial. There is no way Al Gore could have netted $100 million to pay for an ad blitz from An Inconvenient Truth based on the published box office results for the film.
According to Box Office Mojo, the film grossed a bit over $49 million in the world's theaters. Usually the theater gets around half of the ticket price. The studio gets a chunk for making the prints, marketing, distribution, etc. So even if costs were low and the studio gave up any profit, we are talking maybe $20 million tops.
Nor does the $100 million number make more sense when I factor in rentals and sales. According to the rental archive at imdb.com. An Inconvenient Truth grossed only $7.27 million in U.S rentals during the 7 weeks it was in their top 50 rental titles. It did not move back into the top 50 after its Oscar win. The store is going to eat up a huge chunk of the rental income, so the amount going to Gore would be very small.
According to Variety, a week after the Oscars, the DVD sales of An Inconvenient Truth amounted to a cumulative total "of more than 1 million copies". What was the average sales price after all the discounts? Maybe $17 -18? Factor in the cost of the disc itself, packaging, freight, profit for the wholesalers and retailer, etc. Even if Gore got a healthy percentage after all of that, I can't see the net being more than 12 to 15 million.
The final piece of income is that from cable providers and networks might have (over) bid for the rights. Considering how many teenagers and college students have already been force fed this movie, buying the rights to air it would seem to be more a political than a business mover. Thus it comes as no surprise that CBS owned Showtime has the premium cable rights. I wasn't able to find a story about how much amount they paid, however.
So who is actually paying for this ad blitz and why? If it is coming from those who see a draft Gore movement in the future the recent, post Nobel numbers from Gallup linked here ought to give them pause.
