Chapter 098 (1/2)

Monday, April 20.

Just after Easter with his family, Peter Sanders got a phone call and rushed to Fox Studios before eight o'clock in the morning.

Ronald Goldberg's assistant was in a hurry on the phone and hung up before he could elaborate. But Peter Sanders knows very well that it must have something to do with the next weekend's box office of the butterfly effect.

Walking into a conference room in the executive building of the studio, Peter Sanders finds that there are five or six people waiting here, basically senior executives of the publicity department, but Ronald Goldberg has not yet appeared.

Before he could sit down at the conference table, Peter Sanders was keen to catch a number in the crowd's comments.

“…… 11.86 million.... ”

11.86 million?!

Feeling strongly that he might have heard wrong, Peter Sanders snatched the folder from the meeting secretary, stood in the same place and opened it directly.

The first page is the latest box office data report of three days over the weekend.

Butterfly effect, US $11.86 million, - 17%.

Sure enough, it's 11.86 million dollars!

Moreover, compared with the box office data of $14.31 million in the first weekend, the butterfly effect's decline in the next week was far more than everyone expected, only 17%.

Peter Sanders couldn't help but calculate quickly.

At the end of the next weekend, the box office will drop by 17%. If this trend continues, it is absolutely possible that the total box office in North America will exceed 100 million US dollars.

Now the question is, what happened?

Peter Sanders was standing in the same place, a little dazed. Ronald Goldberg came in with a few people and sat directly at the conference table. Seeing the appearance of Peter Sanders, Goldberg was very calm: ”Peter, what are you doing standing there? Sit down.”

Peter Sanders came back, nodded to each other with a smile, and went to the conference table to sit down.

The Secretary of the meeting began to distribute another document.

Ronald Goldberg and other people sat down and said directly, ”you should have seen that, yes, the box office dropped only 17% next week at $11.86 million. As for what happened? I asked someone to summarize the recent audience survey results of the company's publicity department, which can probably explain why. However, this is not the most important. The key now is how to maintain this box office trend and how to make the box office of ”Butterfly Effect” cross the $100 million threshold. ”

After a few years in charge of fox pictures, the company is finally ushering in a work that is expected to break the box office of 100 million in North America. Ronald Goldberg's tone is hard to hide his excitement.

Peter Sanders, listening to Ronald Goldberg, began to discuss with you the issues of increasing the screening scale and adjusting the film marketing strategy of the butterfly effect as soon as possible. He opened another document he just got and read Fox's propaganda department's analysis of the box office trend of the butterfly effect next week.

In the summary of the report, several sets of data from the audience survey of butterfly effect in North America are specially marked.

”Proportion of audience aged 18-26: 43%.”

”Audience rating on the 10 point system: 7.7.”

”Affected by” Lola Run ”, the proportion of viewers who choose to watch the film: 81%.”

”The proportion of viewers not affected by comments: 33%.”

”The proportion of viewers who think the film has been unfairly commented by the media: 76%.”

”The proportion of viewers who plan to recommend to friends after watching the film: 69%.”

In the conference room.

Just after reading this set of data, Peter Sanders has roughly understood why the box office trend of ”Butterfly Effect” next week is beyond everyone's expectation.

At the end of the research report, it is also clearly pointed out that compared with the overwhelming media bad reviews, ”Butterfly Effect” has a much higher reputation among the audience. The audience rating of 7.7 basically belongs to the category of an excellent film.

At the same time, because the audience of butterfly effect tends to be younger, they seldom read newspapers and prefer friends to recommend their viewing targets. Therefore, the impact of media's one-sided bad reviews on the box office of the film is far less than fox predicted.

The report also speculates that the popularity of ”Lola Run” has brought a huge potential audience base to ”Butterfly Effect”. Although some audiences temporarily gave up watching the film due to the bad comments from the media in the first week, they still chose to enter the cinema again after the word-of-mouth spread among the film audience, which also contributed to the slight decline of only 17% at the end of the next weekend.