Chapter 780 (1/2)
After accompanying Sophia for a week, Simon left Rome on February 6 to return to Los Angeles, while the woman stayed in the manor in the southern suburbs of Rome to continue to raise the baby. Then, until the baby was born, most of melisandro's affairs would be handed over to her deputy Angela arenz.
During Simon's absence from Hollywood, in addition to the successful ending of the Sundance Film Festival and another local $300 million level ”suicide team”, the box office revenue was $10.37 million in the seventh week from January 27 to February 2, with a cumulative box office of $278.36 million. There was only a gap of $22 million from the $300 million mark. It was only a matter of time before Simon successfully crossed the threshold.
In addition, the release of ”Hongfan district” on January 27 is also a good start for danielis entertainment in 1995.
In the first seven days of the first week, with its excellent reputation and 1736 screens, the box office of ”Hongfan district” reached 14.19 million US dollars in the first week, and the weekly average exceeded 8000 US dollars. Although it did not reach the sales level of more than 10000 US dollars, it was still a small number of Hong Kong films at the end of January, which was beyond everyone's expectation.
By the time Simon returned to Los Angeles, the box office of ”red zone” had already been released in the next weekend, with a year-on-year decline of only 27% in the next three days, with a revenue of $6.34 million. The cumulative box office of ”red zone” exceeded 20 million in ten days, reaching $20.53 million.
In contrast, the production cost of ”red zone” is only US $7.5 million. As a cooperative investor, new world pictures, owned by danielis entertainment, originally obtained the omni channel distribution rights of the film in North America and Europe with an investment share of US $2.5 million, and the initial investment budget of the film in North America was only US $3 million.
Now, with a total investment of US $5.5 million, the box office will return more than US $20 million in 10 days, and the total box office in North America is likely to reach US $35 million to US $40 million. Moreover, there are European and follow-up channels such as video and television. Taken together, the total return of this movie to Denise entertainment may exceed many blockbuster projects.
Since ”Hongfan district” has been successful, ”rush hour” can also be put on the agenda smoothly.
In the past, the script of rush hour was basically saved immediately according to the routine of Hong Kong movies, and it was specially tailored for Jack. It was also the Hollywood standard and even some flooding Brother movie mode. Simon came up with a similar idea that there was no possibility of a car crash.
However, Simon didn't do it himself. He just talked to new world's president, Denny Morris, about the idea of the script and asked the other side to look for a screenwriter to improve it. The key to the success of rush hour is that Jack Cheng and Chris Tucker are wonderful partners, but the details of the plot are not so important.
Malibu, daenerys studios.
It's already February 8, Wednesday.
Back in Los Angeles, most of Simon's energy is devoted to a series of film projects that Denise entertainment is preparing or has entered the production state.
This morning, we started work at 9 o'clock. For three hours, there were three production meetings in a row. They were about ”baby thunderbolt”, ”Mummy” and ”game of the brave”. These were three of the four foreign cooperation projects finalized last year. The other one, ”spy film”, as a part of ”secret agent movie universe”, will not be launched until after ”baby thunderbolt” is released Move.
Among the three projects that have been started, the first one to be released is mummy in cooperation with Fox, which is tentatively scheduled for the summer of next year. Both ”baby thunderbolt” and ”game of the brave” will wait until the end of next year.
The three partners are not satisfied with this arrangement, but they have nothing to do.
After all, there are too many projects.
Unless you want to kill each other, there will be no suitable schedule for this year. Even next year, there will be a new 007 movie, deathbed Valley directed by Tim Burton, mission impossible 2 CO produced by Denise and paramount, and wonder woman 2, another sequel to DC movie universe.
In addition, there are essential sequels to ”the universe of evocation” and other low - and medium cost key projects. In addition, the schedule of these three films in 1996 is already too crowded. Simon's original plan of ”Independence Day” and the early idea of ”justice alliance” have to be delayed, otherwise all films will not be able to play their box office potential.
In the morning meeting, Simon and the production team basically finalized the production ideas of the three projects.
The mummy, which works with Fox, will adopt Simon's original plot without much modification.
With MGM's ”Thunderbolt baby” is a new idea, Simon personally plays the script.
In the final game of the brave, Simon decided to use the version starring Johnson in 2017 after weighing the 1995 version and the 2017 version in his memory. He was invaded by the game and invaded the game. Obviously, the latter is more likely to bring a sense of substitution to the audience.
Even excluding inflation, the box office of the 2017 version is much higher than that of the 1995 version, and the global box office in memory is close to $1 billion.
Simon's hesitation is mainly due to the fact that if the version of Jushi Johnson is used, he needs to choose a high paid man, perhaps Schwarzenegger or Stallone. If it's just a one-time cooperation, it's OK to pay 15 million or even 20 million. The key is that if the first film is successful and cooperates with big names like Schwarzenegger, the sequel will be very difficult.Simon still clearly remembers that Schwarzenegger specially prepared a strong team of lawyers to negotiate with the film makers for Terminator 3, and finally invested as much as $200 million in Terminator 3, barely breaking through the global box office of $400 million, which only made a lot of investors busy. Only Schwarzenegger easily gained a huge film reward of $30 million, which is a typical case of film companies working for stars Example.
Simon won't allow that to happen to Denise entertainment.
What's more, the 2017 version of the game of the brave is still set with four main characters. Once the first song is successful, the salaries of the four main characters will go up.
Now that the plan has been finalized, Simon's first task is to solve the actor problem.
The 2017 version in my memory, Sony is actually very economical. Except for Jushi Johnson, whose film remuneration has reached 20 million US dollars, the others are not big names. Therefore, the total production cost is only 90 million US dollars. The budget of less than 100 million US dollars is not a big bomb after more than 20 years. However, the final global box office of the film has exploded to nearly 1 billion US dollars.
This time, Simon won't save money on special effects. Instead, he's hammered out a $100 million budget.
The $100 million in 1995 and $100 million in 2017 are obviously not a concept.
In addition, Simon also plans to limit the cost of first-class creators to 25 million US dollars, including the producer, director and four main characters, so as to provide a certain profit share. If this version of game of the brave can still hit the world by 1 billion US dollars, even if he pays 100 million US dollars for first-class creators, Simon will be very happy.
There is also the need to sign the package contract in advance.
Simon doesn't want the sequel to run aground for a long time or even miscarry completely because of all kinds of disputes about film payment after the success of the first song.
Of course, if the project fails, daenerys entertainment also has the right to cancel the sequel directly without any additional compensation. Now Denise entertainment has the absolute initiative in Hollywood. Once stars pressed the studio to sign all kinds of unequal contracts. At least Denise entertainment has changed its tune.
If you don't want to, then the opportunity is someone else's. No matter how big the stars are, they can't stand the ups and downs.
After a busy morning, I had lunch with Amy Pascal in the executive restaurant of the studio at noon.
As soon as the waiter delivered lunch and left, Amy Pascal said with a smile, ”there's been a lot of noise in the media about your donation of AOL stock recently?”