BASICS:
BOX OFFICE + HOME MEDIA REVENUE $26m budget
$73m USA, RoW $80m (incl UK $18m), total $153m. 3rd biggest hit on its release in the US, 2nd in the UK (Toy Story 4 the tentpole ahead in both territories).
It added $80m in DVD, TV + streaming (home media) ... so far.
LEGENDARY/MARKETABLE writer and director: Richard Curtis, Danny Boyle. Its actually based on a 2012 screenplay by Jack Barth, a 1st-time writer! But Curtis took all the credit (and money for that)
MUSIC STAR CAMEO PUSHED IN TRAILER:
Ed Sheeran had an important role (Coldplay's Chris Martin turned it down)
NOTABLE PRODUCTION COSTS, MARKETING SPEND...RELEASE STRATEGY:
$10m on getting rights to Beatles songs from Apple/Sony.
$75m marketing spend. Lucked into a lucrative summer holiday release to avoid a rights case with Paul McCartney (music rights reverting). See the explanation of how writer etc get ripped off on net points.
NARRATIVE TWEAK AFTER TEST SCREENING:
Love triangle plot was cut with the other love interest after hostile test audience responses (this made Patel less sympathetic)
TYPICAL LOW AGE RATING:
PG-13;
BBFC 12 ('infrequent strong language, drug references, moderate sex references'). Summer holidays release.
Wiki snippet on the release date strategy - put into the more lucrative, high profile summer season to avoid paying out to Beatle Paul McCartney ...
Yesterday was initially set for a September 2019 release, but was moved up to 28 June 2019, largely as a result of a copyright suit filed by Paul McCartney. The rights to some of the earlier Beatles songs used in the film would revert to McCartney in the autumn of 2019, and Sony Music wanted to get ahead of it.
The first official trailer of the film was released on 12 February 2019. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 4 May 2019
It would be the 3rd biggest hit on its release in the US, and 2nd in the UK (Toy Story 4 the tentpole ahead in both territories).
From the Wiki (based on the Deadline article linked below):
As of May 2020, it has been estimated that the film will have generated $68 million in global television revenue, in addition to $10.4 million in net revenue for home video and streaming. This adds up to a total estimated home media revenue of $78.4 million.
notes for now...
DEADLINE ANALYSIS: How studios appear to rip off cast/crew with NET points
Lot of good financial insight - the budget is $26m, but for those seeking a share of profits its listed as $41m ... the difference is the large ($15m!!) tax credit from the UK government, which remains counted as a cost for calculating net profits.
To put even a mid-budget WT film into perspective, the $10m they spent to get rights to use some Beatles songs is more than the full budget of almost all non-WT UK film company productions in any year.
$4m was spent on prints; $23m on distribution fees, and a whopping $75m on marketing spend.
In the end, Boyle used 17 Beatles songs — and contracted with Apple for rights to use 15-18, without having to specify which ones.
Until you begin to consider the hidden costs, it looks really good...
Of the $26m budget a $73m USA take and $80 RoW (rest of the world) for a $153m total. Peaked at 2,755 theaters in the US, a sizeable but not top line hit.
Released June 28th (USA), running to Sept 5th, so out for the summer holiday months.
The movie is marketed, and credited, as written by Richard Curtis, whose name sells given his links to multiple major rom-coms with WT. However, the original screenplay dates to 2012, and, as
Uproxx note, the writer Jack Barth is furious at how Curtis and WT squeezed him out, ensuring he didn't profit from this major hit.
his script, Cover Version, was acquired by Working Title Films and eventually became Yesterday, from legendary British filmmakers Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary) and Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Steve Jobs, 28 Days Later).
“I wrote the first treatment in 2012 and in 2013 and I gave it to my agent. She gave it to a producer named Matt Wilkinson,” Barth says, of his script’s initial journey. “Matt tried to get it going as a project that we would fund for maybe $10 million, a low budget film, plus whatever it cost to clear the Beatles rights, which would’ve been a lot. [Wilkinson] got a guy named Nick Angel at Working Title, who’s a professional music clearance guy, working on the Beatles clearances. In the course of doing that, years later, he mentioned it to Richard Curtis because they’re friendly. Richard said, ‘That’s a great idea, I want to do it’ because he had a deal with Working Title/Universal to make a couple of films. He wanted [Cover Version] to be one of the films that he made.”
The article picks up on the theme of net profit points, quoting an entertainment lawyer as saying that in 28 years of working he only knew of 3 movies to show a net profit (ie, after all expenses are deducted). Net points are essentially worthless. Gross points (which disregard expenses), can be lucrative. But Barth just wasn't considered beneficial to the marketing, and so the credit all went to Curtis.
“I contacted Universal Publicity and said, ‘Look, I’ve done some research and I don’t think there’s ever been a screenwriter who sold his first screenplay at my age,'” Barth says. “It’s an interesting angle, almost inspirational. I think it’s a great story. But Universal didn’t want it, they kind of had their marching orders — that it was ‘Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle, two great British filmmakers working together at last.’ I understand that in terms of cleaning up the marketing.”
THE ROLE OF TEST SCREENINGS
Great example here - a character and sub-plot (another relationship for the protagonist) were cut as test screenings showed the audience felt this made Patel a less sympathetic lead. (
Cinemablend)
there was one subplot containing an entire character who was cut from the film, despite staying in Richard Curtis’ script and even remaining in the trailer for Yesterday’s theatrical release. It’s her picture you see at the very head of this story, and her name is Roxanne, played by Blade Runner 2049’s Ana De Armas.
Originally, Roxanne would have been the third point of the typical love triangle you’d see in a romantic comedy like Yesterday, coming between the romance of Lily James’ Ellie and Himesh Patel’s Jack Malik
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