system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: When movies make hundreds of millions, whats an accurate picture of where this money comes from and where it ends up?

For example: Skyfall has already made over $ 500 million around the world. Where do they get that figure from? Where does this money come from? How much do the studios get? What about the theaters? The advertising agencies?
gpt
Typically, a writer/producer develop the idea for a film. They take this idea and 'sell' it to a studio for, let's say, 10 $.

The studio will now hire actors, writers (maybe even the same one), producer/directors, sets etc etc etc and spend 50 $ on this all to make a final/finished movie. Since they've spent (50+10) 60$ now, they sell this finished product for a 150 $ to the distributors. 

The distributor will now market the hell out of the movie, do ads, trailers, sponsorships, interviews etc etc and will make it look like 'The Next Big Thing'. This cost them 100$. Now cinemas and theaters and 'showers' want the film. They all pay 50 $ each to the distributors to get a copy of the film. Suppose the distributors manage to sell it to 66 cinemas 'WorldWide', so they earn ((66x50)-100)=3200$ from all the cinemas all over.

The cinemas now want people to see the film, so they set the ticket price at 1$ and manage to get 300 people to see the film over the course of 3 weeks at their 20-seat cinema, so they've earned (300 x 1) 300 $ from the film.

The people? They just spent 1 $ and got to see Emma Watson smooching Cristian Bale in IMAX format.

tl;dr

* Idea originator spends effort/time - earns 10. Net +10$
* Studio spends 10 + 50 - earns 150. Net +90$
* Distributor spends 150 + 100 - earns 3300. Net +3050$
* Cinema spends 50 - earns 300. Net +250$
* Audience member spends 1 - earns a movie.


Note: Scales massively distorted for clarity.