Hollywood Hunter

Just after Scarlett Johansson confronted Li Youhu briefly, Vanessa Johansson, who was tall and curvy in a silver low-cut dress, came over, hugged Simon gently, and took the other arm of the man, Seeing her younger sister still looking angry, like coaxing a child, she casually pointed to the side: "Scarlett, don't make trouble here, go play over there."

Scarlett saw her sister treating herself like a child, especially the smile on the corner of someone's mouth, she was about to cry, and she tried her best not to throw the juice in her hand on her sister's face. She was envious of the dress, but she didn't know what to do for a moment, she screamed, turned and ran away.

Simon, who was on the sidelines the whole time, only found it interesting.

I was so excited at the beginning, thinking about what would happen if the sister of the Johnson family became famous this time.

Although the younger sister is still more famous at the moment, Vanessa's "Clash of Heaven and Earth" will not be released until the end of the year. However, Simon deliberately showed a little preference, which was quite funny. And Vanessa, whose background is much better than the delicate little Scarlett, was raised by Simon for two years, and she is now more and more radiant.

After a brief interlude, Simon continued to socialize with the crowd with the two goblins, and finally sat down with Amy Pascal, Danny Morris, Nancy Brill and several other Daenerys entertainment executives Chat on a cliffside patio sofa overlooking Los Angeles.

Even though following Simon has created enough miracles over the years, Amy Pascal still felt a little unreal about Daenerys Entertainment’s sweeping attitude in this summer, so she inevitably asked her boss half-jokingly, what is all this now? How exactly?

As a rule, it is impossible for Simon to give an accurate answer.

However, if you have to say another reason, in Simon's view, the key is that Hollywood is actually a big workshop.

When outsiders look at Hollywood, they tend to look up, so all kinds of "Hollywood film industry" and "perfect film production system" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

In fact, if you know enough about this circle, you will find that Hollywood is far less high-end than the outside world imagines.

The most critical point is that Hollywood, no matter it was, is, or will be in the future, is a system ruled by men.

People make things happen.

The result is that with the right people, a studio can prosper very quickly. On the contrary, if you find the wrong people, just like Sony took over Columbia in the first few years, the result is disastrous.

This is one aspect.

On the other hand, the reason why it is said to be a "big studio" rather than a "film industry" is that another key evidence lies in the extremely low risk resistance ability of major studios.

If it is really the so-called perfect film industry, the success or failure of one or two film projects will not affect the entire industrial system. In fact, the major Hollywood studios have more than once appeared due to the failure of one or two film projects. The phenomenon of failure almost leading to bankruptcy.

Because these seemingly beautiful big studios are actually big workshops.

Concentrate on betting on a big project, if it fails, the whole workshop will be close to collapse, and the next step is to find investors to inject capital, continue to save for the next project, and try again.

Originally, the big studios in Hollywood were actually on the same level.

It's all about luck.

Film investment is a gamble.

Therefore, in the previous timeline, until Dibao and Warner, which had a stable superhero series, stood side by side, making other workshops gradually sluggish, the pattern of Hollywood did not change significantly.

This time, Simon, the anomaly, broke the balance of Hollywood twenty years in advance.

Because Simon doesn't rely on luck.

Just because it is not luck, and he knows that he has a high possibility of success, Simon can make more advances in certain fields, such as 3D animation, such as CG special effects, which further expands the super power of Daenerys Entertainment. The gap between the workshop and other studios.

It's finally here.

Just like Daenerys Entertainment produced special effects blockbusters such as the DC Movie Universe series or the "Jurassic Park" series, why didn't other studios follow suit, and why did they still stick to the old Hollywood action movies?

Because I can't keep up.

Many people have the impression that special effects are a very common thing in Hollywood, but they are not.

In the timeline, after the rise of Hollywood cg special effects, the real special effects giants, Industrial Light and Magic deserved it, Peter Jackson's Weta Digital is another one, and finally, James Cameron's Lightstorm Studio, can only Count half.

Others can only be called cg studios, not special effects giants.

Just like there are many people who know kung fu, but it is definitely not just one that can be used as an action guide.

These are two different things.

Therefore, Hollywood's top special effects movies actually come from those few, and the cg special effects results of other studios... Well, the simplest comparison, Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe series, the special effects are basically taken over by Lucas The industrial light and magic studio after the film industry is in charge, and then, look at the special effects of the "Avengers" series, and then look at the special effects of DC's "Justice League" next door.

Why do DC's superhero movies always have so many night scenes? It's dark and dusty, even like a game cg?

To save money?

This is the most common statement.

However, is Batman vs. Justice League low-budget?

not low

.

Well, the result could be another one.

It's not that I don't want to do it, but that I can't do it.

So again, the special effects studio is a special effects studio, and the cg studio is a cg studio. It doesn't mean that you can make top-notch special effects if you know cg, just like you can't become an action director if you know kung fu.

Let's talk about Hollywood today.

The reality is that even if Daenerys Entertainment has opened up the maya series of special effects software, until now, only Daenerys Entertainment has been able to produce top special effects such as the DC Movie Universe and the "Jurassic Park" series. If the studio wants to follow up, first of all, can they make up their minds to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the team to practice, and secondly, even if they can afford such a sum of money, what are the chances of success?

The result is now.

And the root cause of all this goes back to Simon's previous conclusion that Hollywood is not a film industrialization at all. In the final analysis, it is still a big workshop. The reason why Hollywood was able to conquer the world was not because of the industrialization of movies, but because it took advantage of the trend of globalization after the end of the Cold War.

After all, going forward, it is very obvious that Hollywood movies have developed for more than half a century since the end of the 19th century. Why did they not attack the world before, but only started in the 1990s?

All in all, it is difficult to subvert a sound industrial system.

However, for a person like Simon who can see the results of most investment bets, it is much, much easier to destroy the big workshops that are actually quite primitive.

After the weekend, the time came to August 3rd.

on Monday.

Chen Qing returned from China that day, and brought Cheng Taixi along.

Last time, Simon invited Cheng Tae-hee to play in North America after the release of the summer film, and the woman came with Chen Qing until now.

At the same time, it is considered to have handed in a pretty good report card.

Needless to say, "Rose Flower and Red Lotus" has basically been settled. This movie adapted from a Korean folk tale has been released in June. As expected, the number of viewers in Seoul has successfully exceeded one million, and the number of viewers in Korea is about 3 million. The number of movie viewers has accumulated a box office of about 10 billion won.

Although the total cost of 4 billion won for the 3 billion production and 1 billion publicity made the project suffer a little loss in the theater stage, but the follow-up channels can easily achieve profitability.

Then there is "Girls' High School Strange Talk", which will be released on July 10.

The production cost of this original campus horror film is only one-third of that of "Rose Flower and Red Lotus". After its release, the performance has been better than many people's expectations. It has won 193,000 moviegoers in the Seoul area in the first week of its opening. By the end of July According to statistics, the number of moviegoers in Seoul, South Korea has exceeded 500,000. It is estimated that the number of moviegoers in Seoul will be around 700,000, and the number of moviegoers in Korea may reach more than 2 million.

This means a box office of around 7 billion won.

Even if the current box office share in South Korea is relatively low, only about 37%, the showbox team can recover about 2.6 billion won in share, and the net profit in the theater stage alone exceeds 1 billion won.

Anyway, it's a good start.

Therefore, Simon also considered whether to make a Hollywood version of "Girls Tale".

After all, South Korea is just a small plate. Although it has entered August, Simon is still focusing more on Hollywood.

After the opening of the film on July 29, relying on excellent word-of-mouth and spare no efforts in publicity and promotion in the early stage, "Hero" finally reached a box office of 32.16 million US dollars in the first week in North America, which was expected.

After the results were released, Zhang Guoshi returned to China contentedly, and began preparations for the long-suffering "Chu Han" trilogy.

When everyone thought that "Hero" was the perfect ending of Daenerys Entertainment's summer vacation, on August 7, Steven Soderbergh, who had attracted much attention with "Sex, Lies and Videotape" and had been silent for many years Ge quietly launched a "Magic Mike", quite unexpectedly once again gave many people a big surprise.

For this low-cost film with a production cost of only $7 million, even inside Daenerys Entertainment, many people did not pay much attention to it.

If the deadline for the summer file is set at the end of August, this is actually not the last movie of Daenerys Entertainment's summer file. After all, with the release frequency of Daenerys Entertainment, 52 weeks a year is definitely more than the average. A new movie every week.

And, at first glance, the plot of "Magic Mike" is not at all exciting.

Mike, a down-and-out construction worker, got into the gigolo circle by accident, and then became addicted, fell, and finally woke up.

It's such a cheesy plot.

Even with the schedule determined by Simon himself, the New World Pictures team only gave 1,635 yuan for the opening screen in the first week, and all aspects of announcements were also quite satisfactory.

Not even a premiere.

After the film was released, the only bright spot was probably only a comprehensive media score of 7.9 points, but this is definitely not the reason why the film became a dark horse at the box office. After all, a film with a score of 7.9 is barely considered excellent, but this summer is also a catch. a lot.

However, it just exploded.

In the first three days of the weekend, "Magic Mike" made many people unexpectedly earn 15.46 million U.S. dollars. Compared with the 1635 opening screens, this is already close to the level of breaking 10,000 for the museum.

Outstanding.

Then, in the first week, this small film with a production cost of only 7 million U.S. dollars finally reached 2,732 at the seven-day box office.

million dollars, directly becoming another dark horse at the box office in the summer of 1998.

Different from another PG-rated "High School Musical", this R-rated musical film's first week data is worth mentioning, that is, the three-day box office in the first weekend accounted for only 56% of the full first week, far lower than The 60% to 70% level of most films on weekends indirectly shows that the popularity of the film has been rising in the first week of filming, so that many people go to watch this film on weekdays.

It doesn't make sense.

Frankly speaking, Simon himself is not sure why the audience likes this movie?

Gigolo?

forget it.

scale?

Two years ago, Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls" was called the standard.

music?

Actually not brilliant.

Steve Soderbergh?

Many people have almost forgotten "Sex, Lies and Videotape". After all, this film did not win the Palme d'Or in this time and space, so Soderbergh did not win the title of Hollywood Golden Boy.

In short, it just doesn't make sense.

And this unreasonable small film with a production cost of 7 million yuan, with an unreasonable box office of 27.32 million U.S. dollars, unexpectedly won a weekly box office championship at the end of the summer vacation that was gradually turning cold in early August. This movie has attracted more people's attention.

In any case, one thing can be confirmed, there will definitely be a large number of similar films following suit.

On the other hand, while "Magic Mike" was upset, "Hero" maintained a fairly stable trend, with a 34% drop in the next week. For a Chinese film, it was quite satisfactory, and it received another 21.23 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office reached 53.39 million As a result, the total North American box office is expected to lean towards the latter range of the previous forecast of 60 million to 80 million.

In addition to movies, another thing that attracted Simon's attention during this period came from China.

On August 11, 1998, the Chinese authorities issued the "Notice on Further Deepening Urban Housing System Reform and Accelerating Housing Construction", announcing that China has begun a comprehensive and thorough housing commercialization reform.

The layout has been started a few years in advance, and it is inevitable that Simon is still a little emotional after waiting for this day.

Because such a document will not only affect the development trend of China's economy in the next 20 years, it can be said that it will actually affect a whole generation of Chinese people. As for whether the result is good or bad, maybe a generation cannot judge, and we can only wait for a longer historical scale to look back and examine.

【Wanben Station】Official website: www.wanben.org