Chapter 265

Simon returned to Los Angeles, and this year's summer program officially opened with Steven Spielberg's "Raiders 3".

"Raider 3" adopts an unconventional Wednesday opening date, which is on May 24. The film, which started with 2327 screens, won $9.9 million in box office only on Wednesday and Thursday, easily surpassing the action film "battle of the dragon", which was also launched by United States in the first week.

"Weilong Shazhen" was released on May 19. The box office in the first seven days of the normal Friday show is $8.24 million, and the total box office in North America is expected to be around $30 million. Although far from being able to compare with "Raider 3", compared with the production cost of $17 million, the box office of "dragon killing" is not a failure.

It's worth mentioning that the hero of "Weilong" happens to be Patrick Switz, the hero of the original "ghost".

In order to ensure the success of ghost, Simon has no plans to change the hero and heroine. While he's away from Los Angeles, Denise entertainment has negotiated a contract with Demi Moore and Patrick Switz for the classic love movie.

Patrick Switz was promoted to a leading male star two years ago with a global box office hit of more than 200 million US dollars, and finally negotiated a salary of 5 million US dollars.

Demi Moore has nothing to offer but his wife, Bruce Willis. If not for Simon's insistence, Amy was not willing to use the other party at all. Therefore, during the negotiation process, she stuck her pay card to death and only offered a $300000 pay that slightly exceeded the price of the newcomer, with an additional preferential contract for a movie.

With a group of Hollywood actresses focusing on this project, Demi Moore knew that she had no chips to rely on, but just thought about the details and agreed to it soon.

In addition, black actress ubie Goldberg has agreed to play the role of psychic Audrey brown in ghost.

Danielis entertainment officially released the main information of ghost on May 29. The film will be officially filmed in August, with a budget of $20 million. It is tentatively scheduled for next summer.

However, because Denise entertainment has launched a large number of films in recent months, it has not caused much controversy in the media. Hollywood is more concerned about the upcoming danylis entertainment summer season's first movie "bodyguard".

In the past few months, a series of films released by danelis entertainment have not achieved very good box office results. If "bodyguard" continues to maintain this tepid state, the rapid rise of the Hollywood rookie in 1988 accumulated a huge Aura will undoubtedly fade down.

Moreover, according to some indistinct rumors in the circle, "bodyguard" internal audition effect is not very good.

Until the week before the release of the film, dannilis entertainment has been holding the word-of-mouth of "bodyguard", and has never held any public media or fan auditions, which undoubtedly proves this rumor.

Los Angeles.

Century City Hotel in Beverly Hills.

It's May 31. This morning, the original album of bodyguard was launched in Century City Hotel. The album will be on sale next Monday, three days later than the release date of the film. Before that, Whitney Houston, the heroine of bodyguard, had done a lot of homework for her screen debut and her third album.

At the end of the press conference, Denise entertainment held a luncheon at Century City Hotel to entertain the film's main creators and media reporters who were invited to attend today.

In the ballroom.

Clive Davies, President of allista records, a record company signed by Whitney Houston, chatted with Simon warmly for a moment with a glass of champagne. He turned and walked to Whitney Houston. His face turned serious.

Allista records was originally a record company founded in the 1970s with the support of Columbia Pictures. After more than ten years of development, it is now a subsidiary of German Bertelsmann music group. Clive Davis has been the president of the company since its establishment. After ups and downs, alista records finally got a turn for the better because of the popularity of Whitney Houston four years ago.

Whitney Houston's partnership with Denise entertainment is also the result of Clive Davis' efforts.

Now, he has some regrets.

It seems that since the end of last year, Denise entertainment has lost its popularity, and none of the films released in the first half of the year have been popular. However, now that bodyguard has not been released, a series of questions about the quality of the film have spread.

As for the original album of bodyguard, in order to facilitate this cooperation, alista records made a big concession on the contract at the beginning. The album was CO produced by alista records and danilisi Entertainment's unformed recording department, and Simon westero acted as the consultant himself.

As a condition of cooperation, Denise entertainment will take 50% of the gross profit of the record.

Clive Davis originally thought that Simon westero could offer as good a song as the one he wrote for Madonna, but what allista got was a mixed album composed of cover and Whitney's own old songs. The main theme of the album was an old song originally sung by Dolly Parton in the 1970s《 I-Will-Always-Love-You》。Since her debut, Whitney Houston's two albums have achieved a global sales volume of more than 10 million. Seeing that this good situation is likely to end, Clive Davis finds her own stage in the social intercourse, pulls her aside and begins to teach her the skills of throwing the pot in a low voice.

If bodyguard fails, the prospect of this original album is even more worrying.

Clive Davis is now only looking forward to putting the blame on Denise entertainment as much as possible to avoid the impact on Whitney Houston's career.

On the other side of the ballroom.

Clive Davis walks away and Amy Pascal comes to Simon.

Compared with Clive Davis, who only cares about bodyguards, Amy is worried about the commercial performance of the next two films in June, bodyguards and sixth sense. However, she came up to Simon and said something else: "Bob went to New York on Monday. It was nothing special, but someone in New York happened to see him having dinner with a senior executive of Sony's American branch."

Simon understands that Bob in Amy's room is Robert rem.

During the lunch in Cannes, Simon naturally heard REM's suggestion that he wanted to get a raise, but he didn't respond. He just mentioned it to Amy in private to let her pay attention.

I didn't expect REM to get in touch with Sony so soon.

Or, it's more likely that Sony took the initiative to contact rem.

During this period, Sony's acquisition negotiations for Columbia Pictures have been fully open.

Coca Cola, the largest shareholder of Columbia Pictures, intends to cash out its non core business. Sony is also in urgent need of acquiring a Hollywood studio. The intention of both sides to deal is very clear. Therefore, this business is basically settled.

In my memory, Sony completed the acquisition of Columbia Pictures. The person in charge of the company is Peter Cooper and John Peters. Both of them are Hollywood's well-known gold medal producers and have produced many big selling films such as "American Werewolf in London".

The original script of "Rain Man" was also obtained by Cooper Peters production company, which they cooperated with. After a long time, it fell to danilisi entertainment. For this reason, the two also hung the title of executive producer on the "Rain Man" project.

However, the two men in charge of Colombia, it is Sony pit to spit blood.

In the original time and space, Sony had to write down as much as $2.1 billion of assets of Columbia Pictures after driving off two people, which became the biggest loss in Sony's history.

Although Simon thinks that Sony is much better than Peter Cooper and Jon Peters in hiring anyone to be in charge of Colombia, he doesn't think rem is qualified to compete with them in terms of Hollywood qualifications.

Peter Cooper and his wife have made many successful films, but REM's strong point has always been distribution. Before he took charge of new world entertainment, he was the vice president of marketing and marketing department of Universal Pictures. During his tenure as CEO of new world entertainment, the company did not make any films that could be called big sellers.

Now, REM is still the president of danelis entertainment, which is responsible for the distribution business.

Although marketing is becoming more and more important in Hollywood, creative talents have always been the leading force in this industry. The head of Hollywood Studios is usually promoted gradually from the production department, such as Michael Eisner of Disney and Joe Ross, President of fox pictures. It is relatively rare to be the head of a studio from the Distribution Department.

After a moment's deliberation, Simon said, "in that case, you should pay more attention to the Distribution Department for a while."

Amy nodded and said, "you're not going to talk to Bob?"

"Do you remember when he started?" Simon asked

"Probably last August."

Simon shrugged and said, "it's less than a year, Amy. To be fair, I'm very satisfied with Bob's work. However, in the process of signing the contract at the beginning, I have already offered enough conditions for a bonus of $3 million, which is equivalent to that of the executives in the Publicity Department of large studios. Although the company does make a lot of money, I don't think I owe him anything. If he doesn't feel like he's getting enough, leave. "

Amy paused, nodded and said, "I'll look for someone who might replace Bob."

Simon said nothing more, but talked about another thing: "the marketing plan for the last month of sixth sense still needs to be adjusted. Let De Niro not deliberately suggest the plot reversal of the film in talk show interviews and other programs, just follow the normal process of the propaganda and distribution of horror films, and the company's media marketing copywriting is the same. "

Amy said with a wry smile, "Simon, the film will be even less attractive to most of the audience."

"Starring De Niro and my screenwriter, that's the attraction in itself. Amy, the sixth sense can't be a commercial blockbuster with high box office in the first week. I hope it can walk out of a long-term word-of-mouth curve. "

……After the release of bodyguard's original album, the release date of the film will soon come.

On June 2, bodyguard officially launched in North America with 2021 screens. Since the successful saturation release of several films in succession last year, it is very common for the studio to open more than 2000 commercial films this year.

At the same time that bodyguard was released, the box office of the first full week of "Raider 3" was officially released.

During the seven days from May 26 to June 1, Spielberg's commercial blockbuster grossed 46.01 million US dollars in North American Theaters, surpassing the 42.16 million single week box office data of Star Wars: return of the Jedi in that year, creating a new weekly box office record.

Under the strength of "Raider 3", the media reputation of "bodyguard" after its release can be called bleak.

Entertainment Weekly, variety show, New York Times and other mainstream media gave bodyguard negative comments.

Seeing the film review of "a mess" in variety magazine, Amy was so angry that she almost withdrew all the company's advertisements in variety.

According to the comprehensive statistics of the 10 point system, the media score of bodyguard only broke through 3 points, which is far away from the passing line.

However, some magazines such as rolling stone expressed their appreciation for the soundtrack of the film, but these positive comments certainly did not reverse the media reputation of bodyguard.

Affected by the bad reviews, the box office of bodyguard in the first weekend was only $16.61 million.

Compared with the previous movie "Weilong Shazhen" of United pictures, such a box office performance is certainly not a failure. The first weekend's box office is 16.61 million US dollars, and it is expected that the first week's box office will remain stable at more than 20 million US dollars.

However, the media also generally predicted that the box office performance of "bodyguard" in the first week was the result of Denise entertainment sparing no effort to publicize. Affected by the negative word-of-mouth, the film will go out of a very ugly box office curve next. The total box office in North America is probably only $50 million at most.

The production cost of bodyguard is US $20 million, the publicity budget is US $8 million, and the total investment is US $28 million. In this way, the $50 million North American box office is not a failure. Danielis entertainment can basically recover its costs by taking advantage of the local box office.

However, compared with the amazing box office results of a series of films produced by dannilis entertainment last year, the estimated $50 million box office of bodyguard in North America is undoubtedly a failure. Considering the tepid commercial performance of dannilis Entertainment's films released a few months later last year, the failure of this film means that dannilis entertainment has completely retreated from last year's miracle Box office halo blessing.

Corresponding to "bodyguard", the box office of "Indiana Jones 3" was still as high as $21.23 million in the third week, with a drop of only 27%. Within 12 days of its release, Spielberg's blockbuster grossed $77.14 million.

according to the schedule, Columbia Pictures' 1984 box office runner up sequel ghost hunters 2 will also be released on June 9, with an estimated screen size of 2410, more than that of Raiders 3.

In order to stimulate the company's share price as much as possible at the critical time of the acquisition negotiation with Sony, Columbia Pictures has spared no effort in publicizing the sequel.

In the face of the attack of "Raider 3" and "ghost hunting team 2", coupled with the loss of word-of-mouth, "bodyguard" box office prospects are even more worrying. In such adversity, on Monday, June 5, the original record of bodyguard officially went on sale in North America.