The movie finance business still hard to understand

DreamWorks Animation takes $87 million write-down on 'Rise of the Guardians' - latimes.com

I promise I'll stop talking about movies soon, but this report shows (apparently) that a $145 million movie that takes in $300 million globally can still be said to have lost $87 million.

And this at a time when I thought digital projection was meant to make a substantial saving by studios not having to get film prints made and distributed around cinemas.  Also, I thought with kids films there was often substantial profit from DVD releases, but would this Christmas movie even be released yet? The movie is well suited for an Easter release.

Very odd.