Eric's assistant office is in charge of almost all aspects of his work and life, even a bit of a butler team. At this time, the girl sent an email with a look of familiarity, obviously this is not the first time she has done so.
Drew also knew what Eric was waiting for. After sending the e-mail, he patiently shrank into his arms and chatted.
Until twelve o'clock in the morning, the notebook computer that was always on came out with a notification of new emails. Eric got up and opened the emails for a few glances, then smiled and picked up the girl who was already in a daze, and walked towards the bedroom go. If it was at a lively party, it would be no problem for the girl to stay up all night, but in such a peaceful environment, this girl began to lose her spirits early on.
Feeling Eric's gentle movements, the girl stuck to Eric's body, curled up comfortably into a kitten, and said in a daze: "Eric, um, Boeing, how much is it?"
Eric smiled, and responded in a doting tone: "It's enough for you to buy a plane."
Early the next morning, the major newspapers and media in North America became lively, because this week's Friday box office rankings in North America were almost all news points, and almost all mainstream newspapers listed Friday's single-day box office rankings in the prominently on the page.
"Finding Nemo": $20.21 million.
"Contact": $6.86 million.
"The Lion King 2": $6.22 million.
"Godzilla": $5.95 million.
"Air Crisis": $3.08 million.
Even those who are completely insensitive to the figures of this box office list can easily understand what is going on just by scanning the dazzling headlines in the major newspapers.
"'Finding Nemo' beats 'The Lion King 2' on day one."
""Contact" opened at $6.86 million, and Paramount's sniping strategy failed."
""Godzilla" fell 66% year-on-year."
"Amblin Pictures is dissatisfied with Paramount's investment in the promotion of "Contact", and the cooperation between the two parties has cracked."
"The animated films in the summer season are shining brightly, and the live-action blockbusters that have been released have all failed. "Batman and Robin" and "007: Casino Royale" may follow in the footsteps."
"..."
In this series of news reports, the new issue of "The Hollywood Reporter" gives a more detailed analysis article in detail.
"First of all, I have to mention "Titanic" again. As of last week, the global box office figure of this legendary giant with a total investment of 265 million US dollars has reached 2.133 billion US dollars. The US dollar box office is officially down. The amazing box office figures will directly bring the Firefly Group a global box office share of 860 million US dollars, minus the costs, and the net profit of the Firefly Group is close to 600 million US dollars.”
"In addition, the sales of more than 70 peripheral products of "Titanic" also exceeded 850 million U.S. dollars. It’s just physical record sales. It is reported that the Recording Association of North America refused to recognize the 1.25 million “Titanic” digital record sales data in the Yahoo Music Store. The sales of original soundtrack records in overseas countries where “Titanic” has been released also easily exceeded 7 million. According to According to industry analysis, the global record sales of "Titanic" may eventually reach 30 million copies. In a few years, it will successively create a net profit of no less than 2 billion U.S. dollars for the Firefly Group, and in the whole of Hollywood, among the several major media groups whose annual net profit can exceed 2 billion U.S. dollars, so far only Firefly is the only one."
"Stimulated by the huge profits created by "Titanic", in the past six months, the author has heard more than once that the seven major Hollywood film companies are planning a new 'super blockbuster' film plan. However, in the past month, Hollywood real-life The box office performance of blockbuster films will undoubtedly wake up the already hot-headed Hollywood."
"Among them, the monster movie "Godzilla" that can bring Hollywood the most reflection is undoubtedly the monster movie "Godzilla" that belongs to the same CG special effects blockbuster as "Titanic"."
"Sony Pictures' ambitious work with a total investment of 220 million US dollars was aimed at a global box office of 1 billion before it was released. However, after a failed start and consecutive extremely bad reviews, the single-day box office on the next Friday has been squeezed to 1 billion. The fourth place on the list, compared with the same period of 17.5 million US dollars on the first Friday, it has shrunk by 66%, and the box office figure has dropped rapidly to 5.95 million US dollars. It is difficult to exceed US$130 million. At the same time, the overseas box office performance of "Godzilla" is also disappointing, and the film even encountered strong resistance from Godzilla fans in the most important Japanese market."
"According to insiders, Sony executives have urgently called off the preparations for the sequel to Godzilla, and the person in charge of the project may also face forced resignation.",
"As the director and producer of the film, Roland Emmerich is also doomed to be difficult to achieve after "Independence Day". Even before the release of "Godzilla", the Firefly Group suddenly announced that Michael Bay will take over to direct the well-known Firefly. The disaster film series "The Day After Tomorrow" is likely to be affected by the poor quality of "Godzilla". As we all know, Roland Emmerich was once rumored to be the director of "The Day After Tomorrow", and Firefly's Digital Domain is responsible for For most of the special effects production of the Godzilla project, it was not difficult for Firefly to know the quality of the Godzilla film before the film was released."
"In addition to "Godzilla", starting from May, the French Gaumont Film Company's "Fifth Element" costing 90 million US dollars, Firefly Group's production cost of 75 million US dollars "Prison in the Sky", and Amberlin Films produced and produced Paramount released "Contact," which also cost $90 million, and its box office performance can only be described as deserted."
"Among them, "The Fifth Element", which was released for three weeks, has a cumulative box office of only 47 million. It is expected that the total box office in North America will hardly reach 70 million US dollars. The two-week box office of "Prison in the Sky" is only 57.37 million US dollars, although the final box office may It reached 100 million US dollars, but it was still far below industry expectations. Similarly, Robert Zemeckis’s sci-fi masterpiece "Contact" after "Forrest Gump", although the production cost was comparable to "Finding Nemo" released on the same day , but this film, which uses the cloak of science fiction to deeply explore religious and philosophical issues, has obviously not been recognized by the audience. The box office on the first day is less than one-third of that of "Finding Nemo", and even lower than the US$7.7 million of "Prison in the Sky" in the same period two weeks ago Data, perhaps, Amberlin Pictures and Paramount can only hope that "Contact" can get out of the box office curve similar to "Forrest Gump", but based on audience feedback, this possibility is extremely slim."
"Four consecutive big-budget live-action films have failed at the box office, and people can't help but worry about the highly anticipated "Batman and Robin" and "Casino Royale" in the next two weeks. At the same time, perhaps Hollywood should calm down at this time and not be in the Excessive pursuit of big investment and big production under the stimulation of "Titanic"."
"However, in addition to live-action movies, the box office and word-of-mouth performances of the two major animation movies that were released in summer are surprising."
"The second 2D hand-drawn animation film "The Lion King 2" after Paramount Pictures took over Disney's hand-drawn animation studio. It only ended up with a weak 24% decline, and received another 42.33 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office in the two weeks reached 98.03 million US dollars. Although the first day of the third week of release, although under the impact of "Finding Nemo", the year-on-year decline expanded to 37%, but with Given the long-term advantages of animated films, the total box office in North America may still reach US$200 million in the future, far exceeding the box office potential of several live-action blockbusters that have already been released.”
"Finally, it is the most important topic of today's topic, "Finding Nemo."
"Before "Finding Nemo" was released, due to the overwhelming box office reputation of "The Lion King 2" originated from Disney, the industry generally believed that Eric Williams' move to sell Disney's hand-drawn animation studio was extremely stupid. But after Finding Nemo, a lot of people had to keep their mouths shut."
"Only three-quarters of the production cost of "The Lion King 2" has an excellent reputation comparable to "The Lion King 2". Even though "Finding Nemo" has much more convenient publicity channel resources than "The Lion King 2", but in We have to admit that 3D animated films are indeed more popular with audiences than 2D animated films.”
"The box office on the first day was 20.21 million U.S. dollars. Stimulated by the overwhelming word-of-mouth, the box office of "Finding Nemo" may reach a high of 90 million U.S. dollars in the first week. Due to the long-term potential of animated films, "Finding Nemo" will undoubtedly become the No. 1 summer file this year The North American box office may touch 300 million US dollars. Even more boldly, if this box office and word-of-mouth advantage can also be used in overseas markets, "Finding Nemo" is likely to catch up with the former "Lion King" and become another The first animated film to hit the $1 billion mark at the global box office."
"The profitability of animated films is far superior to that of live-action films, and the success of a new group of cartoon characters will bring continuous financial resources to Firefly Group's peripheral stores, game parks and other industries."
"Here, the author even began to look forward to the upcoming "Ice Age" on July 4th. This is the first 3D animation film produced by Blue Sky Studios, which is jointly funded by Firefly and Fox. To the author's sense of this animated trailer, "Ice Age" is likely to be another surprise in the summer. Perhaps, executives of other Hollywood film companies should focus more on the development of the field of animated films instead of Chasing the unreachable Titanic."
This article by The Hollywood Reporter inevitably aroused the reflections of some Hollywood film company executives, and it would also prompt Firefly's competitors to speed up the deployment of the animation film industry. However, Eric had always clearly understood that "Titanic" was more like an anomaly, so he never got excited about it.
Eric originally planned to use the rest day to talk to Kris Jenner about the reality show. Although the Kardashian family used all kinds of hype in the previous life to make people disgusted, Eric is now a huge The controllers of the media empire naturally view problems from different angles. In his position, there are fifty or sixty high-level executives of the Firefly Group that he can often come into contact with, and there are thousands of executives above the manager level of the Firefly system, not to mention that the current total number of employees of the entire Firefly Group has exceeded 120,000. In a circle like Hollywood, if you have any mental cleanliness, you will definitely not be able to live comfortably for a day.
MGM acquires E! After entertainment, if you want to quickly open up the situation in the TV industry, it is undoubtedly a very effective way to use someone like Kris Jenner who is good at hype topics.
However, early on Saturday morning, Eric received a call from Chris from New York. The two chatted for more than half an hour. Eric had to cancel the weekend break and temporarily convened the firefly distribution department and the financial department. Management and the management of Clover Holdings held an emergency meeting.
The matter is very simple. After three months of accumulating power, the international financial oligarchs' attack on the Southeast Asian currency system is about to launch.
The two talked on the phone, and Chris will fly from New York to Tokyo, Japan, and may have to sit there in person for the next month.
After the meeting at the end of April, Firefly Group began to accelerate the pace of extracting box office revenue from "Titanic" in Southeast Asia. At the same time, it also sold Firefly's summer archives and films to be released in the second half of the year to Southeast Asian film studios.
Firefly is also very frank with Southeast Asian filmmakers. The company is worried that the economic situation in Southeast Asia in the second half of the year will cause serious exchange rate losses, so it hopes to cash out in advance.
The Thai baht has just experienced the attacks of international currency speculators in March, and Southeast Asian filmmakers also understand Firefly's worries.
However, most film companies in Southeast Asia generally do not realize the seriousness of the matter. According to common sense, even if the local currency depreciates by 10% or even 20%, the impact of currency depreciation will not be too great for companies whose business scope is limited to local. Stimulated by the box office of "Titanic", Southeast Asian film studios welcomed Firefly Group's move to sell out the distribution rights, so they rushed to buy the distribution rights at a high price.
Since the beginning of May, by adopting some financial means, Firefly has successively recovered the box office share of "Titanic" equivalent to 50 million US dollars from Southeast Asia, and Japan's box office share has also begun to be settled.
At the same time, after selling off Firefly's summer vacation and the Southeast Asian distribution rights of a series of films such as "Prison in the Air", "Finding Nemo 2" and "Jurassic Park 3" in the second half of the year, Firefly once again recovered the US$75 million cash.
If it weren't for the lack of appetite of these filmmakers, Eric would actually like to sell the film distribution rights for the whole of next year. Of course, this can only be thought about.
75 million US dollars, although it is not a huge sum of money for Firefly, but for the Southeast Asian box office where the entire box office market is only half of Japan, this is already the highest profit that Firefly can squeeze out in a short period of time.
Although the financial department of the group estimates that Firefly may lose 10 million to 20 million U.S. dollars if there is no economic crisis in Southeast Asia due to this aggressive sell-off strategy, but Eric knows that if he does not do this, Firefly's loss will be reduced when the Southeast Asian economic crisis breaks out. The loss will be far more than that. At that time, the Southeast Asian currency has depreciated to half, which could have been equivalent to 10 million US dollars at the box office, but after conversion again, only 5 million US dollars will be left. The economy of Southeast Asia has been devastated, and the film industry will definitely be hit hard. Although there is a view in the industry that the entertainment industry will prosper as the economy goes down, but if the economy collapses, Eric does not believe that people will still be interested in going to the movies. Otherwise, Hong Kong movies in the previous life would not have completely declined after the Southeast Asian economic crisis. down.
Throughout the weekend, Eric was checking the status of capital recovery in Southeast Asian countries, and at the same time began to mobilize funds to prepare for the next step of Clover Holdings to absorb more technology stocks.
The North American stock market is a very open global financial market. The severe economic shocks in Southeast Asia will inevitably affect the Nasdaq index, which has been soaring all the way. In the next few months, with the outbreak of the economic crisis in Southeast Asia, the originally high Nasdaq index will There will definitely be a short-term decline, and this is undoubtedly the best time for Clover Holdings to invest.
While Eric was busy with these affairs, entering Saturday, the one-day box office of "Finding Nemo", which had already attracted attention at the beginning, rose again by 38%, reaching US$28.01 million in the end. Although the box office on Sunday fell back, the single-day box office still remained at a high of 22.03 million US dollars. In the first three days of the weekend, the cumulative box office of "Finding Nemo" has reached an astonishing 70.25 million US dollars. This strong box office explosive power is amazing. .
A film critic in the "Los Angeles Times" even joked that "Finding Nemo" is harvesting other people's box office for a week in one day.
In fact, the reality is true. This year’s summer film and “Finding Nemo” are two films with the same production cost of 90 million US dollars, “The Fifth Element” and “Contact”, the former’s three-week box office is only a pitiful 47 million. The latter was released at the same time as "Finding Nemo", and the three-day box office box office in the first weekend was only 20.58 million US dollars. Although the box office in the first week may be close to 30 million, even according to a conservative 30% weekly decline, the three-week box office of "Contact" Time can only recover 65 million U.S. dollars, which is still not comparable to the three-day box office of "Finding Nemo".
At the same time, "Finding Nemo" is also more popular than Pixar's previous films such as "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life" in some countries where it was simultaneously released. The box office equivalent to US dollars reached 13.5 million US dollars. Before that, Pixar's best-performing animated film "Toy Story 2" at the overseas box office only had 6.1 million US dollars in the first three days in the UK.
When this series of statistics came out, Hollywood and the North American entertainment media realized that they had mistakenly focused on the wrong target at the beginning.
The most dazzling box office star of this summer is not "The Lion King 2", not "Godzilla", and maybe it will not be the next "Batman and Robin" and "007 Casino Royale", but before the release. Unobtrusive, the release schedule is sandwiched between the two masterpieces of "Godzilla" and "Batman and Robin", which was once considered "cannon fodder" "Finding Nemo". (To be continued.)