On June 16, just after entering the working day, the "Wall Street Journal" appeared news about abnormalities in the foreign exchange market in Southeast Asia.
The major foreign exchange exchanges in Tokyo, Hong Kong Island and Singapore, the major financial centers in Asia, and the exchange rates of Thai baht, Indonesian rupiah and other currencies began to show obvious fluctuations. sense of urgency.
In recent months, due to international foreign exchange speculators secretly absorbing the currencies of Southeast Asian countries to build positions, the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries have experienced short-term rapid appreciation. The highest point of the Thai baht against the US dollar even reached 22:1, an appreciation rate of nearly 12%.
After the last two days of accumulating strength, on Wednesday, international foreign exchange speculators headed by Quantum Fund and Tiger Fund led by Soros suddenly and officially opened their fangs to the Southeast Asian monetary system. Appearing on the platforms of major exchanges, the sudden attack caught the Thai government completely by surprise, and even failed to organize an effective counterattack in the first place.
Subsequently, the three consecutive days of continuous selling of the Thai baht easily brought the short-term appreciation of the Thai baht back to its original form, and even fell below the average exchange rate of 25:1 between the Thai baht and the US dollar in recent years. :1, the depreciation rate in three days reached an astonishing 19.5%.
In 1997, Thailand's total currency circulation was about 9.2 trillion baht, which was equivalent to 370 billion U.S. dollars based on the average exchange rate of 25:1 in recent years. But in just three days, when the exchange rate fell to 26.3:1, the total value of Thailand's currency had fallen to 350 billion, and the wealth of 20 billion US dollars disappeared. And many people know that this is just the beginning.
At a time when money markets in Southeast Asia are full of gunpowder, the competition for the box office of summer movies in North America is equally fierce.
After raking in $70.25 million at the box office in the first three days of the weekend, the box office momentum of "Finding Nemo" has not diminished at all on weekdays, continuing to harvest at the box office at a rate of $6 to $7 million per day.
In the end, the first-week box office of "Finding Nemo" reached 97.45 million US dollars. Not only was the new film "Contact" released at the same time a full 66 million more, it was almost equivalent to the sum of the box office of "The Lion King 2" in the first two weeks.
Affected by "Finding Nemo", the second-ranked "Contact" only had a box office of 31.29 million US dollars in its first week.
The final decline of "The Lion King 2" expanded to 36%. In the third week, it only earned 27.09 million US dollars, with a cumulative box office of 125 million US dollars, ranking third.
The most disastrous box office this week is undoubtedly the fourth place "Godzilla". Due to the overwhelming negative reviews and the strong impact of "Finding Nemo", "Godzilla" fell by a terrifying 68% in the second week. There is a pitiful $23.57 million, and the two-week box office has accumulated a total of $97.23 million, which is not even as good as the first week of "Finding Nemo".
The dismal box office performance of "Godzilla" not only turned Sony's original global box office ambition of $1 billion into a joke, but even the media didn't bother to comment on this bad movie that was destined to be forgotten.
Firefly's "Prison in the Sky" was fifth, but its third-week decline remained healthy as two live-action blockbusters, "Godzilla" and "Contact," struggled. On the 34% of the film, it collected another 15.28 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office climbed steadily to 72.65 million US dollars. Although it is still difficult to predict whether the North American box office of the film will exceed 100 million yuan, compared with such films as "The Fifth Element", "Godzilla" and "Contact", "Prison in the Sky" performed quite well. What's more, the cost of "Prison in the Air" of 75 million US dollars is the lowest among several live-action blockbusters, and there is not much pressure to pay back.
With the box office data of the previous week released, on Friday, June 20th, "Batman and Robin", which has been tightly held by Warner, was finally released in more than 2,900 theaters in North America, and the quality of the film did not "live up" at all. Many media and film critics have speculated that it is even difficult to describe it with a bad word.
A review in the "Wall Street Journal" can probably express some of the aspirations of the majority of film critics: "In the whole movie, the images of the protagonists such as George Clooney, Uma Thurman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger are undoubtedly all It's very close to the manga characters, but I really can't think of any comments on the story line, the movie lines, the acting skills of the characters, and so on."
As a superhero character that has been best-selling in North America for decades, Batman can be said to have the largest fan base in North America. But with frequent changes in the main creators throughout the series and the decline in film quality, the patience of Batman fans seems to have finally been exhausted. Although the film still won the single-day box office championship with a box office of 16.11 million US dollars on the first day, but only the second day after its release, "Batman and Robin" was kicked off the top of the single-day box office list by "Finding Nemo".
Even, "Batman and Robin" also set a record for the first Saturday box office drop in the summer file. According to the usual box office rules, for most films in their first week of release, Saturday’s box office will be higher than Friday’s box office. Even for “Godzilla”, which also suffered a lot of negative reviews two weeks ago, Saturday’s box office is higher than Friday’s box office. About $2 million. But "Batman and Robin" dropped to $15.09 million on the second day after its first day of $16.11 million.
After the box office of "Finding Nemo" was temporarily suppressed by "Batman and Robin" on Friday at 14.3 million US dollars, the box office jumped to a high of 17.5 million US dollars on the second day. It still remained above 60 million US dollars, and the box office performance was even better than the box office of many big-budget films in the first week.
By comparison, "Batman & Robin" is expected to open with just $55 million in its opening week. Based on the $125 million production cost of this comic film, since the current overseas box office appeal of the Batman series is not even as good as that of "Godzilla", Warner needs to recover at least $80 million in the first week before it can rely on the box office. Achieving balance of payments, but now it seems that this hope has obviously been very slim.
The failure of "Batman and Robin" made many people completely lose confidence in the summer blockbuster live action. MGM's "007 Casino Royale" which will be released next week will naturally bear the brunt. Some entertainment media have even gloated. The tone is waiting for the appearance of Eric's first box office Waterloo in his directing career.
Eric has no time to worry about these remarks in the media. The official outbreak of the Southeast Asian economic crisis has not only affected the entertainment business in Southeast Asia under the Firefly Group, but the entire Firefly system. Nokia, Qualcomm, and LTD all have three companies in Southeast Asia. A large number of businesses, the main product factories of Nokia and LTD are also located in Thailand, the Philippines and other countries. In recent years, companies such as Yahoo and Cisco have also invested heavily in Southeast Asia. Once the currencies of Southeast Asian countries completely collapse, these companies will be in the local Business will be severely impacted.
Eric has always liked being a hands-off shopkeeper, and he usually has Chris to help with some affairs that he should be involved in. But this time, Chris went to Tokyo to sit in the town himself, and many things fell on Eric. After all, he has a lot of memories of the Southeast Asian economic crisis in his previous life, and Eric is also willing to intervene at this time, using his previous life memories to make a more reasonable layout of the businesses of several companies.
After being busy with various documents and conference calls for a whole week, it was not until Saturday afternoon that Eric returned to Los Angeles from the Qualcomm headquarters in San Diego that he took a short break and turned his mind to Hollywood again.
Kris Jenner's mood in the past half month can only be described as ups and downs.
At the beginning of the month, the daughter who went to Los Angeles for the summer vacation suddenly called her home in New York, claiming that she had got an opportunity from Eric Williams to supervise a reality show. Kris Jenner's first reaction was naturally that her daughter was joking with her, associating their family with a big man like Eric Williams, isn't that a joke.
After her daughter repeatedly recounted everything that happened in detail that day, and reported the phone number Eric left behind, Kris Jenner dialed the number suspiciously, although the assistant from Eric Williams It was confirmed immediately in the office, and Kris Jenner was still in a daze for more than half an hour, and then she was ecstatic.
Kris Jenner has always been a woman who longs for the Hollywood Vanity Fair. When she married Robert Kardashian, she also valued that the other party has her own record company, and has a very extensive circle of TV, music and sports celebrities. When Robert Kardashian sold his record label to start an unrelated juice business, Kris Jenner quickly parted ways with him, and a month after his divorce, he quickly married TV sports personality Bruce Jenna is married.
However, although Bruce Jenner was a famous sports star in the 1970s, his influence has not been as good as before since he retired. Now he can only occasionally appear on some TV shows or serve as a sports commentator on the sports channel , and the entertainment industry and Hollywood can only be regarded as barely detached.
As a loyal viewer of Lifetime TV, the sudden reality show producer opportunity made Kris Jenner realize that if she can seize it, this will definitely make her a step up to the sky. For this, see "Project Runway" and " The two producers and hosts of "America's Next Top Model" know it.
There was no time to think about other things. On the day of confirming the news, Kris Jenner dragged her husband and a bunch of children to Los Angeles in a hurry, and stayed at the house of her ex-husband Robert Kardashian. Kris Jenner bought a large number of reality show videotapes and related books, and began to write reality show plan materials while referring to it. As for her daughter, Eric Williams’ words can let her The message that her husband Bruce Jenner participated together was automatically ignored by her.
A week later, Kris Jenner personally rushed to the headquarters of the Firefly Group in Burbank, and handed over the completed plan to one of Eric's assistants. The next step was a long and torturous wait. In order to avoid the disgust of Eric's assistant, Kris Jenner only dared to call once every three days to ask for news.
Originally, I expected that the daughter who entered Drew Barrymore's girlfriend circle could help to find out some news, but then found out that because of her daughter's companion, the girl from the Hilton family was kicked out of the small circle because of offending someone. . As for the husband and ex-husband, after inquiring, I found out that the two men, who could barely be regarded as celebrities in Los Angeles, were so far away from the inner circle of Hollywood, and they had no contact with any useful people at all. Although Pointe Manor is located in a conspicuous location in Malibu, Kris Jenner did not have the courage to take the initiative to come to the door. (To be continued.)