Simon returned to Los Angeles, and this year's summer season officially kicked off with the release of Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" adopted an unconventional Wednesday opening date, and was released on May 24. The film has opened on 2,327 screens, and it earned US$9.9 million in box office on Wednesday and Thursday, easily surpassing

United Artists' action movie "The Dragon" also opened in its first week.

"The Last of Us" was released on May 19. On a normal Friday schedule, the box office in the first seven days was US$8.24 million. The total box office in North America is expected to be around US$30 million. Although it is far from comparable to "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

However, compared to the production cost of 17 million US dollars, the box office performance of "The Dragon King" is not a failure.

It is worth mentioning that the male protagonist of "The Legend of the Dragon" happens to be Patrick Swayze, the male protagonist of the original "The Last Days".

In order to ensure the success of "The Last Day", Simon has no plans to change the leading actors and actresses. During his time away from Los Angeles, Daenerys Entertainment has reached an agreement with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze to star this classic

Romance movie contract.

Patrick Swayze was promoted to a first-line actor two years ago with the hit musical "Dirty Dancing", which grossed more than 200 million US dollars in global box office, and the final negotiated salary was 5 million US dollars.

Demi Moore doesn't have any outstanding works except for being the wife of Bruce Willis. If it weren't for Simon's insistence, Amy would not be willing to use the other party, so during the negotiation process, the salary was stuck very tightly, and she only gave

A salary of US$300,000 was offered, which was slightly higher than the newcomer's price, and it also came with a first-choice contract for a movie. With a group of Hollywood actresses closely watching this project, Demi Moore knew that she had no leverage to rely on.

After a little fussing over the details, we quickly agreed.

In addition, black actress Whoopi Goldberg has also agreed to play the role of psychic Odme Brown in "The Last Day".

On May 29, Daenerys Entertainment officially announced the main creative information of "The Last Days". The film will officially start shooting in August and is initially scheduled for next summer.

However, because Daenerys Entertainment has approved a large number of movie projects in recent months, this matter has not caused much waves in the media. Hollywood is more concerned about the upcoming Daenerys Entertainment summer movie.

A movie called "The Bodyguard".

In the past few months, Daenerys Entertainment has released a series of movies that have not achieved very impressive results. If "The Bodyguard" continues to maintain this tepid status, this rapidly rising company has accumulated in 1988

The huge halo will undoubtedly dim.

Moreover, according to some vague rumors in the circle, the results of the internal test screening of "The Bodyguard" were not very good.

Daenerys Entertainment kept the film's reputation under wraps until a week before its release, and never held any public preview screenings for the media or fans, which undoubtedly proves this rumor.

Los Angeles.

Century City Hotel in Beverly Hills.

It is already May 31st. This morning, the "Bodyguard" soundtrack album conference was held grandly at the Century City Hotel. The album will be officially released next Monday, three days later than the film's release date. Prior to that, the heroine of "The Bodyguard"

Whitney Houston has done her homework for her screen debut and third album.

After the press conference, Daenerys Entertainment held a luncheon at the Century City Hotel to entertain the main creators of the film and the media reporters who were invited to attend today.

Inside the banquet hall.

Clive Davis, president of Allista Records, Whitney Houston's contracted record company, chatted enthusiastically with Simon for a while while holding a glass of champagne, then turned and walked towards Whitney Houston, his expression becoming more serious.

.

Alistar Records was originally a record subsidiary established in the 1970s with the support of Columbia Pictures. After more than ten years of establishment, it has gone through several changes and is now a subsidiary of Germany's Bertelsmann Music Group. Clive Davis started here

He has been the president since the company was founded. After going through ups and downs, Alistar Records finally turned around due to the popularity of Whitney Houston four years ago.

Whitney Houston and Daenerys Entertainment's collaboration on "The Bodyguard" is also the result of Clive Davis' efforts.

Now, he has some regrets.

It seems that since the end of last year, Daenerys Entertainment has lost its glory. None of the films released in the first half of the year have been hits. That's not a big deal. However, now that "The Bodyguard" has not been released, some doubts about the quality of the film have emerged.

has spread.

As for the soundtrack album of "Bodyguard", in order to promote this cooperation, Alistar Records made a lot of concessions in the contract. The album was jointly produced by Alistar Records and the record department of Daenerys Entertainment that had not yet formed.

, Simon Westeros personally serves as a consultant.

As a condition of cooperation, Daenerys Entertainment will take away 50% of the gross profit of this record.

Clive Davis originally thought that Simon Westeros could provide a song as good as the song "Celebration" he wrote for Madonna. However, what Alistar Records got was basically a cover and a song.

A mashup album composed of Whitney's own old songs. The main feature of the album is actually an old song "I-Will-Always-Love-You" originally sung by Dolly Parton in the 1970s.

Since her debut, Whitney Houston's two albums have achieved impressive global sales of more than 10 million copies. Seeing that this good situation is likely to be ruined, Clive Davis found his own pillar who was socializing and brought it to him.

She pulled him aside and began to teach him the skill of dumping the blame in a low voice.

Once "Bodyguard" fails, the prospect of this soundtrack album will be even more worrying.

Clive Davis now only hopes to shift the blame to Daenerys Entertainment as much as possible to prevent Whitney Houston's career from being affected.

On the other side of the banquet hall.

Clive Davis walked away and Amy Pascal came to Simon's side.

Compared to Clive Davis, who only cares about "The Bodyguard", Amy is worried about the commercial performance of the two films "The Bodyguard" and "The Sixth Sense" in June. However, she went to Simon

Recently, I was talking about another thing: "Bob went to New York on Monday. Originally, this incident was nothing special, but someone in New York happened to see him and someone from Sony's US branch.

Let’s have dinner with senior executives.”

Simon understood that Amy's Bob here was Robert Rem.

During the lunch during the trip to Cannes, Simon naturally heard the hint that Rem hoped for a salary increase, but did not respond. He just mentioned it to Amy privately and asked her to pay attention.

I didn't expect Rem to contact Sony so quickly.

Or, it is more likely that Sony took the initiative to contact Rem.

During this time, Sony's acquisition negotiations for Columbia Pictures have been fully public.

Coca-Cola, Columbia Pictures' largest shareholder, intends to cash out its non-core businesses, and Sony is also in urgent need of a Hollywood studio. Both parties' willingness to trade is very clear, so the deal is basically a done deal.

In my memory, Sony completed its acquisition of Columbia Pictures and was looking for leaders for this company: Peter Cooper and Jon Peters. Both of them are long-established gold medal producers in Hollywood and have produced films such as "An American Werewolf".

In London" and many other films, the original script of "Rain Man" was also the first to be obtained by Cooper-Peters Production Company, which the two collaborated with. After a lot of twists and turns, it fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. For this reason, the two are still

The title of executive producer was attached to the "Rain Man" project.

However, these two people took charge of Columbia, but they made Sony vomit blood. The excessive squandering and continuous failures forced Sony to write down the assets of Columbia Pictures by up to 2.1 billion US dollars after firing the two people, becoming

Sony's biggest loss in history.

Although Simon believes that anyone hired by Sony to be the head of Columbia is much better than the two deceivers Peter Cooper, but in terms of Hollywood qualifications, he does not think Rem has the qualifications to compete with the two.

Both Peter Cooper and Peter Cooper have produced many successful movies, but Rem's forte has always been distribution. Before he took charge of New World Entertainment, he was the vice president of the marketing and marketing department of Universal Pictures. During his tenure as the CEO of New World Entertainment,

The company has never produced a single hit movie.

Now, Rem is still just the president of Daenerys Entertainment, the company responsible for the publishing business.

The top leaders of Hollywood studios are usually promoted gradually from the production department, such as Disney's Michael Eisner and Fox Film President Joe Roth. It is relatively rare for someone who comes from the distribution department to become the top leader of a studio.

After thinking for a moment, Simon said: "In this case, you should pay more attention to the distribution department in the next period of time."

Amy nodded and said, "Aren't you going to talk to Bob?"

Simon asked rhetorically: "Do you remember when he joined?"

"Probably, last August."

Simon shrugged and said: "It's less than a year, Amy. To be fair, I'm very satisfied with Bob's work. However, when signing the contract, I already offered sufficient conditions, $3 million.

The amount of the bonus is comparable to that of executives in the publicity and distribution departments of major studios. Although the company does make a lot of money, I don't feel like I owe him anything. If he feels that he doesn't get enough, then leave.

.”

Amy paused and said: "In this case, I will pay attention to the replacement candidate for Bob's position."

Simon nodded slightly and talked about something else: "As for the marketing plan for the last month of "The Sixth Sense," we need to make some adjustments. Let De Niro and the others not be too deliberate in talk shows and interviews.

To hint at the film’s plot twist, just follow the normal horror film promotion process, and the same goes for the company’s marketing copy.”

Amy smiled bitterly: "Simon, this will make the film even less attractive to most viewers."

"De Niro stars and I am the screenwriter, which is the attraction in itself. Amy, "The Sixth Sense" cannot be a commercial blockbuster with a high box office in its first week. I hope it can develop a long-term path."

Word-of-mouth curve.”

After the soundtrack album launch of "The Bodyguard", the film's release date will soon come.

On June 2, "The Bodyguard" was officially launched in North America with an opening size of 2,021 screens. Since the successful saturation release of several consecutive films last year, it has become very common for the studio's main commercial movies to have an opening size of more than 2,000 screens.

.

At the same time as "The Bodyguard" was released, the box office for the first full first week of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was also officially released. For seven days from May 26 to June 1, this Spielberg's commercial masterpiece was released in North American theaters.

It grossed 46.01 million U.S. dollars, surpassing the 42.16 million single-week box office of "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi" that year and setting a new box office record.

Despite the strength of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "The Bodyguard" received a dismal reputation in the media after its release.

"Entertainment Weekly", "Variety", "The New York Times" and other mainstream media have all given negative reviews to "The Bodyguard". "Variety" magazine's evaluation of "a messed up mess" seems very harsh. Amy was furious after reading the film reviews.

I almost pulled out all the company's advertisements in Variety Show.

After comprehensive statistics, the media score of "Bodyguard" finally only exceeded 3 points, which is very far away from the passing line.

However, amidst such one-sided negative reviews, some magazines such as "Rolling Stone" expressed their appreciation for the film's soundtrack, but these certainly did not affect the overall reputation of "The Bodyguard".

Affected by negative reviews, the three-day box office of "The Bodyguard" last weekend was only US$16.61 million.

Compared with United Artists' previous film "The Dragon", this box office result is certainly not a failure. It grossed US$16.61 million in the first weekend. It is expected that the box office in the first week will remain stable at more than US$20 million.

However, the media also generally predicts that the box office performance of "The Bodyguard" in the first week is more due to Daenerys Entertainment's sparing no effort in publicity. The box office in the first week was good, but due to word-of-mouth, the film will go through a very ugly period.

Based on the box office curve, there are many possibilities for the total box office in North America to exceed 50 million US dollars.

Compared with the production cost of "Bodyguard" of US$20 million, the North American box office of US$50 million is not a failure in any way. However, compared to Daenerys Entertainment's series of stunning box office results last year, "Bodyguard" at this time is US$50 million.

The box office results are undoubtedly a failure, which means that Daenerys Entertainment has lost last year's miraculous box office blessing.

Corresponding to "The Bodyguard", entering its third week of release, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" still had a three-day box office figure of US$21.23 million in its second weekend, corresponding to a box office drop of only 27%.

Moreover, in the following week, "Ghostbusters 2", the sequel to Columbia Pictures' classic horror comedy film "Ghostbusters", will also be released. In order to gain more bargaining chips in the deal with Sony, Columbia Pictures is considering this

It can be said that no effort was spared in the announcement of the sequel to this film.
Chapter completed!