The summer vacation is over, and Duke is still on vacation, but instead of leaving North America, he often travels to Lucasfilm in San Francisco to discuss plans and scripts for the new Star Wars with a group of writers. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

As has been said in the past, Duke is not asking for innovation and creativity, but for the most sound plan, and for a hugely successful film series like Star Wars, the risks of so-called innovation far outweigh conservatism.

In addition to that, Duke accompanies Scarlett? Johnson went on a trip to Tennessee, and Scarlett was ready to invest in the Sovereign cinema chain there, which was one reason Duke cared so much about ticket prices.

The current Junhao Cinema Company is far inferior to AMG and Emperor Entertainment, but it is a representative of high-end cinemas in North America.

Perhaps older North American audiences still remember the scenes of some of Sovereign Entertainment's movie theaters in the past, with sticky theater floors, cramped and crowded theater seats, and pitifully sized screens.

But all of this is gone in the Sovereign entertainment theater chain that Duke saw, replaced by a variety of state-of-the-art screens, new audiovisual projection quality, luxury seats that can be reserved online, and even a theater that includes a la carte service.

Sovereign Entertainment began to renovate more than 600 screens and related equipment in its 50 theaters two years ago, and the simple act of replacing fixed seatback seats with adjustable back seats has significantly increased the box office revenue of related theaters.

At the same time, according to the plan of Junhao Entertainment Cinema, the company will also plan to renovate more than 2,000 movie screens and related equipment in the next two years.

This is also one of the reasons for Junhao's external financing.

Accompanying Scarlett around the Sovereign Company, Duke did not object to her investment plan, and in the coming decades, theaters will still be the foundation of the film industry, such as the old cinema chain of Sovereign Company, as long as it is operated properly, this investment is still quite cost-effective.

Sovereign Entertainment is not only renovating existing theaters, but also opening new ones, and Duke and Scarlett have also visited their newly opened theaters, which all offer Sovereign Entertainment's latest "Sovereign Premium Movie Experience" service.

This new high-end service includes the latest super-large IMAX movie screens, newly upgraded cinema lighting equipment, newly upgraded Dolby Atmos 3D surround sound, real-time online seat selection, and priority access to cinemas in the most popular theaters.

Of course. All of these upgrades mean higher ticket prices.

In these luxurious high-end cinemas, Sovereign Entertainment Cinemas has also begun to pilot a limited-edition black anodized rigid movie ticket, which allows audiences to watch any movie in their theater on the same day without any time limit after purchasing this ticket.

At the same time, Junhao Entertainment Cinema Line will also have its own membership point system. To further strengthen the derivative services related to the return of points after members purchase tickets and watch movies, the new membership points system will be implemented from many movie theaters in Knoxville, Tennessee, and then rolled to Sovereign Entertainment theaters across the United States.

In addition, as the focus of the theater's profits, Junhao Company also made a big fuss about selling products. All of the cinemas in the cinema chain offer in-cinema bars, leather adjustable seat-back seats, and in-cinema catering services provided by waiters at any time......

Because of this, Junhao Entertainment Cinema has gradually become a "diamond-level" high-end theater in the North American market in recent years.

Originally, Duke planned to accompany Scarlett to visit more theaters here and participate in investment negotiations between the two parties, but the new news from Warner Bros. forced him to return to Los Angeles early.

Fortunately, there is also Tina? Fei, with a veteran like her to assist Scarlett in negotiations, Duke is also relieved enough.

Duke hurried back to Los Angeles because his film was involved in a storm in the market across the Pacific.

It seems that The Dark Knight Rises simply could not be calm, in the other day. There was a "box office stealing" scandal in the Pacific market, and "The Dark Knight Rises", which sold nearly 1.6 billion RMB, was passively involved, and part of the box office was moved to the box office of other movies.

"Duke, you know more about the Chinese market."

In the Warner Bros. boardroom, Doug? Walter frowned and said, "Do you think there's a better solution?" ”

"No......," Duke shook his head, "that's not our territory. ”

He thought for a moment, right, Jamie? Johnson said, "When you go to that tomorrow, take my letter of protest with you." And also. Inform the MPAA of this and they will diplomatically put pressure on the other side to prevent this from happening to our films again. ”

Having worked in related industries across the Pacific, Duke is well aware. Stealing the box office is not an exception at all.

"Stealing" the box office of Hollywood movies and replacing them with some domestic films is a method that is often used.

Jamie? Johnson was going to fly to the other side to settle the incident and make a serious protest on behalf of Warner and Duke, and he couldn't help but sigh, "This market is really big." But it's also very confusing. ”

"Don't forget, they're just getting started." Duke walked over and patted him gently, "We've been through this phase as well. ”

This is something that happened on the other side of the Pacific, and they don't really have much to do, and unless there are clear targeted legal measures on the other side, similar things will happen.

And Duke knows better than the two Warner executives that things are actually more chaotic and serious than they thought.

The current Chinese film market is thriving, creating the best total box office results in history every year, but under the lush surface of the Chinese film market, there is actually turbulence, as long as you care about this industry, you have basically heard of the words stealing the box office, buying the box office, etc.

Having been a member of the industry, Duke has learned a little bit about it, and some of the things are really shocking.

If you want to talk about the details of stealing the box office and buying the box office, you must first understand the distribution system and account sharing system of cross-strait films, and the players in the market can be roughly divided into three parties - the producer, the distributor and the theater chain.

It's not hard to understand that the producer produces the film; The distributor is responsible for copying, scheduling, and negotiating and signing contracts with theaters. Cinemas are mainly engaged in the screening of films.

So how do these three parties split the box office revenue?

If you buy an 80 yuan movie ticket, the 80 yuan is generally distributed in this way, 5% is used as a special fund for the development of the film industry, and 3.3% is used as a tax.

In addition to these, the remaining 73.36 yuan will be divided between the film company and the theater according to the ratio of 43:57. In other words, for an 80 yuan movie ticket, the producer + distributor can get 31.54 yuan, and the theater chain can get 41.82 yuan.

Of course, this is only a general basic system, and not every film will follow it exactly.

It can be seen that the box office of a movie, excluding the part that must be handed over to the state, is left to share the accounts between the film company and the theater chain. Although there is an agreed account sharing ratio, it can't escape a good word, and sometimes the theater chain has the move to steal the box office in order to make more profits.

This is also one of the reasons for stealing the box office.

For example, for a movie with a box office of 1 billion, the producer + distributor should receive nearly 400 million yuan, and if the theater reduces the actual box office to 800 million through a series of means, then the part that is hidden will be enjoyed exclusively by the theater, and there is no need to share the account with the filmmaker.

This means that the film producer may have lost its due benefits, and in a simple sentence to explain the theft of the box office - the theater used abnormal means to steal the filmmaker's due share of the account.

In order to achieve their own goals, theaters can use a variety of means.

For example, handwritten tickets, ticketless admission, and invalid ticket admission are the most basic of the many means used by theaters to hide the box office.

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that there is a bug in the theater's ticketing system and the tickets cannot be issued normally, so handwritten tickets are temporarily used. However, the probability of this happening is very small, and if a theater has a large number of handwritten tickets and no tickets, it can basically be concluded that the box office is undoubtedly stealing.

When encountering a handwritten ticket, you can ask the theater to go out to play the ticket, but if this is not the case, you can avoid stealing the box office? Of course not.

Like handwritten tickets, they are the most elementary of the means of stealing the box office, and now the issuer mostly adopts the means of supervision, and the means of handwritten tickets are easy to discover, and more advanced methods are popular - structural tickets.

What is a structure ticket?

For example, the distributor will generally agree with the theater on the minimum ticket price of a movie, for example, the agreed minimum ticket price of movie A is 30 yuan. In reality, it will definitely not be sold at the lowest price, but according to the market conditions.

Suppose a movie, the theater sets the ticket price at 70 yuan according to the actual situation, if the audience buys a 70 yuan movie ticket, then the 70 yuan will be shared with the filmmaker, and the theater will have no profit to steal.

So the theater came up with such a method: bundle packages.

The theater sells another 80 yuan package: movie ticket + popcorn + drink, 30 yuan of 80 yuan is counted as the movie box office - 30 yuan is the lowest ticket price - the 50 yuan saved, all counted as popcorn and drink income.

What's in it for theaters? The income from popcorn and drinks does not need to be shared with the filmmaker, and it is all in the pocket of the theater chain.

In order to make a profit, the wisdom of businessmen is endless, and there is a more advanced method of stealing the box office than bundling packages is in vogue, that is, theaters adopt a dual system of bookkeeping and reimbursement.

The theater's accounting system is networked with the box office monitoring system, and the movie box office that the theater and the film party know are from this system, and the other box office system is the accounting system set up by the theater privately, which can also go out to play movie tickets, but the box office is privately swallowed by the theater itself.

As we all know, it is not only the theaters that steal the box office, many times the film side will also join in it, capital is naturally profit-seeking, coupled with the imperfect regulatory measures on the other side, all kinds of box office methods for profit can be said to be endless.

For example, the most typical box office. (To be continued.) )

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