Taking Mayer to the second floor, Eric pushed open the door of a guest room, turned sideways towards Mayer, and said, "Now, you will live here for the next two days, there should be brand new toiletries in the bathroom cabinet, and if there is anything missing, you will have to buy it yourself." Pen %Fun %Pavilion www.biquge.info"

Mayer took two steps into the room with his suitcase, a very spacious bedroom, brightly white, with a separate terrace and bathroom, a large bed, wardrobe and desk, and a 21-inch LCD computer on the desk, which is rarely seen today.

After looking around, Mayer turned around and saw Eric standing in the doorway, not coming in, his expression paused, and suddenly he didn't know what to say.

Eric noticed the change in Mayer's expression and smiled, "That's it, I'll go upstairs to the study, you feel free." There is a library and recreation room on the first floor, and a home theater in the basement, so if you want to go out and hang out, you can just drive the car Carter left behind. ”

Seeing that Eric was leaving, Mayer finally found a topic and said, "Eric, then, do you need me to help you prepare dinner?"

"Oh, there is a Minjiang restaurant in the Jiekou Garden Hotel, you can call and reserve a place, and we can go there to eat in the evening." ”

Mayer didn't know the ordering phone number of Minjiang Restaurant, but she didn't ask much, she could still handle this kind of trivial matter, so she nodded.

Watching Eric leave and disappear into the staircase opposite, Mayer closed the door and stood there for a moment before opening his suitcase and starting to pack up.

Eric didn't bother to pack any luggage, the girl arranged everything in his private order, this mansion has all his daily necessities, even the pencils on the desk in the study are arranged according to his personal habits, this is almost his other home.

After setting up Mayer, Eric went to the study on the third floor.

Turning on the computer, Eric clicked on the Yahoo browser icon on the monitor's desktop and expertly typed the URL of the Google search engine into the address bar.

The familiar search engine page immediately popped up, in addition to web search, there are other images, emails, maps and a dedicated Yahoo homepage through train, compared with the original beta version, the official Google search engine has made some fine-tuning, but the overall change is not much.

Yahoo's current focus is still on portals, and while it has been confirmed internally that it will focus on search engines in the coming years, Yahoo is not making much of a splash to promote the separate Google search engine that has already been launched. After all, Yahoo's upcoming IPO is still focused on the concept of Internet media.

With a click on the row of buttons above the search box, Eric logged directly into his work email through the browser to find the box office data report for the new week.

From June 12th to June 18th, the second week of the release of "The Day After Tomorrow", the overall box office of the film fell by 43% compared to the first week, with a weekly box office of $63.69 million, and a cumulative box office of $175 million, temporarily ranking second in the 1998 North American film box office list, and the first place was "Ace Cheap Spy 2" released on the Easter schedule, and the final box office of this spoof film was fixed at $186 million.

In addition, due to the simultaneous release of most overseas box office countries, the cumulative overseas box office of "The Day After Tomorrow" in two weeks has also reached 226 million US dollars, and there is no doubt that "The Day After Tomorrow" will be another Hollywood blockbuster with a large overseas box office.

Combined with the box office data of the first two weeks, the Firefly distribution department predicts that the North American box office of "The Day After Tomorrow" will be between 230 million and 250 million US dollars, the overseas box office will be between 400 million and 500 million US dollars, and the global box office is expected to be around 600 million to 700 million US dollars.

Although it can't be regarded as an explosion, there is no doubt that "The Day After Tomorrow" can definitely be said to be a global hit, according to the film's production budget of $120 million and a distribution budget of $50 million, just the global box office, "The Day After Tomorrow" can recover more than $100 million in net profit.

Glancing at the box office information of other films in the box office data report, Eric's attention turned to "The Matrix 2", which was officially released today.

Although the sequel rights to "The Matrix" were sold, Firefly still retains the development rights of the "Matrix" series merchandise.

Compared with the long-term operation of videotapes and television broadcast rights, the benefits of the film's peripheral products are almost at the same time as the film's release.

The release of "The Matrix 2", regardless of the outcome, will definitely bring a wave of sales peaks to related peripheral products. Although the peripherals of the "Matrix" series are not as lucrative as animated movies or films such as "Jurassic Park", Fireflies earn this part of the income very easily, and almost no marketing resources have to be invested.

Although Eric didn't specifically ask for it, the assistant's office sent him the information about The Matrix 2 that had been sorted out.

Eric opened the email, and the first thing he saw was the box office data of $9.95 million for the midnight show of "The Matrix 2".

The midnight box office of nearly $10 million once again broke the North American midnight box office record, and last year's Eric's "007: Casino Royale" only grossed $5 million at midnight.

However, Eric is not too surprised, the 007 series has become a symbol of popular film culture, although it is very well-known, but there are not too many die-hard fans, so there are not too many viewers who are willing to stay up late to watch the midnight show.

But the "Matrix" series is different, the amazing first part of the film directly made this series be praised on the altar, gathering a large number of die-hard fans, and it is not difficult to understand the high box office at midnight.

However, the record-breaking midnight performance of "The Matrix 2" also has the natural growth of the North American film market. Not to mention the "Star Wars Prequel" that will be released at the end of the year, even "Thunderbolt 3" half a month later may break this record again.

After glancing at the annotation attached to the midnight data, Eric turned to the commentary on the film, which was what he was more concerned about.

The email first listed the positive reviews for The Matrix 2.

"I love this film and I would like to recommend it to everyone very sincerely. It's just that this film is missing something that can move me in the first part. - The New York Observer

"Compared to the first part, the Wachowski brothers are more mature. - Salon

"You don't have to understand the deep layers of the Matrix franchise to enjoy the movie very easily. - The Hollywood Reporter

"Although some new elements have been added, the film is no longer as amazing and exciting as the first one. - "Variety".

Although it is a good review, Eric clearly feels that many media and film critics' evaluations of "The Matrix 2" can only be regarded as recognition, but from these words, it can definitely not be regarded as rave reviews like the first part. This argument is also in line with Eric's memories of the previous version and his sense of seeing the scripts for the two Wachowski brothers' sequels.

After reading the positive information, Eric skimmed through the following series of excerpts of the brief negative comments, found a longer comment, and read it carefully.

"Considering that the Matrix franchise is off to such a good start, you're sure to have the same expectations for a sequel, right?"

"But a lot of people may be disappointed, at least, that's how I feel. In this sequel, many of the great ideas and highlights from the first film are diluted, and it can even be said that a very bad part is left. Although the film still looks cool on the surface, it is actually far inferior to the first one, and some of the vague and obscure philosophical reflections that the Wachowski brothers deliberately added seem to me to be just a trick. I'm really disappointed with everything in this film, everything seems to go off track, leaving only a bunch of so-called hot action scenes over and over again. ”

"The first one will forever be a milestone in the special effects of a film, it will change the special effects film forever, and it will also give us a philosophical proposition about the real and the unreal that we can think about for many years. However, this sequel is clearly starting to get vulgar, and considering it's a two-part series, it's hard for me to imagine what the third installment will look like, and maybe give us an even worse ending. If you're a fan of the Matrix franchise, you don't want to see that happen. However, considering that the Firefly Group even sold the production rights of the film in order to avoid filming according to the Wachowski brothers' established two sequel scripts, it is difficult for me to expect anything from the third installment. ”

One of the more professional things about film critics in North America is that they basically don't give the audience spoilers in advance.

After reading this review, Eric couldn't see the critic's analysis of the plot of the sequel, but if he thought about how he felt when he first saw the Wachowski brothers' script, he could roughly guess what the other party was feeling.

At the end of the email, after statistics, the overall score of "The Matrix 2" was only 7.3, which was far inferior to the 8.7 of the first part.

Compared with the good situation created by the first part, the score of 7.3 can only be regarded as barely passing.

After reading the email in front of him, Eric put the matter of "The Matrix 2" in the back of his mind, and it was still the same sentence, since it was already spilled water, it would be useless to pay more attention.

The $300 million income from the production rights to the sequel to "The Matrix" was directly invested in the Clover Fund, even according to the value of the overall $16 billion held by the Clover Fund, the original amount of money has more than doubled, and when the stocks are sold one after another next year, the $300 million may bring more than $1 billion.

Amberlin Pictures has invested more than $600 million in principal for the two "Matrix" sequels, even if "The Matrix 2" reaches $1 billion at the global box office, the box office of "The Matrix 3" is still excellent, but considering the huge investment in the early stage, the profits brought by these two sequels to Amberlin Pictures are definitely unlikely to reach $1 billion.

Closing the mail page for The Matrix 2, Eric continued to check the unread emails in his work mailbox, and soon saw a piece of good news from Katzenberg himself.

After a full year, Cameron finally plans to start the production of "Spider-Man".

In an email, Katzenberg said that he had just talked to Cameron and Jon Landau yesterday afternoon about the details, and at the end jokingly asked Eric if he wanted to hand-pick the Spider-Man heroine.

Although far away from Los Angeles, Eric has been following the rough cut progress of "Iron Man", he and Joss Whedon talk about some editing details of the film by phone or email almost every day, and it is expected that Eric will return to Los Angeles, the first rough cut of "Iron Man" will be completed, and he will soon enter the most important special effects production stage.

Compared with "Iron Man", the project progress of "Spider-Man" is outrageously slow, and if Cameron really delays it for too long, Eric will have to change directors, and he can't let "Spider-Man" delay the progress of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Thankfully, Cameron is now finally ready to get to work.

As long as the project is in the production stage, Cameron will not be able to slow down even if he delays any longer.

Thinking of this, Eric had already picked up his mobile phone and dialed Cameron directly in Los Angeles.

The phone was quickly connected, and Cameron was at Firefly Studios, and after a few pleasantries, the two chatted about "Spider-Man", from the script to the special effects to the starring candidates, and chatted for an hour before Eric hung up the phone.

According to the plan in Cameron's words, "Spider-Man" will complete the preliminary preparations such as casting in the second half of the year, and it will be able to start filming early next year, and it will only need to wait until the summer of 2000 at the latest.

After ending the call with Cameron and dealing with work emails for a while, the sky outside the window darkened before I knew it.

After flying here and there for more than half a month, Eric's biological clock began to be a little chaotic, and when he noticed the time, it was already past seven o'clock in the evening.

Turning off the computer, Eric left the room, and the villa that began to become dark seemed very quiet, and went down the circular corridor from the third floor to the second floor, and saw the lights in the small living room downstairs on, and walked down the stairs, Mayer sat on the sofa in the small living room and was obviously a little absent-mindedly watching TV.

The sound of the TV was very quiet, and Eric couldn't slow down, and Mayer soon felt someone approaching, turned his head, smiled shyly, and said, "Eric, I was thinking about when to call you appropriate." ”

"Hungry, let's go," Eric said, and when Mayer stood up and saw that she was still in a light gray professional suit, he said, "Would you like to change your clothes?"

"Okay," Mayer nodded, "Then you wait a minute." ”

Eric walked into the small living room, sat down on the sofa, and waited patiently for five or six minutes, and Mayer went downstairs in a very bright fiery red knee-length dress.

It is difficult for most women to hold up the red clothes, but this set of clothes on Mayer suddenly makes the girl who was still a little young suddenly feel a little more strong woman in the workplace.

Eric couldn't help but look at it a few more times and exclaimed, "It's beautiful." ”

"Thank you," hearing Eric's words, Mayer, who was originally a little apprehensive, relaxed and said, "Then, let's go." ”