On November 18th, the day after Eric flew to New York, "Home Alone" and "Home Alone Again" officially ushered in their premieres, "Home Alone" opened with 1,000 screens, while "Home Alone Again" opened with 1,279 screens, more than 200 more than "Home Alone", Fox had no scruples about gambling agreements, so he did his best at the beginning.

Also on display are 1,395 screens of Universal Pictures' animated "Little Feet Walk the World" and 952 screens of Disney's Broadway International's animated "The Adventures of Oliva".

Three movies for children were released at the same time, which made the media feel that Eric was less likely to win the bet, but Eric was not too worried, these two animations may cause a certain box office squeeze to "Home Alone" in the early stage, but the later stage will definitely not be able to compare with "Home Alone" in terms of staying power, but in the previous life, "Home Alone" had a box office of more than 10 million for 10 consecutive weeks.

After attending the two premieres, when Eric and the crew returned to the hotel, it was already past eleven o'clock in the evening. This era does not have such an advanced box office statistics system as later generations, so we can only wait until next week to know the box office figures of "Home Alone" and "Seventeen Again".

Back in his room, Eric took a shower and was about to go to bed when the phone rang suddenly. Aniston was the only one who called so late.

"Hey, Eric, did you sleep?" asked Aniston, with a little excitement in her tone.

Eric sat on the bed, wiped his wet hair with a towel and said, "Not yet, just finished taking a shower, Anne, what did you like to do?"

"Guess what?"

Eric teased, "Oh, I see, you're definitely pregnant, don't worry, I'll be in charge." ”

"Bah, you big pervert, you know how to think about those dirty things. Aniston took a sip of the microphone: "I just went to watch Home Alone, and I encountered a very interesting thing." ”

Eric smiled, "Tell me?"

"Well, when I came out of the movie theater, I happened to see a little boy of five or six years old, shouting to see Kevin, and the child's parents disagreed, saying that they had just watched it, and the little boy was lying on the ground crying. Someone saw this scene and mistook the parents for human traffickers, beat up the poor young parents, and called the police, and finally several police cars came, which was so much fun, haha. ”

Aniston just told Eric about it as an anecdote on the way to the movie, and Eric saw more meaning in it. After chatting with Aniston a few more words and hanging up the phone, Eric lay on the bed, slightly excited.

Because things still happened according to the trajectory of the previous life. In the previous life, the reason why "Home Alone" was able to achieve such an amazing box office was because a large number of bear children watched "Home Alone" over and over again, and competed to imitate Kevin's every move in the film, and finally pushed the film to achieve amazing box office results.

Things are indeed as Eric guessed, on the first day of the movie's release, the box office of "Home Alone" and the other two animations were basically the same, but as the word of mouth of "Home Alone" spread at an alarming speed in the mouths of children, the second day, the box office of "Home Alone" doubled directly, and on the third day, the single-day box office increased sharply again, and there were queues at the entrance of some popular theaters.

After all, cartoons can be watched at any time, and Kevin, who is a little ghost and a quirky person, is not always available, and most children fantasize about growing up too quickly and being able to do a lot of things that they can't do now. The movie "Home Alone" realizes what most children want to do in reality but can't, dare not do or can't do from the perspective of children.

There was a rapid trend of imitating Kevin among children in North America, and a San Francisco newspaper even reported a real Home Alone incident, in which a nine-year-old boy secretly locked himself in his room as his family prepared to go on vacation to Hawaii after watching Home Alone.

The parents of six children really didn't find out about it, and after the family flew to Hawaii, they found that the boy was missing. The boy's parents had to give up their vacation and fly back to San Francisco from Hawaii, and at the same time, the boy had already made a mess of the house and was waiting for the arrival of the 'stupid thief'.

A week later, the first week of the movie was finally counted, and although the previous signs of popularity have made people have a certain psychological preparation, the amazing first-week box office of "Home Alone" of $27.55 million still shocked everyone's eyeballs.

The box office of more than 20 million US dollars may not be comparable with the blockbusters that grossed more than 100 million in the first week of the later generations, but in this era, this achievement directly exploded all the high-grossing movies in recent years, and even Spielberg's "ET" did not achieve such an amazing start that year, and only George Lucas's "Star Wars" series can surpass "Home Alone", but the production cost of "Star Wars" is more than 100 times that of "Home Alone"!

At the same time, "Seventeen Again" also won the second place with a good score of 13.12 million. The two animated films "Little Feet Walking the World" and "The Adventures of Olive", which competed with "Home Alone", only got 7.12 million and 3.98 million box office respectively, far below the expectations of the two major film companies.

Colombia was indeed lucky, but Bronte Cohen, the president of Colombia who saw the box office in the first week, was not in a bad mood at all, and even couldn't help dropping the teacup in his hand several times.

Based on the first-week box office figures, Columbia's reassessment concluded that Home Alone must have grossed more than $200 million in North America, and possibly more than $300 million. Bront Cohen is extremely remorseful, if he had insisted on buying out the rights to "Home Alone" instead of signing some gambling agreement, then Colombia would have made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits with this film this year.

Now, according to the VAM agreement, if "Home Alone" box office is $300 million, Colombia will pay $120 million to Eric, and it can only get $45 million, minus the distribution costs, Columbia itself may only earn a fraction of Eric's $120 million.

Blunt Cohen has had the idea of tearing up the agreement many times in his heart, but the content of the VAM agreement is now known to the whole United States, and if the agreement is torn up rashly, it will be difficult for Colombia to win the lawsuit, not to mention, it will become the laughing stock of the United States, and he, the president, will definitely be swept away as a scapegoat.

"No, we have to find a way to recover the loss, we have to ......," Bront Cohen was muttering to himself, when the assistant knocked on the door and said, "Mr. Cohen, everyone is here, and we can have a meeting." ”

Bront Cohen rubbed his temples and got up and walked to the conference room.

After taking his seat, Bronte Cohen asked Lester Reid, who was in charge of the Home Alone project, "Lester, how is the number jù analyzed?"

Lester Reed was supposed to be back on a flight late this night with the "Home Alone" crew, but an emergency call from headquarters made him return to Los Angeles half a day earlier than the others. After coming to Columbia headquarters and learning about the first-week box office of Home Alone, Lester instinctively felt that something was wrong.

Glancing at the expressionless Bront Cohen, it was Bront Cohen who decided to accept the VAM agreement, but he was the first to respond to the agreement at the meeting. According to Bronte Cohen's self-righteous personality, nine times out of ten, he will be angry with himself.

"Mr. Cohen, according to the analysis of the number jù department, according to the VAM agreement, we can only get a maximum of about 50 million US dollars, and the peak of the share is about 225 million US dollars, which is the number jù curve. ”

Blunt Cohen took the analysis and glanced at the red parabola representing Colombia's profits, as well as the green curve that represented Eric's share, and his temples couldn't help but jump twice again.

Bang -

Another teacup was slammed by Blunt Cohen on the mahogany floor, making a muffled noise, and everyone else in the conference room shook slightly, subconsciously lowering their heads and becoming silent.

Under normal circumstances, the box office share of 50 million US dollars can already make many film company executives wake up with a smile in their dreams, after all, even if it is the Big Six, the best box office profit in this era is about one or two hundred million.

But when compared to the more than $100 million in profits that Eric could make, all the excitement that Bront Cohen should have had was gone in an instant.

"So, you were responsible for signing the gambling agreement, what now?" Blunt Cohen glanced coldly around the crowd, and finally his eyes fell on Lester Reed.