After the general direction was finalized, it was inevitable that Miss Li would still be chasing after her for some specific ideas. After all, according to Her Royal Highness the Princess, Simon is the best screenwriter in Hollywood, the kind who has won an Oscar.
Simon had almost forgotten about it.
Finally, he showed off the teeth marks on his wrist that still hadn't faded away, and gave two of the more famous ideas in his memory "at the drop of a hat." One is "My Sassy Girl" and the other is "My Wife is a Boss".
These are two well-known projects that successfully broke into Korea during the recovery period of Korean films at the beginning of the century.
Actually, there is another one.
In the early days of the Internet, "Color is Empty" was circulated on a certain streaming software platform that everyone in the memory of a generation owed a membership to. Due to cultural similarities, this Korean restricted youth film is far more famous in Asia than the "American Pie" it imitates.
However, because it was definitely not suitable for a 'travel promotional video' or something like that, Simon didn't say anything.
In fact, the two 'My...' films are not very suitable either.
The more appropriate one is "Roman Holiday", but "Roman Holiday" is not so easy to copy. The 'girlfriend' and the 'gangster' barely make do. After all, after the new century, frankly speaking, romance movies are in rapid decline. .
Because for some reason, everyone gradually no longer believes in love.
It seems to be the same all over the world.
Therefore, Hollywood no longer has "Pretty Woman" and "Sleepless in Seattle", South Korea has gradually lost "My Sassy Girl" and "Blue Lives Matter", and Japan has more and more "Ellie in the Dead Country". "Silk" instead of "Tokyo Love Story", China... On the other hand, love can be found in various types and themes, but mainly because love is cheap. After all, it is much easier for the male and female protagonists to bicker than to work hard to figure out the plot and spend money on special effects. Just like a certain unscrupulous author who has written more than six million words of an entertainment article and still refuses to finish it. In fact, he also likes the jokes about men and women bickering the most, which can easily be one chapter.
As for love, what is it
Now that he thought about it, after breakfast, he sent Miss Li away. After Simon set off on the plane, he casually wrote down the idea for "Color is Empty" and forwarded it to Showbox Entertainment, which Cheng Taixi was in charge of.
The general idea is to imitate "American Pie". As for what it can do, whether the box office and influence can be the same as before, it depends on luck.
Speaking of which, the ongoing North American summer season has once again proved that the film industry is unpredictable and depends on luck.
The first is "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace," which cannot be avoided this summer.
With blockbusters such as "Godzilla" being released one after another, the trend of the first prequel movie in June is even worse than expected. The continuously accelerating weekly box office shrinkage has made this super blockbuster that has been integrated into American culture local. The box office may not even exceed the original expected 400 million US dollars, let alone the previous 470 million US dollars.
After the initial enthusiasm, more and more movie fans began to accuse George Lucas of messing up everyone's expectations. This put Lucas under great pressure and quietly adjusted the production schedule of the last two sequels, and also planned some Reshoots. After all, when it comes to money, Lucas is definitely not lacking now, but as the founder of Star Wars, this Hollywood movie mogul does not want his most glorious achievement to end in a dismal ending.
In addition, the failure of the first part of the prequel made the merger of the three companies no longer uncertain, and it recently successfully passed the antitrust review of the federal Ministry of Justice.
This is much smoother than Daenerys' previous expansions.
After all, in today's Hollywood, even if some of the major players in the industry raise objections and want to stop it, their political resources and lobbying power in Washington are far from comparable to Daenerys.
What's more, those who have the ability to interfere, such as Time Warner, which has been merged into the GE system, will let it go after private communication because of the good relationship between the two parties. There are also companies like Disney and Paramount, which no longer belong to local capital. Even if they open their mouths, Washington will definitely turn to its own people.
As a result, Simon returned to North America and the three film companies had entered into a formal merger process.
Let’s talk about movies.
After the first prequel, it's naturally "Godzilla".
Because it can be considered a collaborative project, Simon was not too optimistic about this monster blockbuster at first, so he put it in the early part of this summer season with limited resources to compete with the first part of the prequel.
The ending is also quite unexpected.
Probably because the special effects blockbusters of this era are far from enough to make the audience tired. Coupled with the quality of the film itself and the global popularity of the name "Godzilla", in short, the box office in the first week was higher than that of the first Star Wars prequel. After that, during the period when Simon left North America, the film continued to earn US$63.79 million in the week after its release from June 18th to June 24th with a respectable 43% decline, and the cumulative box office reached US$175.71 million.
The day after Simon returned to North America, "Godzilla" ended its third week of release. The single-week decline narrowed to 35%, and it collected another US$41.46 million. The cumulative box office easily exceeded 200 million, reaching US$217.17 million.
Based on the current box office trend, 300 million domestically is still not a big problem.
Of course, no matter how high it is, hitting 400 million or the like is just as Simon originally expected, and it is not an extravagant expectation.
Furthermore, before Michael Bay's new film "The End of the World" is released on July 2, there are two movies worth mentioning in June, "The Haunted Man 2" and the one that attracted much attention at the Sundance Film Festival at the beginning of the year. A science fiction pseudo-documentary called "Alien Files".
In fact, Daenerys's three most watched movies this summer are "Godzilla", "Armageddon" and "The Matrix". However, because Simon no longer focuses on expanding his ideas, the entire summer movie, If calculated based on the four months from May to August, Daenerys' various labels, including New Line Cinema, which began to increase investment last year, are expected to release a total of 13 films, even if each film is not counted. There is a movie every week, which is about the same.
Just before "Godzilla", even with the first Star Wars prequel, since the beginning of May, Daenerys's various labels have launched 3 movies, but because of their average performance, they are not worth mentioning. .
The sequel to "The Amityville Chronicles 2", which achieved an "event effect" that is rare in Hollywood movies two years ago, is between "Godzilla" and "The Last Days" and closely follows "Godzilla". "Silla" was released in its second week.
This is because Simon felt that "Godzilla" would not be too outstanding or overwhelming.
There is obviously a discrepancy between reality and assumptions.
As a result, "The Ghost Story 2" was released on June 18, with a large number of fans gathered from the first part, and Jessica Chastain, who had an outstanding performance in "Public Enemy" during the Easter period, will serve as the protagonist of the sequel. With the increased popularity, after the film premiered, the comprehensive media score reached a fairly good reputation of 7.6 points even though it was not as good as the first film. Then, the box office will inevitably be affected.
The New World Pictures team under Daenerys Entertainment provided 3,254 opening screens for "The Haunted Man 2". The previous investment in publicity and distribution also reached US$20 million, which is equivalent to four times the production cost of the US$5 million sequel. It was originally expected that the film's first-week box office could hit 50 million. After all, the first week's box office was close to 60 million US dollars. This time it can't be too bad.
In the end, "Godzilla" continued to be the single-week champion with a box office of 63.79 million U.S. dollars. Coupled with the inevitable diversion of several other new films in the same period, "The Last Day Out 2" only had a box office of 46.45 million U.S. dollars in its first week.
Of course, this 'only' is only relative to the first part of this series.
The total cost of production and promotion of the film was only US$25 million. According to the rules of tiered accounting, "The Ghost Story 2" actually entered the profit cycle in the first week of its release. However, after all, there are still some flaws. After all, with such a start, let alone reaching the first domestic score of 212 million US dollars, this time it may not even reach 150 million US dollars.
Anyway, that's the way it is in Hollywood, it's all about luck.
Finally, in the new box office week of June 25th, "Alien Files", which was obviously unabashed in its publicity and promotion, was released. After a lot of competition at the beginning, the project was finally won by Disney.
Simon also paid attention to the specific cooperation details.
Disney won the sci-fi mockumentary film with a production budget of US$7 million for an upfront agency fee of US$15 million plus a 50% share after excluding publicity and distribution expenses. It also promised a summer release date in June, and The publicity expenditure is US$15 million, and the number of opening screens will be no less than 2,500.
All of these are met.
After the early premiere, the film's reputation spread on a large scale, and it still achieved an excellent overall score of 8.3 points. It was praised by Variety magazine as 'another groundbreaking mockumentary classic'. At the same time, during the promotion process of the film, the film also took the initiative to link up with "The Ghost Story 2" which started a week in advance on many occasions to create a topical effect.
Since it is a business competition, Daenerys cannot be too polite.
Why "The Ghost Story" was successful two years ago? The rapid spread of 'viral marketing' on the Internet platform is the key. 'Alien Files' obviously also hopes to have a 'viral marketing'. Unfortunately, we have forgotten who owns the Internet. .
Therefore, on the Internet, even if it does not disappear, after all, it is too obvious, the topic of "Alien Files" has been suppressed to the greatest extent.
As for the traditional marketing channels, whether it is TV or newspapers, all the ones that can be greeted here are also greeted.
In the end, in the first week of its release, the box office of "Alien Files" was only 27.96 million US dollars. Although the box office exceeded 10,000 US dollars and reached the level of a blockbuster, it was still not as good as "The Ghost Chronicles 2" in the second week.
In the first seven days of the second week of filming, "The Ghost Story 2" recorded another revenue of US$29.11 million with a 37% drop, and the cumulative box office quickly reached US$75.56 million. Even though it's still not as good as the first one, it has already brought considerable book profits to Daenerys.
Let's talk about "Alien Files". Based on Disney's conditions, this movie needs a box office of 80 million in North America for Disney to break even.
27.96 million US dollars in the first week. This is not the 27 million US dollars that could be easily achieved in the long term 10 years ago. In short, a better result is about 80 million in the local market.
Disney's expectation is that it will at least exceed 100 million locally.
Frankly speaking, with the quality of this movie, if it were run by Daenerys, it would easily exceed 100 million. The problem is that Hollywood has never said that you can get high box office if you have a good movie, and now, with the monopoly of Hollywood As the trend continues to strengthen, this tendency becomes more and more obvious.
Backed by French capital groups like Vivendi, Disney is now an 'outsider'. Not only is its own strength far inferior to that of Daenerys and Time Warner, but also, as an 'outsider', the company's films have never been produced. From production to distribution, there are bound to be various explicit or implicit restrictions.
Therefore, the current success of "Alien Files" is already due to the quality of the film.
Finally, there is the present moment.
Daenerys' second super blockbuster film "The End of Days" in the 1999 summer season held its premiere the day before the film's large-scale filming. The next day, the word-of-mouth ban was lifted.
The result was a rollover.
Among them, the "Hollywood Reporter" review is undoubtedly the most representative. The column criticized "The Last Days" as "noisy, stupid and heavy, but the box office will be very impressive". The Los Angeles Times also ridiculed the film for "putting all the thought into it" After focusing on special effects, I finally thought of telling a story. The East Coast's "Washington Post" also turned its finger on Simon, asking, 'Why would Simon Westeros allow such a terrible story to be adapted for the big screen? '
All in all, almost one-sided criticism.
Even if Daenerys' media and public relations team works hard, the comprehensive media score of "The Last Day" is still only 4.3. It is conceivable that without some relaxation behind the scenes, the word-of-mouth score will only be lower.
The unsatisfactory reputation, in fact, Daenerys's senior management basically made a judgment during the internal test screening stage of "The End of the World".
Same goes for Simon.
After all, they are all veterans of filmmaking, so it’s impossible that they don’t have this vision.
However, it was still a bit unexpected that it was so bad that everyone started to criticize it like a boo.
I answered that sentence again, it depends on luck.
Anyway, "The Unforgettable Tribulation" obviously didn't have good luck this time.
Of course, in terms of box office, just as the "Hollywood Reporter" predicts, it will be "very impressive". After all, various works of Bombshell in the past were scolded and had high box office.
This time it should be the same.
After all, the selling point of "Unforgettable Catastrophe" is actually the special effects.
As for the story, it's just passable.
Then again, of course this project originally had a pretty smooth script, and it was not a story-telling thing that was only thought of at the end as the Los Angeles Times said. The problem is that the movie is probably like cooking, even with the freshest ingredients. With the most perfect ingredients, no one knows what a dish will look like until it’s finally finished.
There are too many variables.
Furthermore, after a series of consecutive successes, it is inevitable that Mr. Bangbei will start to feel a little drifting, just like he did before. This is also human nature.
The result of drifting is naturally that the quality of the film plummets.
This is consistent with the past.
In short, this film, which has the best independent schedule in the popular summer season, has a production cost of US$130 million and a promotion of US$50 million, totaling US$180 million, which is also the highest expenditure among the three blockbusters. As a result , may become the one with the most disappointing market performance among the three blockbusters.