{"id":339422,"date":"2025-12-09T18:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339422\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T18:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:06:08","slug":"an-unexpected-sci-fi-movie-made-a-fortune-for-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/339422\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unexpected Sci-Fi Movie Made A Fortune For Fox"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/intro-1765299773.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/2047505\/alien-vs-predator-sci-fi-movie-profit-fox\/\" data-post-id=\"2047505\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"An Unexpected Sci-Fi Movie Made A Fortune For Fox: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Sanaa Lathan as Alexa climbing a snowy mountain in Alien vs. Predator\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    20th Century Studios<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Director Dan Trachtenberg&#8217;s &#8220;Predator: Badlands&#8221; is winding down its run at the box office at the time of writing, but it&#8217;s already the highest-grossing &#8220;Predator&#8221; film ever. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/2029352\/predator-badlands-franchise-box-office-record\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">After becoming the biggest &#8220;Predator&#8221; movie domestically<\/a> pretty early on in its run, &#8220;Badlands&#8221; overtook\u00a02004&#8217;s &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; at the global box office, securing its place at the top of the food chain.\u00a0But that&#8217;s just in terms of theatrical grosses. As it turns out, &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; was really a far bigger hit for Fox back in the day than any of us may&#8217;ve realized.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">A report from <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2025\/12\/box-office-predator-badlands-record-1236640938\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Deadline<\/a> breaking down the record set by &#8220;Predator: Badlands&#8221; looked at both the good and bad for Disney from a dollars and cents perspective. The good? &#8220;Badlands&#8221; has made $180 million worldwide in theaters. The bad? It carries a $105 million production budget. That&#8217;s where &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; comes in, as the outlet also noted that the crossover was a massive, massive success for Fox beyond its theatrical performance:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The only thing about &#8220;Badlands,&#8221; and this is because it&#8217;s sci-fi: it cost a lot, at $105M before P&amp;A. Several sources have told us that &#8220;Alien vs. Predator,&#8221; propped by the early-millennium DVD era and a $65M production cost, is one of 20th Century Fox&#8217;s most profitable movies ever.<\/p>\n<p>That is downright astounding. Remember, Fox also released <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1132655\/tales-from-the-box-office-how-avatar-became-the-biggest-movie-of-all-time-twice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">James Cameron&#8217;s &#8220;Avatar,&#8221; the biggest movie of all time with $2.9 billion<\/a> to its name, as well as all of the &#8220;X-Men&#8221; films, &#8220;Deadpool&#8221; movies, and plenty of other hits over the years. But the box office is only one part of the equation and, as this report suggests, &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; did gangbusters during the peak DVD era before Netflix and streaming took off. This begs the question: Just how much money did the movie make?<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                Alien vs. Predator had a long life well beyond the box office<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/alien-vs-predator-had-a-long-life-well-beyond-the-box-office-1765299775.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/2047505\/alien-vs-predator-sci-fi-movie-profit-fox\/\" data-post-id=\"2047505\" data-slide-num=\"1\" data-slide-title=\"An Unexpected Sci-Fi Movie Made A Fortune For Fox: Alien vs. Predator had a long life well beyond the box office\" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"A Predator and a Xenomorph coming face to face in Alien vs. Predator\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    20th Century Studios<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In terms of box office, director <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/1644756\/alien-vs-predator-minor-box-office-hit-came-major-cost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Paul W.S. Anderon&#8217;s &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; was a decent hit, pulling in $177.4 million<\/a> worldwide against a $65 million production budget. It received one slightly less successful sequel in the form of &#8220;Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">When it comes to those alleged DVD sales, those are harder to pin down. But just as a snapshot, during its initial run on home media in early 2005, &#8220;Alien vs. Predator&#8221; sold around 1.85 million combined copies on DVD and VHS (per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.comingsoon.net\/dvd\/news\/8205-alien-vs-predator-tops-the-charts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ComingSoon<\/a>). Mind you, this was right before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/807084\/david-cronenbergs-a-history-of-violence-marked-the-end-of-vhs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">VHS went the way of the dinosaur in 2006<\/a>. The sci-fi crossover was also the most rented movie during that period, generating some $8.6 million in revenue. And that was just the start.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Anderson&#8217;s movie also eventually made its way to Blu-ray (though it&#8217;s yet to receive a 4K Ultra HD release) and was a cable TV staple for years. It&#8217;s also readily available to stream nowadays and has undoubtedly benefited from VOD rentals. Thus, it&#8217;s easy to see how this movie could&#8217;ve generated a lot of cash for not just Fox but also Disney in the wake of the studio purchasing most of Fox&#8217;s media assets in 2019.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">So, how does this relate to &#8220;Badlands&#8221; and the &#8220;Predator&#8221; franchise&#8217;s future? Well, what this all suggests is that both the &#8220;Alien&#8221; and &#8220;Predator&#8221; movies have very long lifespans beyond the box office. That&#8217;s not always the case for every film, particularly in the streaming era. But if &#8220;Badlands&#8221; is a hit on VOD and streaming, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slashfilm.com\/2017665\/predator-badlands-sequel-setup-explained\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">it could pave the way for Trachtenberg to make his next &#8220;Predator&#8221; movie<\/a>, despite the film&#8217;s budget preventing it from becoming profitable in theaters alone.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;Predator: Badlands&#8221; is in theaters now.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; 20th Century Studios Director Dan Trachtenberg&#8217;s &#8220;Predator: Badlands&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-339422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}