When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that mysterious end of the equation, Deadline is repeating our Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2019, using data culled by seasoned and trusted sources.

THE FILM

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

Lionsgate

What started off as a $20 million-budgeted genre action movie in 2014 has swelled into a near $600M worldwide-grossing franchise for Lionsgate, and a comeback for Keanu Reeves. Compared to the superhero swell, this is a simple tale of an assassin who emerges from retirement to avenge his slain puppy. After the first one cleaned up in ancillaries, the global box office jumped from $86M to $171.5M. The third pic, Parabellum, co-starred Reeves’ Matrix co-star Laurence Fishburne and Halle Berry. The result was the franchise’s best opening weekend at $56.8M, as well as franchise highs with a $171M domestic total and a final $326.7M worldwide cume — a 90% increase over John Wick: Chapter 2. Lionsgate moved the opening date for the franchise from mid-February on part 2 to May 17 this time. Staying away from any Disney event film on the summer calendar was key; the pic arrived three weeks after Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame and a week before Aladdin. At 90% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, John Wick 3 was the best reviewed feature in the series with Chad Stahelski back as director, and received an A- CinemaScore pulling in a heavy male demographic at 63%.

THE BOX SCORE

Here are the costs and revenues as our experts see them:

THE BOTTOM LINE

Even though Lionsgate sold $45M of the pic in foreign sales, which contributes to John Wick 3‘s total global revenues of $258M, they’ll reap more of the profit here versus Knives Out due to the fact it had to split the cash surplus 50-50 on that one with Media Rights Capital. A robust global home entertainment portion is factored here at $70M. Liongate reported that the threequel had sold over 3 million units in packaged media, electronic sales and VOD in its first month, becoming the distributor’s highest-grossing home entertainment title in five years, since 2014’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. John Wick 3 even surpassed John Wick 2 in its first three days of electronic-sales release. The $12M participations are a mix of backend and bonuses for Stahelski and Reeves. That’s part of total costs of $169M, resulting in an $89M profit for John Wick 3. Lionsgate is plotting a fourth pic for a release set as of now on May 21, 2021.