Malibu.
The time is Monday, July 10th.
In the villa on the west side of Cape Dume, Simon woke up on time at six o'clock in the morning in the new week.
Last night I was on the phone with Janet until very late discussing the cabin design of the Boeing 767. At this time, there were still many design drawings faxed from Melbourne scattered around the bedroom.
Since he decided to purchase a Boeing 767 first, Simon contacted Boeing after returning from Melbourne last time.
However, Simon then sent Boeing's sales representatives directly to Melbourne and asked them to discuss the specific details with Janet. The only decision he made was the choice of specific aircraft models.
The latest model of the Boeing 767 series is the 767-300ER, but Simon chose the 767-200ER.
The 200ER is only slightly inferior to the 300ER in terms of fuselage length and load capacity, but is comparable to the 300ER in terms of cruising range. Simon has been renting the 200ER before.
Moreover, the most critical reason why Simon chose the 200ER is that this medium-sized passenger aircraft has low requirements for take-off and landing airports. The runway length required for a fully loaded heavy take-off is only 1.7 kilometers, which can be met by most airports in the world. In comparison, the runway length required for the 300ER to take off is 2.4 kilometers, which cannot be supported by airports in many smaller cities. During Simon's last trip to Europe, whether it was Cannes or Florence, the length of the city airport runways was within 2 kilometers.
After selecting the model, Boeing quoted a price of US$60 million.
After Janet contacted the Boeing sales representative, the first thing she did was negotiate a low price. Simon is not the kind of big customer who orders 10 or 20 planes at once. However, as a public figure, he can play a better role in brand promotion than those big customers by purchasing Boeing products as private jets.
Moreover, the purchase of private jets is indeed negotiable.
After negotiations, the transaction price between the two parties was finally determined to be US$50 million, which was almost a 20% discount. Of course, this is just the bare metal price, internal equipment and decoration are also calculated separately.
Simon has never been a stingy person when it comes to spending money, but he hates being taken for granted. He is very pleased that his woman can save money for a top-level villa in this transaction. After signing the contract and including assembly and decoration time, the aircraft will probably be delivered in November by the end of the year.
Get dressed and get up, simply tidy up the surrounding artwork, and the bedroom will become tidy again.
This is actually Jennifer's credit.
Janet is not in Los Angeles, and Catherine has also gone to New York. Simon's villa in Malibu, Palisade, Beverly Hills, and Janet's villa on the east side of Point Dume are all managed by Jennifer, with a female assistant Taking time to clean several properties every week regularly does not require Simon to worry about it at all.
Recently, Catherine has been helping to keep an eye on the two properties in New York. When Catherine is away, Angela Ahrendts, president of Gucci America, will be in charge.
As for Europe, after completing the acquisition of Gucci, in order to save money, Sofia originally planned to return a Falcon 50 business jet rented by the company. Finally, in order to be able to travel quickly between different cities in Europe, she could help Simon take care of many things. The property was preserved.
Janet had warned Simon that the house might become dilapidated and weathered if left vacant for too long. Now that it is maintained regularly and meticulously, Simon no longer worries about this.
Wash, exercise, shower.
seven o 'clock.
Leave home on time.
We had breakfast at a nearby restaurant and also made an appointment with the head of the construction team at Dume Point Manor to discuss the construction progress of the 'Iron Man Villa'. Simon's attitude towards the villa was just like the Westeros mansion he envisioned. It was built entirely according to the high standards of a work of art. He was not in a hurry. He had a mentality of working slowly and carefully, and only pursued perfection.
After breakfast, we drove to Santa Monica.
Simon opened today's Los Angeles Times in his car and looked at the cover index first.
Skip words like ""The Sixth Sense"" and "Reversal", find a news headline "U.S.-Iraq Business Forum Successfully Concluded", and turn directly to the international news page.
Today is already the 11th day of the release of "The Sixth Sense". Simon has already done all he can do, and the box office in the first week has reached his best expectations. He doesn't need to worry too much about the next thing.
Relatively speaking, the just-concluded 'US-Iraq Business Forum' is something Simon has been paying close attention to recently.
The Iran-Iraq war that lasted for eight years finally ended at the end of last year. After eight years of consumption, Iraq's domestic economy and people's livelihood and other aspects have been depleted to the extreme.
Saddam received "enthusiastic" help from many Western allies in his war with Iran, and the war was able to last for eight years. Now, if we want to restore the Iraqi economy, we will definitely need the assistance of these partners.
The partners are indeed very enthusiastic.
Although it is a U.S.-Iraq business forum, oil giants from the United States, Britain, France and other major Western countries are all gathered in Baghdad.
During the two-week business forum, Iraq hopes to receive US$40 billion in financial support from Western allies to revitalize the domestic economy.
The allies were not stingy and agreed, but they also put forward their own conditions. Iraq needs to privatize its country's oil resources, or most of them, so that international oil giants such as Mobil, Trustee, and Shell can better to help Iraq develop its oil resources and at the same time help restore Iraq's domestic economy.
According to the detection data of geologists from various countries in the 1980s, Iraq can be said to be the largest untapped oil production area in the world outside the Soviet Union. Although the overall reserves are not as good as Saudi Arabia, it has huge potential.
Seeing that the 'allies' were clamoring to directly hand over Iraq's oil sovereignty, Saddam had not been kicked in the head by a donkey, so it was naturally impossible for him to agree.
Without oil, what would be left of Iraq
Therefore, this business forum ultimately failed to reach any substantive agreement, and all that was left was a superficial harmony between the parties.
Simon watched all this with cold eyes, knowing in his heart that this was probably the beginning of many stories in the next twenty years.
When he arrived in Santa Monica, Simon rushed directly to the Daenerys special effects headquarters. He had to discuss the final modifications of some CG shots with the special effects team of "Batman" in the morning.
Jennifer was already waiting for Simon at Daenerys' special effects headquarters.
He asked the female assistant to collect more information about the 'US-Iraq Business Forum', and Simon also took over his work schedule from her.
The work for the morning has been decided, and I made an appointment with Jonathan Friedman for lunch at noon.
In the afternoon, it starts at one o'clock.
Check on the production progress of "Toy Story", one hour; Video game demo of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", one hour; Listen to a brief progress report from the financial audit team, half an hour; Wayne Huizenga, Chairman of Blockbuster The visit lasted half an hour; watching the rough cut of "Angel" and discussing revisions with the creative team took two hours.
At six o'clock, it was still a working meal with Amy.
The schedule also lists some documents that Simon needs to review as soon as possible, which can only be arranged in the evening.
Walking into the office building of Daenerys's special effects headquarters, Simon read his work schedule while walking, and the female assistant handed over the box office data report for the past three days over the weekend.
Simon just glanced through it briefly before turning his mind to today's work.
Compared to Simon's dull reaction, early this morning, after seeing the box office data report for the past weekend, the whole of Hollywood was a little uneasy.
During the three days from July 7th to July 9th, "The Sixth Sense" successfully withstood the pressure brought by all new and old films. Compared with the first weekend, the movie's box office for the second weekend not only did not drop, but actually achieved 6.8 % rebounded at the box office, collecting another US$24.73 million in three days.
Although some media predict that the weekend and full-week box office ratio of "The Sixth Sense" will return to the normal range of 60% to 70% in the second week, the weekday box office is unlikely to return to the high ratio it had in the first week when word-of-mouth just started to ferment. , however, the second weekend three-day figure of US$24.73 million still exceeded even the best expectations of Daenerys Entertainment’s own team.
Ten days after its release, the total North American box office of "The Sixth Sense" has quickly accumulated to US$66.08 million.
In comparison, "Ghostbusters 2" dropped sharply at the box office the following week, with its ten-day box office figure of only $58.76 million during the same period. If "Raiders of the Lost Ark" does not count the first two days of its early opening, the corresponding ten-day box office figure is only 67 million U.S. dollars. Although the data is better than that of "The Sixth Sense," it is still compared to "The Sixth Sense." After rebounding from the decline, the box office of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" dropped by 27% in the second weekend.
After "The Sixth Sense", "Lethal Weapon 2" took second place on the list with a box office of US$20.38 million in its first three days.
The box office revenue in the three days of the first weekend was 20.38 million. If it hadn't been for the sudden rise of "The Sixth Sense", Warner Bros. would have almost couldn't wait to prepare a celebration party.
Disney's old film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" released in June ranked third this week, with a box office figure of US$9.43 million, and the cumulative box office in two and a half weeks reached US$59.24 million. Relative to the production cost of $18 million, the film has been a huge success.
The two films "Ghostbusters 2" and "The Kid 3", which were ahead of "The Bodyguard" last week, both experienced sharp box office declines this weekend. "Ghostbusters 2" fell as much as 41% in three days last weekend, and "Ghostbusters 2" fell as much as 41% in the three days last weekend. "Dragon Boy 3"'s lead over "The Bodyguard" last week was already very weak. This week's 53% drop directly made it slip out of many people's attention.
However, entering its sixth week, the box office of "The Bodyguard" also dropped by 27%. It collected another US$5.76 million over the three days of the weekend, ranking fourth on the list. This romance film has bucked the trend and succeeded despite a lot of negative reviews. In five and a half weeks, the cumulative box office has reached 93.69 million US dollars, and it is about to break 100 million US dollars.
"Ghostbusters 2" ranked fifth, taking in another US$5.26 million. This sequel film, which opened high but sold poorly, has accumulated a box office of US$85.52 million in three and a half weeks.
The new film "The Boss Goes on Vacation" only ranked seventh, behind "Raiders of the Lost Ark", with a box office of US$4.5 million in its first weekend.
Among this week's box office data list, "Sex, Lies and Videotape" was more unexpected than Simon expected. This literary film opened on 517 screens and grossed US$3.93 million in the first three days of the weekend. The total box office in the first week is expected to be May exceed $6 million.
To be fair, Simon really wanted the movie to fail. However, the box office data of US$6 million in the first week means that "Sex, Lies and Videotape" has reached the level of a best-selling movie with an average theater average of over 10,000 US dollars. Compared with commercial films, it is easier for literary and artistic films to survive a slight decline in the box office in the long term. Based on this calculation, the North American box office of "Sex, Lies and Videotape" will be at least equal to that of the original version, or even higher.
Based on some media feedback he read over the weekend, Simon can only judge that "Sex, Lies and Videotape" itself has certain blockbuster elements that can attract audiences to buy tickets, and it does not just rely on the film's award honors.
Although Simon won't be too frustrated because he failed to get a movie with a total box office potential of only 20 to 30 million US dollars in North America, he can't help but feel distressed by it.
The production cost of "Sex, Lies and Videotape" is only US$1.2 million. If the North American box office can reach US$30 million, the box office revenue alone will be enough to exceed many big-budget movies with tens of millions of US dollars invested.
Daenerys Entertainment was the first to express interest in the film, which is no secret within the industry. With the success of "Sex, Lies and Videotape", Daenerys Entertainment will still face very fierce competition if it wants to easily win some projects and scripts in the future.
In fact, the unexpected box office success of Lawrence Kasdan's "The Bodyguard", which has been disliked by the industry for more than ten years, is destined to keep Hollywood's eyes on Daenerys Entertainment for a long time to come.
Simon is paying attention to "Sex, Lies and Videotape", but Hollywood is crazy about "The Sixth Sense".
“Why was this movie so successful?”
"So-and-so seems to have a similar idea."
"Information about the main and supporting actors in the film."
"Can you try to sign the next film contract of the young protagonist in the film?"
"Do you still want to let Daenerys Entertainment continue to be so strong?"
“…”
“…”
Simon worked step by step, and various discussions continued to spread.
Time waits for no one.
On July 14, the box office data for the new week was released.
The industry's prediction that "The Sixth Sense"'s weekend and full-week box office share will return to normal has become a reality.
In the second week of seven days, "The Sixth Sense" failed to maintain the reverse decline of last weekend, and the overall box office figures fell by 9% compared to last week.
However, the box office figure of US$39.26 million still leaves too many people with mixed feelings. You know, the box office of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in its second full week was only US$30.85 million, and the box office of "Ghostbusters 2" in the second week was only US$19.92 million.
In its second week, even though the screen size was increased last week, "The Sixth Sense"'s average box office figure of $20,352 per theater still exceeded the best first weeks of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Ghostbusters 2" data.
Because of this strong box office performance, Daenerys Entertainment successfully secured an additional 379 screens from theaters this week, expanding the total number of screens for "The Sixth Sense" to 2,308.
In addition, the number of new films released in the new week has also been reduced to two, namely United Artists' "007: License to Kill" and Disney's re-release of the classic animated "Peter Pan".
However, although there is a big-budget sequel to the classic spy series "007: License to Kill" released this week, "The Sixth Sense" is so powerful that the 007 series, which has been on the decline over the years, is destined to hardly pose much of a threat to it. .
As for animated re-releases like "Peter Pan", it's obviously even less of a concern.