Universal claims Yesterday lost $88 million (despite a reported profit). With numerous critically acclaimed and award-winning films to his credit, Danny Boyle is one of the last filmmakers many would expect to have trouble finding success with a release. The Slumdog Millionaire director has consistently shown he’s willing to take on a variety of genres and topics with his work. As a matter of fact, it often seems that although his work can be divisive at times, Boyle’s films have a way of lingering long after they’ve disappeared from theaters.
Perhaps this is because they tend to age well, even when considering a film such as Trainspotting, which more or less launched the filmmaker’s career back in 1996. Interest in the film has persisted to such an extent that Boyle took on a sequel with 2017’s T2: Trainspotting. His most recent film, 2019’s Yesterday, offered the unique premise of a world without any trace of seminal rock n’ roll band The Beatles. When struggling musician Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) awakens after an accident, he’s stunned to learn he’s the only one in the world who knows the iconic band’s music - which he then proceeds to pawn off as his own.
At the time of its release, Yesterday was met with decent reviews, and Boyle appeared to have safely secured another hit. But as Deadline now reports, it appears Yesterday wasn’t actually the financial success that many believed it to be. In fact, according to a net profit participant sheet, it looks as though the film has lost $88 million after initially reporting a profit of $45 million. Net profit participant sheets highlight the profits that a participant takes in from the film, and they are often very different affairs than a film’s typical profit and loss statements.
The rather unfortunate side to being a net profit participant (a stipulation that is worked into a participant’s specific deal), is that some costs aren’t exempt, unlike a film’s overall profit margin. In other words, a film like Yesterday may have made a profit of $45 million, but that does not guarantee that its net profits have been as successful. In the Yesterday net profit participant sheet obtained by Deadline (exactly who the sheet belongs to isn’t revealed), it states the film’s budget was $45 million. However, officially, the film’s budget is listed as $26 million. This is due to the fact that this particular net profit participant isn’t enjoying the tax credit Yesterday received for setting its production in the United Kingdom.
While it can be somewhat complicated to unravel the extensive costs and deductions on any given Hollywood production, the net profit participant sheet makes it clear a film’s profits aren’t necessarily what they claimed to be. In this case, it appears the film’s accounting works in one way for some and in another way altogether for others. The end result is that it makes it quite difficult for the average person to really determine whether or not a film has been a financial success. The bottom line on Yesterday, then, is that the film was a box office hit only if the numbers are crunched in a specific manner.
Source: Deadline
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