Fun with Maths! - "For the Fans"

OK, I don't want to keep going on about Batman v. Superman on here, I didn't even hate the movie really, there were bits I liked, but there's something I do want to tackle in regards to some of the response.  As I have previously said, if you liked the film, fine, that's your opinion, and I have mine, just because we don't agree on this, as it is art, one opinion doesn't really trump another.  So as such, this is against all those who are rabidly manning all the battle stations to defend the film.  One defence I've heard of this film, and indeed this is something that I have heard time and again when something with this devoted a fanbase doesn't quite work out, is that it's being made "for the fans".  This is something that turns up a lot in tweets at some critics, even if said critics are pretty publicly comics fans.  Right, time to use some good old fashioned maths to help prove why this argument is terrible, especially in this particular case...




So reportedly, Batman v Superman had a combined budget, for both production and marketing, of somewhere near $410 million, that's our base amount.  Now, for estimating the number of fans out there, how about we use comics sales figures?  According to Comichron, the highest selling DC issue of the last twelve months, was in November last year, Dark Knight III: The Master Race issue 1, with an estimated 440,234 sales.  Just to note, that's a lot higher than the second highest I found, which was last month's Batman issue 50, which sold around 163,406 units.  It seems right to use DKIII for our fan base though, as BvS uses a lot from The Dark Knight Returns, so let's have as our base number of "fans" 440,234.  There are of course older fans not currently reading comics of course, more Superman people, so let's round up a little, shall we say to 450,000?  OK.

Now, the average price of a cinema ticket, from what I could find, is around $8.61.  That was from last year though, but I doubt it's changed too much.  Tell you what, let's be generous and round it up to $9, makes the maths a bit easier, and accounts for the number of 3D screenings of Batman v. Superman.  Also, let's leave out the cinemas' own cut of the ticket price, we'll pretend that all of that cash goes straight back to Warner Bros.  Let's put all that together.  If this film was made for just the fans, then to make a profit, said fans would have to see the film...

$410 million/($9 per ticket * 450,000 fans) < 102 times!

Now I can actually believe that there are some fans that totally would try to do that if they could, and yes I've made a tonne of assumptions here, but I think you see my point.  When you have to spend this much on a property, you not only shouldn't really do it for just the fans, you really can't, as you'll never recoup your costs that way.  This is a pretty extreme example, but the basic logic does hold true for many of these adaptations.  Fanbases, as loud and vocal as they can be, just aren't big enough to support these.  Do you honestly think when Marvel studios greenlit Iron Man, they were thinking of "the fans" (especially the state the character was in post Civil War)?

Besides, there's the one big point that if anything is just made "for the fans", it states that you are excluding anyone new, and that's no way to run a franchise.  Long running series need new points of view, new ideas, it has to reflect the audience to stay fresh.  If there's one thing that's always going to be a barrier to entry it's years of Fan Lore; that's why the ditching of the Star Wars Expanded Universe for the new films was a good thing.  Can you imagine if we had to stop in the middle of The Force Awakens for an info dump on Grand Admiral Thrawn (as cool as he would be to show up), the Palpatine Clones, the Zombie Stormtroopers and all the rest?

This is why I hate the "for the fans" argument; it's factually wrong, economically wrong, and elitist, like it's saying only you can get it.  Also, it's nearly entirely applied to the wrong things; Steve Moffat era Doctor Who isn't made for the fans; stuff like BBV Productions were.  Stop using this tired cliché commenters, be happy that you enjoyed the film, and learn to accept that some people have a different opinion!