After Simon's birthday, the second week of the 2000 Valentine's Day schedule also ended soon. Through the trend of the next week, the local box office size of Daenerys's three films during the same period was basically determined.

First, "Hug Dawn" starring Meg Ryan counterattacked and became the top of the list, with a drop of only 19% in the second week, and a $29.46 million cumulative box office of $65.91 million. According to the film's next week data, this romantic film will not only easily break the $100 million mark in the future, but will also have the energy to sprint towards a higher 150 million yuan box office club. In the end, the top ten of the year will not be impossible.

With such an excellent box office trend, Daenerys has also taken the opportunity to increase the follow-up promotion of this movie. While planning to win more box offices in the local area, it is also striving for good results overseas.

Next is "I'm crazy for Mary".

With the strong promotion of Daenerys Entertainment, "I'm Crazy for Mary" won $39.12 million in the first week, but compared with "Hug Dawn", the vulgar comedy has obviously insufficient momentum. Valentine's Day week passed, and the next week fell 37%, earning $24.65 million, with a cumulative box office of $63.37 million.

It's no problem to break 100 million, but it's definitely not as good as "Hug Dawn".

This actually once again shows the uncertainty of the film industry like gambling. What Simon has done over the years is to adjust the winning rate of the film produced by Daenerys in this "gambling game", but it is impossible to 100%.

"The Bride of Paris", which is also a romance film, hit third this week, closing in at another $10.57 million with a 36% drop.

However, because the box office of the first week was only 16.53 million US dollars, in two weeks, Julia Roberts, who is also a romance film, had a cumulative box office of the new film, which was only 27.1 million US dollars in two weeks, which was not as good as the first week of "Hugging Dawn".

The estimated total local box office of about US$40 million is not too much of a failure, compared with the production cost of US$35 million, considering the overseas and subsequent production, it is not a big failure, but it has nothing to do with success.

Next is Shangge Yundon's "The Back-Strike", which dropped from third to fourth.

In the third week of release from February 18 to February 24, "The Last-Online" fell by 51%, which was a popcorn action movie on the assembly line. It was obvious that the momentum had passed, earning 9.27 million US dollars in a single week, falling within the tens of millions range, with a cumulative box office of 55.03 million US dollars, and the total local box office is expected to be around 70 million US dollars.

Considering the production cost of the film of $25 million, the box office in North America alone reached 70 million, which is also a considerable result.

After Valentine's Day, in addition to some off-season new films, the next film market is mainly the Valentine's Day sequel and the awards season films that are still ongoing.

The Golden Globes have passed, and the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony this year is March 26. It is coincidentally the same as Russia on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean determined to hold the presidential election in advance after Yeltsin resigned.

"Chicago", which Daenerys mainly plays, started painting on December 24 the previous year. As of the week just past February 18 to February 24, it earned another $6.31 million, and the cumulative box office has successfully exceeded the $200 million mark, reaching $221.46 million.

From the Golden Globes to the results of a series of recent association awards, Chicago has basically secured the position of the big winner in this year's awards season. Therefore, until the Oscars' ceremony, the rebound that the Oscars are expected to bring, and the subsequent long-term results are expected to earn about 50 million, pushing the total local box office to US$270 million.

Although there is still no hope that the first local 300 million was expected, the cost of 45 million US dollars was only 270 million. As a musical and dance film, it can be regarded as a box office miracle.

Since we talk about "Chicago", there are also a series of films in the end of the 1999 year, "Cyborg 2", "Lord of the Rings: The Rings Messenger", etc., which have entered the final stage.

Among them, "Cylinder 2" and "Lord of the Rings: The Rings Messenger" have basically the same box office size.

The former was originally the seed of 400 million box office expected by many people, but unfortunately the competition during the schedule is too fierce. According to the box office trend that has recently fallen to less than 100,000 US dollars, the local box office is basically determined to be 346 million US dollars.

Unlike "Cylinder 2" which began to end in the previous year's Thanksgiving Period, "Lord of the Rings: The Rings Messenger" was released in the Christmas season. The most recent week from February 18 to February 24, the weekly income was still 5.16 million US dollars, with a cumulative box office of US$329.73 million.

Because of the popular attributes of the film, the recent decline has remained at about 20%, and it is not a problem to continue to slowly earn 15 million to 20 million in the future. Therefore, the total box office will be between 345 million and 350 million US dollars, which is at most 20 million and 3 million from "Cylinder 2". It is still uncertain who is higher and who is lower.

As for "Racing", "Brave Game 2", "007 Casino Royale", "Genius Ripley", etc., the final box office landing point is basically consistent with the predictions behind the end of the 1999 period at the beginning of the year.

In addition to the movie, February is about to pass, and there are two things that will attract Simon's attention.

The first one is in Eastern Europe, and the Second Chechnya War ended.

About one month ahead of the Russian presidential election. On February 23, the day after Simon's birthday, Russia officially announced the withdrawal of troops from Chechnya and handed over the management of the Chechnya region to local pro-Russian armed forces.

From a political perspective, this is a very good time node.

Compared with the dust of the First Chechen War, the second Chechen War, which was steadily fought in September last year, lasting for half a year, was smooth sailing when someone fought steadily with the support of Yeltsin's delegating power.

Withdrawal at this time not only avoided the continued pressure on Russian finances by the war, but also resolved the public's concerns that the war might last and bring a large number of casualties. It can be said that a mature political fruit was perfectly picked, and the gain brought by the person was enough to easily win the general election in March.

However, the fact is that for Russia, the Chechnya issue has not been fundamentally resolved.

The most direct impact was a series of terrorist activities such as the "Beslan hostage incident" created by Chechen anti-government forces in Russia for many years.

Of course, even if it is not perfect, this decision is undoubtedly the best choice for someone.

This is also what Simon admires most. For the sake of the overall situation, he is willing to make choices, know how to balance and tolerate coexistence. This is actually a necessary quality for an excellent politician.

Politics really cannot go to extremes, especially among major powers.

Ordinary people will avenge their enemies, at most they will only have several corpses buried, and blood will splash five steps. When the extremes of the great powers will be, the result will be blood flowing and the world will be covered with mourning.

Another thing is that on March 25, Simon formed the new SpaceX company on the East Coast of the United States, on the Florida Kennedy Space Center, tested the first heavy rocket, and the Falcon 9 was still in accordance with the previous naming rules.

It took less than two years to launch SpaceX's Falcon 1 in one-time on April 16, 1998, and the progress far exceeded that of SpaceX in the original space-time.

As for the reason, the main reason is that this time the SpaceX team is still in the stage of integrating existing technologies. Therefore, whether it is the previous Falcon 1 or the Falcon 9 this time, it is actually different from the Falcon series of SpaceX in history.

Simon flew to Florida in person to watch the launch.

Because this time's significance is very special, before that, SpaceX's Falcon 1 has launched 17 times in the past two years, with only 2 failures. At the same time, the SpaceX team has been quietly conducting rocket recovery tests and reusing launches.

Of the 17 launches of Falcon 1, 7 recovery was successfully achieved and 6 relaunched, and one rocket was reused twice.

This time, the brand-new Falcon 9 will also undergo recycling tests during its first launch.

In addition, an Igrit Company imaging satellite will be sent into space.

However, this is just a sidetrack.

After all, it is the first time, and only Igret is willing to take risks to cooperate. Moreover, the new Falcon 9 design has a load capacity of 30 tons. This satellite of Igret weighs less than two tons. Regardless of success or failure, both parties can bear the risks, not to mention that there is an insurance company underwriting.

Although the insurance premium has doubled, it is understandable.

Again, one-time success.

The satellite successfully entered orbit, and the planned recycling of the first-stage engine and two first-stage boosters successfully landed at the scheduled location, and the launch site was full of joy.

The outside world has been curious about SpaceX's recycling test in the past two years. Simon has always suppressed it and has not exposed it too much. This time, he no longer concealed it. After the successful launch, videos, pictures and related news releases were logged into major media platforms as soon as possible, and soon became the focus of public attention.

Simon did this to give SpaceX team enough glory and encouragement.

However, for Simon personally, this is far from satisfactory. After all, the new Falcon 9 has a load capacity of 30 tons, with a load capacity of more than 120 tons compared to the legendary Saturn 5. Even though it has huge advantages in cost, the gap in technical parameters is still very obvious.

What's more, what Simon wants to see most is the development of a new generation of space shuttles that has quietly started. And, in the first phase, another moon landing is completed.

In comparison, SpaceX's recycling rockets can only be regarded as auxiliary.

Simon's requirement is to integrate existing technologies to the extreme and compress costs to the extreme so as to maximize the auxiliary functions that rocket products should have.

In addition, the most important thing is the space shuttle program.

Direct take-off and landing on the ground to ensure that the safety level of all types of manned aircraft are reached directly to the moon.

After achieving this goal, Simon felt that it was only another small step for human beings to explore outer space. Moreover, taking this step can only break through one of the biggest restrictions of the aerospace industry, with only investment and very little output. After all, at this stage, most space projects are ultimately based on forward-looking scientific research exploration behaviors through financial subsidies from various countries.

This is mainly because of why humans lost the motivation to explore space after the end of the Cold War.
Chapter completed!