We are regularly treated each year to a barrage of unfounded claims and mindless propaganda from the MPAA yet when the facts are laid on the table they show the real picture...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57431701-1/low-latency-no-22-what-piracy/In 2005 the MPAA estimated that roughly $3 billion a year is lost to Internet movie piracy. Since 2005, there have been five films that have broken a previous opening weekend box office record. Most recently, of course, is this past weekend's $200.3 million blockbuster, "The Avengers." Not only did the film shatter the previous weekend opening record, but it do so with a pirated copy of the film in circulation an entire week before it hit theaters.
The other reason for so called "poor" profits is of course the "hollywood accounting" tax avoidance scam of setting up a few sub divisions of your movie company overseas and lending money from them for a specific movie production at madness level interest rates, even when the film is a blockbuster the parent company will claim a loss has taken place because they have to factor the loan repayments into the films budget, making the whole exercise look expensive when the reality is its only by their devious accounting practices are such large sums of revenue made to disappear thus stealing from both actors and other folks who get paid a portion of the films "profits", no profits means no shares of the cash in many cases.
