Entering September, while Eric was filming "Casino Royale" in the UK, the summer film schedule of North American movies also officially came to an end.
The three films "The Matrix", "Into the Deadly Island" and "Reaper" under the New Line label released by the Firefly Group in the summer vacation have a total box office of 420 million U.S. dollars, although the three films are still in production. North American theaters are showing sporadically, but the box office revenue of hundreds of thousands of dollars per week has little impact on the total box office share.
Compared with previous years, which was almost double the box office total ahead of the second place, Firefly Group's box office revenue this year not only completely lost this advantage, but was even snatched away by Universal Pictures with a slight advantage of 435 million US dollars. In 2019, it was the box office champion of the summer season. While "The Mummy 2" and "Professor Fatty" led the box office, Universal Pictures released two other films that also achieved good results.
After Firefly, Warner released a total of six films in the summer. Although there are no box office hits, it still follows Firefly with a total revenue of 380 million US dollars by virtue of its quantitative advantage.
Perhaps it is due to the sharp decline in the performance of Firefly's summer movies, one ebb and flow, Universal, Warner, and then Paramount, Fox and other major film companies, the box office revenue of this year's summer movies has shown a significant increase compared with previous years. increase.
When "Variety" magazine officially announced the box office data of this year's summer season and related commentary articles, other media immediately began to follow up. Many professional media publicly stated that the decline in the performance of Firefly's films indicates that Hollywood will return to the "evenly matched" of the seven major film companies. Normal state', because before the rise of Firefly, the seven major Hollywood film companies had a fixed production scale and distribution channels. The overall strength of the country is in a relatively balanced proportion.
Although the seven major Hollywood companies have developed and integrated towards media groups one after another, the film business still occupies a considerable share. After Firefly’s argument of returning to “normal” was recognized by most media, the capital market also reacted immediately. Time Warner , Viacom, MGM and other companies have seen their stock prices rise by more than 10% in just a few days, and even Sony, whose "Game of the Brave 2" box office has suffered a disastrous performance, has seen a small-scale stock price drop. up.
However, Firefly Group, a media empire train that can be regarded as speeding in recent years, has suddenly slowed down. Naturally, the media is most concerned about the internal reaction of Firefly Group. Provoking the remarks of the Firefly Group. However, after dealing with the "Matrix" sequel, Firefly's public relations department has always been very low-key, unless it is to fight back against obviously false slanderous news.
As for Hollywood, most people are just looking forward to a good show, especially after the premiere of "Titanic" at the Venice Film Festival was not well received, many people are almost waiting for the arrival of the year-end schedule with anticipation.
With a production cost of 215 million US dollars, a distribution cost of 50 million US dollars, and a film duration of more than 3 hours, no matter what point, Hollywood does not see the possibility of "Titanic" being able to succeed at the box office.
If most of Firefly's rivals in Hollywood are just waiting to see what happens, Wall Street has their eyes set.
Once "Titanic" suffers a huge loss, it will not only eat up the profits generated by Firefly's other blockbuster films, but may also have an impact on Firefly's closed production system, making it obey the industry rules and no longer adhere to the self-sufficient production model .
As long as Firefly opens a gap and uses the capital market for film production financing like other film companies, then Wall Street capital has enough confidence to tear this 'gap' step by step, and eventually swallow Firefly, making it the same as most Hollywood movies. Like a company, it is under the control of capital.
With the outside world staring at it, everything within the Firefly Group is proceeding step by step.
On September 15th, after more than half a year of preparation, the FFM TV station jointly launched by Firefly, Fox and MGM was officially launched, because FFM TV station has more high-quality movie content than the TV station before the integration, and implemented a series of preferential activities. The subscribers of all paid cable stations have basically been preserved, and the total subscriber scale has reached 4.1 million.
Because the positioning of FFM TV station is completely similar to that of HBO, Time Warner is naturally facing the enemy when it comes to the launch of FFM TV station. Warner Cable did not hesitate to tear up the contract, and immediately cut off the signal of 300,000 subscribers of a TV station that was originally equipped with FFM's predecessor. The entire Time Warner was also completely blocked from FFM TV station.
Although Firefly Group and Time Warner will not publicly tear each other up because of this incident, there are not many scruples between the subsidiaries. The first time Warner Cable cut off the user signal, FFM TV station sued Warner Cable TV in the federal court Companies use their market position to compete unfairly. Warner Cable knows that this lawsuit will only make FFM TV famous, but it has to respond to the lawsuit, because FFM TV obviously will not agree to a private settlement.
As a veteran of public relations operations, Weinstein quickly made a big splash about this matter, and FFM TV station became famous for a while.
At the same time as the FFM TV station is launched, September is also the beginning of the TV autumn season.
ABC's "Friends," "ER" and "Survivor" and Lifetime's "Sexy and the City," "Project Runway" and "America's Next Top Model" return in September.
When a person is in a busy state, the days will always pass quickly.
When the Firefly TV department sent the TV program ratings report for September to Eric, the time had come to October unconsciously.
The weather in London is getting colder, and the filming progress of "Casino Royale" has completed more than 80%. There is one month left, and the most important scene will be Bond and Charlie's Angels teaming up to rescue Angela Linde The plot of the.
Kate, Charlize, and Penelope still need a week to join the group. In recent days, the filming work of the crew has been relatively easy, mainly Bond, Mrs. M, Vesper and several villains.
Just finished filming an interactive scene between Vesper and Angela sisters in the morning. Eric sat in the restaurant of Pinewood Studios. ratings report.
On ABC's side, "Friends", "Emergency Room Stories" and "Survivor" are still leading the ratings.
This year, "Friends" has come to the eighth season, and the series has been planned to end in the tenth season. ABC TV station has announced the relevant news before the start of this season. Although the six leading actors are younger than the previous life, but a drama After ten years of episode shooting, I was tired after all, and I didn't want to continue.
But in this time and space, Aniston did not co-operate with several other leading actors to stage a million-dollar drama. However, Firefly is not stingy. In the last three seasons of the contract, the single-episode salary of the six leading actors has been raised to 600,000 US dollars. Twice as much as their single-episode pay for the first two seasons.
As the most popular medical drama in recent years, the ratings of "Story of the Emergency Room" are very stable, and the ratings of a single episode basically remain above 20 million.
"Survivor" experienced an average ratings peak of 30 million viewers in the first two seasons, coupled with reality shows launched by other TV stations competing for viewers, the ratings began to drop sharply.
However, because the production cost of "Survivor" is very low, even if the ratings drop below 10 million, the TV station is still very profitable. What's more, the average viewership of the first three episodes of this season is 17 million. One of the best of all reality shows in North America.
In addition to the three leading dramas, this year ABC also has a brand new ratings dark horse, the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond".
This sitcom with a family-friendly style, under the guidance of "Friends", the number of viewers in the first episode reached 15 million. Perhaps because of the restrictions on family themes, and because of the cultural differences in family concepts between the East and the West, this sitcom was not very well-known in Asia in its previous life, but the ratings at its peak were definitely not much worse than "Friends". Ratings are definitely just the beginning. It is expected that when "Friends" is officially over, "Everybody Loves Raymond" will also enter its peak ratings, just in time to take over the comedy night of "Friends".
In memory, "Everybody Loves Raymond" is the ace sitcom of CBS.
However, Eric did not intervene in this project. He only discovered it after seeing the list of new dramas submitted by ABC in May. The reason why "Everybody Loves Raymond" was transferred to ABC was mainly because the producer of "Everybody Loves Raymond" was David Letterman. The "David Letterman Late Show" dug up ABC, and the TV project with David Letterman as a producer was naturally taken over by ABC.
After reading the ratings statistics of ABC, Eric was about to open the data of Lifetime TV station, when Christina Aguilera walked over with a small dinner plate.
The girl stood opposite Eric, and asked obediently: "Eric, can I sit here?"
Eric smiled and tidied up the documents in front of him, nodded to the girl, and Christina happily put down the dinner plate and sat down opposite.
Although the two had a relationship, Christina didn't bother anyone at all, and she didn't publicize the relationship between the two to outsiders. Eric was very satisfied with this smart and knowing how to advance and retreat.
The whole day's scene today is related to Christina, so Christina took the initiative to sit next to Eric at this time, and everyone would only think that she wanted to talk to the director about the movie, but it would not attract anyone's attention.
Watching Christina pick up the cutlery and sip the vegetable salad on the plate, Eric asked with a smile, "What did you do just now, and you just came here for dinner?"
Christina replied obediently: "Mom called from Los Angeles, and we talked for a while."
"Oh, are you homesick?"
"Not too much," Christina shook her head.
She really doesn't miss home very much. As a child from a single-parent family, Christina is more independent than Britney. She has no intention of going to school, has a job, and can travel around the world with the crew, but she enjoys it.
Eric smiled, and was about to turn his gaze to the information in his hand again, but Christina took the initiative to say: "Eric, I... I suddenly feel that the role of Angela doesn't seem very cool."
Eric raised his head: "Then what do you think is cool?"
Of course Christina has watched "Charlie's Angels", and without thinking about it, she said, "Of course it's like Kate Beckinsale's Selena, but Angela is more like a little nerd who likes to tinker with machines. I think, if the Charlie Detective Agency really existed, they would definitely not take Angela Lind seriously."
In the role setting of Christina in the "Casino Royale" script, Angela Lind is a technological nerd who is obsessed with precision instruments, which was influenced by her father when she was a child.
"You will think that Angela Lynn is not cool enough, this is because "Casino Royale" is a 007 movie, and the movie does not give this character much room to play. However, this character has a very complete setting, She is equivalent to Dr. Q in the 007 series, and will provide the Charlie's Angels with a variety of very cool high-tech props in the future. Well, after the film is released next year, Marvel Entertainment will publish comics related to Angela Lind , then you can see it."
Eric just handed over the role to her at the beginning, and didn't reveal too much. Christina once felt that this role might just be an ordinary character in the "Casino Royale" series.
At this time, hearing Eric say this, Christina's eyes became bright, and she asked: "Then, Eric, does this mean that I can still appear in movies in the future?"
Eric smiled and said: "It is certain that your character will appear in the comic story. Marvel has already started to do this. As for whether it can appear again in the MGM Agent movie universe, it involves There are too many questions, your future career development, the audience feedback on the character image, the needs of the storyline, etc., now I can't make any promises to you."
Although Eric said so, Christina was not disappointed at all. The girl glanced around with charming little eyes, and lowered her voice, "Eric, shall I go to your place tonight?"
"Why, you want to bribe me," Eric said with a smile.
"Hehe, it's just that the actress wants to please the director."
"Forget it, you still have a part to play tomorrow, I don't want my actress to be unable to get out of bed tomorrow." (To be continued.)