Basically, the only modern studio consistently putting out stop motion animation movies, is Laika Studios. And yet, Laika has only had one financially successful movie, Coraline from 2009, while all their other movies have under performed.
However, Laika is currently led and owned by Travis Knight, son of Phil Knight, the owner of Nike. This has enabled Knight to continually bank roll Laika whenever they under perform, essentially making the entire stop motion animation film industry a nepo baby’s pet project.
That being said, this is actually a positive story, and reminiscent of how artists previously would be financially supported by wealthy benefactors.
It’s pretty different from live action according to creators and producers, it’s such a small market and stop motion is so difficult to explain and get off the ground and promote that financial expectations are much more realistic.
You’re right that if a live-action movie costs $100 million to make grosses $180 million, the producers are upset, but that’s a greedy, ego-driven convention of the modern studio system, they are still making tens of millions of dollars before everything on the back end is added in.
The stop-motion world has a more realistic perspective on production and the artists love every single piece of art they create, so also making $40 million as evidence that their art style can succeed in mainstream culture is the cherry on top of any project that even gets to be fully produced.
It’s more that if a movie costs $100 million to make, it’s usually $100 million in marketing. So it would need to make $200 million to break even. Making $180 million means someone lost $20 million dollars, so I wouldn’t really call it greedy. If the movies are not making the money then they’d need to just start reducing scope or just hope someone will keep bank rolling them.