SUBMITTED BY Timbo

November 6, 2003 — Forbes has a nice article summing up the success of the Matrix franchise, and the marketing machine behind it.

Much like the films' blurred distinctions between reality and make-believe, the public has hazily viewed The Matrix Reloaded as a financial failure. Untrue. The worldwide box office for the movie has topped $742 million. The videogame "Enter the Matrix," which was produced using $20 million of the film's production budget, has sold 3.2 million copies at $50 each, for a gross total of $162 million.

Also, a selection of nine video shorts, The Animatrix, which explain background details of the complicated story, was released on DVD at the same time that the second film was released in theaters. It has sold 2.7 million copies at $25 each. The soundtrack to the film has sold 1.8 million copies, grossing $37 million.

Warner Bros. receives a fee for distributing the film in the U.S. and most international markets. Thereafter Warner and Village Roadshow, which split the $300 million cost of making the last two films 50-50, will split the profit. Even after half of the box office sales go to the theater operators, there is plenty of gross profit left for the studios' coffers and for the film's so-called gross players. In addition to Silver, that includes the directors and several actors. For the last two films, the main star, Keanu Reeves, received $30 million plus perhaps 7.5% of the gross. The next-highest paid star was Laurence Fishburne, who received $15 million and an estimated 3.75% of the gross.

The ancillary products generated a windfall for many others. Jada Pinkett-Smith earned a modest fee for her role in the second two films, but she cleaned up on the videogame, in which she is the main star. Pinkett-Smith is receiving an estimated 10% of the profit on the game, placing her earnings thus far near $5 million. "I got a check already," she recently confirmed. "It was like, Wow!'" In an unusual move, all of the gross players on the films chipped in a portion of their shares to a pool for production crew managers.

Read the rest at the link below.