10 Movie Industry Secrets You Didn't Know

Though on paper calculating the financial success or failure of a movie might seem as easy as budget vs. profit, studios have a vested interest in obfuscating the numbers game as much as possible.

You might be familiar with "Hollywood accounting," whereby studios creatively cook their books in order to imply that massively successful movies ultimately failed to turn a profit, usually in order to avoid paying taxes or royalties to cast members.

Perhaps most famously, Star Wars' Darth Vader actor David Prowse was denied royalties from Return of the Jedi because the studio reported zero profit...despite the film grossing a stonking $475 million worldwide.

In more recent times, the Danny Boyle comedy Yesterday saw Universal claim it lost $87.8 million on the project despite grossing almost six-times its budget.

But it's not just Hollywood accounting which is concerning: studios routinely lie about the budgets of their movies, and without any consistent external means to verify, they're often free to do so with impunity.

For example, Revolution Studios was outed as frequently downplaying the budgets of its biggest flops, often shaving $20-30 million off the price tags of dud films.

While you can argue that studios don't owe a great deal of transparency to audiences, when it directly affects the payouts to the cast and crew who work on these films - typically in order to benefit those at the top - while ultimately dictating which films are made in the future, it's definitely problematic.