Relativity Entertainment, a female assistant enters the CEO's office and places the papers on Robert Iger's desk.

"Mr. Egger. She said, "This document needs to be signed by you." ”

Robert Iger took it and looked at it and said, "You can come and get it in half an hour." ”

The female assistant was just about to leave, and he said, "Emma, bring me some copies of today's newspaper." ”

"Okay. The female assistant walked out of the office.

Robert Iger took a hard look at the document, made sure there was no problem, signed it, and then notified the female assistant to come over.

The female assistant took the documents and delivered the newspaper by the way.

After dealing with the work at hand, Robert Iger grabbed the newspaper and flipped to the entertainment page to find news related to Resident Evil.

This is the first movie released by the company after he joined Relativity Entertainment, so he is naturally very concerned.

Relativity Entertainment is expanding the industry, which is a channel for generating profits, but content production is also quite critical, and with excellent content, a wide range of channels can maximize benefits.

Robert Iger watched the premiere of "Resident Evil" and was somewhat worried.

Robert Iger's management experience at ABC and Walt Disney has given Robert Iger excellent work ability and experience, but also influenced his thinking somewhat by the Disney style.

Having been at Disney for many years, the business that I was exposed to every day was a typical Disney-style production, and Robert Iger would definitely be affected.

It's not been long since he left Disney, and a small part of his thinking hasn't changed.

Robert Iger's concern is that the scale of "Resident Evil" is somewhat large, and the audience may be affected.

As soon as this thought flashed through his head, Robert Iger shook his head slightly, and instantly thought of the difference between Relativity Entertainment and Disney.

In Ronan's words, Disney can be called Di's baby, and Relativity Entertainment, as long as the film is profitable, it doesn't matter if it's R-rated, PG-14, or PG.

Robert Iger is well aware that every slightly larger studio in Hollywood is different, and it is impossible to have every studio go the family-friendly route.

Thinking of this, Robert Iger went to the newspaper to see how Resident Evil would react.

Like other films filmed and produced by Shahai Entertainment, this is also a project finalized by Ronan, and the whole company believes that this film will be successful.

Robert Iger doesn't know what magic Ronan has, only knows the projects that Ronan runs, and basically hasn't missed.

"Ace Agent", the only poor box office and market response, has also made a lot of profits in the company's operation.

But Ronan's films also have a characteristic, except for last year's "Spy Shadows", the general reputation of other films is not very good.

It seems that this "Resident Evil" is also like this.

"Filming an original story under the name of a famous game is a thankless exercise. The obscure story and the procrastinating footage all make this movie a failure. ”

This is a column for Kenneth Turan, a full-time film critic at the Los Angeles Times.

Robert Iger flipped through the other pages of the newspaper, and the news related to "Resident Evil" was basically not very good.

"I hope the media's opinion won't affect the market of the film too much......"

Robert Iger put down the newspaper and opened several increasingly influential film websites on the Internet to check out the reviews and ratings.

The Rotten Tomatoes index is rotten, with a praise rate of 37%, and if you only look at the Rotten Tomatoes index, it is very suspicious that "Resident Evil" is a super bad movie.

But when the webpage went to the IMDB website where ordinary fans scored, Robert Iger clicked on the "Resident Evil" page, and couldn't help but feel refreshed, IMDB has an audience score of 7.3 points, which seems to be a very high audience score in zombie films.

He specifically inquired that as long as the audience score of this kind of film can reach 6 points, the market response is often not bad.

However, the genre of game adaptation movies makes people feel uneasy.

Robert Iger didn't worry for long, and when the North American box office of "Resident Evil" came out, a heart basically fell back into his stomach.

On the first day of release in North America, "Resident Evil" won $10.16 million in more than 2,800 theaters, making a good start.

Among the films that opened on a large scale that weekend was New Line Pictures' "Imminent," a crime film starring Denzel Washington, which earned $6.81 million on its first day.

On Friday's first day of release, "Resident Evil" topped the box office charts on the day.

This also made some people in the industry look at the game adaptation of the movie.

While the feedback was sent to Ronan, it was also transmitted to Robert Iger, who had seen first-hand market response statistics and judged that "Resident Evil" would definitely be a success with years of experience.

Although the increase in the number of film reviews has reduced the Rotten Tomatoes index of "Resident Evil" to 35%, the Cinema Score's live statistical score of "B+" for theater audiences is extremely beneficial to "Resident Evil".

Cinema Score predicts that the film will drop more than $60 million at the North American box office.

Robert Iger knows very well that with the investment in production and publicity of this project, if the film can get $60 million at the box office in North America, plus the box office revenue overseas will not be very low, it is not impossible to recoup the cost and generate profits just by relying on box office revenue.

He specially read the statistics of fan reviews, whether it is game fans or zombie movie fans, most of them are more satisfied with "Resident Evil".

"As a movie adapted from the game "Resident Evil", it was unexpectedly well made. There is always a mystery in the plot of the film, and the heroine's amnesia creates more suspense for the story, which makes people want to continue watching after watching the beginning. ”

Many fans of the game, it seems, do not want the movie to follow the game's plot pattern as they imagined.

"When I watched the trailer, I was still angry because of the original heroine and other adaptations, but after watching the first ten minutes of the film, I was glad that the film did not stick to the original setting of the game, and added a lot of unexpected and wonderful ideas. How to say it, the plot is very compact, the ups and downs along the way are extremely coherent, and the routine settings are also very imaginative, especially the picture of the laser array cutting people is really cruel, and it is definitely much more shocking than a simple zombie bite. ”

For those fans who are not fans of the game, the views are very simple.

"A very good-looking zombie movie, very exciting, suspense settings and horror atmosphere, the heroine Alice is so handsome. ”

"Zombies and lickers and the like are very much in line with expectations, the biggest highlight is the heroine, Alice is so beautiful, it doesn't matter what the plot is, it's worth the ticket price to watch the beauty Alice fight zombies!"

"A classic in zombie films, elements such as claustrophobic space escape, zombies, and human nature choices are reasonable and not overwhelming, and Milla Jovovich's red dress is unforgettable and handsome!"

"I haven't played a game, but this movie is made with a sense of sci-fi and action movies, as well as the tightness and ups and downs of the movie, which is very good!"

The relatively good reviews of fans, coupled with the use of zombies as a gimmick, and the promotion of this type of audience, "Resident Evil" performed quite well in theaters.

After winning $10.16 million on the first day, "Resident Evil" not only did not fall at the box office on Saturday, but rose slightly, closing $10.62 million on the same day.

By Sunday, "Resident Evil," like all films, had dropped somewhat, earning $7.65 million.

In the first week of its release in North America, among more than 2,800 theaters, "Resident Evil" earned $28.43 million, easily beating "Imminent" with $20.75 million and winning the North American box office top.

The box office figures in the first week have already exceeded the production cost of the film, and it can be said that it was a huge success.

The following Monday was the President's Day holiday, and due to the holiday effect, "Resident Evil" still performed relatively strong in North America, collecting another $6.85 million in a single day, and the North American box office accumulated $35.28 million.

In just four days, the game-based film adaptation surpassed $35 million.

After Robert Iger got the box office statistics, he was completely relieved, and such a movie, which seemed a little unreliable, turned out to be a big success.

"I have to say that you have a really good eye on the decision of the film project. ”

In the office, Robert Iger looked at Ronan and said, "The success of Resident Evil is a good start to the year. ”

Ronan said calmly: "It's still propaganda and distribution." ”

Robert Iger suddenly thought of one thing and said: "This project is not only a success for the movie, the book "Zombie Survival Guide" has also sold very well, and it has sold 430,000 copies in North America due to the influence of the movie. ”

Ronan couldn't help laughing: "Zombie culture is still very marketable, and our future production plans can continue to pay proper attention to the zombie film genre." ”

I remember that Zack Snyder remade a "Dawn of the Living Dead" and officially started his directing career, and went back to find someone to inquire which company owned the copyright of the old version.

"Last year there was a success of Tomb Raider, and this year there was a big hit of Resident Evil. Robert Iger then added: "I've heard that a lot of companies in the industry want to follow up on the game adaptation. ”

Ronan said directly: "I have a "Dungeon Siege" ready to be adapted here, and there is a sequel to "Resident Evil" that needs to be followed, and other games are adapted from movies, so we don't want to grab it from other companies." ”

He has already spoken to Paul Anderson and Milla Jovovich, both of whom are very interested in the sequel, and after a period of rest, they will devote themselves to the preparation and filming of the sequel.

In Ronan's previous life, someone once commented that "Resident Evil" was a movie made by the director to make the heroine.

Whether it's Alice or "Resident Evil", the influence on the other side of the Pacific is actually so great that it appears in many of them.

Ronan intends to continue this series.