Hollywood Hunter

Fox could not wait to hold a press conference the next day, announcing that "Terminator 2" was officially launched as one of Daenerys Entertainment's 10 film projects.

Counting "Terminator 2", Daenerys Entertainment plans to cooperate with other 10 films and 6 have been confirmed.

At that time, the global box office of "Terminator" was only more than 78 million U.S. dollars, but it achieved Schwarzenegger's position in Hollywood's first-line action actor in one fell swoop, showing the influence of this film. Therefore, the establishment of "Terminator 2" immediately attracted strong attention from the media and movie fans.

James Cameron has already completed the script of "Terminator 2". With Daenerys Entertainment and Fox Pictures jointly giving the green light, the film is expected to start shooting in the middle of the year and will be released next summer.

After the weekend, the preparations for "Death of the Dead" also made a breakthrough.

Harrison Ford officially joined the film, and the remuneration was also confirmed as $10 million.

The continuous basic salary of male stars such as Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford has exceeded 10 million, which means that the salary of Hollywood's top stars has officially entered the era of 10 million dollars.

The salary of filmmakers actually represents their status in Hollywood.

If Simon did not appear, due to the rapid expansion of the film market and the improvement of the economic situation, a lot of hot money poured into Hollywood, the 90s would be the era when top filmmakers have the strongest voice in Hollywood. This strength will continue until the rise of special effects movies after the new century.

Now, relying on the success of "Batman: Hour of War", Simon has actually developed a film operation mode that is driven by IP and technology instead of relying on stars.

Of course, most people don't realize this yet.

Entering the new week, although Schwarzenegger agreed to participate in "Terminator 2," Simon still looked for the "Kindergarten Special Police" project.

The "Kindergarten Special Police" in my memory is not completely a dark horse project. Besides Schwarzenegger, the director of the film, Ivan Reitman, is also very famous in Hollywood. He is the director of the "Ghostbusters" series. Years ago, I also collaborated with Schwarzenegger on the more alternative "Dragon Brother and Mouse Brother".

Schwarzenegger's agent at the Joe Ross family reception said that Arnold was considering participating in the show, and it happened to be Reitman's new film "Kindergarten Special Police."

However, because most people regarded the success of "Dragon Brother and Mouse" as an accident, Schwarzenegger did not have enough confidence in participating in another family-style comedy, so he finally chose "Terminator 2". .

Simon learned about the general situation of "Kindergarten Special Police" and gave up the idea of ​​competing for this project. This is not only because Reitman could only choose other actors after Schwarzenegger gave up. The main reason is that this project has been signed by Universal.

As long as the MCA can be merged smoothly this year, Simon will be equal to this project, and now there is no need for another move.

Busy, another week passed quickly.

In the week from February 2 to February 8, "Batman: Hour of War" received another $20.35 million with a 13% drop, and the cumulative box office reached $347.11 million.

However, this week, the movie that received the most media attention was still "Drive for Miss Daisy."

In the ninth week of the release, the second week of the large-scale opening, the box office of "Driving for Miss Daisy" has not fallen back because of the recent spread of word-of-mouth and popularity. Instead, there has been a reversal, although only a weak 0.5%. But it also exceeded many people's expectations.

With a single week’s box office revenue of 8.18 million US dollars, the cumulative box office of this originally inconspicuous movie suddenly reached 27.55 million US dollars.

At the box office of $27.55 million, it seems that it cannot be compared with any of the top movies on the list. However, among all the 502 movies that entered the theaters in the past year, "Drive for Miss Daisy" has a box office score of $27.55 million, which has made it the 43rd place on the box office list last year, and the box office performance can be said to exceed 90% of the movies last year.

Moreover, this is just the beginning.

After the box office of "Driving for Miss Daisy" was released last week, various box office evaluation agencies generally predicted that the total North American box office of this film is expected to exceed 60 million US dollars.

Now, with the film's large-scale opening of the second week, the box office performance is almost the same as the previous week, and Daenerys Entertainment has once again increased the number of film screens to 1302 yuan this week. The North American box office potential of "Driving for Miss Daisy" obviously exceeds many people's boldest predictions.

This is likely to be another club movie with a box office of 100 million yuan.

Moreover, it is definitely a club movie with the lowest budget cost last year.

When the media was generally attracted attention by "Driving for Miss Daisy", Daenerys Entertainment's "Pretty Beautiful Lady", which was positioned for Valentine's Day, was officially released on February 9. Because it was the off-season of the movie, the distribution team easily raised 1,563 screens for "Pretty Beautiful Lady".

Compared with the original Richard Gere, the new version of the actor Pierce Brosnan is very low-profile, and Julia Roberts has barely reached a familiarity in the audience's impression in the past two years. The advantage of using these two actors as the leading roles is that the cost of the film is further reduced, only 10 million US dollars.

Because the first few internal previews have received very good feedback from the audience, Daenerys Entertainment has determined the actor's strategy of not being famous enough to make public announcements, but the initial publicity budget investment reached 7 million US dollars, of which 5 million U.S. dollars are used exclusively for advertising on various platforms.

As long as the box office of the film reaches expectations in the first week, it will immediately increase its marketing budget.

On the first day of the painting, "Pretty Woman in Wind and Moon" did not receive general media recognition, and the average film score was barely passing. This was still in consideration of Daenerys Entertainment's public relations factors.

"Time" magazine unceremoniously criticized the film as'an old Hollywood assembly line work'.

The critics of the "Chicago Reader" commented sarcastically that ‘the hero paid $3,000, and then they fell in love, which is really Hollywood’. "Entertainment Weekly" also criticized "Pretty Girl in Wind and Moon" in a satirical tone: "This story is that Roberts's role suddenly changed after he met a rich man, and he also learned to cry in the opera house."

However, these evaluations with intellectual superiority have not affected the reputation of the film in the eyes of the audience.

The requirements of most ordinary people are actually not high, a simple story that resonates.

Moreover, the audience of "Pretty Woman" is much larger than "Drive for Miss Daisy".

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment has spared no effort to promote the offensive to cater to the atmosphere of Valentine's Day. Three days after the opening of the painting weekend, "Pretty Girl in Wind and Moon" won 12.47 million US dollars in box office.

For the entire subsequent week, due to the dramatic increase in the number of moviegoers around Valentine's Day on February 14th, the box office of "Pretty Girl" in the first week and seven days finally reached 19.16 million US dollars, squeezing "Batman: Hour of War" in one fell swoop. A single-week box office champion lasting seven weeks.

In the eighth week of its release, the box office of "Batman: Hour of War" dropped by 19%, and then received 16.51 million US dollars, ranking second. The cumulative box office reached 363.62 million US dollars, steadily advancing to 400 million.

This week’s third place is no longer "Driving for Miss Daisy", but an action movie starring Steven Seag produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, "Seven Years Storm", which earned 12.14 million in the first week of the painting. Dollar.

Under the impact of the two new films, the number of screens in "Driving for Miss Daisy" increased to 1,302 yuan this week, and the box office still achieved an 11% decline, with another $8.95 million, and the cumulative box office reached $35.5 million.

In the off-season at the box office in February, when the word-of-mouth was not too good, the box office in the first week was able to get 19.16 million US dollars, and the box office performance of "Pretty Woman in Wind and Moon" exceeded most people's expectations. This also allowed the film to gain more media attention, or controversy.

At the same time, in the audience group, although there are also some people who do not agree with the concept expressed in the film, most of the audience likes the film very much and began to recommend it to people around it.

As a result, in the second week of the painting, after Valentine’s Day had passed, the box office of "Pretty Pretty Lady" had a very slight drop of 5.5%. The box office of the next week was $18.11 million, which was almost nothing compared to the first week. Significant decline. In just two weeks, "Pretty Beautiful Lady" quickly accumulated 37.27 million US dollars in box office.

There is no doubt that the first box office dark horse of 1990 was born.

Moreover, it still comes from Daenerys Entertainment, and it still comes from Simon Westeros.

Simon tried to keep himself out of the media as much as possible after the release of "Batman: Hour of War" at the end of last year. To achieve this goal, Simon spent his 22nd birthday on February 22 in a quiet manner with Janet.

Now, with the success of "Pretty Pretty Lady in Wind and Moon" again, the media's attention has once again shifted to him.

The first news that attracted media attention was that the richest man in the Union who had just passed his 22nd birthday was going to marry his girlfriend Janet Johnston next month.

In fact, the media has been stationed in Melbourne for a long time recently to follow up the wedding preparations in real time.

Naturally, the media began to discuss various topics around Simon and Janet's wedding, and the most discussed were undoubtedly Simon's personal wealth and various situations after the two got married. Because of the age difference between the two, there are still many media who are not optimistic about this marriage. An article in the "New York Times" also specifically reminded Simon to remember to sign a prenuptial agreement.

Then, the topic naturally extended to how much money Simon has now.

6 billion US dollars, this is a well-known authoritative figure published by the "Forbes" rich list.

However, this is already the data for August last year.

now what?

Along with such topics, the Wall Street Journal suddenly exposed Daenerys Entertainment's full year financial report last year on the second day of Simon's birthday on February 23.

Although it has to pay a lot of large expenses for the company's expansion, because Daenerys Entertainment has too many successful projects in the past two years, it has continued to provide the company that has been established for more than three years. Daenerys Entertainment last year The scale of after-tax net profit reached a staggering $531 million.

This is indeed a very surprising number.

In the past year, although the financial reports of many American companies have not yet been released, according to the data of the previous few years, the profit scale of more than 500 million US dollars is enough to make Daenerys Entertainment squeeze into the top 50 of the US corporate profit rankings. .

Moreover, compared to Daenerys Entertainment's qualifications, other companies with similar profits are all giants that have been in business for more than a decade.

Such as Motorola.

As of the fiscal year last September, the annual net profit of the electronics giant Motorola was only 490 million U.S. dollars, which was the best financial report in recent years.

At the same time, with multiple projects last year, especially the later operation of "Batman: Hour of War", many media predict that Daenerys Entertainment's profit scale is likely to double this year. Once so, it will undoubtedly be even more terrifying.

You know, Daenerys Entertainment is a 100% company owned by Simon Westeros.

Not to mention this year, just based on the profit scale last year of 531 million US dollars and the most conservative 10 times P/E ratio, compared to the US$3 billion valuation made by Daenerys Entertainment last year by Forbes, this rapidly rising Hollywood movie The company's market value this year is enough to exceed $5 billion.

Excluding all other assets of Simon Westero, just this one is almost enough for him to maintain his position as the richest man in the Federation.

Someone not only asked, is Daenerys Entertainment really worth $5 billion?

Movies have always been a high-risk business. Perhaps they have been outstanding in recent years, but they may fall into a downturn in subsequent years.

However, as soon as this question was raised, it met with the strongest refutation.

Marvel!

Yes, Marvel Entertainment is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daenerys Entertainment.

The success of just one project of "Batman: Hour of War" is expected to bring about $1 billion in profits for all parties involved. This is only the beginning of the DC Cinematic Universe.

Now that the first episode is successful, the huge plan for more than 10 movies has been announced recently. Under Simon Westero’s personal control, even if it does not reach the start result of "Batman: Hour of War", it will definitely easily surpass Hollywood. Most of the items.

Moreover, the biggest advantage of the DC Cinema Universe project is sustainability.

This means that Daenerys Entertainment and Time Warner no longer have to bear the strong uncertainty of the box office prospects every time they operate traditional film projects.

Therefore, anyone with a little vision can undoubtedly see how much potential Marvel, which is solely held by Daenerys Entertainment outside of the DC movie universe plan, will have much potential.

Warner Bros. Pictures also planned to sell DC for tens of millions of dollars a few years ago. Now, it's just the success of "Batman: Hour of War", even if it is 1 billion dollars, Steve Rose will not Agree to sell. What's more, any popular superhero under DC may be an existence worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

So, Marvel, which also owns a large number of superhero copyrights, is undoubtedly a super gold mine.

Just this is enough to support Daenerys' entertainment value.

As a society in which media is operated commercially, there are people who are interested in digging for news.

After the Wall Street Journal’s revelations about Daenerys Entertainment’s annual financial report aroused attention, another financial magazine, Fortune, suddenly exposed another piece of information, which directly detonated public opinion: Simon Westeros to the United States Data on overseas assets registered with the IRS.

cash.

$4.5 billion!