Here's How Much Money 'The Interview' Lost for Sony

When Sony pulled "The Interview" from theaters and opted for an almost entirely VOD release, it was clear that the movie would end up being a big financial loss for the studio.

We now have a better idea of just how much of a loss it was.

Current estimates say that "The Interview" lost about $30 million for Sony Pictures Entertainment, factoring in the movie's production budget, marketing budget, box office revenues and home video revenues. The movie reportedly cost about $44 million to make (roughly $15 million of which was for Seth Rogen and James Franco's salaries) and had about another $30 million in marketing costs. That puts the total cost at about $74 million, though Sony claims it's closer to $60 million since they cut their marketing budget in the week leading up to the movie.

Thus far, "The Interview" has made just under $6 million in theaters and just over $31 million on VOD. Those number could climb to $7 million and $41 million once all is said and done (if we're being generous), but once the company pays out various distributors they should end up taking home about $43 million. You don't have to be great at math to know that that's considerably less than $74 million.

That's not good, and it certainly doesn't pave the road for future major motion pictures to release entirely online. However, it's also not even close to some of the biggest box office losses in history: "47 Ronin" just recently put up almost a $150 million loss, the biggest in Hollywood history.

What these numbers don't take into account, though, are the added costs that the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment caused. The company could face upwards of $100 million in lawsuits from former employees whose personal data was stolen, not to mention the unreported costs of any outside help hired to shore up the company's digital security following the hack.

Of course, Sony may have been hacked whether or not "The Interview" was made, depending on whether or not you think that North Korea was behind the attack. In any case, it does seem that there definitely is such a thing as bad publicity.