After spending a month in New York with two women, Eric returned to Los Angeles as Christmas. As the most important schedule of the year in addition to the summer season, most of the films in the Christmas season will be released in the two weeks of December 18 and December 25.

Firefly's last "Detective Plane Head" in 1992 was also scheduled for December 18, because Kim Carrey and TG have been at odds about the next movie salary, and in early December, Kim Carrey once again publicly expressed his strong indignation at the "cheating" signing the option contract to the entertainment media, and also said that he did not plan to participate in the premiere of "Detective Plane Head".

A few days before the premiere of "Detective Plane", after a long tug-of-war negotiation, TG finally signed another film contract with Jim Carrey for $11 million again, and at the same time, the audience saw Jim Carrey at the premiere on December 17.

It's almost a habitual trend in Hollywood where Hollywood stars often star in films with directors or producers who know them at low prices or even for free, but they often go toe-to-toe with the studios that discovered them, and Eric is used to it.

In addition to "Detective Planehead", Warner's "Bodyguard" and Columbia's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" co-produced with Firefly's Disney Studios also released on the same day.

Eric did not attend the premiere of "Detective Planehead", but he did attend the premiere of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" at the soft request of Peter Cooper and Nicole.

According to the original agreement, Firefly collaborated on five films with Colombia. The distribution rights in North America belong to Colombia. And overseas distribution is handled by Firefly. Naturally, this agreement was intended to cover up the impact of the private agreement between Eric and Peter Cooper, and Colombia's overseas distribution network was already in disarray, and if Colombia had done so, the overseas box office of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" might have been half as expected.

Because of the optimism about the future of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", Colombia took out almost all of its own money, arranging more than 2,800 screens for "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" in the first week, after learning this data, most of the media said that Colombia's "exceeding" film box office potential distribution method is likely to cause the film to shrink significantly at the box office in the next week. But after three days of screenings in the opening weekend, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" earned a staggering $39 million at the box office, and it is expected that the first-week box office is likely to hit the production cost line of $60 million.

In addition to the scale of the premiere, the Oriental kung fu factor used in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", which is completely different from the previous action movie forms in North America, has also become the focus of media pursuit.

The box office of the film was released in the first three days of the weekend. In just a few days, John Wu received more than a dozen film cooperation invitations and countless media interview invitations.

Because he has signed a contract with Firefly, John Wu is very excited about the high director's salary and share quoted by other film companies. But he is also very self-aware that he has no private contact with outsiders, and he has no intention of tearing up the contract with fireflies. However, those interview invitations from the media made John Wu enjoy it very much, and he was interviewed by various newspapers, magazines or TV stations one after another, talking about his violent aesthetics and oriental kung fu, and even flew back to Hong Kong to accept TVB's interview program.

In the original time and space, the most successful and earliest cooperation between kung fu elements and Hollywood's local commercial films was "The Matrix", and the entire series won more than $1.5 billion at the global box office, making kung fu elements popular in Hollywood for a while. As for the earlier kung fu films, most of them have kung fu stars from the East participating, and they cannot be regarded as authentic Hollywood movies.

And now, because of the success of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", Hollywood has also begun to pay attention to Hong Kong films that are far away across the ocean and are experiencing the last period of crazy prosperity. Because John Wu signed a contract with Firefly, several other major Hollywood film companies knew that they could not poach people from Eric, so they set their sights on Hong Kong's first-line directors, and Hong Kong local filmmakers also saw John Wu's scenery during this time, becoming a lure for international directors, plus local films have seen a bottleneck in development, and they are also very eager to solicit Hollywood.

Although the box office of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" fell by more than 40% in the second week However, the next week box office of 36 million US dollars plus the accumulation of screenings in the early stage of the film, the box office results easily exceeded 100 million US dollars within two weeks of release, becoming the largest box office dark horse in the 1992 Christmas file, and the total box office of the film is expected to exceed 200 million US dollars.

Peter Cooper was still complaining that his first film with Firefly was not a special effects blockbuster, but now he is only ecstatic, even if Columbia only gets 40% of the profit in the original sharing agreement, but the profit still exceeds the income of most of the films released by Columbia in the past two years. If the four films with Firefly in the next three years can continue to achieve similar results, Peter Cooper thinks he can sit very comfortably in the CEO of Columbia.

In addition to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", the Christmas file Firefly's "Detective Plane Head" and Eric's nominal executive producer's "Bodyguard" have also achieved good results, although they are not as strong as "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", but in two weeks, the box office of "Detective Plane Head" and "Bodyguard" have exceeded $50 million.

In addition to Fireflies, Warners and Columbia. The performance of the other four major Hollywood studios in this year-end schedule is relatively unsatisfactory. And the most miserable of them all is MGM. For a whole year, MGM did not produce a single film, but only acted as an agent for the distribution of films produced by other small companies, and the total box office revenue of all the films released by MGM in 1992 was even less than 100 million US dollars, which can be said to be the ultimate failure.

Because of the fraud lawsuit of Italian investor Giancarlo Paretti, MGM was publicly auctioned by the Bank of France in December, and there is no final bidding result yet. Eric didn't make a move on MGM for the time being.

Fox originally planned to get the copyright of the "Home Alone" series from Firefly again to make a sequel, but although the last "Home Alone" was a success, because the little protagonist Stuart Runkel is one year older, the good life in recent years makes him no longer suitable for pretending to be tender and cute in the movie, so the series has also entered the most risky stage, and Fox's offer this time is only 50% of last year's, but he hopes to participate in "Home Alone" In the end, the two sides did not negotiate, and for various considerations, the "Home Alone" series was completely stranded. And the few comedy films developed by Fox did not perform too well.

Paramount's Martin Davis has spent the year dealing with a possible takeover by Viacom or QVC, and has no interest in the film business. Therefore, there are no works.

Universal is a little better, under the helm of Michael Eisner, Universal started a low-cost strategy to win by volume at the end of the year, in the case of several other film companies only releasing one or two works at the end of the year, Universal launched six movies at the end of the year, the opening screen is about 1000 pieces, and then make appropriate adjustments according to the results of the movie, insiders can see that Michael Eisner did this out of helplessness, he was in charge of the global event is too short, the long-term period of large-scale movies is too late to launch, in order to improve the business situation of Universal as soon as possible, boost the confidence of investors, Michael Eisner came up with such a strategy.

In addition to "Schindler's List", the other five films are all comedies or feature films with an investment of no more than 20 million US dollars, although the box office results are not too bright, but in the two months of Thanksgiving and Christmas, including "Schindler's List", the six films combined also exceeded 200 million US dollars, and it is not a problem to harvest about 100 million US dollars at the box office again, and the profit prospects are quite impressive.

At the same time, "Schindler's List" has undoubtedly become a big hit for the Oscars.

As a film about the Holocaust during World War II, and the target is still Jews, all the media in North America treat the film with almost caution, and there is basically no mention of Schindler's List in print or on television Of course, it is definitely not without other voices, such as some Jewish groups have spoken out that Spielberg's film restores historical facts to a certain extent, and uses the situation of the documentary, but it is still not realistic enough, and the tragedy of the year is not deep enough. Other Jewish commentators have suggested that the best way to deal with the Holocaust is to remain silent rather than to repeatedly claim it as a victim, which only increases hatred and sows the seeds of unpredictability for another conflict.

Regardless of the attitude of the outside world, the film quickly exceeded $40 million at the box office within a few weeks of its release, supported by a large number of Jews, and Universal expected it to be a loss-making project, but the result surprised Michael Eisner and strengthened his determination to increase his efforts to win over Spielberg.

After spending Christmas with Drew and Nicole, who stayed in Los Angeles, at Sharp Corner Manor, and during this time attended some consecutive parties that could not be pushed off, Eric thought that the year was about to be spent in this lively atmosphere, but with the release of Hollywood's annual box office statistics, Fireflies have once again become the focus of everyone's attention.

Although many movies are still in the release stage, according to the word-of-mouth and box office curve in the early stage of the movie, it is not too difficult for box office agencies to count the total box office of a movie, and the accuracy rate is quite high.

In the last few days of the new year, although most people are on vacation, Hollywood professional or non-professional magazines have begun to comment, review and summarize all the films in 1992, and Hollywood's annual box office, overseas box office, and the annual box office of major film companies are undoubtedly the data that everyone pays more attention to.

And the results given by most magazines surprised both insiders and outsiders for a while.

Firefly Pictures has won a total of $1.53 billion at the box office with six films that broke 100 million US dollars, including "Tornado", "Nun is Crazy", "Strange Jack in Disguise", "Aladdin", "Speed of Life and Death" and "Detective Plane Head", plus 17 other films released by Firefly Pictures' Disney and New Line labels, which totaled $1.53 billion at the box office, far exceeding the total box office of 840 million for the second-ranked Time Warner, and occupied 27% of the market share in the total box office of $5.5 billion in North America in 1992.

Although some magazines also raised objections, saying that the two movies "Strange Jack in Disguise" and "Detective Plane Head" should not be counted under the Firefly, but should belong to TG Films, but even so, minus the box office of more than 200 million yuan of the two films, Firefly Pictures' performance is still far more than that of Time Warner, which ranked second. What's more, anyone who knows a little bit about Hollywood can know that TG is almost equivalent to a subsidiary of Firefly, and some people also argue that if it is to be counted as investment rather than distribution, then a large part of the box office of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" should also be counted under the Firefly, so most media are more inclined to the approximate box office amount of 1.5 billion.

27% box office share, such a staggering number has not appeared in the whole of Hollywood for many years, "Hollywood Reporter" has made some statistics on this, Firefly Pictures' annual production and operating budget is expected to be about 800 million US dollars, deducting the taxes that should be paid, Firefly may get up to more than 400 million US dollars in net profits at the domestic box office in North America alone. What's more, Firefly also has overseas box office results that are not inferior to those in North America.

After the acquisition of Disney, Firefly Pictures' entertainment industry chain has been very perfect, in addition to the fixed domestic and foreign theater distribution box office revenue, Firefly can also get a large amount of profits from the film's videotape distribution, TV broadcast authorization, exclusive business authorization and other channels. What's more, Firefly now owns several Disney parks and Disney merchandise stores in major cities across the United States and Europe.

It can be said that the annual turnover of Firefly will far exceed the figure of 1.5 billion US dollars.

However, it is a pity that because Firefly is not listed, there is no need to disclose Firefly's financial report to the public, which also leads to the actual turnover and profit of Firefly Except for Firefly's core executives, outsiders are basically unknown. (To be continued......)