Just after Memorial Day, a copy of the latest movie statistics is on Duke's desk. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

"The Avengers" just spent its fourth weekend in North America, and collected another $47.88 million from North America that weekend, with a total of $572.3 million at the North American box office, which is infinitely close to the top three in the total box office list in North America, "Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King", "Titanic" and "Avatar".

And the film has only been released for four weeks now, although the popularity is gradually decreasing, there is still a lot of screening time in the future to increase the box office accumulation.

Similarly, the overseas box office of "The Avengers" has undoubtedly exceeded $1 billion, and the global box office has reached $1,595.71 billion, and it is only a matter of time before it crosses the $1.6 billion mark.

Everyone knows that "The Avengers" will surpass "Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King" as Duke's single highest-grossing film.

At the same time, "Fast and Furious 5", which once competed with "The Avengers", has dropped in popularity much faster than "The Avengers", which was released a week earlier, and this weekend, "Fast and Furious 5" plummeted 62% from last weekend, taking $20.44 million from North America.

However, this figure also allowed the North American box office of "Fast and Furious 5" to steadily cross the $200 million mark, reaching $210.44 million.

Overseas, "Fast and Furious 5" was also firmly suppressed by "The Avengers", and currently only has more than $320 million at the overseas box office.

But the combined box office figure of $530 million is enough to make the film one of the commercial stars of this summer season.

There is no doubt that from the box office side, "Fast and Furious 5" even with the help of Fan? The Diesel incident engaged in "emotional marketing", but it is obviously not the same level of film as "The Avengers".

If you look at it from the perspective of the film industry chain, these two films are even several levels behind.

"The Avengers" has generated nearly $1.5 billion in non-theatrical production, while "Fast and Furious 5" is only tens of millions of dollars.

This achievement is also a fitting reflection of Duke's comic book hero film business.

Not all movies adapted from comics are superhero movies, and not all superhero movies are adapted from comics, such as Peter? Berg's "Hancock for All" and Knight? M. Hiamalan's "Unbreakable" is all original content.

But for Hollywood, superhero movies based on comics are the most valuable. Filming a sequel without worrying about the subject matter is one thing, and more importantly, it is the master switch for integrating the bigger deal of the entertainment industry, as long as the locomotive of the movie starts. Other parts of the industry chain, including comics, toys, licensed products, audiovisual products, and theme parks, will have a steady stream of new content that can bring a lot of money.

All of Hollywood is envious of Duke, envious of him throwing out a huge amount of money back then, and getting most of the equity of Marvel Comics, which is not favored by the whole United States.

Today, many investment firms and Hollywood makers know not to pay a price that borders on madness. It is impossible for Duke to give up the equity of Marvel in his hands, so they have set their eyes on another part of Marvel's equity and continue to fight for it.

In order to raise funds to acquire some of Marvel's shares, Walt Disney, which has been gradually weakened in recent years, cut 70 percent of its independent film division Miramax last year, halved the number of films released each year to two, and simply sold it to a film private equity fund this year.

The famous company, founded by the Weinstein brothers, has a huge library of 700 films, including such names as "Pulp Fiction" and "The English Patient."

Sadly, however, Miramax was the "only professional" on Oscar night. The price is only 363 million US dollars, and it is not difficult to understand why, Miramax's film is indeed 'artistically valuable', but it does not sell licensed products, and it does not help to increase the profitability of film industrialization.

Today's six major Hollywood studios are basically a department of an entertainment group or a larger company, and none of them are the departments with the highest turnover, the cost of film and television production is high, and after offsetting the expenses, the net profit of film and television products is far less than that of derivative products, but the pulling effect of film and television products is obvious. Turnover and high profit margins in other sectors related to it can be guaranteed.

This is the foundation of the Hollywood empire - "content is king", pulling the entire industrial chain.

Despite its staggering box office hit, "The Avengers" is essentially an expensive trailer for movies like "Avengers 2, 3......", "Iron Man 3, 4", "Captain America 2, 3......" and other movies for years to come, as well as big commercials for Warner theme parks, toys and licensed products such as the $37.99 Hulk** and the $11.99 Captain America beer mug.

At the beginning of June. Hasbro Yu Marvel renewed a new licensing agreement, the new contract until 2017, Hasbro has more than 1,000 characters such as Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and other overseas franchises, including toys, games, etc., Hasbro needs to pay a franchise fee of $400 million, in addition to paying a certain amount of sales shares.

For Duke and Marvel. This is the "no profit" obtained by relying on "content".

But Marvel itself is not without its problems.

In recent years, Marvel, which has continuously provided content and profits to many Hollywood studios, has a tendency to decline in its basic business, that is, comics, and in May this year, no comic book magazine could sell more than 100,000 copies, which is a record low, and comic books have not increased in price in recent years of inflation, and Marvel and DC Comics have maintained their prices at $2.99.

In fact, after the cold winter of the mid-90s, the comic book industry went downhill significantly, which is a big reason why Duke didn't face a strong competitor when he bought Marvel.

Marvel's market share can account for about 40% of the American comic industry, but the annual sales of the entire industry are less than 1.5 billion US dollars, at least in Duke's entire industry, the direct comic book business is not very remarkable.

However, Duke is well aware that the real value of Marvel Comics is not the comics themselves.

Hollywood as a whole is not in good shape, with DVDs once seen as the saviors of the film industry shrinking dramatically after 2007, and TV rights shrinking rapidly after the rise of the internet, and large companies must find alternative profit margins during the industrial transition - the media are keen to report on the box office (because the information is readily available), but not to pay much attention to the spin-offs behind the box office.

With the huge platform of Warner Bros. and Time Warner, which are major shareholders and board members, Duke has undoubtedly created a complete industrial chain for Marvel Comics.

For Hollywood in the past, the mainstream "national blockbusters" were original movies such as "Ben Hur", "Bridge over the River Kwai", "Male and Female Thieves", "Haw Par Overlord", "The Godfather" and "ET Alien", and making a sequel or trilogy is already the ultimate, except for the special 007 series, almost all of them are B-grade horror films or comedies.

However, with the advent of the "franchise" era led by "Star Wars", the entertainment industry found that "high-concept" commercial films were only the beginning of a series of extended product revenues, and when Hollywood studios were incorporated into the multinational integrated entertainment media group under their umbrella, and the huge capital controlled the film industry, film products were more included in the overall planning, and how to maximize profit became the most important issue.

Therefore, films such as "Superman", "Batman", "X-Men", "Spider-Man" and other films will emerge in an endless stream, even to the point of flooding.

Duke is not only a director, but also a spokesman for the interests of a huge capital group, and his next film will naturally be a superhero movie.

The proliferation of superhero movies essentially reflects the natural profit-seeking side of capital, such as "Captain America", "Thor" and other films, although the box office results are not bad, as a commercial film, in fact, it is far from relying on the box office to recover costs, but Duke and Marvel Studios are tired of it, and Warner Bros., as the distributor, is even more flocking, the most important reason is the huge derivative value.

Disney Chairman Michael? Eisner was blunt about selling Miramax, "Continuing to invest in new Miramax films is not necessary for our core strategy. ”

He values films that provide content for Disney's theme parks, television and other media, and licensed products, regardless of whether they have originality and artistic value.

This is also what all Hollywood producers and distributors have in common.

For example, Pixar Studios, in which Duke also holds a large stake, "Ratatouille" and "Wall-E the Robot", which are recognized as the most artistically valuable, together with the box office, brought in a total of less than $1 billion in revenue, while the much-criticized "Cars" box office is inconspicuous, but now it has derived a market value of more than $8 billion.

If Duke and Time Warner were to choose between it, it would definitely be "Cars", which does not mean that Duke likes "Cars", but his position, which naturally determines that he must do it.

In order to maximize the value of "Cars", Duke and Warner Bros. pushed for the global release of "Cars 2" last year, making it a spin-off industry that can compete with Disney's classic animation, and they did not hesitate to postpone the release of "Toy Story 3" until this summer.

The postponed animated blockbuster officially landed in the North American market in early June, attracting widespread attention as a highly anticipated sequel and the final chapter in the mouth of Pixar Studios.

As long as the film is successful, it can still create huge profits, just like what Hollywood's big directors do, and the so-called "ending" is just talking.

Duke, who is on vacation for the time being, also accepted an invitation from Pixar Studios to appear at the premiere of the film. (To be continued.) )

PS: Ask for monthly passes and recommended tickets!