How do they come up with that net return? Especially when most films don't catch on?
"What we look at is an exhaustive set of comparables," Bradley says. "We look at similar films done over the most recent years and we narrow it down to films that are closest to our budget.
At the same time, you're looking at similar talent, you're looking at similar genre. And you take what is their average box office and we hair cut that box office by 30%-50% to come up with what we believe is a conservative, moderate approach."
In this process the company removes from comparison giant grossers such as Sideways, a film that cost $16 million to make and whose latest worldwide gross was almost $110 million.
Of course in this case, exhaustive comparables can be subjective as well. Recall a recent episode of the AMC show Mad Men, when an advertising executive wondered why a TV commercial emulating Bye Bye Birdie with an Ann-Margret look-alike didn't work.
Said another executive: "It's not Ann-Margret."
Such are the slings and arrows of working in showbiz.