At noon, Firefly Studios. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

Eric and Gravity VFX supervisor Robert Byron came out of the digital studio together, originally planning to go to lunch together, when the phone rang, Eric answered a few words, and then parted ways with Robert Byron and came to his office in the studio.

Pushing open the office door, Elizabeth, dressed in a professional suit, sat in a leather chair behind her desk, holding a document and flipping through it blatantly.

Eric walked over, smiled and reached out to take the materials in Elizabeth's hand, leaned against the edge of the table and teased, "Even if you are angry with your father, you don't have to move the office to me, right?" Your cinema is the size of a place. ”

Listening to Eric's pot, Elizabeth suddenly stiffened her face, she ran to New York for a week, but in the end she still couldn't stop a strange woman from working on the Fox network.

"They said they were going to hand over the business of Fox to me, hmph, when I don't know, control freak," grumbled angrily, Elizabeth raised her eyes and glared at Eric again, "You're a control freak too, you men are control freaks." ”

"You finally understand the cruel truth," Eric pulled the leather chair in front of him, leaned over and kissed the girl's face, and smiled, "Are you disappointed in the world now and want to take revenge on society?" ”

Elizabeth tilted her head, opened her mouth to bite one of Eric's fingers, and bared her little white teeth menacingly.

Undeed, Eric pushed forward and stretched out another finger.

The girl, who realized Eric's intentions, quickly let go of his finger and snorted twice before she said aggrievedly: "You hateful fellow, you also bully me." ”

"Okay, don't be angry," Eric pulled out a tissue from the lattice under his desk, wiped his hands, and smiled, "Hungry or not, let's go eat first?" ”

Elizabeth shook her head and said with some reluctance: "I'm not hungry, I'm going to go on a diet for a day, you accompany me." ”

Eric encouraged very willingly: "If you don't go on a diet for a week, you can write a will first, and remember to leave me the hilltop villa, and the one at the Trausdale estate will be given to Julia." ”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes widely, "You think beautifully." ”

Eric saw that her little flame was almost extinguished, and said, "Do you want to go out and eat?" ”

"I'm not hungry now, wait a minute," Elizabeth shrunk back into the leather chair and raised her chin to gesture to the computer screen on the table, "So, you and Julia are going to bet me on this?" ”

Eric turned his head to look, only to see that the lit computer screen showed a website about Blair the Witch.

The small operation team of "Blair the Witch" is still very capable, and with the resource support of Firefly, it only took three days to make the theme website of the film.

A few days ago, I roughly explained the operation of viral marketing to the small team, and Eric didn't put too much thought into it.

For this pseudo-documentary that has created a box office miracle, Eric is more just a truncated mentality and some ticket plays, if it can succeed, everyone will naturally be happy, and it doesn't matter if it fails. After all, the firefly system has developed to the current scale, and the upright management can go further, and too much pursuit of these tricks will only outweigh the losses.

Moreover, if the film is bought and successfully operated by Artisan Company according to the historical development of the past, it will receive $140 million at the box office in North America alone.

In fact, the number of moviegoers in North America has always been very fixed every year, and the North American box office has just exceeded the $7 billion mark in recent years due to the increase in ticket prices. The $140 million box office is equivalent to one-fiftieth of the total box office in North America, and this money is taken by the artist, and other Hollywood studios will naturally lose $140 million in revenue. According to the market share of the firefly system, this is equivalent to stealing money from the fireflies, and Eric is naturally not willing.

Of course, Eric wanted to replicate the marketing model of "Blair the Witch" in the past, and he had other intentions: "This was a marketing experiment, and I wanted to show the industry the power of the Internet channel. You know, a lot of traditional advertisers are still full of doubts about the effectiveness of Internet advertising, and if this can be successful, I think more people will recognize Internet advertising platforms. ”

"I just read the information on this website, and if I hadn't known beforehand that everything was fake, I would have almost believed it," Elizabeth said, "but do you really think the film will sell $100 million at the box office, Julia told me, and the film sucks." ”

"Maybe, there's no shortage of miracles in Hollywood."

Elizabeth's eyes rolled and said slyly: "In this case, about that bet, I'll go next, if you lose, you're going to help Fox make a movie." ”

"What if I win?"

"Then I'll make a movie for Firefly."

"Are you sure you can make a movie?"

"Of course," Elizabeth lifted her chin proudly, "I'm a serious media graduate, unlike some people who haven't gone to college." ”

Eric shrugged his shoulders indifferently and smiled, "Okay, but you have to know that in Hollywood, everyone is uneducated, and only those who have gone to college are despised." ”

"Ahh ”

"yes," Eric said, "So, before the release, the company will definitely state in advance that this is just a movie marketing." ”

Eric also thought about it.

In the past, the Yijiang Film Company was just a small family, and it played everyone with a fake and real thing, and later media also focused on the box office miracle created by "Blair the Witch", and no one pursued the Yijiang Film Company for its obviously deceptive marketing methods.

Artisan companies can do this, but fireflies cannot.

This is actually one of the reasons why Eric does not expect much from the box office success of "Blair the Witch".

Firefly's goal is too big, and once "Blair the Witch" is successful at the box office again, and the company does not clarify it in advance, it will definitely be grabbed by countless people. In a social environment like North America, where a few glares can lead to a lawsuit, Fireflies will definitely face a series of lawsuits.

Elizabeth asked again, "And when are you going to release it?" ”

"It depends on the situation," Eric thought for a moment and said, "Such a topic, a month of brewing is almost enough, and if it is too long, the curiosity of the audience will cool, maybe in March." ”

Since it's just a ticket, Eric will definitely not put "Blair the Witch" in a popular schedule such as the summer file.

After a few words, Eric reached out and pulled Elizabeth up from the chair and said, "Let's go, go to Venice Beach." ”

Elizabeth no longer refused, took Eric's arm and walked out of the office together, and said, "By the way, will you go to the Golden Globe ceremony tomorrow night?" ”

Eric shook his head directly: "Don't go." ”

In the past year, Hollywood has achieved brilliant box office results in commercial films, not only with "Breaking Bad 3", "Mission Impossible 3", "Star Wars Prequel 1: The Phantom Menace" and other global 1 billion super blockbusters, but also box office dark horses such as "Midnight Bell".

In comparison, Hollywood's literary film market last year was bleak, which also made for the most mediocre awards year in recent years.

This awards season, the two seemingly popular films, whether it is "The Horse Whisperer" or "Elizabeth", are far less desirable than films such as "Forrest Gump", "Schindler's List", and "Saving Private Ryan" in previous years.

Eric doesn't even have any interest in this year's Oscars, so he's even more lazy to join in the excitement of the Golden Globes.

As expected, under Miramax's strong PR, at the Golden Globe Awards the next day, "The Horse Whisperer" easily won most of the award nominations, and only Cate Blanchett of the "Elizabeth" crew successfully won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series, which is still because "The Horse Whisperer" did not compete with Blanchett in this award.

In the list of Oscar nominees announced later, "The Horse Whisperer" also led this Oscar with 10 nominations.

This year's Ballon d'Or will be held on January 29, followed by the Super Bowl 33 final in Miami, Florida, on January 31, which will also be the second broadcast of the FOX network after receiving the Super Bowl ticket.

The biggest highlight of this Super Bowl ad is undoubtedly the series of advertisements for new technology companies, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cisco, Amazon, Intel and other mainstream new technology companies have appeared, as if people have completely lived in the Internet age.

However, among them, the trailer of "Iron Man" still attracted a lot of attention.

The 30-second Super Bowl commercial is naturally impossible to contain too much information, except for the Iron Man armor at a glimpse, the audience is undoubtedly Eric, the actor of Tony Stark.

Although Tony Stark, who has dark chestnut hair and a beard in the film, and Eric's in reality, look completely different from each other after makeup, and their temperaments are very different, many people still can't help but frantically discuss the various commonalities of the two characters in and out of the play. Of course, Eric, as the richest super-rich man ever in North America and even the whole world, personally played the leading role in a movie, which has also become the focus of controversy for many people.

Various related topics on the Internet have taken over the top topic charts of portals in just a few days.

In the following days, Firefly Group also officially released the first TV trailer of "Iron Man" on major TV networks, heralding the arrival of the final stage of large-scale publicity before the release of the film. Some of the film's main creators and supporting actors also began to appear sporadically on some TV talk shows to warm up for its release in three months.

At the same time that "Iron Man" began to be promoted as a regular movie, a rumor spread on the Internet in Maryland about the mysterious disappearance of several college students after visiting Blair Witch.

The biggest premise of viral marketing is a topic that attracts enough attention and an interactive network that can spread the topic.

The ordinary life of the North American middle class and the natural desire for adventure made them involuntarily have a strong curiosity about those "missing" college students, which satisfies the eyeball effect premise of viral marketing.

On the other hand, as the country with the highest Internet penetration in the world, when the people in many other regions are not very clear about what a personal computer is, the Internet penetration in North America has caught up with TV and video recorders, and in 1998, the global PC sales reached more than 93 million units, of which seven CDs were concentrated in North America.

At the end of last year, the number of Internet users in North America had exceeded the 100 million mark, equivalent to one-third of the total population of North America, and the user base exceeded 100 million, which also gave the witch Blair incident enough popularity base.

With the two key elements in place, and the fact that all those in the know have re-signed a well-established confidentiality agreement, and no one has jumped out to debunk the truth in the process, the rumors of Blair the witch have gradually evolved into a storm of Internet viruses.

While the "Blair the Witch" theme website released detailed background information about the story, it also continued to release various information such as search and rescue information of the local garrison in Maryland, insider records, and follow-up progress of time, all of which are fake and true, and their broader curiosity.

In just a week, curious explorers have gathered in the small town of Brookshville, Maryland, where "Blair the Witch" was filmed, to ask the bewildered townspeople about Blair the witch.

As this incident intensified, the local government of Maryland even had to come forward to refute the rumors, but the North American people, who have been surrounded by various conspiracy theories since childhood, naturally did not believe the government's official explanation, and the incident continued to ferment rapidly.

Seeing that this was moving faster than he thought, Eric soon decided to set the release date of "Blair the Witch" on March 5.

However, for the sake of prudence, Eric also arranged only 200 opening screens for this film, in any case, according to the current development of things, even if the public was clarified before the release, most people's interest in this topic has greatly decreased, and Fireflies can make a small profit.

Then again, although it is only 200 opening screens, in fact, compared to the original time and space in which Artisan Company was able to raise more than 20 theaters for "Blair the Witch" in the first week, 200 screens is undoubtedly a big deal, which actually shows the deep-rooted heritage of Hollywood big companies.

Since it is a small year for the Oscars, February, which should have been very lively in Hollywood, has also been much more deserted this year.

Eric continued the post-production of Gravity step by step. Meanwhile, in late February, Eric flew to New York again to complete the transfer of AOL's 3.1% stake in Clover Fund.

On February 16, after half a year of negotiations, AOL and Time Warner finally reached a preliminary merger draft, as long as the shares of AOL directly held by Firefly Group are recovered, the two sides will officially announce the merger and submit the merger to the Federal Trade Commission for review.