Simon returned to Los Angeles, and this year's summer season officially kicked off with the release of Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" has adopted an unconventional Wednesday opening date, with a release date of May 24. The film opened on 2,327 screens and earned US$9.9 million in box office on Wednesday and Thursday, easily surpassing United Artists' action movie "The Dragon" which also opened in its first week.
"The Dragon" was released on May 19. On a normal Friday schedule, the box office in the first seven days was US$8.24 million. The total box office in North America is expected to be around US$30 million. Although it is far from comparable to "Raiders of the Lost Ark", relative to the production cost of 17 million US dollars, the box office of "The Dragon King" is not a failure.
It is worth mentioning that the male protagonist of "The Legend of the Dragon" happens to be Patrick Swayze, the male protagonist of the original "The Last Days".
In order to ensure the success of "The Ghost Story", Simon has no plans to change the male and female protagonists. While he's away from Los Angeles, Daenerys Entertainment has finalized contracts with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze for this classic romance movie.
Patrick Swayze was promoted to a first-line actor two years ago with the hit musical "Dirty Dancing", which grossed more than 200 million US dollars in global box office. The final negotiated salary was 5 million US dollars.
Demi Moore doesn't have any outstanding works except for her status as Bruce Willis's wife. If it weren't for Simon's insistence, Amy would not have been willing to use the other party, so during the negotiation process, the salary was stuck very tightly, and she only offered a salary of US$300,000, which was slightly higher than the newcomer's price, and also came with the first choice of one movie. rights contract.
With a group of Hollywood actresses paying close attention to this project, Demi Moore knew that she had no leverage to rely on, so she quickly agreed after just a little care about the details.
In addition, black actress Whoopi Goldberg has also agreed to play the role of psychic Odme Brown in "The Last Day".
On May 29, Daenerys Entertainment officially announced the main creative information of "The Last Days". The film will officially start shooting in August with a budget of US$20 million and is initially scheduled for next summer.
However, because Daenerys Entertainment has announced a large number of movie projects in recent months, this matter did not cause much trouble in the media. Hollywood is paying more attention to Daenerys Entertainment's first summer movie "The Bodyguard," which is about to be released.
In the past few months, a series of movies released by Daenerys Entertainment have not achieved very impressive box office results. If "The Bodyguard" continues to maintain this tepid status, the huge halo accumulated by this fast-rising Hollywood newcomer in 1988 will undoubtedly dim.
Moreover, according to some vague rumors in the circle, the results of the internal test screening of "Bodyguard" were not very good.
Daenerys Entertainment tightly suppressed the reputation of "The Bodyguard" until a week before the film was released, and never held any public preview screenings for the media or fans, which undoubtedly proves this rumor.
Los Angeles.
Century City Hotel in Beverly Hills.
It is already May 31st. This morning, the "Bodyguard" soundtrack album launch conference was held grandly at the Century City Hotel. The album will be officially put on sale next Monday, three days later than the film's release date. Prior to this, Whitney Houston, the heroine of "The Bodyguard", had done enough homework for her screen debut and third album.
After the press conference, Daenerys Entertainment held a luncheon at the Century City Hotel to entertain the main creators of the film and the media reporters who were invited to attend today.
In the banquet hall.
Clive Davis, president of Allista Records, Whitney Houston's contracted record company, chatted enthusiastically with Simon for a while while holding a glass of champagne. Then he turned and walked towards Whitney Houston, and his expression turned serious. .
Alistar Records was originally a record company established in the 1970s with the support of Columbia Pictures. It has been through several changes over the past ten years and is now a subsidiary of Germany's Bertelsmann Music Group. Clive Davis has been the president of the company since its inception. After many ups and downs, Alistar Records finally turned a corner due to the popularity of Whitney Houston four years ago.
Whitney Houston and Daenerys Entertainment's collaboration on "The Bodyguard" is also the result of Clive Davis' efforts.
Now, he regrets it a little.
It seems that since the end of last year, Daenerys Entertainment has lost its glory. None of the films released in the first half of the year have been hits. That's okay, but now that "The Bodyguard" has not been released, a series of doubts about the quality of the film have already spread.
As for the soundtrack album of "Bodyguard", in order to promote this cooperation, Alistar Records made great concessions in the contract. The album was jointly produced by Alistar Records and the record department of Daenerys Entertainment that had not yet formed. , Simon Westeros personally serves as an advisor.
As a condition of the partnership, Daenerys Entertainment will take 50% of the album's gross profits.
Clive Davis originally thought that Simon Westeros could provide a song as good as the song "Celebration" he wrote for Madonna. However, what Alistar Records got was basically a cover and a song. A mashup album composed of Whitney's own old songs. The main feature of the album is actually an old song "I-Will-Always-Love-You" originally sung by Dolly Parton in the 1970s.
Since Whitney Houston's debut, her two albums have achieved outstanding results with global sales exceeding 10 million copies. Seeing that this good situation is likely to be ruined, Clive Davis found his own pillar who was socializing and brought him to She pulled him aside and began to teach him the skill of dumping the blame in a low voice.
Once "Bodyguard" fails, the prospect of this soundtrack album will be even more worrying.
Clive Davis now only hopes to shift the blame to Daenerys Entertainment as much as possible to prevent Whitney Houston's career from being affected.
On the other side of the banquet hall.
Clive Davis walked away and Amy Pascal came to Simon's side.
Compared to Clive Davis, who only cares about "The Bodyguard", Amy is worried about the commercial performance of the two films "The Bodyguard" and "The Sixth Sense" in June. However, she walked up to Simon and talked about another thing: "Bob went to New York on Monday. Originally, there was nothing special about it, but someone in New York happened to see him and Dinner with an executive from Sony America."
Simon understood that Amy's Bob was Robert Rem.
At the lunch during the trip to Cannes, Simon naturally heard the hint that Rem hoped for a salary increase, but did not respond. He just mentioned it to Amy privately and asked her to pay attention.
I didn’t expect Rem to contact Sony so quickly.
Or, it is more likely that Sony took the initiative to contact Rem.
During this time, Sony’s acquisition negotiations for Columbia Pictures have been fully public.
Coca-Cola, the largest shareholder of Columbia Pictures, intends to cash out non-core businesses, and Sony is also in urgent need of acquiring a Hollywood studio. Both parties have a very clear willingness to trade, so the deal is basically a done deal.
In my memory, Sony completed its acquisition of Columbia Pictures and was looking for leaders for this company: Peter Cooper and Jon Peters. Both of them are long-established gold medal producers in Hollywood and have produced films such as "An American Werewolf". In London" and many other hit films.
The original script of "Rain Man" was also first obtained by Cooper-Peters Production Company, which the two collaborated with. After a lot of twists and turns, it fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. For this reason, the two also failed in the "Rain Man" project. Executive Producer title.
However, these two people were in charge of Colombia, but they deceived Sony until it vomited blood.
Excessive spending and continuous failures forced Sony to write down the assets of Columbia Pictures by as much as 2.1 billion US dollars after firing two people. This became Sony's largest loss in history.
Although Simon believes that anyone hired by Sony to be the head of Columbia is much better than the two deceivers Peter Cooper and Jon Peters, but in terms of Hollywood qualifications, he does not feel that Rem has any competition with the two. Qualifications.
Both Peter Cooper and Peter Cooper have produced many successful movies, but Rem's forte has always been distribution. Before he took charge of New World Entertainment, he was the vice president of the marketing and marketing department of Universal Pictures. During his tenure as the CEO of New World Entertainment, The company has never produced a single hit movie.
Now, Rem is still just the president of Daenerys Entertainment, the company responsible for the publishing business.
Although marketing is increasingly important in Hollywood, creative talent has always dominated the industry. The top leaders of Hollywood studios are usually promoted gradually from the production department, such as Disney's Michael Eisner and Fox Pictures President Joe Roth. It is relatively rare for someone who comes from the distribution department to become the top leader of a studio.
After thinking for a moment, Simon said: "In this case, you should pay more attention to the distribution department in the next period of time."
Amy nodded and said, "Aren't you going to talk to Bob?"
Simon asked back: "Do you remember when he joined the job?"
"Probably, last August."
Simon shrugged and said, "It's less than a year, Amy. To be fair, I'm very satisfied with Bob's work. However, when signing the contract, I already offered sufficient conditions, $3 million. The size of the bonus is comparable to that of executives in the publicity and distribution departments of major studios. Although the company does make a lot of money, I don't feel like I owe him anything. If he feels that he doesn't get enough, then leave .”
Amy paused and nodded: "I will look for suitable candidates who may replace Bob."
Simon stopped talking and talked about another thing: "The marketing plan for the last month of "The Sixth Sense" needs to be adjusted again. Let De Niro and the others do it on talk show interviews and other programs Don’t too deliberately hint at the film’s plot twist, just follow the normal horror film promotion process, and the same goes for the company’s media marketing copy.”
Amy smiled bitterly and said: "Simon, this will make the film even less attractive to most viewers."
"De Niro stars and I write the screenplay, which is attractive in itself. Amy, "The Sixth Sense" cannot be a commercial blockbuster with a high box office in its first week. I hope it can develop a long-term path." The word-of-mouth curve.”
…
The film's release date is quickly approaching after the soundtrack album launch for "The Bodyguard."
On June 2, "The Bodyguard" officially launched in North America with a scale of 2,021 screens. Since the successful saturation release of several consecutive films last year, it has become very common for studios’ main commercial films this year to have openings exceeding 2,000 yuan.
At the same time as "The Bodyguard" was released, the box office results for the first full week of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" were also officially released.
In the seven days from May 26 to June 1, Spielberg's commercial masterpiece grossed 46.01 million U.S. dollars in North American theaters, surpassing the 42.16 million single-week box office data of "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" that year, setting a new record Set a new weekly box office record.
Despite the strength of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Bodyguard" received a dismal reputation in the media after its release.
"Entertainment Weekly", "Variety", "The New York Times" and other mainstream media have given "Bodyguard" negative reviews.
After seeing the movie review in "Variety" magazine that said "a messed up mess", Amy was so angry that she almost withdrew all the company's advertisements in "Variety".
Based on the comprehensive statistics of the 10-point system, the media score of "Bodyguard" finally only broke through 3 points, which is very far away from the passing line.
However, among the overwhelming negative reviews, some magazines such as Rolling Stone expressed their appreciation for the film's soundtrack, but these positive affirmations did not reverse the media reputation of "The Bodyguard".
Affected by negative reviews, the box office of "The Bodyguard" in the first three days of the weekend was only 16.61 million US dollars.
Compared with United Artists Pictures' previous film "The Dragon", this box office result is certainly not a failure. It grossed US$16.61 million in the first weekend. It is expected that the box office in the first week will remain stable at more than US$20 million.
However, the media also generally predicted that the first-week box office performance of "The Bodyguard" was more a result of Daenerys Entertainment's sparing no effort in publicity. Affected by negative word-of-mouth, this movie will follow a very ugly box office curve. The total box office in North America may only be 50 million US dollars at most.
The production cost of "Bodyguard" is US$20 million, with a publicity budget of US$8 million, and a total investment of US$28 million. Based on this calculation, the North American box office of US$50 million cannot be considered a failure in any case. Daenerys Entertainment can basically recoup its costs with local box office.
However, compared to the amazing box office results of a series of films produced by Daenerys Entertainment last year, "The Bodyguard" is undoubtedly a failure with an estimated US$50 million in North American box office. Counting Daenerys Entertainment's box office in the next few months Released to a tepid commercial performance, the film's failure means that Daenerys Entertainment has completely lost last year's miraculous box office halo.
Corresponding to "The Bodyguard", entering its third week of release, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" still had a three-day box office figure of US$21.23 million in the second weekend, with a box office drop of only 27%. In its 12 days of release, Spielberg's blockbuster has already grossed $77.14 million at the box office. ,
According to the schedule, on June 9, "Ghostbusters 2", the sequel to Columbia Pictures' 1984 "Ghostbusters" that was the runner-up at the annual box office, will also be released. "Raiders 3" and more.
In order to stimulate the company's stock price as much as possible at the critical moment of acquisition negotiations with Sony, Columbia Pictures spared no effort in the announcement of this sequel.
Faced with the competition from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Ghostbusters 2", coupled with the loss of word-of-mouth, the box office prospects of "The Bodyguard" are even more worrying. Amid such adversity, on Monday, June 5, the original soundtrack of "The Bodyguard" was officially released for sale in North America.