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Originally Posted by Andrew NDB
Not really. TMNT II had a production budget of 25 million... it's hard to speculate what the marketing budget would be in a movie in 1991, but let's say it's shockingly low and the same as the production budget, another 25 million. The movie made 78 million stateside. Going by the usual math (theaters taking their cuts), New Line/Golden Harvest took home about 60 million of that, probably less. That's 60 million against 50 million to make the movie. The overseas data on TMNT II and III is not known for some strange reason, but let's assume it performed proportionately the same as TMNT I did overseas, adjusted for the same decline seen domestically between films (TMNT I did 135 million domestically with an added 67 million overseas, TMNT II did 78 domestically)... that gives us another 40 million overseas. Cut that in half because you're losing half of the money on international ticket sales, that's another 20 million in the pot. 80 million against 50 million to make it. Not terrible but not a slam dunk, either.
TMNT III, only 4 million dollars less to make than TMNT II but it made only half the money. They probably did end up in the red on III, clawing to a breaking even point when it came time for home video sales and such.
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The sequels definitely did less well but were still profitable for the studio. The sequels were hardly flops both in the US and internationally. Then again I'm not sure how TMNT II could have made more money than the original since the original film was the ninth highest grossing film that year and for many years the highest grossing independent film of all time. That's quite a large bar to set.