Simon left London the next day and the next stop was Helsinki.
The official schedule of this trip to Britain is basically settled, but there are two other small things, none of which is settled. It is the hot girls and Harry Potter that came to mind on the plane.
Not for the moment.
On Harry Potter, Simon searched the Facebook social network and other network platforms in the UK, but failed to find a woman named J.K. Rowling. Then he remembered that Western women often follow their husband's surname when they get married. Once J.K. Rowling was a single mother, this time is not necessarily.
And then change the way, mainly with J · K prefix search, and even some network literature community, still nothing.
We have to give up.
Finally, he decided to give it a try. During his next trip to Finland and Italy, Simon took the time to list the outline of the first Harry Potter series based on his memory, and wrote a synopsis of the story, which was passed to Los Angeles for them to find a shooter to write for him.
As for story inspiration.
Simon also used to say that he caught a glimpse of a wizard dressed up as a little boy with black glasses on the side of the road and spent a sketch of Harry Potter.
Of course, Simon doesn't intend to sign the story in the future. Considering the layout of the IP, he doesn't intend to give the shooter the right to sign. Instead, he gives a pseudonym, J.K.
Forget Rowling.
As for the future, all Simon can do is let it be.
Los Angeles.
When Simon was in Europe, it was April 18, another Friday.
The Easter schedule has come to an end, and several previous films are still going on.
Just in the past box office week, the new "hurricane rescue" starring Jett Lee once again won the box office champion in a single week. From March 28, it is the third week since its release. After the first week's success of $31.37 million, this action movie, which combines Chinese Kung Fu with Hollywood template, fell 43% in the next week, earned $17.88 million, and narrowed to 26% in the third week, then closed at $1 $3.21 million.
In three weeks, the cumulative box office of the $25 million budget film has reached $62.46 million. Even with the $10 million of publicity investment, it has basically recovered the cost.
Judging from the current trend, "hurricane rescue" has a box office potential of US $15 million to US $20 million. It is expected that the total domestic box office is expected to reach US $80 million.
Although it's hopeless to break through 100 million, even if Simon doesn't have too high expectations for the new hurricane rescue, the $80 million box office expectation has exceeded everyone's expectation.
The successive success of Jack Cheng and Jet Li in Hollywood has not only triggered a wave of Chinese kung fu movies among the audience, but also many Hollywood studios have turned their eyes to the other side of the ocean. Recently, many studios have begun to contact with them.
And then it turns out, it's still a little late.
This brings us to a Chinese Kungfu movie, young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey, which was released again by Denise entertainment last Friday.
Although the English name of the film has been translated into iron monkey, the wonderful display of Chinese Kung Fu has attracted a lot of attention under the upsurge of Hurricane rescue.
On April 11, "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey" opened with 1514 screens in North America. It was only the first week of its release, and once again made an unexpected $10.36 million at the box office.
In April, with a stand-alone, Chinese language movie theme of 1514 yuan, not much screen scale, the first week of 10.36 million US dollars, can be called a small miracle.
With this little miracle, "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey" even won the second place in the box office list.
In the same box office week, the leading characters of the top two films in the North American film market are all Chinese, which is a spectacle that has not appeared in many years.
With such a small start, the box office of "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey" in North America is expected to reach about 25 million US dollars, which seems not much. However, this old film produced in Hong Kong in 1993 was actually bought by danielis entertainment.
Even though last year's "rush hour" made Chinese Kung Fu attract a lot of attention again, most people used to look forward after all, instead of looking for old films.
Danielis entertainment is the opposite.
On the other hand, the collapse of Hong Kong films since last year has made many film companies in urgent need of funds, even if they want to be sold. As a result, daenerys entertainment released video tapes, including "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey" and so on, totaling more than 20 films with Omni channel copyright in North America. Daenerys entertainment only spent less than $10 million, with an average of less than $500000 per film.
Of course, in Hong Kong dollars, the average price of nearly 4 million Hong Kong dollars per unit is still considerable.Now, "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey" earns more than US $10 million a week. The producers of the film, such as Jiahe and Huanya, are not so "impressive" all of a sudden. The feeling of being trapped is worse than one of the producers of "black man" last year.
If more than 20 films are sold Not to mention all, even if only half of them have such market potential, it is also a blood loss.
I thought that Hollywood would never make a lot of money if we strictly guard against such a new project as police story 4. Unexpectedly, an old film that has been shown for so many years can still be sold in Hollywood.
At the same time, Hong Kong filmmakers, who were worried about the future because of the collapse of the Hong Kong film market, can't help but see a way out after the successive success of Hong Kong films in Hollywood. In addition, Hollywood's explorations can be called a hit and go.
After all, it's a cold time between Easter and summer. After "hurricane rescue" and "young Huang Feihong's Iron Monkey", the box office of "ghost of terror", which came in third, fell back to the range of 10 million dollars this week.
It was also the third week of release. After the $14.51 million cut by 51% in the next week, the box office of "ghost of terror" shrank by 32% in the three weeks, earning $9.86 million again, accumulating $53.91 million.
Considering the box office curve of the film, the total domestic box office of the film is expected to be between us $60 million and US $70 million, which is not as good as the expected US $80 million of Hurricane rescue. However, compared with the production cost of US $30 million, it used to be satisfactory.
Fourth on the list is alien 2.
In the fourth week of its release, the science fiction film with alien themes made another $8.16 million, with a cumulative box office of $71.55 million, easily surpassing the first one. Not only that, with the film's box office surplus at this time, it's not a big problem for the local government to break through 80 million. "Hurricane rescue" is only expected to reach 80 million, and "alien 2" is enough to easily break through the 80 million barrier and reach a higher level, so it will also become the most popular film in the Easter season, of course, the most popular one among the four films related to Denise entertainment.
However, in the fourth week, the box office of Kim Carey's comedy has fallen to 4.51 million US dollars, barely exceeding the box office of 4.19 million US dollars of BJ's single diary in the ninth week, with a cumulative box office of 52.5 million US dollars. It is expected that it will be difficult for the local people to break through 60 million US dollars.
Considering the production cost of 35 million US dollars and the publicity investment of 15 million US dollars, Denise entertainment obviously can't recover the cost from the local distribution and can only look forward to overseas distribution.
In addition to the top five, it's worth mentioning that BJ's single diary is the sixth.
With $4.19 million in box office revenue in the ninth week of release, the total box office of the love movie has reached $138.26 million. Although the box office of a single week is much less than that of "cable TV repairman", the box office curve of "BJ single diary" is very stable. Maybe it is not impossible to hit 150 million.
It's a pity that Denise entertainment executives review the whole Easter schedule.
Except for "BJ's single diary" on Valentine's day, none of the four movies featured in Easter season is worth more than 100 million yuan.
However, it is not surprising that four films have been released at the same time.
Let's say that alien 2, whose performance exceeded expectations, would have been very easy if it hadn't been hit by the combination of Hurricane rescue and ghost of terror that Easter week. However, the cake of the film market is so big that if you take more, others will be less.
Therefore, the internal friction between the four films in this Easter season is obvious.
Of course, considering the stimulation of the four films together, because many audiences are attracted to enter the cinema, the increase in the box office is also worth it. If there were no four films of danielis entertainment, not to mention the extra share, they would be eaten up by other studios' films. Moreover, the box office of the Easter season for two consecutive weeks may not exceed 100 million a week, or even reach a high of 130 million US dollars in the Easter week, which is comparable to that of the summer vacation and the end of the year.
All in all, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Daniels studios.
Near the end of the week, Amy Pascal held a summing up meeting with the directors of several of her studios, returned to her office again, and began to ask her assistant Vanessa Linde about her work.
It's mainly a few things that my boss recently told me.
For example, the idea of a love film called "my best friend's wedding", the negotiation between husoni and Japan's Dongbao on the copyright of "Godzilla", and the fantasy novel named "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone" just obtained yesterday.
"Ronald buss has accepted the screenwriting job. In addition, I transferred the story idea to Julia. ICM has no response for the time being. As for Godzilla, Dongbao's attitude is a little vague. "
"I don't want to hear that ambiguity."
"I'm sorry, Amy, but it's obvious that according to the information we got, Sony was going to have an agreement with Dongbao. Now, let's step in and use the appeal of Denise entertainment in Hollywood. As long as the Japanese are not stupid, they will know who to cooperate with. However, they should be waiting for our offer now. "Amy thought about it a little bit and understood: "Dongbao wants to participate in the investment?"
"Yes," said Vanessa Linde, who has been with Amy all these years. "According to the information we got, the cooperation between Dongbao and Sony originally did not intend to invest, but only enjoyed a certain profit share. Now danielis entertainment wants to take over. In the eyes of the Japanese, the box office will be quite secure, so it will not miss investment opportunities. "
"In that case..." Amy pondered again for a moment and said, "let our copyright team keep in touch with Dongbao. However, let's wait for the other side to take the initiative."
Vanessa nodded, and she also thought that, since the Japanese mind has been determined, there is no need to lose more initiative and let them put forward their own conditions. Only then can Denise entertainment bargain better. After that, Vanessa handed over a folder: "also, here are some writers who are good at children's fantasy novels."
Amy took the information, opened it and said, "you can get off work first. I'll leave after reading these."
Vanessa nodded and said, "actually, Amy, you don't have to be so tired now. Besides, with the baby, it doesn't matter to leave work early."
Amy knew that Vanessa was concerned about herself and laughed, but she didn't explain anything.
In short, there are two types of executives in big Hollywood studios, one is good at creativity, the other is good at management.
At the beginning, Michael Eisner was very good at creativity. He even added the title of chief creative officer to himself when he was in charge of Disney. He also served as the host of a program on Disney Channel.
As for those who are good at management, they are usually lawyers or accountants. Take Disney as an example. Frank wells, Eisner's first deputy, was a lawyer. While Eisner was in charge of Disney's general direction, wells helped to manage various administrative affairs. In the past 80 years, they cooperated with each other by tacit understanding and quickly brought Disney to life.
If it wasn't for Simon, Disney would still shine in the 1990s.
Although she started as an assistant at the beginning, with her later transition to producer, Amy thinks she should have been a creative executive. Unfortunately Well, of course, it's not a pity here. With the rapid development of danielis entertainment, and her inspirational boss, Amy can only concentrate on management now.
Frankly speaking, on the current scale of danielis entertainment, she is actually a little bit incompetent. Therefore, Amy has no complaints about the flat architecture design that her boss decentralized her power to Nancy Brill, Robert egger and even the respective directors of the three studios.
But also dare not slack off.
After all, along the way with her boss, Amy is very clear that she can still stay in this position at this time, mainly because of the love accumulated over the years, not because of her ability. Therefore, she also puts herself in a good position to do what she can.
One of the most important things is to do as well as possible what Simon himself told him.
Just like the script of my best friend's wedding, the copyright of Godzilla, and the novel creativity about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone, with Amy's accumulated experience over the years, these things seem to be insignificant, but often later, they will become the core of Daniels' entertainment.
The most typical is the DC movie universe.
At the beginning, she was responsible for the copyright of DC superheroes and talked about it one by one.
Therefore, even if the greatest credit will be given to her boss, she is still indispensable.
As a matter of fact, with her accumulated wealth, she can retire immediately and live a rich life. However, few of the people who have reached the top of the pyramid can really let go.