After the first week of screenings, the box office number of "Lethal Weapon 3" in the first seven days was finally US$42.94 million, slightly lower than the expected US$45 million.
Because of its preference for action comedy, the production cost of "Lethal Weapon 3" was only US$35 million.
It started at US$42.94 million, which was a hit compared to the cost.
However, Warner Bros. Pictures' expectations for this project are limited because the sharing contract signed by several main creators such as Mel Gibson, Danny Glover and director Richard Donner has taken more than half of the film's profit share. The income is actually not that high. Whether "Lethal Weapon 4" will continue to be produced depends on the profit distribution game between the producer and the main creatives.
From memory, "Lethal Weapon 4" was not released until 1998, largely for the above reasons.
After the start on May 15, Disney's black comedy "Sisters Are Crazy" was released on May 22. The film's budget reached 31 million US dollars, but the number of opening screens was only 1,430.
This kind of opening screen size was already on a large-production level a few years ago, but now in 1992, it is a sign that the film's box office prospects are not optimistic. Disney plans to release three movies this summer. The other two are not the sequel to "Honey, I Turned the Kids Small" and "Honey, I Turned the Kids Big", or even the re-release of the classic 2D animated film "Dear, I Turned the Kids Big". "Pinocchio" is expected to have more than 1,600 opening screens, surpassing "Sisters Are Crazy".
In addition to "Sisters Are Crazy", the film released on the same day is "Fire Lover" released by Daenerys Entertainment's New World Pictures.
"Lovers" is directed by the famous French director Louis Malle and stars Oscar winner Jeremy Irons and famous French actress Julia Binoche. It tells the story of a conservative British MP who had an affair with his son's girlfriend. Love story.
New World Pictures is promoting "The Lover" as a remake of "Fatal Attraction," a blockbuster film starring Michael Douglas a few years ago.
However, the actual selling point of this film is only one word: sex.
The mainstream media are all serious about various analyzes of the plot structure of "Lovers". In relatively gossipy media such as the New York Post, the "conflict" between "Lovers" and the MPAA due to classification issues is making a fuss.
Because of the many large-scale love scenes in the film, MAPP originally positioned "Fire Lovers" as an NC-17 rating. After a dispute between the two parties, and New World Pictures finally made considerable concessions, the film finally obtained the R-rating with difficulty. Rating.
This rating conflict was of course intentional by the New World Pictures team.
Hollywood studios have countless disputes with the MPAA every year because of ratings. The same is true for Daenerys Entertainment, but most of them are resolved relatively low-key.
Therefore, once in a while, a big fanfare in the media can be very effective.
The opening screen size of "Fire Lover" is 516. With the vigorous promotion of the New World Pictures team, the film received a box office of US$5.39 million in the first week of its opening, and the box office exceeded the US$10,000 sales standard.
After all, the French director's works have a limited audience in North America, and it is a fiercely competitive summer season. It also has a certain starvation marketing effect. New World Pictures has no plans to increase the number of box office screens next week.
However, the opening box office of 5.39 million US dollars ensures that the North American box office revenue of "Fire Lover" is expected to be around 15 million US dollars.
Although it is the work of Louis Malle, who directed famous films such as "Atlantic City", due to its mediocre reputation, the box office during its early release in Europe was only average. New World Pictures bought out "Atlantic City" for only US$2 million. The investment for the North American omni-channel copyright of "Fire Lover" is also US$2 million.
This is actually a risk. The distribution team initially predicted that the film's North American box office might only be 5 million US dollars.
Louis Malle has never been much of a box-office director.
With a total investment of 4 million U.S. dollars, if it only gets 5 million U.S. dollars at the North American box office, this project can only hope to recover the cost through video tapes and other channels in the later stage.
Several European production companies of "Fire Lovers" probably also foreseeed such a possibility, so they were willing to sell off the North American rights at once and settle down. Similarly, it is precisely because of the buyout that "Fire Lover" was able to get a good summer schedule.
The total North American box office is expected to be US$15 million, which is enough for New World Entertainment to recoup all the early investment in the project and achieve profitability.
Many people in Hollywood did not understand why Daenerys Entertainment, which owns the DC movie universe and a large number of other super-blockbuster IPs, would get involved in the field of low-cost independent films and art films.
Now it is gradually discovered that a niche film with a box office of 10 to 20 million US dollars in North America may not earn half of the first-week box office of a blockbuster movie like "Lethal Weapon 3". However, if there are more than ten similar movies a year, Movies, coupled with the low-cost advantage, the comprehensive income is very considerable.
Moreover, starting from the projects such as "Reservoir Dogs", "Dancing Heroes" and "Double Dragon Club" at the beginning of the year, including the just-released "Fire Lovers", Daenerys Entertainment's New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures The Jiazi label has released a total of nine low-cost niche projects with box office sales exceeding 10 million US dollars.
Even if each film can only earn two to three million U.S. dollars in net income at the box office, over the whole year, including the tight supply of video tapes and television broadcast channels, it will be enough to contribute more than 100 million U.S. dollars in net profit to Daenerys Entertainment. .
This is also limited to low-cost niche projects.
High Gate Pictures and New World Pictures also have major projects every year such as the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series, "Twilight Zone", and "The Piano".
Including the net income from these major projects, the profit scale brought by the two sub-labels to Daenerys Entertainment will easily reach two to three billion US dollars or more. If the other seven major Hollywood studios are in normal times, their annual net profits are often only two or three billion US dollars.
However, even if this is increasingly understood, it will not be easy for other studios to catch up with the established Daenerys Entertainment.
Just like the original time and space, it is difficult for other studios to surpass New Line and Miramax in two areas. Moreover, this time New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures are already subsidiaries of Daenerys Entertainment, and there is no possibility of being acquired by other studios.
Even though the first week's box office was very good relative to the cost investment, "Fire Lover" was not conspicuous on the box office list that week.
In the week from May 22 to May 28, "Lethal Weapon 3" continued to lead the single-week box office list with a box office of US$32.31 million, with a weekly box office drop of only 24%.
Disney's "Sisters Are Crazy" unexpectedly earned US$16.76 million at the box office despite being ignored, with an average theater average of over US$11,000.
Disney, which had experienced high-level quarrels over this project the week before, responded quickly and increased the number of screens to 1,742 the week after its release.
On May 29, North American theaters finally ushered in the first real big-budget blockbuster of the 1992 summer season, "Earth Ambition" produced by Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation, with a production cost of US$60 million.
This film about the struggle of Irish immigrants in North America at the end of the 19th century was directed by Ron Howard and starred by Tom Cruise.
In the original timeline, this was actually a 'husband and wife' film, with the heroine being Nicole Kidman.
However, this time, the heroine of "Ambition Earth" obviously cannot be the original version, but is still Simon's "acquaintance", Catherine Zeta Jones.
A certain old man killer has parted ways with Columbia Pictures president Jon Peters, but he has also developed a good network of contacts in Hollywood. In order to ensure its own interests, Tom Cruise's projects rarely cooperate with other big-name actors, especially the heroines, who are generally played by second- and third-tier actors, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is just right.
In terms of publicity and distribution, Columbia Pictures has also spared no effort.
The production cost is 60 million US dollars, the publicity budget has also reached 30 million US dollars, and a huge investment of 90 million US dollars has been invested in the entire project. The opening screen size has also reached the full release level of 2,791.
Tom Cruise obviously went to great lengths to ensure the box office success of "Hard Earth."
Due to changes in history, Cruise only divorced his first wife two years ago. In order to create more topics for this project, these days, mainstream and gossip media have begun to hype the romance between the male and female protagonists.
This is a media propaganda technique that has almost been used to death in Hollywood. Of course, a trick that has been used repeatedly has its merits.
The 'romance' of Tom Cruise and Catherine Zeta-Jones has indeed attracted the attention of many movie fans.
However, no matter how much production investment, no matter how much publicity budget, no matter how hot the rumored romance is, it will ultimately be impossible to save a project that is bound to be only tepid.
After its release, the media reputation of "Terra" was only barely acceptable. Tom Cruise's popularity has declined significantly in the past two years and the audience is not interested in the entire story. As a result, the box office of the film in the first three days was only 1,019. US$10,000, which is less than one-third of Columbia Pictures’ expectations for this project, is a complete drop of cold water on the head.
Immediately after the following working day, the box office of "Ambition" in the first seven days of the week was only 15.62 million US dollars, only ranking third on the weekly box office list.
Warner Bros. Pictures' "Lethal Weapon 3" remains the week's box office champion.
In its third week of release, "Lethal Weapon 3" continued to earn US$20.02 million, and its cumulative box office reached US$95.28 million, soon to exceed 100 million US dollars.
Disney's "Sisters Are Crazy" is only in its second week of release, and its potential as a dark horse at the box office has already been revealed.
Although it was only the runner-up in the weekly box office, after appropriately increasing the number of screening screens, the box office of "Sisters Are Crazy" reached US$16.29 million in its second week, which was only a negligible 3% drop from the first week's box office. In two weeks, the film's cumulative box office has exceeded the production cost of US$31 million, reaching US$33.05 million.
If "Wonder Woman" hadn't crushed it fiercely, "Sisters Are Crazy" could definitely have gone out of the beautiful long line of the original time and space.
Moreover, "Earth" failed to grab the market a week ahead of "Wonder Woman", causing more media attention to shift to this DC superhero blockbuster.
Like the previous "The Flash", the production cost and publicity budget of "Wonder Woman" are also US$80 million, and the total investment in the early stage of the project reached US$160 million.
Because its IP is a well-known "A-list celebrity", although there are no heavyweight stars starring, "Wonder Woman" is still the most watched movie this summer. The experience-worthy special effects scenes in the previous trailers of the film and the good looks of Diana Prince played by Famke Janssen have also attracted countless movie fans and comic book fans.
In addition, Daenerys Entertainment’s publicity team also appropriately played the feminist card.
In recent years, there have been quite a few successful female-only movies in Hollywood. This made Daenerys Entertainment executives basically no longer worry about whether such a female superhero movie could compete with male superheroes before the project started filming. Three female directors were nominated for Best Director at the Oscars this year and were mentioned again during the promotion process.
Diana Prince has made her initial appearance in "Batman: The Dark Knight", a cross-fusion of the DC movie universe, and the previous "Batman: Begins", "Batman: The Dark Knight" and "The Flash" The continuous success has provided a basis for the success of "Wonder Woman" to be far more popular than many other non-sequel movies.
Out of confidence in the quality of the film itself, the premiere of "Wonder Woman" was also chosen on Wednesday, June 3.
At the same time, the film's reputation was officially lifted the next day.
With overwhelming praise, "Wonder Woman" received a comprehensive media score of 9.3. The film's plot, special effects, shots, soundtrack, etc. have all been unanimously praised by mainstream media.
"The Hollywood Reporter" commented that "Wonder Woman" has a coherent and exciting plot, full of innovative grand special effects, vivid and plump characters, and clever and seamless foreshadowing. "Wonder Woman" officially kicked off the DC movie industry. The Great Curtain of the Universe'.
"Variety" even praised Famke Janssen: a superhero who could easily have been relegated to the role of a vase, under the superb performance of this Nordic girl, successfully created a resolute and courageous character full of justice and justice. A powerful female superhero image.
Simon's custom soundtrack, modeled after the original set for Diana Prince, also managed to attract media attention.
Just after the premiere of the film, a famous film critic from "Rolling Stone" publicly stated that the soundtrack of "Wonder Woman" will become one of the most collectible records in 1992, and also congratulated Simon without hesitation. The Hollywood super director may receive another Oscar nomination for original score in addition to his directing duties.