Although Avatar is a big hit for Newscorp, the parlous state of Murdoch’s financials forced him to hedge the risk by giving up equity in the movie.
Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp will only scoop about two thirds of the profit on its Avatar movie, as the company was forced to minimise risk by giving up points to joint producers, Newscorp insiders say.
“Without this we’d have been dead meat” admitted one staffer. “I reckon it represented over half of our profits in 2009.”
In the previous fiscal, Slog analysis suggested that without the Premiership income, Newscorp would’ve made a loss. Although showered by hits with Newscorp addresses after publishing the scoop, the story was never denied.
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The Slog 