From April 9 to April 15, the first seven-day box office of "Toy Fighter 2" reached 43.67 million U.S. dollars, easily topping the single-week box office championship.
Due to the strong impact of "Twilight Zone 2", the second-place "Legend of Sand" only had a box office of US$7.63 million in its first week.
"A Nightmare on Elm Street", which New Line Cinema has high hopes for, finally had a box office figure of US$5.31 million in its first seven days.
On April 16, a new week, three new films were released in North American theaters, namely Warner Bros.'s "Boiling Point", MGM's romantic comedy "Bonnie and Joan" and Goman Pictures' drama "The Big Algae" ocean".
Warner's "Boiling Point" stars black movie star Wesley Snipes and has 1,425 screens. It is a typical police action movie.
MGM's "Bonnie and Joan" tells the story of a brother and sister who each have a rough life experience and meet their true love. The film stars Johnny Depp and opened on 861 screens.
High Gate Pictures' "The Sea of Algae" is adapted from the novel of the same name, and is also a prequel to the famous "Jane Eyre". The original novel tells the story of the mad woman in the attic in "Jane Eyre". The film opens on 505 screens.
Because the heroine in the script of "The Sea of Algae" is a mixed-race girl with a dark complexion, Simon originally decided on a heroine, Catherine Zeta-Jones. After the 'Old Man Killer' replaced the former Nicole Kidman and co-starred with Tom Cruise in "The Big Brother" and caused a scandal, although "The Big Brother" did not do well at the box office, Zeta-Jones It's a great increase in fame.
The film's early internal test screenings went well, so it was placed on the Easter schedule.
After the three new films were released, "The Vast Sea of Algae" indeed received the highest overall media score of 8.2 points during the Easter period.
However, many people are still paying more attention to "Twilight Zone 2" which opened last week. The box office trend in the next week will determine the final box office of these movies in North America.
In the past few years, the opening weekend grossed over 40 million U.S. dollars, which can almost be said to be a seed player in North America's domestic box office of 200 million. With the rise of saturated full-scale release, the first-week box office is getting higher and higher, quickly squeezing a movie's business. potential, the subsequent decline is often very deep.
Even so, the US$43.67 million earned in the first week of "Twilight Zone 2" was still beyond many people's expectations. As long as the drop in the second week is not too severe, the film is expected to even surpass the first film's total North American box office of US$120 million.
Finally, from April 16 to April 22, the second-week box office of "Tokyo 2" dropped by 39%, and it collected another US$26.61 million, continuing to rank first in the weekly box office list.
In two weeks, this comedy movie, which was originally predicted by Daenerys Entertainment to have a total box office of US$60 million, has reached a total box office of US$70.28 million in North America. The decline in the next week was controlled within 40%, which means that the film's box office trend is quite good. The total local box office is expected to be between US$130 million and US$150 million, surpassing the US$120 million box office result of the first film, and becoming Danielle's box office In 1993, Silk Entertainment's first local box office film exceeded 100 million.
When the box office was released the next week, although they had only signed a two-film contract with Mike Myers, New World Pictures executives began to discuss the feasibility of developing a third film with him.
Since the film has successfully broken through the sequel curse of this type of comedy, Simon has no objection to the development of sequels, but only requires that the cost of the third film must be controlled within US$40 million. As compensation, Simon agreed to provide a group of creatives with profit-sharing contracts.
Two consecutive movies have exceeded 100 million in box office. It stands to reason that the cost of the third sequel will double to 60 million US dollars. However, if $60 million is really needed, Simon would rather abandon the project.
The budget cost is 60 million US dollars, and future publicity and distribution will require at least 20 million US dollars.
An 80 million U.S. dollar project is already a blockbuster, and considering that the overseas box office potential of the "Tokyo" series is very small, the local box office needs to reach 150 million U.S. dollars to be able to make money back.
The second and third parts of "Austin Powers" both reached US$200 million in North American box office, but Simon has no such confidence in "Kingdom". US$150 million is probably the limit of this series' domestic box office.
Although things are not certain, as the box office of the sequel here far exceeds initial expectations, Simon does not intend to take risks.
The point is that Daenerys Entertainment has no shortage of other projects.
You know, Jim Carrey's "Planet" and "The Man in Disguise" have both been approved. This comedy star with a distinctive personal style not only has local box office appeal as much as Mike Myers, but also has the ability to win Recognition in overseas markets.
After first place, MGM's "Bonnie and Joan" relied on good word-of-mouth, earning US$8.79 million in its first week, ranking second on the list, and the average theater average also exceeded the US$10,000 blockbuster level, surpassing the production level. factory expectations.
As a result, MGM quickly increased the film's response size from 861 to 1,363 in the second week.
Following closely behind, Fox Pictures' "Tales from the Sandlot" ranks at No. 3. .
This baseball-themed youth film only saw a 28% drop in box office in the second week, taking in another US$5.56 million.
If you only look at the decline figures, "Legend of Sand" is even better than "Toy Fighter 2". Of course, this is mainly because the opening box office volume is not high.
The cumulative box office in two weeks is US$13.19 million, and the box office curve is very stable. The total North American box office of "Legend of Sand" is expected to reach between US$20 million and US$25 million.
Warner Bros.'s police action film "Boiling Point" ranked fourth, with a box office of US$5.12 million in its first week.
Considering that the production cost of "Boiling Point" was only US$9 million, and it earned US$5.12 million in the first week, the total domestic box office is expected to be around US$10 million, which is basically in line with Warner's expectations. Through subsequent operations, it can basically recover the cost and achieve a small profit.
Gaomen Pictures' "The Vast Sea of Algae" ranked fifth on the list.
This literary drama adapted from a literary classic relied on its excellent reputation and the precise promotion strategy of Gaomen Pictures. It earned US$4.65 million from 505 screens in the first week, with an average of nearly US$10,000.
Taking into account the long-lasting nature of literary films, although "Algae Sea" opened with only 4.65 million U.S. dollars in its first week, the total North American box office is very promising to exceed 15 million U.S. dollars, and even hit the 20 million U.S. dollar mark.
The production cost of the film was US$3 million, and including publicity and distribution, the total project budget was only US$5 million.
With box office expectations of US$15 million to US$20 million, Gaomen Pictures can achieve good profits just through local theater distribution.
"A Nightmare on Elm Street", for which New Line has high hopes, was far lower than expected at the box office of US$5.31 million in its first week. Although the box office decline in the second week remained at a relatively good 36%, it was destined to be unable to bring success to this second-tier film company. What a reversal.
The next week's box office was US$3.38 million, and the two-week total was US$8.69 million. The total box office is expected to be US$12 million. New Line released it through all channels such as overseas and subsequent video tapes, so it is not a big problem to recover the entire US$17 million project investment. However, New Line obviously didn’t have enough time.
After the disappointing first-week box office performance of "A Nightmare on Elm Street," the stock price of the film company, which went public in 1986, began to plummet.
By the time the box office was released the next week, New Line's stock price had dropped 27% in half a month compared to before its release, with a market value of only US$46 million. It had shrunk by more than US$200 million from its peak in previous years. 75%. New Line's total liabilities reached US$72 million. After this heavy blow, it was completely insolvent at this time.
After trying to find a buyer or reorganizing the debt to no avail, New Line founder Robert Shea formally filed for bankruptcy on April 23.
After Miramax, another studio that should have been very dazzling in the 1990s announced its withdrawal from the Hollywood stage.
Except for Simon, Hollywood didn't lament New Line's bankruptcy too much.
In the 1980s, driven by government support and the rise of the video tape industry, a large number of studios sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain, and then disappeared one after another in the harsh federal economic environment in these years. Compared with companies such as Canon Pictures and De Laurentiis Group, which were very noisy and ambitious at the time, except for the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series, New Line has never been too conspicuous in the industry.
Now, this company started with "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and ended with "A Nightmare on Elm Street", just like a cycle.
Even the more sensitive industry insiders are not too aware of Daenerys Entertainment's continuous targeting of Miramax and New Line. After all, suppressing latecomers is basically what the seven major Hollywood companies are doing.
However, many people also realize that competition in Hollywood has become increasingly fierce, and it is becoming increasingly unfriendly to second- and third-tier film companies that lack funds and channel resources.
Not only New Line, which has just filed for bankruptcy, Orion Pictures, which had previously received financial support from Canada's Seagram Group, can only be described as struggling in the past two years. It has completely lost the glory of winning consecutive Oscar awards in the 1980s. Some other independent studios can only make small efforts.
Founded more than 20 years ago, New Line's most valuable asset is undoubtedly its library of hundreds of film copyrights.
Danny Morris specifically mentioned this to Simon some time ago.
However, after careful consideration, Simon decided that Blockbuster would participate in the subsequent auction of New Line assets.
After initially deciding to quietly build Blockbuster into an independent media company similar to Netflix later, in recent months, Blockbuster has quietly registered and established Blockbuster Entertainment Company, responsible for personally participating in investment in film projects.
Prior to this, Blockbuster had quietly bought the dozens of movie rights that Miramax had accumulated over the years after bankruptcy for $13 million.
The price of New Line's film library is obviously much higher than that of Miramax.
After all, it is only the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" series, which has good commercial potential whether it is through video tapes or other channels or continuing to turn over the cards. Moreover, compared to Miramax, which mostly only has very incomplete partial regional or single-channel copyrights, New Line has a large number of fully copyrighted films in its library.
The Blockbuster team made an assessment and found that it would require at least US$60 million to acquire this part of the assets from many competitors interested in the New Line film library.
New Line's bankruptcy only occupied a small section in the more professional "Hollywood Reporter".
On April 26, the news that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley officially signed a US$1.5 billion capital injection agreement with Igret Company almost occupied a prominent position on the front pages of a series of mainstream studios in the following days.
After more than a month of negotiations, the price of US$1.5 billion has not changed. However, the Westeros system has also made huge 'concessions'.
Westeros Company will no longer withdraw a cent of the US$1.5 billion in funds reached in the transaction, but will inject all the funds into the Ygrit Company's account in the form of additional financing for the company's development in the next few years.
Corporate additional financing and shareholders selling stocks are two completely different operations.
One of the most important differences is that the latter needs to pay capital gains tax, and the federal capital gains tax at this time is still as high as 29%. In order to avoid paying huge capital gains taxes, Simon had no intention of withdrawing funds from this equity transfer.
Many media have actually seen this, but they still admire Simon for decisively giving up US$1.5 billion in cash.
You know, this is US$1.5 billion in cash after all.
At this stage, even among the billionaires on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, few can spend US$1.5 billion in cash in one go.
In addition to injecting all US$1.5 billion into Ygritte as financing, Westeros also agreed that Ygritte will conduct an IPO within the next three years. At the same time, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also jointly obtained the underwriting rights for Igret's future IPO.
After the transaction was completed, in addition to the heated discussion in the media, the most direct consequence was that the Nasdaq technology stock sector rose again.
A company like Igret, which was only established for 4 years, has been valued at US$15 billion. Together with Cisco and AOL, some hesitant investors have also begun to enter the market to participate in the operation of technology stocks.
On the other hand, the Christie's acquisition in Europe is also progressing smoothly.
Even though the British media called on the British government to strictly review to prevent Christie's, an iconic British company with a long history, from falling into the hands of foreigners, in the end the British government did nothing to obstruct it.
Of course, it’s not as if there aren’t lawmakers trying to gain more support who plan to try.
However, Melisandre's company is backed by the Westeros system, and the relationship between the Westeros system and News Corporation has always been very good. News Corporation, which controls a large number of media in the UK, is simply not something that one or two congressmen can offend.
Sophia participated in several opportunities in British politics under the recommendation of News Corporation's senior management, and the acquisition of Christie's was successfully approved by the British authorities.
After the deal was concluded, Melisandre Company also publicly promised that Christie's headquarters will remain in London. Melisandre Company will not make any large-scale reorganization of Christie's in the short term, and will maintain this historic auction house in the long term. Maintain the existing traditional corporate culture.
Britain is no longer the empire on which the sun never sets, and the pound crisis in the past year has disgraced this old empire.
Melisandre's company made such a statement, no matter what it was in private, but on the surface, the British media felt that it had retained some dignity and did not pursue the matter again.