‘BATTLESHIP’ drags down Universal Pictures profits by over $80 milli. Everyone dance.

It is a tasty world when a flick based off of a board game fails in rather spectacular fashion. Not usually one to rub salt in the wound, I never the less still enjoy dancing on the ashes of this movie.

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While studios have been moving toward a model where instead of investing a handful of different movies and a variety of budgets and expectations, they put all their money into a few make or break movies per year, the risk of that approach is beginning to be more than apparent. Disney is still wiping the egg off their face from “John Carter,” the debacle of a film that they’ve gone on record as saying lost them $200 million bucks. Oops. And now over an expensive folly over at Universal has also affected the balance sheet.

Their parent company Comcast released results of the last quarter, and while their earnings went up 30%, atUniversal Pictures the failure of “Battleship” caused an $83 million loss of cash flow (versus a $27 million profit last year). So yes, a film that earned $302 million worldwide lost the company money — but that will happen when you spend over $200 million to produce a movie based on a board game, starring Rihanna, a swimsuit model and that guy from “Friday Night Lights.”

It won’t stop these donkey-assed companies from slinging dough at ridiculous concepts. Not at all. This is why we must celebrate while we can.