Paramount Emperor Brad Grey is undoubtedly delighted with the 13 Oscar nominations earned by his pet project The Curious Case of Benjamin Button—truly an impressive haul for a movie no one actually liked.

After running the numbers on an adding machine, ripping off the unspooled receipt and declaring, "Holy crap—what a cash-incinerating bonfire!", however, the LAT concludes the nominations won't necessarily add up to profitability.

To begin with, we have the huge production budget, as reverse-aging Brad Pitt is an expensive affair. (Fincher quickly rejected a studio note suggesting that "maybe we could cut of a few tens-of-millions if we just have him wear a series of age-appropriate rubber novelty masks? Let me know what you think.") It therefore ended up costing them $150 million just to produce the film, five times the budget of the next most expensive Best Picture nominee. They spent another $135 million to market and distribute it worldwide, ensuring every bus stop from Beverly Hills to Bangladesh was covered in Pitt and Cate Blanchett's expressionless faces. Another $10 million was then spent just for the Oscar push.

And what has the movie taken in?

To date, "Button" has grossed $104 million at the U.S. box office and generated an additional $16.2 million in Australia and a handful of markets overseas. Warner Bros., which is releasing the film abroad, will roll out "Button" over the next few weeks in Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Japan and Italy.

A person familiar with "Button" said Paramount and Warner Bros. would break even when the movie grossed $300 million in worldwide ticket sales and went on to perform at projected levels when released in DVD and sold to TV.

By contrast, Slumdog Millionaire cost a puny $15 million to make, and its ten nominations will likely help it double its take of $45 million once it expands this weekend from 582 theaters to 1400.

Regardless of whether it hits that magic number, we doubt Button will signal the end of its kind, i.e. the bloated studio prestige pic with no franchise potential. For as long as there are executives who hope to litter their legacy with "meaningful" pictures, there will be greenlit, $200 million Oscar-grabs based on loglines like, "Two words: Will Smith in an updated Gentleman's Agreement, only with Muslims instead of Jews."