Peter Ritchie thought for a moment and said, "There aren't many other Hollywood studios that have made a public statement about this, but Universal has publicly stated this morning that it will hold a celebration banquet for "Fat Professor" over the weekend, and besides, the media has been very active on this matter, after all, this is the first time in three years that we have lost control of the June schedule. ”

Starting with 1993's "Jurassic Park", Firefly has almost firmly held the hottest month of June in North America with a fixed summer trilogy strategy, during which films produced by other studios have hardly won a single weekly box office title.

Because of the continuous strong box office performance of Firefly's summer films, Hollywood has even regarded the June schedule as Firefly's 'own place', and several other major film companies will almost subconsciously transfer their main films out of the June schedule.

But this year, because "Titanic" and Firefly's 3D animated movies were absent from the summer file at the same time, there were only two films released by Firefly, and film companies such as Universal and Paramount also began to try to 'grab the beach' and land on the golden period that originally belonged to Firefly.

Although Firefly has an absent film, the strength of Firefly in the past few years has left a deep shadow on other film companies. So you can imagine how jubilant the executives of several other major Hollywood studios would be when the global black comedy "Fat Professor" unexpectedly overpowered Firefly's "Death Island" won the summer box office in June. While they won't take a public statement, with Hollywood's close ties to the media industry, these people will certainly express the frustration they have accumulated in recent years through media channels.

With the media's habit of seeing the wind and steering the rudder, Eric can almost imagine how lively the entertainment news in the American newspapers has been in recent days.

Eric doesn't particularly care about this, just like the conversation between Katzenberg and Frank Wells in Los Angeles a few days ago, on the one hand, Firefly is not a public company, and Eric has an absolute controlling stake in the company, so he doesn't have to worry about criticism from the capital market and shareholders. On the other hand, with its own strong financial strength, the capital chain of Firefly film production and distribution system is completely self-sufficient and does not need to rely on external financing. Therefore, this kind of box office failure will not have any substantial impact on Fireflies, at most it will only shrink in terms of annual film business revenue compared with the past, and with the extreme uncertainty of the film market, this kind of performance ups and downs are almost inevitable for any big film company, and it is not entirely a bad thing to happen to Fireflies at this time, at least, it can make Hollywood colleagues who have been suppressed for several years breathe a sigh of relief and reduce some hostility and wariness towards Fireflies.

After talking to Peter Ritchie for a while, Eric signed a few necessary documents and sent his assistant away.

Leaving the study and coming to the downstairs living room, Miranda saw Eric coming down from upstairs, and immediately got up to greet her, and a white woman who was originally sitting on the single sofa next to her also stood up, the woman was wearing a white women's shirt and a black knee-length skirt, about 1.7 meters tall, with brown hair, and an average appearance, but there was a faint shrewdness in her eyes.

"Eric, this is Claire Witzman," Miranda said, affectionately holding Eric's arm.

Eric nodded and motioned for the other to sit back down, asking, "You're an intern at ICM, aren't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Williams, I dropped out of USC last year and have just been at ICM for a year. ”

The dropout rate of American college students is nearly 50%, Claire said frankly, Eric is not surprised, but guessed from Claire's college that she may be the child of ICM executives, USC is a famous school for the children of wealthy people in North America, Claire was sent as Miranda's assistant, and it is certainly not a pure accident, after all, ICM executives must know that through Miranda, they can get the opportunity to contact themselves, which is estimated to be a network resource that any agent dreams of.

Eric didn't bother to pay attention to the twists and turns, and said, "Miranda has nothing to do here, you can accompany her to Florida and then go back to Los Angeles." ”

Claire smiled and nodded, "Of course it's fine, Mr. Williams, it's my job." ”

Miranda, who was next to Eric, had a happy expression on her face, then became pitiful again, shook Eric's arm slightly, and said, "Eric, I, I can't even afford a plane ticket to Los Angeles now." ”

Eric smiled and reached out to pinch the girl's pitiful face, took out his wallet, and wanted to write a check to the girl, but Miranda had already leaned over like a curious kitten and looked into Eric's wallet.

"Wow, this, black, black, I've heard of it, Eric, can I use this black credit card?"

Although the famous Amex Black Gold Card was not issued until 1999, in fact, many banks' top credit cards are black.

Eric is not a collector, there are only three or four credit cards from major American banks in his wallet, seeing the girl poking her little head with a heart-warming look, Eric smiled, inserted the pen back, took out the black Citi card and handed it to the girl, and said, "Na, don't spend it indiscriminately, play for a while and go back to Los Angeles obediently." ”

"I know," Miranda took the credit card with a happy face, pursed her pink lips and kissed it, realizing that something was wrong, and quickly put her arms around Eric's neck and kissed him on the face, "Eric, you are such a good person." ”

Eric's head was full of black lines, and he didn't expect that an infinite black card would be replaced by a good person card, which was too much of a loss.

Reaching out and hugging Miranda, who was almost on his legs, Eric said, "Go to Peter, and ask him to call my accountant for authorization." Also, don't boast like that in the future. ”

Sending away the pestering leprechauns, Eric continued to work on Casino Royale.

However, in Hollywood, the media discussion caused by the box office failure of "Brave Death Island" did not pass slowly because of the loss of time, but became the beginning of a storm.

After the news of "Death Island" losing to "Fat Professor" in the first weekend box office, most of the media in North America can be described as boiling, although they also realized that this kind of celebratory boiling is unreasonable, but Fireflies continued to dominate the June schedule for the first time after three years. The news of the 'loss' is a big news after all, and the attraction to ordinary people is no less than the news of the sudden bankruptcy and collapse of a large American consortium, so whether it is to win attention or the forces behind it really want to celebrate, in short, most of the media have shown a gloating attitude towards the news of the box office failure of "Brave Death Island".

After such a noisy week, on June 21, the heavyweight film "The Mummy 2", which has been produced by Universal for two years, was officially launched on more than 3,300 screens in the United States, and at the same time, "Ace Commissioner" starring Hollywood's first $20 million movie star Jim Carrey produced by Sony was also released.

With the accumulated popularity and overwhelming publicity of the previous work, "The Mummy 2" collected $84.29 million at the box office in North America in just one week with a strong momentum, easily winning the box office championship of the week, and also getting the best opening score of all films released in 1996 to the current position.

At the same time, "Brave Island" is as Firefly predicted, although the youth audience is not large, but because of the excellent quality of the film, the box office fell by only 23% the next week, and it once again received $32.17 million at the box office, ranking second in the weekly box office list.

Sony's "Ace Correspondent" The box office is far lower than industry expectations, the first week of more than 2,600 screens, only 29.96 million US dollars box office, ranked third, because Jim Carrey's $20 million salary has greatly increased the film's production budget, the total cost of the film reached 60 million US dollars, but judging from the sluggish reputation of the film, Jim Carrey's first film after getting rid of the original contract may also be the first film that is difficult to break 100 million at the North American box office after he served as the leading actor in the film.

The subsequent "Fat Professor" also unsurprisingly fell 39% at the box office, with a weekly box office of $27.45 million, ranking fourth.

In the fourth week of its release, "The Matrix" fell by 46% at the box office, squeezing into the fifth place at the weekly box office with a weekly box office of $20.18 million, and at the same time, after four weeks of release, the North American box office of "The Matrix" easily exceeded $200 million, reaching $200.54 million.

Because of the congenital shortcomings of "Brave Death Island", although it showed its due strength the following week, the total box office of this film will only be fixed at about $130 million.

Therefore, although the box office of "The Matrix" exceeded $200 million in four weeks, the media still did not let go of the opportunity to tease Firefly, but compared Firefly's box office performance this year with last year.

Firefly's three films last summer, "Jurassic Park 2", "Day of Alone" and "Toy Story 2", totaled more than $811 million at the North American box office alone. In the past few years, the box office of Firefly summer has also remained at this level.

But this year, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse.

Although the box office of "The Matrix" exceeded 200 million US dollars, the expected box office of "Death Island" is also destined to bring good profits to Fireflies in the later stage.

However, judging from the expected box office of 240 million for "The Matrix" and $130 million for "Brave Island", the total box office of these two films in this year's summer file is only 370 million, compared with last year's summer performance of $811 million, Firefly's box office performance this year has dropped by 54%.

Heavyweight films have always had a locomotive effect in big film companies, because "The Matrix" and "Brave Island" are not motivated, it is conceivable that Firefly in the next year, compared with last year's various profit figures will also shrink by more than 50%, coupled with the expected loss brought by "Titanic", which is almost in the footsteps of "Future Water World", Firefly will be able to achieve an annual operating profit of more than $2 billion this year like last year, it will be completely unknown.

Even, some media that are more pessimistic about Fireflies regard the box office failure of Fireflies this summer as a signal that Fireflies are bound to decline.

In this case, in the last week of June, Paramount's "Pocahonta" released once again gave the fireflies a perfect patch.

On June 28, Disney's hand-drawn animation studio, which Paramount Pictures acquired from Firefly for $2.5 billion, is now Paramount Animation, launched its first 2D hand-drawn animated film "Pocahonta".

Although the production cost of this 2D animated film has almost doubled compared to the Firefly period, because Paramount Animation is bent on giving the old club a 'perfect revenge', several heads of the studio have invested a lot of energy in this cartoon, and the quality of the film is much stronger than in the original time and space, and the film has reached a total of $5.9 million at the box office alone.

Although "Pocahonta" failed to replicate the box office miracle of "The Lion King" of $66 million in the first week, its box office performance of $51 million in the first week and a cumulative box office of $56.9 million still exceeded the expectations of most box office agencies, and even overturned the extremely strong "The Mummy 2" in the first week of release, and the box office of "The Mummy 2" fell by 49% in the second week, with a cumulative box office of only $41.72 million.

As we all know, animated films have always been good at taking the long line at the box office, "Pocahonta" reached $51 million in the first week, and as long as the box office decline is within 30% in the next few weeks, the total box office can even hit the $200 million mark. Subsequently, the 26% box office drop in the following week of "Pocahonta" confirmed this beyond any doubt.

In this case, everyone completely ignored Firefly's New Line Film Company's "Death is Coming", which was released in the same week as "Pocahonta", this alternative style of bloody horror film got more than $13 million at the box office in the first week of the summer file, and the decline in the second week was only 24%, and the cumulative box office may even be close to $60 million, with its cost of $20 million, plus the overseas box office, "Death is Coming" is undoubtedly the second year of "Seven Deadly Sins" under the new line After that, another big-money film.

Of course, most of these media outlets were selectively ignored, and because of the box office success of "Pocahonta", the media began to shift the spearhead and directly point to the behavior of Fireflies in abandoning hand-drawn animation.

Only a small number of people know about the sale of the hand-drawn animation studio by Firefly, and it is certainly impossible for Firefly to explain it at this time.

Seeing that it was becoming more and more lively outside, the group had to start a counterattack.

It just so happened that "The Matrix" exceeded $200 million at the box office, which is worth celebrating, and in order to make the film achieve a higher North American box office, Firefly arranged for the Wachowski brothers to appear on ABC TV's talk show.

And this talk show really brought trouble to the fireflies. (To be continued.) )