An Oscar-winning hit that made $911 million at the box office but didn’t turn a single penny of profit settles a lawsuit it surely couldn’t afford

It would be entirely reasonable and fully justified to assume a movie that raced to an eye-popping $911 million at the box office would be posting profit margins that were through the roof, but accounting instead revealed that Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody allegedly ended up in the red.

Quite how a relatively inexpensive production that recouped its estimated $55 million budget almost 17 times over at the box office failed to turn a single penny of profit is somewhere between astonishing and mind-blowing, especially when you consider it would go on to nab four Academy Awards and rank as the highest-grossing biopic and straightforward drama in cinematic history until Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer came along.

And yet, studio 20th Century Fox’s accounting statements highlighted a $51 million deficit, which served as the backdrop to writer Anthony McCarten filing a lawsuit claiming he hadn’t seen a fair share of the profits which he was contractually obligated to receive as part of his deal. The legal action has been dragging on for a while now, but it’s eventually been settled rather quietly.

While it hasn’t been revealed how much McCarten did or didn’t receive, his lawyer noted that “the parties have resolved the matter,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Only in the film business could a global sensation that earned Marvel money end up posting a loss by the time the dust settled, so it’s easy to see why the person credited solely for the screenplay had questions as to why they weren’t being compensated befitting the status of somebody who scripted a monolithic motion picture success story.