I’m in Hollywood

Petric thought for a while, and said, There are not many other Hollywood studios who have publicly expressed their views on this, but Universal has publicly stated this morning that it will hold a celebration banquet for Professor Fatty on the weekend. In addition, the media have expressed their opinions on this matter. is very active, after all, this is the first time in three years that we have lost dominance of the June schedule.”

Beginning with Jurassic Park in 1993, Firefly has almost firmly held the most popular one-month schedule in June in North America with its fixed summer schedule trilogy strategy. During this period, films produced by other film companies hardly got any No. 1 at the box office in any week.

Because of the continuous strong box office performance of Firefly's summer films, Hollywood has even regarded the June schedule as a private place for Firefly, and several other major film companies will almost subconsciously move their flagship films out of the June schedule.

But this year, due to the absence of the three animated films that Titanic and Firefly are good at at the same time, there are only two major films released by Firefly, and film companies such as Universal and Paramount have also begun to try to land on the golden schedule that originally belonged to Firefly.

Although Firefly has one film absent, the strength of Firefly in the past few years has left a deep shadow on other film companies. So you can imagine how cheered the executives of several other Hollywood studios would be when Universal's black comedy Fat Guy accidentally suppressed Firefly's brave entry to the Deadly Island to win the summer box office championship in June. Although they will not rashly express their opinions publicly, but with the close connection between Hollywood and the media industry, these people will definitely express the remaining depression accumulated in recent years through media channels.

With the character of the media accustomed to seeing the wind, Eric can almost imagine how lively the entertainment news in the American newspapers will be in recent days.

Eric didn't particularly care about this, just like the conversation between Katzenberg and Frank Wells in Los Angeles a few days ago. On the one hand, Firefly is not a listed company, and Eric has absolute control of the company. Controlling rights do not have to worry about criticism from the capital market and shareholders. On the other hand, with its strong financial strength, the capital chain of Firefly's film production and distribution system is completely self-sufficient and does not need to rely on external financing. Therefore, the situation that the box office of the movie does not meet expectations will not have any substantial impact on Firefly. At most, the annual revenue of the movie business will shrink compared to the past. Given the extreme uncertainty of the movie market, this kind of performance Ups and downs are almost unavoidable for any major film company. What happened to Firefly at this time is actually not entirely a bad thing. At least, it can make the Hollywood colleagues who have been suppressed for several years breathe a sigh of relief and reduce some of their concerns. The hostility and wariness of fireflies.

After talking with Petrich for a while, Eric signed several necessary documents and sent the assistant away.

Leaving the study and went to the living room downstairs, Miranda saw Eric coming downstairs and immediately got up to greet him. A white woman who was sitting on the single sofa next to her also stood up. The woman was wearing a white blouse and black Knee-length skirt, about 1.7 meters tall,

He has brown hair and a normal appearance, but there is a hint of shrewdness in his eyes.

Eric, this is Claire Weitzman, Miranda introduced, hugging Eric's arm affectionately.

Eric nodded and motioned for the other party to sit down again and asked, Are you an intern?

Yes, Mr. Williams, I dropped out of USC last year and just entered the year.

The percentage of American college students dropping out is nearly 50%. Eric is not surprised by Claire's frankness. He just guessed from Claire's school that she may be a child of the upper class. USC is a well-known school for the children of the rich in North America. , Claire was sent to serve as Miranda's assistant, and it was definitely not a pure accident. After all, the layer must know that through Miranda, you can get the opportunity to get in touch with himself, which is estimated to be a network resource that any agent dreams of.

Eric was too lazy to pay attention to the twists and turns, and said: Miranda has nothing to do here, you can accompany her to Florida, and then go back to Los Angeles.

Claire nodded with a smile: Of course no problem, Mr. Williams, this is my job.

Miranda, who was next to Eric, showed a happy expression on her face, turned pitiful, shook Eric's arm lightly, and said, Eric, I, I am even meeting now. Airfare to Los Angeles is unaffordable.

Eric smiled and pinched the girl's pitiful face, took out his wallet, and wanted to write a check to the girl, but Miranda had already leaned over like a curious kitten and looked into Eric's wallet.

Wow, this, black, black, I heard that, Eric, can I use this black credit card?

Although the famous American Express Black Gold Card was not issued until 1999, in fact, many top credit cards of banks are black.

Eric is not a collector. He only has three or four credit cards from major US banks in his wallet. Seeing the girl's heart-pounding expression, Eric smiled, put the pen back in, and took out the Citi black card and handed it over. To the girl, he said, Hey, don't spend a lot of money, just go back to Los Angeles after playing for a while.

I know, Miranda took the credit card with joy on her face, pursed her pink lips and kissed it, realizing it was wrong, and hurriedly wrapped her arms around Eric's neck and kissed him on the face, Said: Eric, you are such a good person.

Eric's forehead was full of black lines, but he didn't expect that one of his infinite black cards would actually be replaced by a good person card, which was a huge loss.

Reaching out and hugging Miranda, who was almost riding on his legs, Eric said, Go to Peter and ask him to call my accountant for authorization. Also, don't make such compliments in the future.

After sending away the goblin, Eric continued to devote himself to the filming of Casino Royale.

However, in Hollywood, the media discussion caused by the unsatisfactory box office of the brave entry to the deadly island did not slowly pass because of the loss of time, but became the beginning of a storm.

After the news of the first weekend box office loss to Professor Fat Man came out, most of the media in North America was in a frenzy. Although they also realized that this kind of frenzy to celebrate victory was unreasonable, Firefly continued to dominate six After three years of the monthly schedule, the news of the first box office failure is a big news after all, and its appeal to ordinary people is no less than the news of the sudden bankruptcy of a large consortium in the United States. Therefore, whether it is to gain attention or the power behind it. I really want to celebrate, in short, most of the media are gloating at the news of the box office failure of Brave Island.

After such a noisy week, on June 21, Universal's two-year-old heavyweight film The Mummy 2 was officially launched on more than 3,300 screens in the United States. At the same time, there was also Hollywood's first $20 million remuneration film star Jim Carrey produced by Sony. Starring the trump commissioner.

With the accumulated popularity of the previous work and the overwhelming publicity, The Mummy 2 has a strong momentum and harvested a box office of 84.29 million US dollars in North America in just one week. The film's best performance.

At the same time, as Firefly predicted, although the audience of teenagers is not large, due to the excellent quality of the film, the box office only dropped in the following week, and again received a box office of 32.17 million US dollars, ranking No. 1 in the weekly box office list. two.

The box office of the ace commissioner, which Sony had high hopes for, was far below the industry's expectations. The release scale of more than 2,600 screens in the first week only earned $29.96 million at the box office, ranking third, because Jim Carrey's $20 million remuneration greatly increased the film. The production budget of the film, the total cost of this film reached 60 million US dollars, but judging from the film's sluggish reputation, Jim Carrey's first film after getting rid of the original contract may also be his first North American film since he became the leading actor in a film. A film that is hard to break the 100 million box office.

The subsequent Fatty Professor also unexpectedly ended up with a 39 box office drop, ranking fourth at the weekly box office of $27.45 million.

In the fourth week of its release, The Matrix’s box office dropped by 46%, and the 2018 weekly box office squeezed into the fifth place in the weekly box office. At the same time, after four weeks of release, The Matrix North American box office easily exceeded 200 million US dollars, reaching 200 million. $540,000 location.

Because of the inherent insufficiency of bravely breaking into the deadly island, although it showed its due strength in the following week, the total box office of this film will only be fixed in the range of about 130 million US dollars.

Therefore, although the box office of The Matrix has exceeded 200 million US dollars in four weeks, the media still did not miss the opportunity to tease Firefly, but compared Firefly's box office performance this year with last year.

Firefly's three films last summer, Jurassic Park 2, Lone Day and Toy Story 2, grossed more than $811 million at the North American box office alone. In the previous few years, the box office of Firefly's summer program has also been maintained at this level.

But this year, everything seems to have taken a turn for the worse.

Although the box office of The Matrix has exceeded 200 million US dollars, the expected box office of Brave Island is also destined to bring good profits to Firefly in the later stage.

However, judging from the expected box office of 240 million for The Matrix and 130 million for Brave Island, the total box office of these two films this summer is only 370 million. Compared with last year's summer results of 811 million, Firefly's this year's box office is only 370 million. Box-office scores fell sharply by 54.

Heavyweight films have always had a locomotive effect in big film companies, because the Matrix and the lack of motivation to brave the deadly island, it is conceivable that Firefly will shrink by more than 50% compared to last year's various profit figures in the next year. Coupled with the expected losses brought by the Titanic, which is almost following the footsteps of the future water world, it is completely unknown whether Firefly can achieve an annual operating profit of more than 2 billion US dollars this year, as it did last year.

Even some media that are more pessimistic about Firefly take Firefly's box office failure this summer as a signal that Firefly is bound to decline.

In this case, in the last week of June, Pocahontas released by Paramount once again gave Firefly a perfect complement.

On June 28, Disney’s hand-drawn animation studio, now Paramount Animation, which Paramount Pictures acquired from Firefly for $2.5 billion, launched its first 2 hand-drawn animation film Pocahontas. .

Although the production cost of this 2-animated film has almost doubled compared to the Firefly period, because Paramount Animation wanted to give the old club a perfect revenge, several directors of the studio were all for this animation. A lot of energy has been put into the film, and the quality of Pocahontas is much stronger than that of the original time and space. In the early stage of the film, just the movie box office has accumulated a total of 5.9 million US dollars.

Although Pocahontas failed to replicate the $66 million box office miracle of The Lion King in its first week, its first week of $51 million and a total of $56.9 million at the box office still exceeded the expectations of most box office agencies, and it will even be released for the first time. The extremely powerful Mummy 2 was overturned on the ground. The Mummy 2 weekly box office fell by 49%, and the cumulative box office was only 41.72 million US dollars.

As we all know, the box office curve of animated movies has always been good at taking a long line. Pocahontas’ first week box office reached 51 million US dollars. As long as the box office decline within 30 is maintained in the next few weeks, the total box office can even reach the 200 million US dollars mark. Subsequently, Pocahontas' second-week box office drop on the 26th confirmed this without a doubt.

In this case, everyone completely ignored Firefly's New Line Film Company and Pocahontas, which was released in the same week. The box office of more than 13 million US dollars, the next week's decline is only 24, the cumulative box office may even be close to 60 million US dollars, with its cost of 20 million US dollars, plus the overseas box office, there is no doubt that Death is coming under the new line. This year, after the seven deadly sins, another big-money movie.

Of course, most of these media were selectively ignored. Because of Pocahontas' box office success, the media began to shift the focus, pointing directly to Firefly's abandonment of hand-painted animation.

Only a small number of people know the inside story of Firefly's original sale of the hand-painted animation studio. Of course, it is impossible for Firefly to explain at this time.

Seeing that the outside is getting more and more lively, the group has to start a counterattack by Yulun.

It just so happened that The Matrix broke through $200 million at the box office, which is worth celebrating. In order to make this film a higher North American box office, Firefly arranged for the Wachowski brothers to land a talk show on B TV.

But this talk show really brought a trouble to Firefly