December 24, Christmas Eve.
The much-anticipated "Cyborg" officially landed in North American theaters on this day, with the number of opening screens reaching 3,106.
The strength of the DC movie universe has been confirmed by five consecutive movies, so "Cyborg" can almost dominate the schedule. The other three movies released on the same day are all small-scale screening projects with only a few or dozens of screens.
Christmas Eve is a day for family reunions in the West, and is usually not the best time to start a movie.
However, thanks to the promotion of Warner Bros., a large number of movie fans still regarded watching "Cyborg" as a holiday celebration and chose to enter the theater to watch the movie as soon as possible.
Compared with the long-standing DC superheroes such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, Cyborg was born in 1980, and he is still black, so his disadvantage is very obvious. If this project were to be launched alone, Warner would not have any confidence. Fortunately, this is a continuation of the cross-fusion of the DC movie universe. The storyline closely follows the summer release of "Superman" and builds on the past and the future. Therefore, it largely offsets the protagonist of the film. Disadvantages in terms of popularity and race.
Especially the movie reputation.
The film once again uses many new technologies in terms of special effects, making the effect of the steel skeleton even more brilliant than the robots in "Terminator". The plot of the film has also been repeatedly polished. Although it is not amazing, it is done in one go. It not only tells a complete story The origin of the superhero Cyborg also laid enough foreshadowing for the subsequent development of the DC movie universe. In addition, the black protagonist needs to maintain political correctness. After the word-of-mouth ban was lifted, the comprehensive media score of "Cyborg" reached 9.1 points, which is completely Excellent level.
In the end, it’s because of Christmas Eve that Warner Bros.’s marketing cannot match the deep-rooted holiday traditions of Westerners. The box office of "Cyborg" on its first day of large-scale opening was only 14.16 million U.S. dollars. This result ranked last among DC movie universe projects.
Before the media had time to exaggerate the film's failure, the following Saturday, the film's single-day box office soared 39%, taking in US$19.73 million.
The following Sunday, "Cyborg" also reached a box office of $17.37 million.
When the first weekend of screenings ended, the cumulative box office of "Cyborg" in three days finally reached 51.26 million U.S. dollars, surpassing the first weekend box office result of 49.31 million U.S. dollars for "The Flash" which also opened on Christmas two years ago.
Although it still ranks second to last among the six films in the DC Cinematic Universe, Warner's reference for "Cyborg" happens to be "The Flash". The film's promotion team's box office expectations for "Cyborg" are only comparable to those of "The Flash." Now, this superhero movie with many disadvantages has a tendency to surpass the popular old superhero The Flash under the aura of the DC movie universe, which completely surprises Warner.
After the first weekend, from December 24th to December 30th, "Cyborg" accumulated a total box office of US$76.21 million in the first seven days, and it undoubtedly topped the single-week box office championship.
With the addition of "Cyborg", the total box office in the last full box office week of 1993 soared to $193 million. However, the strong "Cyborg" inevitably suppressed other films of the same period.
Impacted by the release of "Cyborg", "The Lion King", which is the most popular and most suitable for family viewing at the end of the year, failed to reverse the box office decline again during the Christmas week, but the film's decline this week was only a negligible 3%. It collected US$27.61 million, with a total box office of US$237.29 million in six weeks of release.
"Mission: Impossible", which ranks third on the list, did not have such good luck. The box office dropped by 19% during the Christmas week, with a revenue of US$20.52 million, and a cumulative box office of US$143.73 million.
Other films during the same period had mixed gains and losses, but none of them could compare with the top three films on the list.
December 31, the last day of 1993, started another box office week.
In order to avoid the sharp edge of "Cyborg", Fox's sci-fi thriller "Ghostbusters" chose to be released this week in an unconventional way. It will open on 1,031 screens. It is probably with a certain mentality of trying to pick up the slack, just in case. What about "Cyborg"'s box office failure? What if the film accidentally becomes a dark horse
After all, there are not so many eventualities in this world.
The box office on the first day was only US$730,000, which also proves that "Ghost" is just a cannon fodder at the end of this year-end schedule.
Since New Year's Day on January 1st falls on a Saturday, during the box office week from December 31st to January 6th, many films did not experience the sharp decline in box office after the holidays in previous years.
In its second week of release, "Cyborg" saw a box office drop of only 26% the following week, taking in another US$56.39 million, bringing the total box office in two weeks to US$132.6 million. Whether the film's total North American box office can hit 300 million still depends on the follow-up trend. If it exceeds "The Flash"'s original domestic box office of $253 million was more than enough.
The phenomenal 3D animated film "The Lion King" still ranks second.
In its seventh week of release, the box office dropped only 33%, continuing to earn 18.36 million U.S. dollars, and the cumulative box office reached 255.65 million U.S. dollars, less than 45 million U.S. dollars away from the 300 million mark.
Among the Big Three, "Mission: Impossible" saw a box office decline of 36% this week, which is considered to be the deepest decline in the box office on the list. It took in US$13.1 million at the box office in a single week, and the cumulative box office increased to US$156.83 million.
Although the decline was relatively deep, the overall box office trend of "Mission: Impossible" still broke through the haze of low box office opening caused by the initial sniper attack by "The Lion King". The domestic box office in North America is expected to be about 180 million US dollars, based on a share ratio of about 55%. Calculated, it is enough for Daenerys and Paramount to recoup the entire production and promotion investment of US$100 million just by relying on the North American box office. The overseas box office revenue can basically be counted as profit.
Even if it cannot compare with the DC Cinematic Universe projects or blockbusters such as "Jurassic Park" and "The Lion King", Paramount is satisfied with the market performance of "Mission: Impossible", and the sequel series has been officially launched recently.
After spending more than a week resting with the woman and children on Christmas Day, Simon resumed work on January 3 after New Year's Day, and Janet also flew to New York on the first working day after New Year's Day, leaving only the female assistant in Du Plum Point Manor takes care of three children.
Veronica flew to Australia to spend Christmas, and then brought Melbourne back to North America after the holidays.
After Janet gave birth to Nicholas, Veronica mentioned the matter of letting go of work again, but Simon and his wife bypassed it together. During this period, Janet also added the burden of supervising Black Rock Asset Management Company.
Black Rock Asset Management has the most conservative investment strategy among the three core subsidiaries of Cersei Capital. It cannot be tolerated that the funds controlled by this company are so huge. The total assets currently accumulated have reached 170 billion U.S. dollars. Once something goes wrong, it will inevitably be implicated. The entire Westeros system.
In order to prevent limited personal energy from hindering the rapid expansion of the Westeros system, Simon and his wife have been delegating power to the management as much as possible. On the other hand, they have also failed to supervise the finance, personnel and legal aspects of each subsidiary in the system. continues to strengthen.
Veronica is undoubtedly one of the people the Simons trust most, and is just right for the job.
At the beginning of the new year, Daenerys Entertainment's first large-scale commercial move was to acquire the remaining half of the shares of USA Television Network from Canada's Seagram Group.
After successfully acquiring Paramount Communications in October last year, Seagram Group, a foreign investor, was unable to continue to hold the USA TV network due to restrictions by federal regulations and had no choice but to sell it.
USA Television Network was originally jointly owned by Paramount Communications and MCA, with both parties holding an equal shareholding ratio of 50%. Daenerys Entertainment merged with MCA, and half of the former shares fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. Simon also gained absolute control of the USA Television Network.
In recent years, USA Television Network has grown rapidly through hit programs such as the Housewives reality show and Desperate Housewives. In less than three years, the number of subscribers increased from the initial 21 million to the current 43 million, and the annual revenue also increased from the initial US$60 million to US$330 million in 1993.
Preliminary estimates of the network's full-year net profit in 1993 also amounted to about $40 million.
If it weren't for federal media regulations, Seagram Group would certainly not have agreed to divest itself of a basic cable network that continues to grow at a rapid pace.
As a major shareholder, Daenerys Entertainment has the right to first purchase the other half of USA's shares, but after other media groups in the Federation expressed interest in this part of the shares, it is unrealistic to take over at a low price.
After more than two months of negotiations between the two parties, Seagram Group finally agreed to transfer its shares in the USA TV network for US$700 million in cash. Calculated based on the profit scale in 1993, it was equivalent to a price-earnings ratio of 35 times. Although this price Not outrageous, but still very expensive.
Even so, if the success of "Mission: Impossible" hadn't made Seagram realize the need to maintain a good cooperative relationship with Daenerys Entertainment, this agreement may have continued to be negotiated for a while.
After successfully acquiring the USA TV network, Daenerys Entertainment announced the group's second major move in mid-January, reorganizing its gaming business.
After four years of investing in EA and two years of full acquisition, the company's development is not bad. Combined with Daenerys Entertainment's Blizzard Studio, which originally specialized in console games, Daenerys Entertainment's electronic game business achieved full success in 1993. Preliminary annual revenue is US$1.16 billion, and net profit is expected to be around US$230 million, which is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of the group's annual net profit.
The total output value of the global electronic game market in 1993 was approximately US$13 billion.
The revenue of Daenerys Entertainment’s video game division accounts for nearly 9% of total global game revenue. If it were other companies, it would be very rare to have such an achievement in just a few years, but this does not satisfy Simon.
The most typical point is that for several consecutive years, although the game business department has also launched a series of blockbuster PC and console games, they have never seen the super hits like the original "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". In recent years, the sequel of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game has It is also inevitable that the popularity will decline.
With the development of Daenerys Entertainment, the core film business has reached its peak. The future growth points will be television on the one hand and games on the other.
The music business that Simon is also interested in will continue to decline in the next 20 to 30 years, but the game is different.
At this stage, the total output value of games on various platforms is already equivalent to the global movie box office. In Simon's memory, this number will increase tenfold in the next 20 to 30 years, reaching the level of 100 billion.
According to the current development status of Daenerys' entertainment game business, ten or twenty years from now, as long as it can still maintain its current market share, it will still be a giant in the industry.
No company can prosper forever. Simon will not be blindly optimistic just because of his current achievements. Moreover, he also expects the group's game business to go further.
To do this, it is inevitable to reorganize the existing game business.
Because there are serious differences in business philosophy between Simon and Tripp Hawkins, the head of the group's game business.
According to the group's management structure, the game business is in charge of Nancy Brill. Tripp Hawkins, the former founder, chairman and CEO of EA, normally only needs to report to Nancy.
After Nancy successfully developed the Daenerys entertainment game business, her focus in the past two years has been on Blockbuster Entertainment and blockbuster projects such as the DC Movie Universe and "Jurassic Park", "Toy Story", and "The Lion King" As for the increasingly prosperous Daenerys entertainment peripheral product business, it is inevitable that the management of the game business department will be neglected.
Tripp Hawkins' business philosophy for EA is, on the one hand, to produce the highest quality games, which is probably a principle that any game company adheres to. On the other hand, it is to strictly control the game production and avoid as much as possible. Uncontrollable risks in the game development process.
It was this latter point that Simon could not approve of.
Video games, like movies, music, and books, are also creative industries. Creativity is crucial for any game to be successful.
Tripp Hawkins strictly controls the dominance of the game and develops the game completely as a pure commodity, which directly damages the creativity of the game development team.
In the original time and space, although it has maintained its status as a giant in the industry for a long time, due to the business philosophy inherited from the founder Tripp Hawkins, EA always interfered excessively in the development of games by its studios, resulting in many outstanding works. The studio gradually disappeared after being acquired by EA, leaving users with only sequels that were increasingly commercialized.
EA has therefore been called a 'cancer in the industry'.
In comparison, Blizzard Entertainment, which attaches great importance to game quality, can count the total number of games it has developed over the decades since its establishment. However, because its excellence in game quality has been recognized by a large number of users, the number of games produced by this company is not large. The market value of the company is higher than that of EA, which has a large number of game categories.
Simon has always attached great importance to budget control of Daenerys Entertainment's film projects. However, if he has to choose between film quality and budget schedule, Simon will usually choose the former. In his heart, he is still a person who pays more attention to film quality.
Because of this, Daenerys Entertainment has cooperated with James Cameron, a habitual overspend criminal. Some projects in the DC movie universe, two Pixar animated films, and even many other projects under Daenerys Entertainment are much better than the original ones. It is estimated that they are actually overspending.
The mediocre quality of the film can be compensated by the channel advantages of promotion and distribution and the company itself.
Once the quality of the game is not satisfactory, there will not be many users to buy it. Therefore, in Simon's opinion, the quality of the game is more important than the movie.
As a result, under Simon's personal leadership, EA founder Tripp Hawkins left the company after receiving a generous compensation, and the new Daenerys Entertainment game business unit was led by EA's former president Larry Probst. Be responsible and still report back to Nancy Brill.
After the reorganization, the EA production department and distribution team were separated, and the original production team directly under EA was also reorganized into a highly independent studio model.
In the future, the EA team will be mainly responsible for game distribution on PC and console platforms. For each of its studios, the management team will only have the power to supervise personnel and finance, and creative leadership will be delegated to each studio as much as possible. people.
The new operating philosophy given by Simon is that EA only needs high-quality products.
The creative team can overspend, delay production, start over, or even completely cancel unsatisfactory works. In the end, it just needs to come up with a quality game.
Of course, freedom always has limits.
The creative team must take responsibility for all their actions.
Simon can tolerate failure, but he will not condone continuous failure. The studio's actions such as overspending and delaying production must also be based on game quality considerations. If it is due to other reasons, they will also be punished.
After completing the reorganization of the game department, Simon also personally finalized the acquisition plans of several game studios.
The most important one is a studio from Los Angeles called 'Silicon and Synapse'. This studio has only been established for two years, and its results are not outstanding. However, a real-time strategy game currently being developed by the studio is The key point that Simon is interested in is that the name of the game is "Warcraft".