Entering September, the box office week ends on August 27th to September 2nd, and the 1999 North American summer season has basically come to an end.
For Daenerys Entertainment, the most outstanding films of this summer season are undoubtedly three major, two minor and five movies.
First up are three super bombshells.
"Godzilla", which kicked off the summer season, was initially used as a hedge against "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace" as 'cannon fodder'. However, the result was unexpected.
The film opened on June 11. Not only did the box office directly exceed 100 million in the first week, but the subsequent trend has also been very stable.
As the summer season comes to an end, this super blockbuster, which has been in theaters for nearly three months, is also entering its final stage. There are only more than 200 screens left, and the revenue in a single week is less than 100,000 US dollars. The dust has basically been settled, and the final film has been released. The domestic box office in North America will probably be US$313 million.
Overseas, it is still continuing. However, because the major overseas ticket warehouses have basically opened, the box office volume has also been determined, which is about 470 million US dollars. It failed to reach the 500 million originally expected, but there is nothing dissatisfying. place.
Therefore, the global box office of "Godzilla" is estimated to be US$780 million.
The production cost of the film is 120 million U.S. dollars, with 30 million U.S. dollars invested in promotion and distribution, and 780 million worldwide. In the theatrical release stage alone, it will contribute about 200 million U.S. dollars in pre-tax income to the producer. For just one movie, it will exceed The full-year profit scale of the lower-ranked seven companies in Hollywood.
Because of the success of this movie, Daenerys Entertainment and Japan's Toho Co., Ltd., the copyright holder of Godzilla, are already in close negotiations on the development of follow-up projects. Each party has its own bargaining chip and is quite see-sawing.
Immediately afterwards, there is "The End of the World" directed by Michael Bay.
The film opened on July 2 and lasted for two months. It has also entered the final stage with a box office of less than 100,000 US dollars in a single week. "The Last Day" is more than half a month behind the schedule of "Godzilla", and it has begun to wrap up at the same time. This also shows that the film's box office is relatively weak. The total domestic box office is basically determined to be 228 million US dollars.
Overseas, it is also not as strong as "Godzilla". At present, "Godzilla" is expected to have an overseas box office of about 370 million U.S. dollars, with a total global box office of about 590 million.
590 million worldwide, the total cost of production and promotion is 180 million, and the initial revenue from the theatrical release stage of "The End of the World" is 80 million US dollars.
Of course, this result has nothing to do with failure, and it has reached Simon's original passing mark. The problem is that people are afraid of comparison, and so are films.
Then there is the last of the three blockbusters, "The Matrix."
As of September 2, the sixth week of its release, "The Matrix" still has a very good box office and has collected another US$19.15 million. In six weeks, the cumulative box office of this groundbreaking science fiction blockbuster has reached US$267.12 million.
There is only a little over 30 million away from the 300 million threshold.
Based on the film's current momentum, "The Matrix" will have no problem collecting another US$50 million. The total local box office will be around US$320 million, which is slightly higher than "Godzilla".
Similarly, with the strong global distribution capabilities of Daenerys Entertainment, the local performance of "The Matrix" is outstanding, and the overseas performance of "The Matrix" is not inferior at all. Although the distribution is still ongoing, from the data accumulated so far, the overseas performance is at least as good as It will be worse than "Godzilla".
Considering that the total production and publicity cost of "The Matrix" was only US$110 million, which is less than the US$120 million production cost of "Godzilla", let alone "The Last Day", the film's expected profit during the release stage will easily exceed US$200 million. , and all the profits this time will belong to Daenerys, and there is no need to share it with Toho like in "Godzilla".
With the film's success, a sequel was immediately on the table.
Different from the pull of "Godzilla", Daenerys has already signed an intention agreement with the creator for the sequel as usual, so first of all, it can be determined that the cost of this sequel will be much lower. For example, even if Keanu Reeves, as the starring role, He can still get the maximum salary in the sequel, but this time it is only 15 million instead of the previous 20 million.
Because the agreement has been signed in advance, the sharing agreement will be lower. The upper limit of the sharing in this time and space is also 15%, but Reeves is expected to take up to 10%, just like Michael Bay in "The Last Day" before, instead of The old 20/20 contract.
In addition, Simon will still adopt the production strategy of shooting two sequels back to back this time, which can also save budget to a certain extent.
Not only that, Simon will not interfere randomly with the first film like Warner once did, and he has no confidence, and as a result, the film fails to realize its full potential. After the success of the project, they completely let go of the two sequels and allowed the Wachowski brothers to do whatever they wanted. As a result, the subsequent reputation and box office collapsed.
Simon has always been willing to give film creators enough space, but at the same time, he has never allowed them to have too much freedom.
As for the scale, it is very simple. The final right of interpretation belongs to Simon Westeros.
After the three major blockbusters, there are two smaller films that still performed well at the box office.
The first one is "The Ghost Story 2", which was released on June 18. Because the performance of "Godzilla" the previous week was too strong, this is the sequel to the pseudo-documentary film that also created a small phenomenon. The opening results will inevitably be affected to some extent, but the first week is still as high as 46.45 million. Compared with the total investment of only 25 million in production, promotion and distribution, the first week directly enters the profit cycle.
After all, it is a popcorn movie, preceded by "Godzilla" and followed by "Armageddon". The film's box office performance was far inferior to that of the first film. It was officially released in mid-August, and the final domestic box office was US$127 million, which was a smooth success. Entering the 100 million yuan box office club.
In addition, the overseas market performance of the film is basically clear, which is about US$150 million.
Calculated, the total global box office of "The Ghost Story 2" is 270 million, which is not as good as the 460 million of the first film, but relative to the cost, it is still a big profit. Therefore, "The Ghost Story 3" directly entered the development stage.
The second one is "Fight Club".
In terms of cost, the production cost of 46 million US dollars is not a small film, but the publicity and release of this film is a classic, so much so that when many people were not optimistic about the commercial prospects of this film, it achieved a reversal. Attack.
The film opened on August 6 and grossed US$23.45 million from 1,263 screens in the first week, reaching a blockbuster level in all theaters.
Immediately afterwards, the screening screens remained unchanged the next week, and the decline was well controlled at 17%, with another US$19.46 million collected.
In the third week, the number of screens doubled to 2,537, and the box office also achieved a 7% reversal drop. It may not seem like much, but it was the first film to achieve a reversal in the non-screening period in 1999. Received US$20.82 million.
More recently, in the fourth week from August 27 to September 2, the film finally experienced a larger drop of 34%, collecting another US$13.74 million. It seems to be accelerating its decline, but the cumulative total box office of the film has reached 77.46 million US dollars, which is only more than 22 million away from breaking 100 million.
With the current trend, it is enough to survive easily.
Initially, even though it performed well in the first week, Daenerys' New World Pictures team was still not confident. They believed that the local box office of the film would only be between 60 million and 80 million US dollars, and they obviously had no expectations for breaking 100 million US dollars.
The reality is undoubtedly unexpected.
With the same excellent box office response in overseas markets where it has already been released, "Fight Club" has completely realized a perfect counterattack from the initial expectation of losing money to achieving good profits in the theater stage.
Similarly, the film director David Fincher, who failed in two consecutive films, not only ushered in a turnaround, but also, because of this excellent marketing operation, David Fincher was also portrayed as something very capable. The movie godhead that gathers the attention of movie fans.
Just like Nolan later.
When David Fincher is mentioned in the future, everyone will think of "Fight Club". Even if some people have not even seen it, they will inevitably have an unknown feeling and then have expectations for Fincher's new film. This is actually a commercial guarantee. .
In addition to the three major and two minor movies, what makes Simon a little regretful is that in the summer from May to August, Daenerys Entertainment launched a total of 13 movies, and the remaining 8 movies have no dark horses. From the current point of view, After all are released, the other eight movies are expected to bring Daenerys 200 million US dollars in box office, with an average of less than 30 million per movie. Combined with overseas, excluding the cost, it is actually not a loss.
Comprehensive calculation, all 13 films are expected to contribute a total box office of 1.3 billion U.S. dollars to Daenerys.
On the other hand, from May 1 to August 31, about 17 weeks, the North American film market earned a total box office of US$2.53 billion.
Although nearly half of Daenerys's 13 films are still in theaters, some of the projects that belonged to Daenerys Entertainment before May have also entered the summer vacation. Therefore, the 1.3 billion figure is roughly not bad.
Obviously, it is still half the country.
Other Hollywood studios have gradually become numb to this, because anger is useless and other actions are useless. They can only strive for the remaining market share while being forced to reduce production output to avoid more losses.
Speaking of Daenerys, another thing is that, including "Fight Club", starting with the American version of "Aihu" at the beginning of the year, and later "American Pie 2", as of September, 1999 has already won 7 A film with a box office of over 100 million.
As for other studios, except for "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace," this summer, only one new film from Warner Bros. has achieved a box office of over 100 million. This is a completely new film called "The Phantom Menace." "Hunter", a medieval classic vampire fantasy genre, is very similar to the later "Van Helsing" that failed at the box office. It stars Mel Gibson, who has always cooperated happily with Warner. The production cost is 75 million US dollars. It also opened during the Independence Day holiday in early July. , as of September 2, it has basically concluded. The local box office is about 154 million US dollars, and the global box office is expected to be over 300 million US dollars. Considering the cost, it’s a small profit.
Daenerys took the lead, and Warner reluctantly followed. In addition, Twentieth Century Fox completed the merger of three companies at the same time through the Star Wars prequel and started to gain momentum. This basically fits the Hollywood pattern that Simon expected. .