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8月11日开画的《巴克叔叔》上映也进入第8周，单周票房再收326万美元，累计票房达到5702万美元。以这部影片大概还有1000万美元左右的票房潜力，《巴克叔叔》预计将成为约翰·休斯这些年仅次于《春天不是读书天》的票房成绩第二高电影。

"Bodyguard", which was first released in the summer, due to the recent dispute between Daenerys Entertainment and Alistar Records, the box office data that had already begun to close has seen a small rebound in recent weeks. The box office was 51 million US dollars.

The current number of screens for "Bodyguard" is 286, and it is expected that the domestic box office will break through the US$1.2 million mark before the next release.

此外，9月份高门影业先后推出从戛纳电影节买入的《甜妹妹》和《屋顶上的女人》，两部影片上映时间分别是9月8日和9月22日。

Ella Deutschman has explored an effective radial distribution model through the release of "Metropolitan", "Sisters", "Sisters of Sid" and other films in the first half of the year, that is, in New York, Los Angeles, etc. A strategy of small-scale openings in central cities to test market response and then gradually spread to other cities.

Jane Campion's "Sweet Sister" was marketed in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. After the word-of-mouth trial screening was recognized by the media, Deutschman decisively invested 30 US dollars in publicity and distribution costs in the three cities.

《甜妹妹》在9月8日以26块银幕规模开画，首周就创造了单馆进账超过19000美元的出色成绩，七天时间票房收入达到51万美元。

Taking into account the audience of the film, the distribution team of Gaomen Films predicts that the total North American box office of "Sweet Sister" is expected to reach 500 million US dollars.

Gaomen Pictures bought "Sweet Sister" with only an advance payment of 50 U.S. dollars. After the increase, the overall publicity and distribution expenses can be controlled within 100 million U.S. dollars, although 50% of the net box office will be paid to the producer in the future. Profit sharing, but all income from video tapes and TV broadcasts in the later period will be owned by Daenerys Entertainment, and this project can be regarded as a small gain.

As for "The Woman on the Roof", Gaomen Films did not take the word-of-mouth route to seek media approval, but instead hyped up the lesbian elements and erotic scenes in the film. Deutschman also arranged for the film's two heroines Featured in a local men's magazine in New York that is more adult-oriented.

In response to the audience's dislike of watching subtitles, Gaomen Films specially produced a dubbed version for this Swedish film.

Gaomen Pictures invested a total of 30 US dollars in film purchase, dubbing and publicity. "The Woman on the Roof" opened in New York on September 9 with 22 screens, and recovered 11 US dollars in box office in seven days.Calculated based on the publicity investment of US$23 in New York, this has already recovered the cost, and the box office of more than US$10 in a single venue is also better than "Sweet Sister".

However, in the second week of its opening, the box office of "The Woman on the Roof", which is still limited to New York, dropped by 9% from September 29th to October 10th, and the box office curve is far worse than that of "Sweet Man". "Sister" is strong.After several months of long run, the North American box office forecast should be able to reach around $5 million.

Speaking of which, the two "small businesses" of Gaomen Films are nothing to mention in front of blockbuster films such as Daenerys Entertainment's "The Sixth Sense of Spirituality" and "The Bodyguard", but Simon did not despise them at all. He always insisted on An attitude of looking at a $50 business as well as a $5000 million business.

After all, a big tree is doomed to die if only the main trunk lacks branches and leaves, and these 'small businesses' are actually the branches and leaves that Daenerys entertains.What's more, no one is sure whether these inconspicuous branches and leaves will suddenly become another towering tree one day.

In addition to the domestic box office, some overseas box office data of "Bodyguard" also appeared in this week's report.

In this era, the overseas release of Hollywood movies will generally be delayed by more than three months compared to the domestic release. Daenerys Entertainment is also very cautious about the overseas release of "The Sixth Sense of Spirituality". Therefore, for the time being, only "Bodyguard" is in the three summer movies. In September, it entered the overseas market one after another.

During this period of time, Daenerys Entertainment and Alista Records had a dispute over the "Bodyguard" soundtrack album. Alista Records had to accept Daenerys Entertainment's strong attitude last week. Daenerys Entertainment's financial audit is now nearing completion.

On the other hand, the complete cessation of sales of the original soundtrack album of "Bodyguard" did not impact the box office of the film as many people imagined. The audience is very curious about "The Bodyguard".

Overseas major ticket warehouses started from the earliest release in the United Kingdom on September 9. In the last month or so, the film has accumulated more than 8 million US dollars in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and other ticket warehouse countries that have been filmed. This is still in Japan. , France and other countries with large ticket warehouses are not screened.

In my memory, the box office distribution of "Bodyguard" is dominated by overseas countries. The North American box office of the film only exceeded 3 million, but the total overseas revenue was close to [-] million US dollars.Now it seems that this movie will still reproduce the box office distribution rules of the original version.

The overseas box office was not affected, and Daenerys Entertainment naturally took more initiative in the dispute with Alistar Records.

Because of this initiative, Simon returned to Los Angeles over the weekend. After completing the financial audit, Alista Records transferred a total of $3825 million in cash to Daenerys Entertainment Account, of which $753 million was paid by Alista Records. Neris Entertainment's defaulted compensation.

Daenerys Entertainment also took the initiative to make some "compromises", and did not announce the specific amount of the settlement reached by the two parties, which can be regarded as saving some face for Alista Records.

However, everyone in the circle is probably well aware of this matter. Daenerys Entertainment’s strong statement through the soundtrack album of "Bodyguard" also gave a strong blow to all other studios that have cooperation projects with Daenerys Entertainment. Warning: If you want to engulf Daenerys Entertainment's interests in the cooperation, Daenerys Entertainment will definitely not choose to compromise even if it hurts both sides.

Los Angeles.

Fox Studios in Century City.

In the two weeks since Simon left, Fox Films has quickly completed the preparations for the first of the 10 projects, "Sleeping with the Enemy". It will be launched in the second half of the month.

Compared with the other three films that will be released next year, "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is expected to be released at the end of July and early August next year. The competition at the end of the summer season will not be so fierce. It can avoid competition with "Sleeping with the Enemy", which is also a thriller.

The schedule of "Ten Days of Dangerous Love" is initially confirmed as Halloween at the end of October next year. After this year's "Scream 10", the third part of the series will be suspended for one year, so there will be no internal friction at that time.

"League of Pink" is expected to be scheduled for Thanksgiving in November next year, so as to avoid "Home Alone" in December.

The other 10 of the remaining 6 films will probably be released in 1991 and 1992. Simon also admitted to many people that the first four films are not the focus, and the real "blockbuster" must come later.

After finishing the production meeting of "Sleeping with the Enemy" all morning, everyone had lunch together. Simon was about to return to Santa Monica when he was stopped by Joe Ross and returned to Joe Ross's president's office in the studio .

The two sat down, and Joe Ross handed over a document and said, "Simon, this is the copyright transfer agreement for "Terminator". For profit sharing, we talked with Helmdale for a month, and the copyright fee of 300 million US dollars has not changed, and the share has been changed to 5% of the net profit of the film box office."

Simon took the copyright transfer agreement handed over by Ross and flipped through it.

Although the copyright transfer price of US$300 million is not as high as Simon's previous price when he secretly purchased the Thor King Middle-Earth series, it is already very high.After getting this money, Helmdale probably no longer expects too much profit, so it will agree to exchange 5% of the omni-channel net profit for 5% of the box office net profit.

Omni-channel net profit sharing and box office net profit sharing are two completely different concepts. Anyone with a little knowledge of Hollywood accounting rules will understand that Hollywood movies usually do not generate profits on their books, let alone pure box office profits.

Putting down the agreement, Simon asked Ross, "What about Cameron?"

Joe Rose shook his head: "Cameron insists on being the director himself, Simon, I think we can leave him alone and do it ourselves."

Simon asked: "So, have you read Cameron's sequel script?"

Joe Rose nodded: "I've seen it, it's not bad."

Simon shrugged and said, "I've seen it too."

The two looked at each other for a moment, and smiled wryly together.

Now that I have read Cameron's sequel script, unless I completely abandon the idea of ​​the liquid metal robot, otherwise, if I want to shake Cameron away, I will be sued in the future.Although Joe Ross said it was not bad, he obviously wouldn't be unaware of the finishing touch of the liquid metal robot.

Therefore, it is not so difficult to get rid of Cameron completely.

Chapter 298 Crisis Explodes (Revised)

The producer of the original "Terminator 2" is Carlock Films, which is famous for its extravagance and waste in Hollywood. Arnold Schwarzenegger not only won Hollywood's first high fixed salary of 1500 million US dollars in this project, the film also became The first Hollywood movie to cost more than $1 million to make.

In memory, "Terminator 2" only developed and printed more than 100 million feet of film, and the final material used was less than 1%, which is enough to prove how wasteful the film is.

More than 100 million feet of film actually means a huge expenditure for the film crew to capture these shots.Once a film crew starts work, it costs tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. A set of shots that could have been shot in three days took six days, and the budget naturally doubled.

From "The Abyss" to "Terminator 2" and then to the famous "Titanic", James Cameron's series of films have never been completed on time, which is why Cameron burns more money than other directors root cause.

After discussing with Joe Ross, Simon and Joe Ross only confirmed that Fox would continue to keep in touch with Cameron, and that they could add more value to the screenwriter and let the other party act as a producer. As for Cameron directing himself, it was the last resort option.At the same time, this project will not be included in the 10-film plan for the time being until all aspects are finalized, so as to avoid the main creators waiting for a price.

After talking about things, Simon returned to Daenerys Entertainment headquarters in Santa Monica. Amy Pascal was already waiting for him with another middle-aged man in his 40s wearing glasses.

After receiving Simon's instruction, during this time, Amy has been looking for the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment.

Daenerys International has confirmed internally promoted Mark Belford as president.

Mark Belford is about the same age as Amy. This young man in his early thirties did not go to college. After graduating from middle school at the age of 18, he worked in Hollywood with some connections at home.

Joining Daenerys Entertainment last year, Mark Belford caught Simon's attention by chance, and then performed well in the release of "Scream" and many other films, so he was quickly promoted.

The Hollywood media has different attitudes towards Mark Belford's rocket-like promotion. Some people commented that Simon dared to employ people, while others criticized Simon for being too reckless. Daenerys Entertainment also inevitably criticized this.

However, within a month of taking office, Mark Belford quickly took over the overseas business of Daenerys Entertainment.

In the dispute between Daenerys Entertainment and Alistar Records, the suspension of the original soundtrack album of "Bodyguard" not only did not affect the overseas distribution of the film, but the box office and popularity of this film in various overseas box office countries have bucked the trend. It has nothing to do with the marketing operation that Mark Belford has launched for a month.

Just this made Simon confirm that his choice was correct.

The person in charge of Daenerys International has confirmed that what Simon is going to meet with today is the person in charge of Daenerys Home Entertainment.

Maurice Corman, in his 40s, has a slightly fat body and wears a pair of rimless glasses. He has nothing to do with Roger Corman, the king of Hollywood B-movies. He has been working at Columbia Pictures as a marketing assistant President.

After Sony completed the acquisition of Columbia Pictures, this period of time can be described as frequent, buying the original MGM Studios in Culver City, merging Peter Cooper and Jon Peters' Cooper Peters Production Company, buying out All the shares of the subsidiary Samsung Pictures, cooperate with Daenerys Entertainment, sell TV station assets, etc.

At the same time, the original management of Columbia Pictures is also in the ranks of Sony's replacement.

Maurice Coleman resigned under this background and officially joined Daenerys Entertainment after a few weeks of discussions. He is the president of Daenerys Home Entertainment and is mainly responsible for Videotape and TV distribution of films produced by the two major labels of Film Industry and New World Pictures.

The determination of the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment also means that the power originally belonging to Robert Rehm has been divided into three. Robert Rem will continue to be in charge of Daenerys for the next two years. Domestic theatrical distribution of films produced by China Film and New World Pictures.

The estrangement accumulated between the two sides was already very deep, and Simon did not communicate too much with Robert Rem on this matter.The reason why he was not fired is also because of his contribution to Daenerys Entertainment in the past year. Simon is not a person who likes to kill donkeys.

However, this is also based on the fact that Robert Rehm must complete his work in the next two years with due diligence.If Rem feels resentful because of the diversion of power and even deliberately messes up Daenerys Entertainment's movie project, Simon will never be soft when he chases people.

In fact, after confirming that Rem's power was divided into three, Simon told Amy to focus on the company's distribution department.

After the meeting with Maurice Coman, Simon and Amy talked about Ella Deutschmann again.

Ella Deutschman's one-year probationary period is coming to an end soon. Although Gaomen Films is directly responsible to Simon personally, it is still Amy who discusses with Deutschman the salary plan after formal entry.

After several communications, it was roughly confirmed that Ella Deutschman's official contract period is 5 years, and the basic annual salary is 30 US dollars.At the same time, Deutschman can also receive 5% of the annual net profit of High Gate Films as a bonus.According to Deutschman's performance in the past year, the amount of entry bonus that Simon promised to the other party last year was also confirmed as 200 million US dollars.

Ella Deutschman's 5% net profit share of Gaomen Pictures seems to be the same as that of Amy, but the difference between the two is actually equivalent to the difference between a movie's box office net profit share and omni-channel net profit share.Moreover, Deutschman's terms do not involve equity awards.

Before you know it, it's another busy day.

At six o'clock in the afternoon, Simon was about to leave work when Nancy Brill came into his office.

Putting a game cassette on Simon's desk, Nancy sat down opposite and said, "The game team has adjusted some details, Simon, try playing again to see if there is any room for improvement. "

Blizzard Studio was officially established in February at the beginning of the year, and it has been 2 months now.

The normal development time for a video game in this era is 3 to 5 months. It was completely random to make a game like "Alien ET" in only 6 weeks. However, Blizzard Studio spent such a It took 8 months to grind out a game, which also made Simon feel like he named it wrong.

The genuine Blizzard is famous for bouncing tickets.

Moreover, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game development plan, which was divided into two at the beginning, is an action role-playing type and a combat fighting type.At this time, Nancy took out an action role-playing game similar to Konami's version in Simon's memory. The other combat fighting game only took three months to set up in the early stage, and it is still under development.

Bouncing tickets naturally means that the budget is overrun.

The original production budget of the two games was 50 US dollars. Now, the production budget of this action role-playing game "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" is close to 100 million US dollars. Another combat fighting game, if it is released early next year, The budget is at least 120 million US dollars, all more than doubled.

Because it is confirmed that the action role-playing version will be officially released in early November, Nancy Brill is also promoting it recently, and plans to launch it in Japan and North America at the same time. According to Nintendo’s royalty system, the production cost of future game cassettes will also increase. Daenerys Entertainment needs to take it personally.

Taken together, Daenerys Entertainment's total investment in a game has exceeded 200 million US dollars, and this does not include other aspects of Blizzard Studio's expenditures.

If it weren't for the fact that the quality of the two games is very good during several trials, Simon would definitely stop the project directly.

In recent months, he has been used as a "guinea pig" more than once for trial work. Seeing that Nancy brought another cassette that obviously won't change much, Simon shook his head and said: "There are only three weeks left. It’s released, can I still modify it now?”

"The first batch of 10 cassettes can't be changed, but the subsequent ones can be improved."

Simon gestured casually: "Actually, you should find the consumer group of this game to try it out, not me."

"Of course, the potential consumer groups in the age group of 8 to 22 are all within the scope of my test. Hey, you are 21 years old."

Simon interrupted: "How old are you?"

"It's really rude." Nancy gave Simon a blank look, got up and pushed the cassette towards Simon, and said, "Anyway, try again, I'm off work first."

Simon watched Nancy leave, put the game cassette in his briefcase, and left the office.

In the next few days, Simon was still busy with various projects, and the undercurrent in the US junk bond market became more and more turbulent.

Friday, January 10th.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, United Airlines held a press conference, announcing that the company was unable to repay a corporate bond of up to US$15 billion on time due to cash flow shortages. interests of investors.

Of course, the financial market would not believe the clichés that United Airlines ensured the interests of investors, so they rushed to sell the shares and bonds of United Airlines, which triggered a series of chain reactions.

The long-accumulated crisis in the U.S. junk bond market officially broke out.

Calculating carefully, compared with the sudden Black Monday in 1987, this Black Friday "little crash" has too many advance signs.

Since the first half of this year, the Drexel Securities Company, where the 'junk bond king' Michael Milken once belonged, has been in crisis.

This Wall Street financial giant, which has issued more than US$800 billion in junk bonds in the previous ten years, has been severely damaged by the various insider trading scandals involved with Milken, and many conglomerates who have been working closely with Drexel Securities Co., Ltd. It is no longer possible to obtain funds to support operations through repeated junk bond financing like drinking poison to quench thirst.

At the same time, after the 87 stock market crash, the market’s enthusiasm for investing in junk bonds has also dropped sharply, and the federal government’s supervision of junk bond financing has become more stringent in the past two years. All these factors are driving the final collapse of the junk bond market.

After the United Airlines announcement was released, in the last two hours of trading on Friday, the stock prices of a large number of companies in the North American stock market plummeted. The second largest single-day drop after the 217 points on the day of the Japanese stock market crash.

标普500指数也随着大盘的崩溃在随后两个小时内暴跌了32点，相比当天开盘时的286点，跌幅达到11%。直接触发了芝加哥商品交易所标普500指数期货10%的跌停限制。

As of the close of the day, the stock price of United Airlines in the center of the storm plummeted 21% within two hours, and the price of United Airlines bonds fell by 27%.

In addition, the stock and bond prices of many other institutions such as companies and banks that issued or held a large number of junk bonds also plummeted.

Drexel Securities Company was the first to bear the brunt. The stock price of the company, which has been falling continuously for the past six months, fell 19% in just two hours. The share price of Columbia Savings and Credit Bank, which has maintained a close cooperative relationship with Drexel Securities for a long time, also fell sharply by 16%. .

Gillette Holdings, American Newspaper Group, Integrated Resources Corporation, Uni-President Oil & Gas Corporation, and Reynolds Nabisco, which just set a record for leveraged buyout at the beginning of this year, and a long list of well-known American companies whose stock prices plummeted Countless investors were frightened.

Everyone felt that another stock market crash had come.

Well, this time it's Friday.

You have two days to discuss coping strategies.

However, compared to two years ago, the federal government's bailout measures this time are obviously not so strong. The United Airlines executives who originally thought that they could get emergency funds in such a crisis had just kindled their hopes, but they were rejected by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Statements that the federal government will not foot the bill for highly indebted businesses were doused.

At the same time, more negative news about the junk bond market broke out during the two days of the weekend.

The front page of The Wall Street Journal on Saturday was a comprehensive statistical report on the junk bond market.The article pointed out that in the past ten years, the comprehensive yield of investment in junk bonds has only increased by 145%, while the yield of North American stock markets has increased by as high as 207% over the same period.

Not only that, in the previous ten years, among the 100 randomly selected companies in North America that had issued junk bonds, 24 companies went bankrupt or were unable to meet their repayment obligations like United Airlines, which is five times that of other companies.

The article concludes that the theory of high-risk high-yield junk bonds that Michael Milken has been proclaiming for the past ten years is fundamentally wrong.

Therefore, junk bonds actually have no investment value, and many companies are only maintaining superficial prosperity with repeated financing similar to Ponzi schemes.United Airlines' default on its debt was just the beginning of a collapse in the junk bond market after a decade of prosperity.In the coming months, more businesses and institutions will be dragged down by a flood of worthless junk bonds.

In addition to the "Wall Street Journal"'s overall bearishness on the market level, many negative news about some targets that issue or hold a large number of junk bonds have also been exposed.

Drexel Securities was disclosed by the "New York Times" that the company's cash flow has dropped from US$15 billion at the beginning of the year to less than US$3 million. This Wall Street financial giant, which itself holds a large number of junk bonds and needs a high proportion of funds for turnover, may collapse at any time .