I’m in Hollywood

On November 18, the day after Eric flew to New York, Home Alone and Return to Seventeen officially ushered in the premiere. Seventeen opened at 1279 yuan, more than 200 yuan more than Home Alone. Fox had no scruples about gambling agreements, so he did his best at the beginning.

At the same time, 1,395 screens of Universal Pictures' animation Little Feet Go Away and 952 screens of Olivia's Adventures, an animation released by Disney's BWI International.

The simultaneous release of three children-oriented movies made the media feel that Eric was less likely to win the bet, but Eric was not overly concerned. These two animations may have some impact on Home Alone in the early stage. The box office is squeezed, but it will definitely not be able to compare with Home Alone in terms of staying power in the later stage. In the previous life, Home Alone had a box office of more than 10 million for 10 consecutive weeks.

After attending the two premieres, when Eric and the crew returned to the hotel, it was already past eleven o'clock in the evening. This era does not have the advanced box office statistics system of later generations, so we can only know the box office data of Home Alone and Back to Seventeen until next week.

Back in the room, Eric took a shower and was about to sleep when the phone rang suddenly. Aniston was the only one calling so late.

Hi, Eric, are you asleep? Aniston asked with a little excitement in his tone.

Eric sat on the bed, wiped his wet hair with a towel, and said, Not yet, just after taking a shower, Annie, what happened to you?

Guess it?

Eric teased: Oh, I know, you must be pregnant, rest assured I will be responsible.

Bah, you big pervert, you know that you think about those nasty things. Aniston held the microphone and spat: I just watched Home Alone, and I encountered a very interesting thing.

Eric smiled and said, Tell me?

It's like this, I came out of the movie theater and happened to see a five- or six-year-old boy, shouting to see Kevin, the child's parents disagreed, saying that he had just watched it, and the boy lay on the ground crying When someone saw this scene and mistakenly thought that the parents were human traffickers, they beat the poor young parents and called the police. In the end, several police cars came, which was really fun, haha.”

Aniston just told Eric about it as an anecdote while watching the movie, but Eric saw more meaning from it. After chatting a few more words with Aniston, and hanging up the phone, Eric was lying on the bed, slightly excited.

Because things are still happening according to the trajectory of the previous life. The reason why Home Alone in the previous life was able to achieve such an amazing box office is because a large number of arrogant children watched Home Alone over and over again and again, and scrambled to imitate Kevin's every move in the film, and finally pushed the film to get amazing results. box office results.

Things are indeed as Eric guessed. On the first day of the movie's release, Home Alone and the other two animations were basically the same at the box office. On the second day, the box office of Home Alone doubled directly. On the third day, the single-day box office increased significantly again. There were already queues at the gates of some popular theaters.

After all, you can watch cartoons at any time, and Kevin, who is a little devil and a quirky man, is not something you can meet at any time. Most children imagine that they will grow up too fast and can do many things that they cannot do now.

From the perspective of children, the film Home Alone has realized what most children want to do in reality but can't, dare not do or can't do.

There was a rapid trend of imitating Kevin among children in North America. A San Francisco newspaper even reported a real Home Alone incident. After watching Home Alone, a nine-year-old boy was ready to go to While on vacation in Hawaii, he secretly locked himself in his room.

The parents of six children didn't really find out about it. After the family flew to Hawaii, they found out that the boy was gone. The boy's parents had to give up their vacation and fly back to San Francisco from Hawaii. At the same time, the boy had already made a mess of the house, waiting for the arrival of the stupid thief, but unfortunately the parents who were really anxious were waiting.

A week later, the box office of the first week of the film was finally counted. Although the previous signs of popularity have made people psychologically prepared, the astonishing first-week box office of Home Alone 27.55 million US dollars still shocked everyone's attention.

The box office of more than 20 million US dollars may be incomparable with the block-office blockbusters that exceeded 100 million in the first week of the future, but in this era, this achievement directly surpassed all the high-box office films in recent years, even Spielberg's ET that year. None of them have achieved such an amazing opening result. Only George Lucas's Star Wars series can surpass Home Alone, but the production cost of Star Wars is more than 100 times that of Home Alone. !

At the same time, Back to Seventeen also won the second place with a good result of 13.12 million. The two cartoons Little Feet and Olivia's Adventures, which compete with Home Alone, only received 7.12 million and 3.98 million at the box office respectively, far below the expectations of the two major film companies. There is no doubt that the box office of the two animations was severely suppressed by Home Alone. Universal and Disney executives lamented that the box office of Home Alone was too bad, and at the same time they envied Colombia's good luck.

Colombia was really lucky, but the president of Colombia, Blunt Cohen, who saw the box office in the first week, was not in a good mood at all, and even threw the teacup out of his hand several times.

According to the box office data of the first week, Columbia re-evaluated and concluded that the North American box office of Home Alone must be more than 200 million US dollars, and it is even likely to exceed 300 million US dollars. Blunt Cohen is extremely remorseful. If he had insisted on the plan to buy out the copyright of Home Alone instead of signing some shitty gambling agreement, Columbia would have made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from this film this year.

And now, according to the gambling agreement, if Home Alone box office is 300 million US dollars, Columbia will pay a share of 120 million US dollars to Eric, and he can only get 45 million US dollars, minus the distribution cost, Columbia's own earnings may be Only a fraction of Eric's $120 million.

Blunt Cohen has had the idea of ​​tearing up the agreement many times. However, the content of the gambling agreement is now known throughout the United States. If the agreement is rashly torn up, it will be difficult for Colombia to win the lawsuit, and it will become a laughing stock in the United States. It will definitely be swept out as a scapegoat.

No, we must find a way to recover the loss, we must... Blunt Cohen was muttering to himself when the assistant knocked on the door and said, Mr. Cohen, everyone is here, we can have a meeting.

Blunt Cohen rubbed his temples, got up and walked to the conference room.

After taking his seat, Blunt Cohen asked Lester Reed, who was in charge of the Home Alone project, directly: Lester, how's the data analysis going?

Lester Reed would have been back on a flight with the Home Alone crew late tonight, but an emergency call from headquarters sent him back to Los Angeles half a day earlier than the others. After arriving at the Columbia headquarters and learning that Home Alone was box office in its first week, Lester instinctively felt that something was wrong.

Glancing at the expressionless Blunt Cohen with a guilty conscience, it was Blunt Cohen who decided to accept the gambling agreement, but he was the first to respond to the agreement at the original meeting. According to Blunt Cohen's domineering personality, nine times out of ten, he will take anger at himself.

Mr. Cohen, according to the analysis of the data department, according to the gambling agreement, we can only get a share of about 50 million US dollars at most, and the peak value is about 225 million US dollars. This is the data curve.

Blunt Cohen took over the analysis file and glanced at the red parabola representing Columbia's profit, and the green curve representing Eric's share, which went up all the way. His temples jumped twice again.

boom--

Another teacup was smashed by Blunt Cohen on the mahogany floor, making a muffled sound. Everyone in the conference room was slightly shocked, and they lowered their heads subconsciously and became stunned.

Under normal circumstances, the box office share of 50 million US dollars has already awakened many high-level film companies from their dreams. After all, even the six giants, the best case of the box office profit in this era is about 100 to 200 million yuan. .

But all the excitement that Blunt Cohen should have vanished in an instant when compared to the more than $100 million in profit that Eric could have made.

Then, you are responsible for signing the gambling agreement, what do you do now? Blunt Cohen glanced around the crowd coldly, and finally his eyes fell on Lester Reed.