Chapter 586

December 24, Christmas Eve.

On this day, "steel bone" officially landed in North American Theaters, with 3106 screens.

The strength of DC film universe has been confirmed by five consecutive films, so "steel bone" almost dominates the schedule. The other three films released on the same day are all small-scale spot projects with only a few or dozens of screens.

Christmas Eve is a time for westerners to get together. It's not usually the best time to start a movie.

However, under the promotion of Warner Brothers, a large number of fans still regard watching "steel bone" as a kind of festival celebration, and choose to enter the cinema for the first time.

Compared with DC superheroes such as Superman, Batman and wonder woman with a long history, steely was born in 1980 and is still black, with obvious disadvantages. If we start this project alone, Warner will not have any confidence. Fortunately, this is a continuation of the cross fusion of DC movie universe. The plot of the story is close to Superman, which is the Summer Edition. It is a link between the past and the future. Therefore, it largely offsets the disadvantages of the protagonist in terms of popularity and race.

Especially the movie word of mouth.

The special effects of the film once again adopts many new technologies, which makes the steel effect more brilliant than the robot in terminator. The plot of the film is also polished repeatedly. Although it is not amazing, it is also completed in one go. It not only tells the origin of the superhero steel, but also lays a sufficient foreshadowing for the follow-up development of the DC movie universe. In addition, the black masters are also involved Due to the need to maintain political correctness, the comprehensive media score of "steel bone" after the lifting of the word-of-mouth ban reached 9.1, which is completely excellent.

In the end, the reason for Christmas Eve, Warner Bros. marketing, after all, is not equal to the Western deep-rooted festival tradition. The box office of "steel bone" was only 14.16 million US dollars on the first day of large-scale painting, which ranked the bottom in the DC film universe project.

Before the media could play up the film's failure, the box office of the film soared 39% on the following Saturday, earning $19.73 million.

The following Sunday, the box office of "steel bone" also reached $17.37 million.

At the end of the first weekend, "steel bone" grossed $51.26 million in three days, surpassing the $49.31 million in the first weekend of "flash" two years ago.

Although it is still the second from the bottom among the six DC movies, Warner's reference to "steel" is just "flash". The film publicity team's box office expectations for "steel bone" are only as high as those for "flash.". Now, this superhero movie with many disadvantages has a tendency to surpass the old popular superhero flash under the blessing of DC movie universe aura, which makes Warner overjoyed.

After the first weekend, from December 24 to December 30, "steel bone" grossed $76.21 million in the first seven days of the first week, reaching the top of the box office in a single week.

With the addition of "steel bone", the total box office volume of the last full box office week in 1993 soared to $193 million. However, the strong "steel bone" inevitably suppressed other films in the same period.

Under the impact of the release of steel, the box office of lion king, the most popular movie at the end of the year and the most suitable movie for the whole family, failed to reverse its decline again in the Christmas week. However, the film's decline this week was only a paltry 3%, with another $27.61 million. The cumulative box office of the movie in six weeks was $237.29 million.

Mission impossible, which ranked third in the list, didn't have such good luck. Its box office fell 19% in the week of Christmas, earning US $20.52 million and accumulating US $143.73 million.

In the same period, other films have different ups and downs, but they can't compare with the top three films on the list.

On December 31, the last day of 1993, another box office week opened.

In order to avoid the edge of "steel bone", fox's science fiction thriller "mechanical ghost" chose to be released this week, with 1031 screens, probably with a certain mentality of trying to pick up the leak. What if "steel bone" fails at the box office? What if the movie goes dark?

After all, there are not so many accidents in this world.

The box office of $730000 on the first day also confirmed that "mechanical ghost" is just the cannon fodder at the end of this year's schedule.

The new year's day on January 1 happens to be a Saturday. During the box office week from December 31 to January 6, the box office of many films did not fall sharply after the previous holidays.

The box office of steel bone, which was released in the second week, dropped only 26% in the next week, and closed at US $56.39 million. The cumulative box office in the two weeks was US $132.6 million. Whether the total box office of the film in North America can hit US $300 million still depends on the follow-up trend, which is more than US $253 million of the original box office of flash.

The phenomenal 3D animation movie "Lion King" still ranks second.

In the seventh week, the box office dropped only 33% and continued to earn $18.36 million, reaching $255.65 million, less than $45 million from the 300 million mark.The box office of mission impossible, one of the big three, fell by 36% this week, which is the one with a deeper decline in the box office. The box office revenue in a single week was US $13.1 million, and the cumulative box office rose to US $156.83 million.

Although the decline was deeper, the overall box office trend of mission impossible still broke through the haze caused by the initial attack of the lion king. The domestic box office in North America is expected to be about 180 million US dollars. According to the accounting proportion of about 55%, it is enough for Denise and paramount to recover the total production and publicity investment of 100 million US dollars only relying on the North American box office Basically, the box office receipts of foreign companies can be counted as profits.

Even if it can't be compared with DC movie universe project, Jurassic Park and Lion King, paramount is satisfied with the market performance of mission impossible, and the sequel of the series is officially launched recently.

Simon returned to work on January 3 after new year's day, and Janet flew to New York on the first working day after new year's day, leaving only the female assistant to take care of three children at domay point manor.

Veronica flew to Australia during Christmas and brought Melbourne back to North America after the festival.

After Janet gave birth to Nicholas, Veronica mentioned that she would let go of her work again, but Simon and his wife got around together. Meanwhile, Janet added a burden to supervise black rock asset management company.

Among the three core subsidiaries of cersei capital, the investment strategy of black rock asset management company is the most conservative. It can't bear the huge amount of capital that the company has. At present, the total assets of the company have reached 170 billion US dollars. Once there is a problem, it will inevitably involve the whole Westeros system.

In order to avoid the hindrance of limited personal energy to the rapid expansion of the westero system, Simon and his wife have been devolving power to the management as much as possible. On the other hand, the supervision of the financial, personnel and legal aspects of the subsidiaries in the system has also been continuously strengthened.

Veronica is undoubtedly one of the Simon couple's most trusted people, and just right for the job.

At the beginning of the new year, Denise Entertainment's first large-scale commercial move was to take the remaining half of the shares of USA TV network from the Canadian sigram group.

After the successful acquisition of paramount communications in October last year, due to the restrictions of relevant federal regulations, sigram group, as a foreign investor, can not continue to hold the USA TV network and can only choose to sell it.

At the beginning, USA TV network was jointly owned by Paramount communications and MCA, and both sides held 50% of the shares. Danilisi entertainment merged MCA, half of its former shares also fell into danilisi Entertainment's hands, and Simon also got the absolute control of USA TV network.

In recent years, the USA TV network has developed rapidly through such popular programs as the reality TV series of wife and desperate housewives. In less than three years, the number of subscribers has increased from 21 million to 43 million, and the annual revenue has increased from 60 million to 330 million in 1993.

The net profit of the TV network in 1993 is estimated to be about 40 million US dollars.

If it were not for the restrictions of federal media regulations, sigram group would not agree to get rid of such a basic cable network which is still growing rapidly.

As a major shareholder, although Denise entertainment has the priority to buy the other half of the shares of USA, it is unrealistic to take over the shares at a low price after other federal media groups have expressed interest in the shares.

After more than two months of negotiation, sigram group finally agreed to transfer its shares in USA TV network at a price of US $700 million in cash. Based on the profit scale in 1993, it is equivalent to a price earnings ratio of 35 times. Although the price is not unreasonable, it is also very expensive.

Even so, if it wasn't for the success of mission impossible that sigram realized that he needed to maintain a good relationship with danielis entertainment, the agreement might have to continue to wrangle for some time.

Danelis entertainment announced the group's second major move in mid January, restructuring its game business.

After four years as a shareholder in EA and two years as a wholly-owned acquisition, the development of this company is not bad. Combined with Blizzard studio, which used to be the main console game business of danilisi entertainment, danilisi Entertainment's video game business has a preliminary annual revenue of US $1.16 billion in 1993, and its net profit is expected to be about US $230 million, which is about one tenth of the group's annual net profit.

The total output value of the global video game market in 1993 was about 13 billion US dollars.

Danielis entertainment video game division's revenue accounts for nearly 9% of the global total revenue of games. If it is any other company, it is very rare to have such achievements in just a few years, but it can't satisfy Simon.

The most typical point is that for several years in a row, the game business department has launched a series of blockbuster PC and console games, but there is no such super popular product as Ninja tortoise. In recent years, the popularity of Ninja tortoise sequels has inevitably declined.

With the development of danielis entertainment, the core film business has reached the acme. The growth point in the future is TV on the one hand and games on the other.Simon's music business will be in decline in the next 20 to 30 years, but games are different.

At the present stage, the total output value of games on various platforms is already comparable to the global box office scale. In Simon's memory, this number will increase tenfold in the next 20 to 30 years, reaching the level of 100 billion.

According to the current development status of danilisi's entertainment and game business, ten years and twenty years later, as long as it can still maintain the current market share, it will still be a giant in the industry.

No company can be prosperous forever, Simon will not be blindly optimistic because of his current achievements, and he also expects the group's game business to go further.

To achieve this, it is necessary to reorganize the existing game business.

Because Simon and Tripp Hawkins, the head of the group's game business, have serious differences in business philosophy.

According to the group's management structure, the game business is in the charge of Nancy Brill, and Tripp Hawkins, the former founder, chairman and CEO of EA, normally only needs to report to Nancy.

After Nancy's successful development of Denise's entertainment and game business, her focus in the past two years has shifted to Blockbuster Entertainment and Denise's entertainment peripheral product business, which has become more and more prosperous with DC movie universe, Jurassic Park, toy story, lion king and other blockbuster projects, which inevitably leads to neglect of the management of the game business department.

On the one hand, Tripp Hawkins' business philosophy for EA is to produce the best quality games, which is probably the principle that any game company adheres to. On the other hand, it is to strictly control the game production and avoid uncontrollable risks in the game development process as far as possible.

It was this latter point that Simon could not recognize.

Video games, like movies, music and books, belong to the same creative industry. Creativity is very important for any successful game.

Tripp Hawkins strictly controls the dominant power of the game and develops the game with the pure commodity orientation, which directly damages the creativity of the game development team.

In the original time and space, although it has long maintained its position as a giant in the industry, EA always interferes with the game development of its studios excessively because of the business philosophy inherited from the founder of Tripp Hawkins. As a result, many excellent studios gradually die out after being acquired by EA, leaving users with only a sequel that is more and more inclined to commercialization.

As a result, EA is also known as the "industry cancer".

In contrast, Blizzard Entertainment, which attaches great importance to the quality of games, although it can count the total number of games developed over the past few decades, because of its continuous improvement in the quality of games, it has been recognized by a large number of users, but the market value of this company, which produces a small number of games, is higher than EA, which has a large number of game categories.

Simon has always attached great importance to the budget control of danilisi Entertainment's film projects. However, if he wants to make a choice between the film quality and the budget schedule, Simon usually chooses the former. In the end, he is a person who pays more attention to the film quality.

Because of this, Denise entertainment will cooperate with James Cameron, the habitual cost overrun criminal. Some projects of DC movie universe, two animated films of Pixar, and many other projects of Denise entertainment are actually cost overruns compared with the initial expectation.

The mediocre film quality can also be made up by publicity and the company's own channel advantages.

Once the quality of the game is unsatisfactory, there will not be many users to buy and consume. Therefore, the quality of the game is more important than the film in Simon's view.

As a result, under Simon's personal leadership, EA founder Tripp Hawkins left the company after receiving a generous compensation. The new danilisi entertainment and game business department was in the charge of former EA president Larry Probst, and still paid back to Nancy Brill.

After the reorganization, the EA production department and the distribution team were separated, and the production team directly under EA was reorganized into a studio mode with strong independence.

In the future, EA team will be mainly responsible for the game distribution of PC, mainframe and other platforms. For its studios, the management team only has the power to supervise personnel, finance and other aspects, and the creative dominance will be delegated to the directors of each studio as far as possible.

Simon's new operation concept is that EA only needs boutiques.

The creative team can overspend, jump tickets, push over and start over, or even cancel the unsatisfactory works. In the end, it only needs to take out the boutique games.

Of course, freedom has always been limited.

The creative team must be responsible for all their actions.

Simon can tolerate failure, but not successive failures. If it is due to other reasons, it will also be punished.

Completed the reorganization of the game department, Simon also personally finalized the acquisition plan of several game studios.

One of the most important is a studio called "Silicon and neural bond" from Los Angeles. This studio has only been established for two years, and its achievements are not outstanding. However, Simon's focus is on a real-time strategy game that the other party is developing recently. The game name is Warcraft.