2020 The Measured Circle's Most Profitable Movies

While tracking a movie's box office is fascinating, The Measured Circle is also interested in how profitable a movie is.

This list of movies making a domestic gross ("dogro") of at least $40 million in the USA in 2020 ranks them in order, based on their dogro against their rumored production budgets. Certainly there are other costs (including the not inconsiderable marketing budget) and other income (including foreign box office and merchandising), but this can give us an interesting picture.

Expect studios to look at these types of results, and sometimes greenlight projects based on them (although it's hard to resist spending a $100 million on a possible blockbuster).

Note that recent releases will typically appear lower on this list than their eventual results. If they were in the top ten the weekend before the list is updated, they will normally be marked with "and counting".

Movies where the rumored production budget is not available on IMDb (or elsewhere...we prefer using BoxOfficeMojo, which, like IMDb, is owned by Amazon, but which have dogroed at least $40m in 2020 in the USA appear at the bottom of the list. They may be more profitable than many of the movies above them, but we can't do the math on them.

As a new feature (introduced in 2013), we've decided to label movies, to make this clearer. A traditional measure of success is the dogro being twice the production budget. Using that as a starting point...

Dogro 2X production budget = "Money" Dogro 3X production budget = "Golden" Dogro 30X production budget = "Platinum" (God's Not Dead prompted the creation of this new award)

Dogro less than 50% of production budget= "Underperformer"

Starting in July 2017, we added another Measured Circle Award: Road Winner. These movies have at least 2/3rds of their box office from "foreign", per BoxOfficeMojo. While we specifically focus on US box office, that can help explain why, for example, a sequel might be made to a movie which was an Underperformer. This number is also particularly unstable in the early part of a movie's release, since movies don't open in all markets simultaneously. For that reason, not every movie that qualifies may show the award, and it's possible we'll award a movie and then the percentages will change. On 5 May 2019, we started listing the dogro (domestic gross) percentage of the whole: a movie would need to be under 34% to be a Road Winner.

Sub-40s

These movies did not make it to the list below because they did not dogro $40.0m. We will note two kinds: ones that have dogroed triple their production budget (Golden) or had a production budget of at least $40.0m and have not dogroed half of their budget (Underachievers).

Golden Sub-40s may appear here before their run is done and they may earn more dogro (particularly if they are nominated for or win Oscars). Underachiever Sub-40s are not added here until that status seems very likely (we will typically wait at least two months from the release date).

Golden Sub-40s

Underperformer Sub-40s

Projected (we are confident that these movies will appear on the list…USA release dates are shown, subject to change ((and due to recent events, several tentpoles have changed)), when known):

* Westside Story (18 December) * Godzilla vs. Kong (20 November) * Minions The Rise of Gru (3 July) * Wonder Woman 1984 (5 June) * Fast & Furious 9 (22 May) * Black Widow (1 May)

Possible (we are less confident in these, but wouldn't be surprised if they dogro at least $40m):

* Dune (18 December) * Eternals (6 November) * Halloween Kills (16 October) * Death on the Nile (9 October) * The Witches (9 October) * Bill & Ted Face the Music (21 August) * The One and Only Ivan (14 August) * Morbius (24 July) * Jungle Cruise (24 July) * Ghostbusters 2020 (10 July) * In the Heights (26 June) * Top Gun: Maverick (26 June) * Artemis Fowl (5 June) * The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (22 May) * Scoob! (15 May) * Legally Blonde 3 (8 May) * Trolls World Tour (17 April) * The New Mutants (3 April) * Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (3 April)

NOTE: due to what is hopefully a temporary change, it is much harder to put this list in order than it used to be...it may not be in order when you see it.