It was just after eight o'clock at night when Eric took Cindy back to his usual apartment at the Sixth Avenue entrance.
Following Eric, Cindy looked at the living room that hadn't changed, and said, "I don't know why, but it feels a bit strange to think that you always live here alone."
Eric took off his coat and hung it on the hanger, walked to the round table with a laptop by the floor-to-ceiling windows and sat down, pressed the power button of the computer, and asked, "What's so strange?"
Cindy also hung up her windbreaker, sat on the steps of the entrance and took off her high boots. After thinking for a while, she said, "Don't you feel deserted?"
Eric tapped the keyboard to enter the power-on password, and replied, "If I remember correctly, you should live alone, right?"
"It seems, yes," Cindy was stunned, still pondering in her heart, put away her high boots, stepped on her slippers and walked to the wine cabinet in the corner of the living room, picked out a bottle of whiskey, and then said, "It's so strange, I feel completely different about you living alone than I do living alone."
"It's very interesting, let me know if you figure it out," Eric felt that this topic seemed familiar, and he didn't bother to delve into it. He logged into his work mailbox and opened the "Titanic" box office data email from Los Angeles.
Cindy tilted her head, distractedly opened the small freezer, and asked, "Do you want to add ice?"
"Actually, I don't like drinking."
"That's really wasteful, the wine in your cabinet is enough to buy a nice house in Manhattan," Cindy said, without asking Eric's opinion, adding ice cubes on her own, He came over with two glasses of whiskey. Putting a glass of wine in Eric's hand, Cindy pulled a chair and leaned over, asking, "Can I have a look?"
The content of the email is the detailed box office data of "Titanic" in recent weeks and some box office trend analysis, most of which will appear in the public media, so there is no need to keep it secret.
Eric nodded, stepped aside, and took a sip of the glass of whiskey.
With Eric's permission, Cindy was quite happy at first, but when she saw that the 12-inch laptop screen was covered with dense data tables and text, she suddenly felt a little dizzy and lost all interest.
After patiently watching with Eric for a while, Cindy got up and said, "I want to take a shower, Eric, do you want to come together?"
Eric patted Cindy's little hand on his shoulder: "You go first, I'll wait for a while."
When Cindy left, Eric's eyes turned to the laptop screen again.
"Titanic" began to fall after reaching an unprecedented peak in the global box office in a single week of Oscars week.
In the 15th week of its release in North America, due to the exhaustion of popularity, the single-week box office quickly fell below 20 million US dollars, reaching 18 million US dollars. The overseas box office did not continue the feat of breaking 200 million in a single week. Compared with the 236 million US dollars in the 14th week, the overall overseas box office fell by 25% in the 15th week, and it received another 177 million US dollars.
In the following weeks, the decline in North American box office continued to expand. In the latest week, the total domestic box office reached 571 million US dollars, but the single-week box office also fell below the 10 million US dollar mark, only 9.3 million.
However, the box office decline in overseas markets has remained at a relatively weak 20%. From the outbreak of overseas markets in the 13th week to the present 6 weeks, the total box office in overseas markets has skyrocketed from just over US$400 million to a terrifying US$1.281 billion. The data also pushed the film's global box office to a high of $1.852 billion.
Although the weekly box office in North America has fallen into the million range, it has begun to end, which also means that the box office of "Titanic" in North America will not be much different from its previous life.
However, due to the adoption of an overseas distribution strategy that is completely different from the original time and space, a large number of countries with overseas ticket warehouses were released one after another during the weeks when "Titanic" was at its peak, which also stimulated the desire of more potential audiences to watch the movie The boom has made the overseas box office of "Titanic" better than ever.
Although the continuous decline in the North American box office of "Titanic" in the previous life will definitely have the same effect, but because the distributor Fox lacks confidence in the film, it is doomed to be unable to compare with the present in terms of overseas promotion of the film and the scale of theaters. When "Titanic" achieved double miracles at the box office and awards in North America, the release rhythm of many overseas box office countries had come to an end, and the "Titanic" North American awards and box office miracle could no longer fully exert its effect of stimulating the market.
At the same time, Eric also found that due to different distribution strategies, when most overseas markets have been thoroughly stimulated, the recovery cycle of overseas box offices is also significantly more concentrated. Due to the popularity of "Titanic", once it is released, most overseas audiences who are interested in "Titanic" will choose to go to the cinema to watch the movie as soon as it is released. This is also the miraculous record of "Titanic" in the 14th week The biggest reason for the record overseas box office of $236 million in a single week.
Moreover, this factor also made the overseas box office drop of "Titanic" significantly larger than that of North America. The 25% drop compared with North America in the 15th week also caused "Titanic" to fail to continue to achieve 200 million in a single week.
However, although the overseas box office of "Titanic" has dropped to 68 million US dollars in the past week, the weekly box office decline in overseas markets has also begun to narrow to less than 20%, which means that the film has squeezed out the pure film after a few weeks. It’s just that after the “moisture” of ordinary passer-by audiences affected by the halo of box office awards, the core fan base overseas is still larger than that in North America. It is expected that in the next two months, the overseas box office of "Titanic" will still be able to collect again. Around US$300 million, plus the North American box office surplus, this also means that the global total box office of "Titanic" is likely to eventually hit a high of US$2.2 billion.
Looking back at the end of last year, affected by a lot of negative comments from the media and the lack of confidence of everyone around him, Eric once just hoped that as long as the film can recover the cost, everything will be fine.
Afterwards, the North American box office of "Titanic" began to explode, and Eric let go of his anxiety and began to look forward to the film's box office figures from his previous life.
Before and after the Oscars ceremony, the film accumulated popularity for several months and began to be released on a large scale, and created a box office miracle of 236 million US dollars in a single week overseas. Eric couldn't help but feel that the global box office of this film might exceed 2 billion US dollars. indefinite.
Now, looking at the final forecast of $2.2 billion made by the Firefly distribution department for the movie's final box office, Eric has no more thoughts in his mind.
Perhaps, a miracle should be something that breaks through the limit of everyone's imagination.
On the email page, behind the global box office forecast is a detailed analysis of several important overseas box office countries in the distribution section.
Eric was not very interested in the information, and he scrolled down the page, intending to quickly browse through the rest of the email. However, when he saw the Japanese box office analysis section, Eric was suddenly attracted by a number.
30 billion yen.
This is the distribution department's expectation for the total box office of "Titanic" in Japan.
The current Japanese box office equivalent of "Titanic" has reached 220 million U.S. dollars. The reason why Eric noticed this figure was not just because it was a full 80 million U.S. dollars higher than the box office figure in the original time and space.
What's more, this number is almost the same as "Spirited Away", which ranked first in the box office of Japanese film history in the original time and space. However, after the exchange rate conversion, the 30 billion yen is equivalent to 280 million U.S. dollars, but he happened to remember that the once Historically, Spirited Away has grossed $250 million in domestic equivalents.
Where did the other $30 million go
Scanning the page again, Eric quickly searched for a set of numbers, 107:1, which is the current exchange rate of the yen to the dollar.
In an instant, Eric understood many things.
In the original time and space, "Titanic" was released in North America at the end of 1997, and the release time of Southeast Asian countries is probably similar.
The end of 1997, what time was that!
The financial crisis is raging across Southeast Asia.
In Eric's memory, the currencies of Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines were almost cut in half. Even in Japan, affected by the overall economic situation, the currency depreciation has reached about 20%. It is obviously impossible for these destructive currency systems to return to normal in a short period of time.
Then, according to the conversion based on this series of information, in the past, in 1998, the exchange rate of the Japanese yen to the US dollar should be around 133:1. At that time, the box office of "Titanic" in Japan was equivalent to 200 million US dollars, according to the current 107: If calculated at the exchange rate of 1, it should be about 250 million US dollars.
The difference of 30 million US dollars this time may be considered as an additional gain due to factors such as changes in the distribution strategy, rather than the unbelievable 80 million US dollars just now.
Realizing this, Eric immediately operated the mouse again and slid the page to the detailed overseas box office figures.
In addition to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and other major box office countries and regions in Southeast Asia have a cumulative box office of 120 million U.S. dollars. Follow-up piecemeal efforts are expected to reap another 30 million U.S. dollars.
In other words, Southeast Asian countries and regions, including Japan, will accumulatively contribute 430 million US dollars to the global box office of "Titanic", and Firefly will eventually be able to obtain a share of 150 million US dollars in income.
But obviously, this must be under the condition that the monetary system in Southeast Asia remains stable.
According to the release schedule of most Southeast Asian ticket warehouses, if Firefly follows the normal settlement steps in the past, if they want to get their share, they will have to wait until September at least. At that time, the economic crisis in Southeast Asia is already in full swing. The global box office figure of 100 million US dollars will definitely be lowered. If this is still insignificant, the most intuitive result is that Firefly may eventually lose more than 50 million US dollars in revenue sharing.
Even if the Firefly family has a big business, it is impossible for Eric to give up the 50 million US dollars for nothing.
After sorting out his thoughts, Eric opened the draft box and began to write an email, detailing the series of discoveries he had just made, and hoped that the management of Firefly could discuss and come up with a corresponding solution as soon as possible.
On the other side of the living room, the bathroom door opened, and Cindy came out flamboyantly with only a bath towel on her body and two long white legs dangling.
Sitting down at the position just now, Cindy tidied up her wet hair. Seeing Eric's face focused on typing on the keyboard, she swayed her calf restlessly, stretched out her toes and scratched Eric's leg twice. .
Eric paused for a while, turned his head to look at the woman, picked up the glass of whiskey in his hand and drank the last bit of wine, shook the glass at Cindy, and handed it over: "Hey, hold it."
The original ice cube in the glass had melted to the size of a walnut, and it made a crisp clanging sound as Eric shook it.
Cindy took the glass with a smile on her lips, but her eyes were a little watery, and her expression was resentful: "Again, this ice cube has been soaked in whiskey, you want to burn me to death."
"Heh, I really want to see how you get burned to death," Eric glanced at Cindy's undrinked glass of whiskey just now, said with a smile, and started typing on the keyboard again.
Cindy looked at the ice cubes dipped in whiskey in her glass, shrank her neck, picked up Eric's glass obediently, poured the ice cubes into her mouth, her cheeks were bulging, and her eyes were still staring Eric.
Eric ignored the woman's intentional cuteness, thought about writing the email, and copied it to Katzenberg, Frank Wells and several other high-level executives before turning off the computer.
Seeing that Eric was done, Cindy blinked, and spit out the ice cube in her mouth. The original corners of the ice cube seemed much rounder: "It seems, it's still a little big."
Eric picked up the woman, walked to the sofa, and said with a smile, "Do you like small ones?"
"Bah, uh..."
…
When Eric sent that e-mail, some people in Los Angeles were still at get off work.
It didn't take long for Katzenberg and others to call.
After spending the weekend in East Hampton, Eric returned to Los Angeles on Monday, and the first meeting he participated in was to formally discuss Eric's e-mail.
"According to our preliminary agreed plan," during the meeting, Katzenberg recounted the results of everyone's discussions over the weekend, "We can use hedging methods in foreign exchange transactions to cash out the benefits of Southeast Asian countries in advance. , However, this will definitely cause some losses.”
After spending the weekend in East Hampton, Eric returned to Los Angeles on Monday, and the first meeting he participated in was to formally discuss Eric's e-mail.
"According to our preliminary agreed plan," during the meeting, Katzenberg recounted the results of everyone's discussions over the weekend, "We can use hedging methods in foreign exchange transactions to cash out the benefits of Southeast Asian countries in advance. , however, this will definitely cause certain losses.” (To be continued.)