Chapter 1000 Good News
Taking Mayer to the second floor, Eric pushed open the door of a guest room, turned to Mayer sideways, and said, "Hey, you can stay here for the next two days, there should be brand new ones in the bathroom cabinet. Toiletries, what else is missing, you have to buy it yourself."
Mayer pulled the suitcase and walked two steps into the room. This is a very spacious bedroom, brightly decorated in white, with a separate terrace and bathroom. The large bed, wardrobe and desk are all very simple in style. But obviously with a delicate and expensive atmosphere, there is also a computer with a 21-inch LCD screen, which is rarely seen today.
After looking around, Mayer turned around and saw Eric standing at the door, not intending to come in, his expression paused, and suddenly he didn't know what to say.
Eric noticed the change in Mayer's expression and said with a smile: "That's it, I'm going to the study upstairs, you can do whatever you want. There is a library and entertainment room on the first floor, and a home theater in the basement. I want to go out for a walk. If you want to drive the car that Carter and the others left behind, you'll be fine."
Seeing that Eric was leaving, Mayer finally found a topic and said, "Eric, then, do you need me to help you prepare dinner?"
"Oh, there is a Minjiang restaurant in the Jiekou Garden Hotel. You can call to reserve a place. We can go there to eat in the evening."
Mayer didn't know the ordering phone number of Minjiang Restaurant, but she didn't ask much. She could still handle such trivial matters, so she nodded.
Watching Eric leave, the figure disappeared at the entrance of the stairs opposite. Mayer closed the door and stood there for a while before opening his suitcase and starting to pack up.
Eric didn't pack any luggage. The girl arranged everything in his private life in an orderly manner. This mansion has a full set of his daily necessities, even the pencils on the desk in the study are placed according to his personal habits. Yes, this is almost his other home.
After setting up Mayer, Eric went to the study on the third floor.
Turning on the computer, Eric clicked the Yahoo browser icon on the desktop of the monitor, and skillfully typed the URL of the Google search engine in the address bar.
The familiar search engine page immediately jumped out. In addition to web search, there are other pictures, emails, maps and a dedicated Yahoo homepage through train. Compared with the original internal beta version, the official Google search engine has made some fine-tuning. But overall little has changed.
Yahoo's current business focus is still on portal sites. Although it has been determined internally that it will take search engines as its business focus in the next few years, Yahoo has not promoted the separate Google search engine that has been launched with great fanfare for the time being. After all, Yahoo's upcoming ipo will focus on the concept of Internet media.
After clicking on the row of buttons above the search box, Eric directly logged into his work mailbox through the browser and found the box office data report for the new week.
From June 12 to June 18, the second week of the release of "The Day After Tomorrow", the overall box office of the film dropped by 43% compared with the first week, with a weekly box office of 63.69 million US dollars and a cumulative box office of 175 million US dollars, temporarily ranked in 1998. The second place in the annual North American film box office list, the first is "Ace Power 2" released on the Easter schedule, this parody film finally set the box office at 186 million US dollars.
In addition, since the simultaneous release of most overseas box office countries has basically been achieved, the cumulative overseas box office of "The Day After Tomorrow" has reached 226 million US dollars in two weeks. There is no doubt that "The Day After Tomorrow" will be another overseas box office. Hollywood blockbuster.
Combining the box office data of the previous two weeks, the Firefly distribution department predicted that the North American box office of "The Day After Tomorrow" will probably be between 230 million and 250 million US dollars, the overseas box office will be between 400 million and 500 million US dollars, and the global box office is expected to be 600 million US dollars. to around $700 million.
Although it can't be regarded as an outbreak, there is no doubt that "The Day After Tomorrow" can definitely be said to be a global hit. According to the film's production budget of 120 million US dollars and a distribution budget of 50 million US dollars,
Just at the global box office, "The Day After Tomorrow" will be able to recover a net profit of more than 100 million US dollars.
Scanning the box office information of other films in the box office data report, Eric's attention turned to "The Matrix 2", which was officially released today.
Although the production rights for the sequel to "The Matrix" were sold, Firefly still retains the right to develop peripheral merchandise in the "Matrix" series.
Compared with the long-term operation of video tapes and TV broadcasting rights, the benefits of peripheral products of the film are almost carried out at the same time as the release of the film.
"The Matrix 2" is released, no matter what the result is, it will definitely bring a wave of sales peaks to related peripheral products. Although the peripherals of the "Matrix" series are not as rich as animated movies or "Jurassic Park" and other movies, Firefly earns this part of the income very easily and hardly needs to invest any marketing resources.
Although Eric did not specifically instruct him, the assistant office still sent the information related to "The Matrix 2" that had been sorted out to his e-mail.
Eric opened the email and saw the box office data of "The Matrix 2" at $9.95 million at the midnight at first glance.
The midnight box office of nearly 10 million US dollars once again broke the midnight box office record in North America. Last year, Eric's "007 Casino Royale", the midnight box office was only 5 million US dollars.
However, Eric is not too surprised. The 007 series has become a symbol of popular film culture. Although it is very well-known, it does not have many diehard fans, so there will not be too many audiences who are willing to stay up late to watch the midnight show.
But the "Matrix" series is different. The stunning first part of the film directly made this series a godsend, gathering a large number of diehard fans, and it is not difficult to understand the high box office at midnight.
However, "The Matrix 2" broke the record at midnight, and there are also factors of natural growth in the North American film market. Not to mention the "Star Wars Prequel" that will be released at the end of the year, even "Charlie's Angels 3" in half a month, it is possible to set this record again.
After looking at the annotations attached to the data of the midnight scene, Eric turned to the comments of the film, which was what he was more concerned about.
The e-mail first listed the praise of "The Matrix 2".
"I liked this film very much, and I recommend it to everyone very sincerely. However, this film has lacked some things that moved me in the first film." - "The New York Observer"
"Compared with the first one, the Wachowski brothers are more mature." - "Salon"
"You don't have to understand the depths of the Matrix franchise to enjoy the movie very easily." --The Hollywood Reporter
"Although some new elements have been added, the film is no longer as amazing and exciting as the first one." - "Variety".
Although it was praised, Eric clearly felt that the evaluation of "The Matrix 2" by many media and film critics can only be regarded as recognition, but from these words, it must not be regarded as the first film. This tone is also in line with Eric's memory of the previous version and his senses after reading the scripts of the two Wachowskis' sequels.
After reading the positive information, Eric skipped the following series of brief negative comments, found a longer comment, and read it carefully.
"Given how well the Matrix series got off to a good start, you'd definitely have the same expectations for the sequel, right?"
"However, many people may be disappointed, at least, I personally feel this way. In this sequel, many good ideas and highlights of the first film have been diluted, and it can even be said that a very bad one is left. Part of. Although the film still looks cool on the surface, it is actually far from the first one, and some vague and obscure philosophical thinking deliberately added by the Wachowski brothers is just a mystery to me. I really I'm disappointed with everything in this film, everything seems to have gone off track, leaving only a bunch of so-called hot action scenes over and over again."
"The first will forever be a cinematic special effects milestone, it changed special effects cinema forever, and it also gave us a philosophical proposition about the real and the unreal that we can think about for many years. This sequel, however, is clearly starting to flow. Yu vulgar, considering this is a two-episode series, it's hard for me to imagine what the third installment will be like, maybe give us a much worse finish. If you're a fan of the Matrix series, you must Wouldn't want to see that happen. But thinking about the fact that Firefly Group even sold the production rights to avoid shooting according to the Wachowskis' script for the two sequels, it's hard for me to reconsider the first What to expect from the three."
One of the more professional things about film critics in North America is that they basically don’t give the audience any advance spoilers.
After Eric read this review, although he couldn't see the film critic's analysis of the plot of the sequel, but thinking about how he felt when he read the Wachowski Brothers' script, he could roughly guess what the other party was. Feeling.
At the end of the email, after statistics, the overall score of "The Matrix 2" is only 7.3, which is far less than the 8.7 of the first part.
Compared with the great situation created by the first film, the score of 7.3 is only barely passable.
After reading the email in front of him, Eric put the matter of "The Matrix 2" to the back of his mind. It is still the same sentence. Since it is already poured out, it is useless to pay more attention.
The $300 million in revenue from the production rights for the sequel to "The Matrix" was invested by Eric directly into the Shamrock Fund. Even if the total value of the shares held by the Shamrock Fund is 16 billion US dollars, the original amount of money has doubled. The $300 million could be worth more than $1 billion when the stock sells off next year.
Amberlin Pictures has invested more than $600 million in the two sequels of The Matrix. Even if The Matrix 2 hits $1 billion worldwide, The Matrix 3 is still a good box office, but considering that With the huge investment in the early stage, it is absolutely impossible for the two sequels to bring profits to Amberlin Films to reach 1 billion US dollars.
Closing the email page of The Matrix 2, Eric continued to check the unread emails in his work mailbox, and soon saw a good message from Katzenberg himself.
After grinding for a full year, Cameron finally plans to start the production of "Spider-Man".
Katzenberg said in the email that he had just chatted with Cameron and Jon Landau about the details yesterday afternoon, and finally jokingly asked Eric if he wanted to personally choose the heroine of "Spider-Man".
Although far away from Los Angeles, Eric has been paying attention to the rough cutting progress of "Iron Man". He and Joss Whedon talk about the editing details of the film by phone or email almost every day. It is expected that Eric will return to Los Angeles, " The rough cut of the first version of Iron Man is about to be completed, and it is about to enter the most important stage of special effects production.
Compared with "Iron Man", the progress of the "Spider-Man" project is so slow that if Cameron really delays it for too long, Eric will have to change the director. He can't let "Spider-Man" delay the whole The progression of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Fortunately, Cameron is now finally going to make it.
As long as the project enters the substantive production phase, Cameron can't slow down no matter how much he delays.
Thinking of these, Eric has picked up his mobile phone and directly dialed Cameron's number in Los Angeles.
The call was quickly connected, and the Cameron people were at Firefly Studios. After a few chats, the two chatted about "Spider-Man", from the script to the special effects to the starring candidates, chatting for a full hour, Eric just hung up the phone.
According to the plan in Cameron's words, "Spider-Man" will complete the preliminary preparations such as casting and scene in the second half of the year, and it will start shooting early next year, and it will only have to wait until the summer of 2000 to be released at the latest. within the tolerable range of grams.
After finishing the call with Cameron, and dealing with work emails for a while, the sky outside the window darkened unconsciously.
After flying around for more than half a month, Eric's biological clock also began to be a little confusing. When he noticed the time, it was past seven o'clock in the evening.
Turning off the computer, Eric left the room, and the villa became very quiet. He went down to the circular corridor on the third floor to the second floor and saw the lights in the small living room downstairs. He walked down the stairs. , Mayer was sitting on the sofa in the small living room, visibly absent-mindedly watching TV.
The sound of the TV was very low, and Eric could not take his steps lightly. Mayer quickly felt someone approaching, turned his head, smiled shyly, and said, "Eric, I was thinking about when to call You are suitable."
"Hungry, let's go," Eric said, waiting for Mayer to stand up, seeing that she was still wearing a light gray professional suit, and said, "Do you want to change clothes?"
"Okay," Mayer nodded and said, "Then wait a moment."
Eric walked into the small living room, sat down on the sofa, and waited patiently for five or six minutes before Mayer changed into a very gorgeous fiery red knee-length dress and went downstairs.
It is difficult for most women to hold up red clothes, but wearing this dress on Mayer's body made the girl who was still a bit young suddenly feel a little more powerful woman in the workplace.
Eric couldn't help but glanced at it a few more times and exclaimed, "It's very beautiful."
"Thank you," Hearing Eric's words, Mayer, who was a little nervous, relaxed and said, "Then, let's go."