No, because of the wonderful system called Hollywood Accounting. Studios have been sued – repeatedly – around this practice, the most famous suit where this was a factor being Buchwald v. Paramount, which had Art Buchwald suing the studio who made Coming to America, claiming the studio stole his idea. Buchwald won, was awarded initial damages… and then Paramount quickly settled.
One reason for the settlement was that the “unconscionable” (as per Buchwald) practice of “Hollywood Accounting” was revealed during the trial. Because of these practices, the movie – which made $288 million in ticket sales – had made no profit. If Buchwaldd had pressed this matter, the studio feared a wave of creators would come forth and also sue (because they too had not received any profit participation, because no “profits” were to be had.)
John Landis, the director, said about the case at the time: “The irony of that case is that the only people that his lawsuit benefited were Eddie Murphy and me because it forced Paramount to open their books.”
That being said, there is a good rule of thumb around whether a movie his profitable: Take the total box office worldwide a movie gets. Divide it in half, because studios get a “sliding scale” of the total box office depending on the film, the region, and the contracts they have with the theaters (so, let’s say half as an average). Then subtract the cost of the film’s production AND the marketing costs (both numbers are not public but journalists in the entertainment industry usually find these out).
If the final number is a positive one, you can say they made “some” profit. If it’s negative… well, the studio could have STILL made a profit from merchandising and product tie-ins, unless they publicly state in earnings reports that the film bombed so hard it impacted earnings (Disney did this with John Carter and The Lone Ranger, so we know for sure they lost money on those two films).
Let’s apply this formula to the box office for the recent film Superman V. Batman, which has been critically lambasted but still made a tidy sum of money. As of the time I write this, it has made $870 million, and is pretty much finishing it’s run worldwide after almost 8 weeks of release. Lots of money, right? Yes, BUT remember: The theaters get about half. So let’s be generous, and say it’ll make $900 million and Warners will take $500 million of that.
The movie cost $250 million… at least, that is what the original budget was. Rumor is the budget actually was over $400 million. Let’s again be kind and say it was $350 million (you can see I’m bending over backwards here). You have now a tidy profit of $150 million… Oh, wait, that’s actually how much the studio spent on marketing the film (again, some estimates are higher). So, did Warner Brothers break even, or lose money? Probably not, because as you may have noticed there are a LOT of Batman and Superman toys in the stores these days. That is your profit, right there… but again, the studio shares that with the people actually making the merchandise.
To summarize, I think the above is a pretty good guess but… who knows? I do know that the studio probably wanted a LOT more ticket sales than they received, and in a similar situation Sony effectively halted all plans for a “Spiderman universe” when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperformed with only $630 million worldwide.