On July 30, the summer season began to wrap up. As many as 7 films were released in North American theaters this week. However, 4 of them had openings of less than 300 yuan. An Italian literary film "Four" released by Gaomen Pictures "A Love Story" only gives a screening scale of 11 screens.
The three mainstream commercial films with an opening screen size of more than 1,000 are MGM's "Paradise", Fox Pictures' "Robin Hood" and Columbia Pictures' "Naked".
"Paradise" stars Robert Downey Jr. and tells the story of a car accident that leaves the male protagonist Tommy surrounded by four ghosts. It is obviously following the trend of "Ghosts". The film opened with 1,263 screens.
"Robin Hood Is Crazy" is a spoof of the Robin Hood theme. It is obviously following the trend of Kevin Costner's hit "Robin Hood" two years ago, which opened with 1,275 screens.
"Naked" is a project similar to "Basic Instinct" that Madonna personally promoted to Simon last year. The film uses Queen Madonna's large-scale performance as a selling point, and the number of opening screens exceeds the other two commercial films, reaching 2,070.
In the box office week from July 30 to August 5, because the box office of new films released in the past two weeks has been very average, the number one on the list is "Gannet" which opened on July 16.
In the third week of its release, "Gannet"'s box office dropped 31% compared to last week, with a revenue of US$16.82 million. The film's cumulative box office in three weeks reached US$72.83 million, and is expected to exceed 100 million in the next three weeks. The box office is probably around US$100 million, and it is unlikely to exceed US$110 million.
Not only "Gannet", entering August, the box office trends of a series of Daenerys Entertainment's summer-related films have been basically determined.
Relying on a single-week box office of US$10.37 million in its fifth week of release, the North American box office of "Sugar-Coated Trap", which opened on its own on July 2, officially exceeded the US$100 million mark, with a cumulative total of US$104.93 million. Considering that the box office volume of "Sugar-Coated Trap" in its fifth week of release has reached the tens of millions of US dollars, the film's total North American box office is expected to reach between US$140 million and US$150 million.
Another film related to Daenerys Entertainment, "Sleepless in Seattle", took in $6.03 million at the box office this week. It has been in theaters for seven weeks. This romantic film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan The cumulative box office is 11631, and the total box office in North America is expected to be around 130 million US dollars.
Going forward, "Superman", which opened on June 4, was in its ninth week of release. The single-week box office officially fell to less than 10 million US dollars, with a weekly revenue of 9.39 million US dollars from July 30 to August 5. At the same time, the film's cumulative box office has reached US$332.11 million, and the total box office in North America is expected to reach approximately US$360 million.
Because three of the four major commercial films are distributed by other Hollywood studios, Daenerys Entertainment is only responsible for "Sugar-coated Trap", which also makes the three summer releases of New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures This film has received considerable distribution resources from Daenerys Entertainment.
Therefore, "The Legend of Bruce Lee" on May 17, "Orlando" on June 11 and "What's Love Got to Do With It" on June 25, three medium-low-cost production films, compared with their budget investment, all It achieved pretty good box office results.
Among them, "The Legend of Bruce Lee" has been canceled. The production budget of the film is 15 million US dollars, and the promotion and distribution is 5 million US dollars. The total box office in North America reached 35.11 million US dollars. New World Pictures basically recovered all the production and promotion costs just relying on the North American box office. cost, the profits from subsequent channels will be very considerable.
"Orlando" starring Tilda Swinton has a cumulative box office of US$17.36 million as of August 5, and continues to steadily approach US$20 million with a box office of more than US$500,000 in a single week. The total investment in film acquisition and promotion of "Orlando" was only US$6 million, and it had already begun to generate profits.
The Tina Turner music biopic "What's Love Got to Do With It" is even more of a surprise.
The production and promotion investment of the film is equivalent to that of "The Legend of Bruce Lee", with a total cost of 20 million US dollars. After being released on June 25, as of August 5, the cumulative box office has reached 42.63 million U.S. dollars. The single-week box office from July 30 to August 5 still reached 3.81 million U.S. dollars, and the next hit is the total box office problem of 50 million U.S. dollars. Not big.
Compared with "Superman", the revenue of these three films is simply not worth mentioning. However, the three films, or including the four major commercial films, Daenerys Entertainment's seven summer films have all been successful. For Hollywood For other studios, this time it's the latest upstart that's scary.
Movies are a gambling business, so how can anyone always win
Simon didn't think there was anything special about it.
Seven movies, four of which are flagship movies, are all good ones he made based on his own prophetic advantages. Since the other three movies were selected by New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures for the summer release, their quality will not be too bad, and the quality will not be too bad. What's more, there is strong publicity support from Daenerys Entertainment Group.
Movies are a gambling business, but card counting is also possible on this gambling table.
It's like the Disney that Simon remembers.
Disney, which integrates Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm, and Pixar Studios, also has a set of best cards with a great chance of winning. Therefore, it also leads to the grand occasion that Disney divides half of the top ten box office lists in North America every year. .
In the past few years, Simon was always worried that Daenerys Entertainment's too much limelight would cause unpredictable troubles, so he adopted a strategy of cooperating with external parties to share profits. Until this summer, Daenerys Entertainment still has three of the four commercial hits. Distribution is handled by other studios.
With Daenerys Entertainment successfully merging MCA and the Westeros system becoming increasingly powerful, the concerns of the past are no longer a problem.
As long as it successfully merges with a national public television network in the next few years and completely completes its layout in the media field, Daenerys Entertainment can fully demonstrate Simon's dominance in Hollywood.
On the other hand, the most striking contrast to Daenerys Entertainment this summer is undoubtedly Columbia Pictures, which is owned by Sony.
In order to keep his position as CEO of Columbia Pictures, Peter Cooper is almost desperate.
Starting from "My Genius Family" which was released in the same period as "Bruce Lee: The Legend" on May 14, as of August 5, Columbia Pictures has released a total of 6 movies this summer, namely "My Genius Family", "The Last of Us," "Phantom Hero," "Dangerous Honeymooners," "Justin's Poetry" and "The Naked Heart."
For six movies, the cumulative production budget alone reached US$230 million.
However, the total summer box office of the six films as of August 5 was only US$170 million. Columbia Pictures could only recover a box office share of US$90 million, which was not even enough for the promotion and distribution costs of the six films.
Among them, Madonna's new film "Naked", which was released on July 30, had a production budget of US$30 million and only had a box office of US$8.54 million in its first week. The market has proved with facts that the audience is not actually very interested in McQueen's nudity. The failure of this project is also the epitome of a series of failures in Columbia Pictures' summer season.
Columbia Pictures' failure was no accident either.
When they were running Cooper-Peters, Peter Cooper and Jon Peters were producers in the circle. Because they were working with colleagues who were familiar with the rules of the industry, they didn't do anything too outrageous, and they achieved good results. score.
After taking over Columbia Pictures from Sony, the two Hollywood veterans also completely let themselves go because of the Japanese's decentralization attitude.
Laziness, squandering, chaotic management, nepotism, blind investment...the two executives have committed almost all the shortcomings that can drag a company into the abyss in recent years.
For such a film company, losses are inevitable and profits are accidental.
On August 6, following the disappointing box office results of "Naked" in its first week, Sony officially announced the removal of Peter Cooper and Jon Peters from all positions. Michael Schur, President of Sony America Hough will temporarily take over all operations at Columbia Pictures and report directly to Sony CEO Norio Ohga.
Not only that, Sony also sent an accounting team to Colombia to begin a financial audit of the studio.
In the face of this sudden personnel shakeup, everyone at Sony remained quite silent. However, Peter Cooper, who was dismissed from his post, expressed his dissatisfaction with being dismissed without reason during the contract period in an interview with the media, and also revealed that he might initiate a lawsuit against Sony. litigation.
The North American media then spent the entire weekend discussing the turmoil at Columbia Pictures.
As of Monday, August 9, the front-page article of the Los Angeles Times was still reporting the latest news about Columbia Pictures. It was rumored that Columbia Pictures’ financial situation was worse than everyone expected, and Sony may face more than 1 billion Write-downs of assets above USD.
However, Sony's recent market value is actually only about US$17 billion.
Peter Cooper was fired from Sony two years earlier than Simon remembered. In the original time and space, it was not until 1995 that Sony finally stopped letting Columbia Pictures have its way.
Simon even knew Sony’s true asset write-down amount, which was a full US$2.7 billion.
When Sony bought Columbia Pictures, it offered only US$3.4 billion for the equity of this major studio and assumed an additional US$1.6 billion in debt, bringing the total transaction value to US$5 billion. In recent years, Sony has invested no less than US$1 billion in order to resolve various legal disputes and Columbia Pictures' financial needs.
The US$2.7 billion asset write-down is almost equivalent to wiping out more than half of Columbia Pictures’ assets.
Because of this failure, Akio Morita completely lost control of Sony and died in depression a few years later.
This time, apparently influenced by Simon and Daenerys Entertainment, something has changed.
However, Sony's big setback with Columbia Pictures will not change.
This summer alone, Columbia Pictures' losses on a series of projects will exceed US$200 million. In a few years, this major studio has been severely damaged by Peter Cooper and Jon Peters. Sony is expected to take over. The asset write-down figures announced later will certainly not be much lower than Simon remembers.
This incident actually sounded a wake-up call for Simon.
It definitely does not mean that if you provide some people with enough funds, enough trust, and enough space to play, you will receive rewards.
If you do this rashly, you are likely to end up in a mess.
The scale of the Westeros system is getting larger and larger. If you want your business empire to continue to expand, decentralization is necessary. However, the results of decentralization without restrictions are likely to be disastrous.
In the restaurant of Shell Villa, while reading the newspaper in the morning, she talked about her thoughts with Janet beside her. The woman nodded her head several times exaggeratedly: "I understand, I understand."
Janet is actually Simon's eyes on the Westeros system.
Seeing the woman acting up, Simon smiled and said, "Is there any problem?"
"No," Janet shook her head, glanced at the man, and said, "Do you want your aunt to come over and take my place to help you take care of some things? Don't worry, I won't let you succeed."
“…”
Wrinkling her little nose and finishing the last bite of the breakfast specially prepared by the nutritionist for pregnant women, Janet wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin, came over and kissed Simon on the face, and said with a smile: "Go to San Francisco today to have a good time, you don't have to come back tonight. Yes. Well, you can tell Jenny that you are coming back, and I will help you cover up your lie."
Simon carefully placed Janet, who was next to him, on his lap and hugged her. He gently touched the woman's bulging belly and said, without continuing what he just said, "Do you want to come to England next week?"
After several months of preparation, Nokia will be officially listed on the London Stock Exchange next Friday.
Janet hugged Simon's neck and pressed her face against Simon's head: "I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to stay at home."
Simon thought for a moment and said, "In this case, I won't go."
"Go ahead, go ahead, it's boring to stay with a pregnant woman all day."
"It's really boring and troublesome."
"Well, bite you."
Feeling his ears being bitten by two rows of small teeth for a moment, Simon said: "After this busy month, I will put down my work as much as possible to accompany you on your maternity leave."
Janet helped Simon rub the shallow teeth marks on his ears and said, "You have no credibility with me anymore, workaholic."
"This time, we will definitely take Moer back and take care of him for a while. We can't let the little guy not even know his parents."
Janet did not deliberately mention Veronica this time. She gave a shallow hum, leaned her head on Simon's shoulder and talked for a while. It was almost nine o'clock before Simon left home and rushed to the airport to fly to San Francisco.
At ten o'clock, we arrived at the headquarters of Ygritte Company, where several executives were already waiting for Simon.
What we want to focus on today is a new project that Igret is about to launch, a classified information website.
This is a key project in Yigret's recent expansion plan after the completion of the last US$1.5 billion financing.
There are many classified information websites in Simon's memory, such as 58.com, Ganji.com, Baixing.com, etc.
Since there are so many classified information websites, it shows the commercial potential of this website type.
In the original time and space, unlike the hundreds of schools of thought contending on China's classified information websites, there was only one 'Craig's Directory' in North America that had a near-monopoly. However, unlike many classified information websites in China, Craig's Directory was almost completely free. Yes, it is this free model that gives it a super high monopoly advantage.
Moreover, regarding the suggestion of a classified information website, someone within Ygrit actually put it forward a long time ago.
It was just deliberately suppressed by Simon, and it has not been launched until now. Some time ago, Simon also asked people to apply for the '58list' subsidiary brand and the corresponding independent website based on memory.
Among them, 58 is naturally based on 58 in the same city, which is a little bit of Simon's bad taste.
The project has been suppressed until now, mainly because starting this project will touch a big cake worth tens of billions of dollars.
As we all know, print media in the United States are very developed in this era. From world-class metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles to some remote fishing port towns, they often have their own newspapers.
The American public also has a very common habit of subscribing to newspapers.
In the huge paper media industry, most newspapers will have many sections densely packed with classified information advertisements such as 'recruitment' and 'rental houses'. This part of the revenue often accounts for about half of a newspaper's total revenue.
The entire federal paper media industry currently generates more than $20 billion in classified information advertising revenue each year.
Now, once the free classified information website of Yigrit Portal is launched, most users will be able to publish various classified information advertisements on the Internet without spending a penny. It is conceivable that once this online business develops, What a powerful impact it will have on the existing classified information advertising business on paper media platforms.