The pre-release was carried out completely with the specifications of the blockbuster film, and the advertising budget alone was invested 50 million US dollars, even if the three films were packaged and promoted, the three film companies were still quite confident in the opening box office of the film. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

However, no one expected that the box office of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" would be so unexpected on the first day.

With $15.37 million on the first day, it landed on the single-day box office list without any suspense, and even broke the opening box office record of Hollywood's Easter schedule.

According to this standard, just three days after the first weekend, the box office of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" may reach about 45 million, and as long as the box office curve is stable, the box office in the first week may even be close to $70 million.

$70 million in the first week, which is already equivalent to the opening week of a blockbuster film in the hottest summer season.

Prior to this, Fox's best tone for the box office of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" in the first week was only about 30 million, and according to the first week of $30 million, the film is expected to get a box office of about 60 million during the entire Easter schedule, allowing Fox to recover the production cost.

Now it seems that it will only take two days of the weekend to achieve the goal that Fox originally expected, and even if the follow-up box office curve of "Ace Spy 2" is weak, with this kind of start, it is almost certain that "Ace Spy 2" will recover its production costs in the first week.

In comparison, Warner Bros.'s "City of Angels" only grossed $5.51 million in a single day on Friday, less than one-third of "Ace Spy 2".

Although there is a huge difference between the first-day box office of the two, the first-day box office of "City of Angels" is not much lower than Warner's box office tone. $5.51 million on the first day, which means that "City of Angels" grossed around $15 million in the first three days of the opening weekend, and the box office could reach around $25 million in the first week.

As a literary romance film, with two box office bigwigs, Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, Warner was still very confident that "City of Angels" could get out of a long-term line with a weekly decline of about 20 or 30 percent, so that "City of Angels" may get about $70 million at the box office in North America.

Coupled with the overseas box office appeal of Cage and Meg Ryan, the film can be distributed overseas, and Warner Bros. can steadily recoup its costs and achieve profitability.

This is actually the expectation within Warner Bros. for "City of Angels".

However, when the box office of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" came out on the first day, Warner suddenly lost his original confidence.

Obviously, just "Ace Cheap Spy 2" can hit such an amazing first-day box office, so next week, the two new films "Xenomorph" and "Wedding Singer" will be released, and under the strong squeeze, the decline of "City of Angels" will definitely not be too good.

At the same time, in strong contrast to the box office on the first day, "Ace Cheap Spy 2" has almost received a poor reputation from the media.

This word-of-mouth decline by the media and film critics has been a dark cloud over the three companies' Easter Movie Package plans from the very beginning.

Although they are media conglomerates themselves, and the three also control two of the four major television networks in North America, it is difficult for the three companies to control another traditional channel that determines the reputation of movies, newspapers.

Because the paper media industry in North America is very developed, every city, as large as an international metropolis like New York, and even a small city with only tens of thousands of people, has its own regional newspaper, although News Corp holds a number of very influential print media, but it is impossible to influence thousands of large and small newspapers in North America, each of which will have an influence on the residents in the coverage area.

A spoof film like "Ace Cheap Spy 2", which makes a lot of dirty jokes, is impossible to be recognized by traditional print film critics, and word of mouth is naturally imaginable.

However, it received a first-day box office of $15.37 million at the beginning, and neither Fox nor Firefly can let the bombardment of bad reviews from traditional media affect the film's subsequent box office curve.

Because of the things in the family, Elizabeth, who has gradually taken over all the film businesses of the Twentieth Century Fox Group in the past two years, flew back to New York, but the president of the group, Joe Ross, was not ambiguous, and when he saw the box office of "Ace Spy 2" on Saturday morning, he immediately convened the executives of Fox's distribution department to discuss "Ace Spy 2" At the same time, Joe Ross naturally did not forget to send an invitation to Eric, but although it was a weekend, Eric still had too much work to do and could not find time to attend such a meeting.

If it weren't for the 'Easter Movie Package' program spearheaded by Firefly, the box office of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" would not have been so good, which is almost everyone's consensus.

Whether it is Eric's status in Hollywood or his personal relationship with Elizabeth, it cannot be ignored by Joe Ross, Eric was unable to attend the marketing meeting of "Ace Spy 2", Joe Ross deliberately rushed from Century City Fox headquarters to Firefly Studios at noon to have a dinner with Eric, and the two once again considered the next plan in detail.

As a result, starting on Saturday afternoon, the media controlled by the three companies began to fight back against the bad media reviews suffered by "Ace Cheap Spy 2".

Of course, neither Fox nor Firefly tried to refute the bad reviews of "Ace Spy 2" in traditional media, but found another way, using the strong contrast of "Ace Spy 2" being welcomed by the audience but being mistreated by the media as the starting point, mercilessly criticizing the harshness, old-fashioned and lack of entertainment spirit of traditional film critics.

"Cinema is, after all, a mass entertainment, not a matter of pleasing a small group of critics. If it were only to cater to the preferences of film critics, Hollywood would definitely not be as powerful as it is today, but would become more and more niche like European films. ”

"Ace Spy 2" got a box office of $15.37 million on the first day, which is enough to prove its popularity in the hearts of the audience. Most people walk into the cinema after a busy week, not to feel the preaching, nor to learn philosophy, what they need is just to forget their troubles and smile during the movie. ”

The Firefly system's defense of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" naturally caused a backlash from traditional media and film critics.

However, compared with the one-sided bad reviews at the beginning, with the tacit cooperation of print media, TV and web portals, the three companies quickly regained the initiative.

For a time, the argument that "movies are just a kind of mass entertainment, and the audience should not be swayed by film critics" instigated the separation of film critics and ordinary audiences spread rapidly under the manipulation of the powerful media channels of the three companies, and the emerging Internet media platforms also received a lot of attention again in the process.

Anyone has a blind obedience in their hearts, not to mention, it is still this kind of argument that almost challenges traditional concepts, under the guidance of these public opinions, many people are just to join in the fun, with a mentality that watching the excitement is not a big deal, and deliberately ran to the Internet movie platform to score "Ace Cheap Spy 2".

Of course, the negative effects are not without it, and some well-known traditional film critics who have already entered the websites such as Yahoo Movies and IMDB have announced their withdrawal from the Internet movie platform in order not to protest against the marketing strategy of the three companies.

However, for the bigger picture, these people's actions did not have much of a substantial impact.

Subsequently, driven by this marketing trend, the box office curve of "Ace Cheap Spy 2" was not affected by the one-sided bad media reviews, and even these reviews played a certain counterproductive role.

After Friday's first-day box office of $15.37 million, "Ace Spy 2" won $17.65 million and $13.97 million on the following Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

In the end, the box office of "Ace Spy 2" reached $46.99 million in the first three days of the opening weekend.

Compared with the growing popularity of "Ace Spy 2", "City of Angels" is gradually in a state of near oblivion, and the film's final opening weekend box office is only $15.16 million, less than one-third of "Ace Spy 2".

Although Natasha Hensquich, who finished filming the scene of "Iron Man", accompanied by him, this past weekend, Eric was still busy with his feet on the ground.

On Saturday, he watched the recent filming footage of "Iron Man" with Joss Whedon, and also participated in the designation of the follow-up promotional strategy for "Ace Spy 2".

On Saturday night, Eric also attended Coppola's family party, during which he watched some of Sofia Coppola's directorial neodymium production, "The Death of Neodymium."

Sunday is still busy.

When the new week arrives, the first thing Eric needs to face is the Fireflyer second-generation MP3 player released by Firefly Electronics and Nokia at the same time, as well as Nokia's first music mobile phone, the M-100.

The launch of the two products in San Francisco was held at two o'clock in the afternoon, and the filming of "Iron Man" naturally did not stop, but Eric hurriedly flew to San Francisco to attend the conference after the morning shooting was completed.

After another round of production capacity expansion for half a year, the current production capacity of Fireflyer Electronics' Fireflyer series music players has reached 2 million units per month, and this conference is actually the global launch of Fireflyer2 and Nokia M-100 music mobile phones.

In the following Easter weekend, the Fireflyer2 will be launched in North America and major European markets at the same time, and the Yahoo Music Store will also be opened in several major European countries at the same time, but the Nokia M-100 Music Phone will first test the waters in North America and open up the connection to the Yahoo Music Store in North America.

The venue for the launch of the two products was again chosen at the Marriott Hotel in San Francisco.

Eric took off from Los Angeles at twelve o'clock in the afternoon, about half past one, and arrived at the Marriott Hotel half an hour after the launch began.

This time Eric does not plan to take the stage again, but purely rushed to help the audience for this new product launch, under the careful preparation of the senior management of Firefly Electronics, this time it is obvious that there will be no embarrassment that the singer can not attend.

The press conference is about to start, and the grand ballroom has been crowded with guests and media people from all walks of life, and the press conference of Firefly Electronics this time is much louder than when the first generation of Fireflyer was released. In addition to the invited media, many uninvited journalists, unable to obtain entry permits, flocked outside the Marriott hotel to wait for news, which was not the case when the first-generation Fireflyer was released.

In the Marriott Hotel, in a large conference room specially set aside by the hotel for the organizer, Eric was in a very relaxed mood at this time, he has been in contact with several high-level executives of Firefly Electronics during this time, and naturally knows the progress of their press conference preparations well, and naturally he will not worry about any accidents.

At the conference table, Eric chatted with several executives and beckoned Christina Aguiler, who was the guest performer at the conference, to come over to him: "So, you're releasing your first album at the end of the year?"

Christina still looked petite, sat down beside Eric obediently, and said, "Yes, I've released two singles in a row, and the results are good, so the company has started to choose songs for me." ”

With that, the girl looked like a kitten begging for food, looking at Eric with big eyes.

Due to Eric's preference for Christina, Firefly Records also leans more towards Christina. Although Christina's singing skills are great, this time, Firefly Records does not intend to let Christina go this route again, but the standard teen pop.

The original Christina, at the beginning of her career, also took the teen pop route, and her best-selling record was precisely the teen pop style album with "Genie in a Bottle" as the main theme.

It's just that this market has been taken by Britney, and as Britney becomes more and more popular, Christina, who is regarded as a 'follower' by a large number of fans, is naturally dwarfed in popularity, and has no choice but to start taking the route of explosive singing. Although Christina later won a series of Grammy and other music awards for her outstanding singing skills, she was far from being able to compare with Britney Spears in her career.

Thinking of this, Eric didn't immediately satisfy the kitten's wishes, but just asked, "By the way, what has Britney been doing lately?"

"She's starting to prepare her own singles," Christina felt a little wary of Eric's sudden mention of Britney, but she still didn't hide it very well, and said truthfully, "The company set the same route for the two of us as you said at the beginning." ”

"I, did I say anything?" said Erik for a moment, but couldn't remember for a moment. There was so much he had to say.

"Hehe, that's it, my image is a little more rebellious, but Britney is the kind of girl next door good girl route. Christina smiled and reminded. (To be continued.) )