Exploiting Hollywood 1980
Chapter 53: A stubborn member of the box office charts
The young computer expert happened to be an undergraduate student in the computer science department at UCLA. He enthusiastically pointed out the store where Ronald could buy all the accessories, and used his privileges as an administrator at the computer center to open an email account for Ronald.
Ronald also fulfilled his wish and helped him get a signed photo of Phoebe Cates through his connections.
"Beep, squeak, wooo..." After a series of strange noises, the modem finally connected to the university's BBS.
Ronald logged in with the email account given by his friend, and then opened the client software of the newsgroup.
The connection speed was very slow, and the phone bill was expensive. Ronald had to download the content in the newsgroup in the middle of the night. After finally waiting until all the emails were downloaded, Ronald began to browse slowly on the computer.
There was not much content in the newsgroup. In the movie section, there were only two posts discussing "Night of the Comet". It was the movie-watching campaign initiated by the college student. There were more discussions about "War Games" under one post. After all, it was a movie related to these computer geeks. Some people also pointed out many loopholes in the movie, and listed as many as twelve.
Ronald replied, "Movies are an art of storytelling, and some loopholes are for the audience's convenience." Then he continued to browse other sections.
Most of the sections discussed computer, software, and network-related content. Ronald couldn't understand most of them. There was only one topic section, which contained various controversial topics. For example, anti-war, racial discrimination, Soviet Union, nuclear war, etc.
Ronald found it interesting and posted a post called "Does anyone know the history of Japanese Americans?" Then he turned off the computer.
The next day, several people responded to his post, and many people said they had never heard of the history of Japanese Americans. Only one person replied that because of World War II, America had driven all Japanese Americans into concentration camps. It was just like the Chinese Exclusion Act against Chinese Americans earlier.
Then several people said they had never heard of this matter.
Ronald saw that person and replied angrily, "These white rulers don't want you to remember this period of history of persecution of yellow-skinned people. You can check the history of the 442nd Infantry Regiment."
Ronald certainly hadn't heard of the 442nd Infantry Regiment, and replied in the client, "I haven't heard of this Infantry Regiment, I don't know what you mean, where can I see their history?"
In the next few days, the box office chart officially entered the most intense period of the year. "Star Wars" continued to surge forward, earning $42 million in box office in a week, and the average weekly box office of a single theater was as high as $40,000.
"Psycho 2" and "The Man with Two Brains" quickly fell back and gave up the top three positions in the box office chart.
On the contrary, "War Games", "Flashdance", and "Night of the Comet" remained stable and continued to be at the top of the list.
【To be honest, I have been using Mimi Reading to read books and follow the latest updates recently, changing sources, and reading aloud in many tones, both Android and Apple are available. 】
Especially for "Flashdance" and "Night of the Comet", although the number of theaters has dropped to 1,000 and 500 respectively, the box office has a lot of stamina and is declining very slowly.
"Flashdance" has been screened for the eighth week, but the box office has only dropped by 20% compared with last week. The second week declines of "Psycho 2" and "The Man with Two Brains" have exceeded 40%.
The most surprising thing is that "Night of the Comet" has only dropped by 10 percentage points compared with last week. In a short time, the reputation of the box office nail spread like wildfire.
"You know, Ronald. The box office in the first weekend depends on the company's distribution ability, but starting from the second week, it all depends on the audience's word of mouth. This is an iron rule. It seems that your movie has a good reputation, enough to be compared with "Flashdance."
The distribution manager of Atlantic Company, sitting in the conference room, explained to Ronald the reason for the abnormally strong box office.
"Then will our number of theaters be maintained?"
"It can be maintained for about one week. There will be another summer blockbuster "Incredibles 3" released next week. The number of theaters for our movie will not decrease too much, but the number of screenings and the time of the screening will be affected."
"Okay", Ronald has long accepted the fact that Atlantic's distribution ability is not good. Fortunately, his own movie is doing well. If it continues, it will surely break the 20 million box office record.
In addition to the good quality of "Night of the Comet" itself, the special effects are also quite good, unlike the simplicity of a small production. Ronald feels that the videos and movie trailers played on TV stations in a loop have made a significant contribution to the box office.
He does not have much evidence to prove this, but "Flashdance" and "Night of the Comet" are the only two movies that advertise on TV stations. The weekly decline of these two movies on the box office list is particularly slow, which cannot help but make all those engaged in film distribution begin to doubt the power of TV stations.
"Do you think it is the effect of TV advertising?" Ronald asked the other party. "I think it's half and half. On the one hand, TV does have a lot of young audiences, so advertising here can maximize the reach of our target audience for 'Night of the Comet'. On the other hand, your film is indeed of high quality.
Director Li, I'm not flattering you. I used to work in distribution at United Artists. The quality of a film is closely related to the director's professional ethics. I'll just say one thing, your budget has been invested entirely in production.
All the money can be seen on the final screen where it was spent. Those realistic zombies, the debris after the comet destroyed the world, the blood-red sky, and the deserted city. I am not an expert in shooting movies, but I feel that another director might not be able to make it even with five million dollars. "
"You were originally at United Artists?" Ronald asked.
"Yeah, I think you should have heard of Michael Cimino. His 'Heaven's Gate' crew spent three percent of the budget on drug abuse. And you're You can’t see how the money was used at all on the screen. I had already taken out a loan to buy a house and almost lost my mortgage because of this movie.”
Ronald smiled and was about to answer when Tom Coleman, the president of Atlantic, knocked on the door and came in.
"Hello, Ronald." Tom hugged Ronald tightly.
"Sorry, I was just in a preparatory meeting with several crews. Your and Martha Coolidge's movie made Atlantic famous in the industry. The scripts that were not sent to us before are now being sent to us."
"Coffee?" Tom Coolidge raised his hand to introduce a middle-aged lady who came in with him.
"This is our company's financial director."
"Hello Mr. Ronald Lee, according to the agreement we signed before, 'Night of the Comet' has reached the break-even point. We will first pay your director's remuneration of one hundred thousand US dollars, and your company's investment of twenty Ten thousand US dollars, settled to you in advance.
We need to distribute the rest of the profit sharing to you and other investors after the movie is released and the box office figures are settled with the theaters. "
Ronald took two checks totaling three hundred thousand dollars and put them into his pocket.
"So when will our box office be settled?"
"Don't worry, Ronald." President Tom Coleman took over, "We will enjoy a relatively high share of the current box office. When it switches to long-term screening, your movie will undoubtedly be screened for a long time. We The production company’s share will be reduced accordingly, so basically the main part of the profit that can be attributed to us will start to be settled after the first round of screenings.”
"As for the time, it's difficult for me to give you a specific number, but we will do our best."
"Okay, then I will ask my accountant to contact yours." Ronald knew that the accounting period for the box office share would not be too short. Anyway, he had already received his remuneration and the investment costs. In short, he would save his capital first. "
Called Lawrence, the accountant, and deposited the check in the bank. Ronald began to think about giving himself some rewards.
Should I buy a sports car that is standard equipment for Hollywood celebrities?
never mind. I have seen several sports car dealers and found that expensive sports cars in Europe are very expensive, and America's own muscle sports cars are not enough to reflect their value in Los Angeles and distinguish themselves from other directors in the entertainment industry.
The DeLorean sports car invested by talk show host Johnny Carson two years ago has doors that open on both sides and a shape like swan wings, which is very recognizable. But the cockpit of the sports car was very small, and Ronald couldn't even straighten his legs when he sat in it, so he gave up the idea for the time being.
When Ronald returned home, he started to turn on the modem, continued to connect to the user network, and read the news. He has been very addicted to this news group these days. The people in it are very well-educated. From the English text, it can be seen that the participants are well-educated.
"Um?"
A highlighted line appears in the upper right corner of the newsgroup client.
Ronald looked carefully and saw that someone had replied to his statement.
After pressing the "n" key several times, Ronald found the person's reply. It turned out to be Ronald asking about the 442nd Infantry Regiment.
"The 442nd Infantry Regiment was a regiment formed by Japanese Americans. Its sacrifice rate exceeded 100%. The family members of Japanese Americans were driven into concentration camps. They had to join the army for their post-war life. Go to the European battlefield to fight the Germans.
If you need more information, you may wish to contact Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye. "
"Daniel Inoue, senior senator from Hawaii." Ronald touched his chin.
Chapter 53: A nail on the box office list
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