Accompanying two women in New York for a month, Eric returned to Los Angeles near Christmas. As the most important time of the year besides the summer, most of the Christmas films will be released in the two weeks of December 18th and December 25th.
Firefly's last film "Detective Airplane Head" in 1992 was also scheduled for December 18, because Jim Carrey and tg have been unable to agree on the salary of the next movie. In early December, Jim Carrey made public again Expressed to the entertainment media strong outrage at being 'tricked' into signing that option contract, while also stating that he does not intend to attend the premiere of "Aeroplane".
A few days before the premiere of "Plane Detective", after a long period of see-saw negotiations, TG finally signed another film contract with Jim Carrey at a salary of 11 million US dollars, and at the same time, it also allowed the audience to watch the movie on December 17. Jim Carrey was seen at the premiere on the 1st.
Hollywood stars often star in the movies of directors or producers who are kind to them at low prices or even free of charge, but they often confront the film companies that discovered them, and they have a quarrel with each other in terms of remuneration. This has almost become a Hollywood phenomenon. This is a habitual trend, and Eric is also used to it.
In addition to "Aeroplane", Warner's "Bodyguard" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" co-produced by Columbia and Firefly's Disney Pictures were also released on a large scale on the same day.
Eric didn't attend the premiere of "Plane Detective", but he finally attended the premiere of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" under Peter Cooper's stalker and Nicole's soft-spoken request.
According to the original agreement, Firefly will cooperate with Columbia on five films. Distribution rights in North America belong to Columbia. Firefly is responsible for overseas distribution. This agreement is naturally to cover up the impact of the private agreement between Eric and Peter Cooper. Columbia's overseas distribution network is in disarray at this time. If Columbia distributes overseas, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith "'s overseas box office may even be half of what was expected.
Because of the optimistic prospect of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", Columbia spent almost all of its wealth and arranged more than 2,800 screens for "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" in the first week. A release that exceeds a film's box-office potential is likely to cause a film to shrink significantly the following week. However, after three days of screenings in the first weekend, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" received an astonishing box office of 39 million U.S. dollars. It is estimated that the first week's box office is likely to touch the production cost line of 60 million U.S. dollars. Before that, such results usually only happen in the summer One can imagine the shock it brought to the industry.
As soon as such results came out, most of the media that had been pessimistic about Columbia’s hairstyle strategy changed their direction, and began to analyze the reasons for the success of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. In addition to the scale of the premiere, “Mr. The oriental kung fu factor in the form of action movies in North America has also become the focus of media pursuit.
The three-day box office of the film's first weekend has been released. In just a few days, John Wu received more than a dozen film cooperation invitations and countless media interview invitations.
Because he has already signed a contract with Firefly, although John Wu is very excited about the high director's remuneration and share offered by other film companies. But he is also very self-aware that he has no private contact with outsiders, and he has no intention of tearing up the contract with Firefly. John Wu enjoyed the interview invitations from the media very much. He accepted interviews from various newspapers, magazines or TV stations, talked about his violent aesthetics and oriental kung fu, and even flew back to Hong Kong to accept TVB 's interview program, it can be said to be infinitely beautiful for a while.
In the original time and space, the most successful and also the earliest cooperation between kung fu elements and local Hollywood commercial films was "The Matrix". As for the earlier kung fu movies, most of them have Kung Fu stars from the East, and they cannot be regarded as authentic Hollywood movies.
And now, because of the great success of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hollywood has also begun to pay attention to Hong Kong movies, which are far away across the ocean and are experiencing the last period of crazy prosperity. Because John Wu signed a contract with Firefly, several other major Hollywood film companies knew that they could not poach people from Eric, so they set their sights on Hong Kong's first-line directors, and Hong Kong local filmmakers also saw John Wu. During this period of time, the lure of becoming a major international director and the bottleneck in the development of local films have appeared, and the solicitation of Hollywood is also extremely eager. Both sides come and go, and the charming eyes are floating over the entire Pacific Ocean.
Although the box office of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" fell by more than 40% in the second week, the box office of 36 million US dollars in the second week and the accumulation of early screenings of the film easily broke through 100 million US dollars within two weeks of its release, becoming the 1992 annual box office. The biggest dark horse at the Christmas box office. It is estimated that the total box office of the film may exceed 200 million US dollars. Firefly and Columbia can recover all the publicity and distribution costs and make a profit at the North American box office alone. A series of distribution methods in the later stage will bring All will be pure profits, which is undoubtedly the most eye-catching box office achievement after Sony acquired Columbia.
Peter Guber originally complained that the first film he collaborated with Firefly was not a blockbuster with special effects, but now he is only ecstatic. The profit still exceeds what Columbia has earned on most of the films it has released over the past two years. If the four films he collaborated with Firefly in the next three years can still maintain similar results, Peter Guber thinks that he will be able to sit very securely as the CEO of Columbia.
In addition to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", Firefly's "Aeroplane" and "Bodyguard" by Eric's name as executive producer also achieved good results. Although not as strong as "Mrs. Smith", the two At the end of the week, the box office of "Aeroplane" and "Bodyguard" both exceeded 50 million US dollars.
Except Firefly, Warner and Columbia. The performance of the other four major Hollywood film companies this year's year-end schedule is relatively unsatisfactory. And one of the most miserable is MGM. For a whole year, MGM did not produce any movies, but only acted as an agent for movies produced by other small companies, and the total box office revenue of all the movies released by MGM in 1992 was even less than 100 million US dollars, which can be said to be Desperate to the extreme.
Due to the fraud lawsuit of Italian investor Giancarlo Paredi, MGM was publicly auctioned by the Bank of France in December. There is no final bidding result yet. Although Eric is a little excited about MGM's huge film library, but To accumulate funds for more promising investments. Eric did not take a shot against MGM for the time being.
Fox originally planned to obtain the copyright of the "Home Alone" series from Firefly again to make a sequel, but the previous "Home Alone" was a success, but because the little protagonist, Stuart Runkel, was one year older, the years have been excellent. His life makes him look no longer suitable for pretending to be tender and cute in movies, so this series has entered the stage with the highest risk, and Fox’s asking price this time is only 50% of last year’s, but he hopes to participate in the peripheral share of "Home Alone" In the end, the two sides did not reach an agreement. Due to various considerations, the "Home Alone" series was completely stranded. However, several comedy films independently developed by Fox did not perform very well.
Martin Davis of Paramount has been dealing with possible acquisitions by Viacom or qvc all year long, and has no interest in the film business at all. Therefore, no work has been released.
Universal is a bit better. Under the helm of Michael Eisner, Universal launched a strategy of winning with low cost at the end of the year. When several other film companies only released one or two works at the end of the year, Universal launched at the end of the year. He has produced six films, and the opening screen is around 1,000 yuan, and then make appropriate adjustments according to the film results. Anyone in the industry can see that Michael Eisner did this out of helplessness. He is in charge of global events for too short a period of time. There is no time for a long-running big-budget film to be launched. In order to improve Universal's business situation as soon as possible and boost investors' confidence, Michael Eisner came up with such a strategy.
Except for "Schindler's List", the other five films are comedies or feature films with an investment of no more than 20 million U.S. dollars. The six films including "Schindler's List" have also exceeded 200 million US dollars in total, and it will not be a problem to reap around 100 million US dollars in the box office, and the profit prospect is quite considerable.
At the same time, "Schindler's List" has undoubtedly become a big hit at the Oscars.
As a film about the Holocaust during World War II, and the target is Jewish, the attitude of all the media in North America towards the film can be described as cautious, and there is basically no mention of "Schindler's List" in the paper media and on TV. Of course, it is definitely not without other voices. For example, some Jewish groups have expressed that Spielberg’s film has restored historical facts to a certain extent, and it uses the form of a documentary, but it is still not realistic enough. The tragedy of that year is not described deeply enough. And some other Jewish commentators also said that the best way to deal with the Holocaust should be silence, instead of repeatedly advocating as victims, which will only increase hatred and sow unpredictable seeds for another conflict. seed.
Regardless of the attitude of the outside world, the film was released for a few weeks. With the support of a large number of Jews, the box office quickly exceeded 40 million US dollars. Universal thought this would be a project destined to lose money. The result surprised Michael Eisner At the same time, it also strengthened its determination to increase efforts to win over Spielberg.
Spent Christmas at Pointe Manor with Drew and Nicole who stayed in Los Angeles, and attended some unstoppable parties during this period. In the noisy atmosphere, Firefly passed through calmly, but with the release of Hollywood's annual box office statistics, Firefly has once again become the focus of everyone's attention.
Although many movies are still in the release stage, according to the word-of-mouth and box office curve in the early stage of the movie, it is not too difficult for the box office agency to calculate the total box office of a movie, and the accuracy rate is quite high.
In the last few days of the new year, although most people are on vacation, professional or non-professional magazines in Hollywood have already started to comment, review and summarize all the movies in 1992, while Hollywood’s annual box office, overseas box office, major movies The company's annual box office total is undoubtedly the data that everyone pays more attention to.
The results given by most magazines surprised both insiders and outsiders for a while.
Firefly Films has six films worth more than 100 million yuan including "Tornado", "Sisters Are Crazy", "Masquerade", "Aladdin", "Speed" and "Aeroplane", as well as Disney and New Line under Firefly Films, etc. The other 17 films successively released by several labels have received a total box office of 1.53 billion U.S. dollars, far exceeding the total box office performance of Time Warner, which ranks second at 840 million U.S. dollars, and a total of 5.5 billion U.S. dollars in North America in 1992. The box office accounted for 27% of the market share.
Although some magazines also raised objections, saying that the two films "Ghost in Masquerade" and "Aeroplane" should not be counted under Firefly's banner, but should be attributed to TG Films, but even so, minus the two films by more than 200 million At the box office, the performance of Firefly Pictures still far exceeds the second place Time Warner. What's more, as long as anyone who has a little knowledge of the Hollywood circle can know that tg is almost equivalent to a subsidiary of Firefly, some people also refute that if it is calculated by investment rather than distribution, then a part of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" Most of the box office should also be counted under the banner of Firefly. Therefore, most media are more inclined to the approximate box office amount of 1.5 billion.
27% of the box office share, such an astonishing number has not appeared in Hollywood for many years. The "Hollywood Reporter" made some statistics on this. The annual production and operating budget of Firefly Films is expected to be about 800 million US dollars After deducting the taxes that should be paid, Firefly may obtain a net profit of more than 400 million US dollars only at the North American box office. What's more, Firefly also has overseas box office results that are not lost to North America.
After the acquisition of Disney, the entertainment industry chain of Firefly Pictures has been very complete. In addition to the fixed domestic and foreign theater distribution box office revenue, Firefly can also obtain a large amount of profits from film videotape distribution, TV broadcast authorization, and exclusive business authorization. . What's more, Firefly now also owns several Disney parks and the huge sales revenue brought by Disney peripheral merchandise franchise stores in major cities in the United States and Europe.
It can be said that the annual turnover of Firefly will far exceed the figure of 1.5 billion US dollars.
However, it is a pity that because Firefly is not listed, there is no need to disclose Firefly's financial report to the public, which also makes the actual turnover and profits of Firefly basically unknown to outsiders except the core executives of Firefly. (To be continued..)