"The following is cribbed from another source, but it's pretty much in the ballpark.

"drop almost 50% of that gross because that’s the split between the distributor and theater chains after the bottom falls out of the 90/10 split of first week of showings. The studios cut for worldwide grosses was less than $154M, so, yes they lost about $100M on the release. They will recoup some of it with DVD sales and broadcast licenses, but it lost serious money."
"

"The idea that T4 lost money has become like rumor that works its way around a room growing in intensity every time told. The movie actually did not lose money, it performed less than hoped. Like Microsoft forecast 14% profit and announcing only 9%. Its cause for concern and disappointment but thats it. No movie would turn a profit , if fans had their way with the math. Cut that gross in half and then half again, thats the real profit and the movie cost 200 million......... It did not perform well enough for the brand name and the 200 million dollar budget. We know now how money was borrowed with SHORT TERM , terms. This has caused problems. The next movie will hopefully benefit from hindsight."

"I don't know where GF is getting his numbers, but for it to have been unquestionably profitable it would have had to do well into the $250+ range in the US. And in a pretty quick amount of time.
"

"Dude... it made $380 million *gross* at the theater. I repeat, *gross*. To get the net profit, you need to remove the share that the theaters take. It's a 90/10 split for the first week (or two), then 70/30, then even less <- this could be a bit off, but not by much; the point is, the theaters take their share too. The movie cost $200 million to make and $80 million to promote. You do the math. The movie did not make profit. It likely will with DVD money, but at the box office alone, it did not make money. And that's no spin or rumor or whatever, that's pure math. The problem you make is that you take the gross box office number and say that this is how much the movie made. But this is wrong because of the studio/theater split. You also only see the $200 million budget, but (as I did above), you need to add the promo money to that."

"1)You want to see a flop, Serenity is a flop.

2) Don't give me all this split, theater/ take. Yada yada yada."

"Waitasec:

Fox kept just 70 million from the 800 million gross of Independence Day? That's it?

Could you post the link for this LM? I'd like to see what else I can find for other movies.

EDIT: According to this article in the LA Times, both WB and Sony plan on making bids for the franchise:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/11/terminator-to-have-new-owner-by-january.html"