Made in Hollywood

Just after Memorial Day, a copy of the latest movie statistics was placed on Duke's desk.

"The Avengers" just spent its fourth weekend in North America. That weekend, it collected another US$47.88 million from North America. The North American box office totaled US$572.3 million. It has already approached the top three in the North American total box office rankings. 3: The Return of the King, "Titanic" and "Avatar".

Moreover, the film has only been shown for four weeks now. Although the popularity is gradually decreasing, there is still a lot of showing time in the future to increase box office accumulation.

Similarly, the overseas box office of "Avengers" unsurprisingly exceeded US$1 billion, and the cumulative global box office has reached US$1.59571 million. It is only a matter of time before it breaks through the US$1.6 billion mark.

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

At the same time, "Fast and Furious 5", which once had to compete with "Avengers", has dropped much faster than "Avengers", which was screened for a week in the morning. This weekend, "Fast and Furious 5" "Compared to last weekend’s plunge of 62%, it took 20.44 million US dollars from North America.

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

Overseas, "Fast and Furious 5" has also been firmly suppressed by "Avengers", and currently only has more than 320 million US dollars in overseas box office.

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

There is no doubt that from the box office perspective, even if "Fast and Furious 5" uses the Van Diesel incident to engage in "sentimental marketing", it is obviously not a film of the same magnitude as "Avengers."

From the perspective of the film industry chain, the two films are even worse by several levels.

"Avengers" has created nearly 1.5 billion US dollars in non-theatre production value, and "Fast and Furious 5" is only a mere tens of millions of dollars.

This achievement also appropriately reflects Duke's business experience in comic hero movies.

Not all movies adapted from comics are superhero movies, and not all superhero movies are adapted from comics, such as Peter Berg’s "National Superman Hancock" and Knight? M? Shiamalan's "Indestructible" is original content.

But for Hollywood, superhero movies adapted from comics are the most valuable. Shooting a sequel is one aspect without worrying about the subject matter, and more importantly, it is the master switch for the larger business of integrating the entertainment industry, as long as the movie locomotive starts. Other links in the industry chain, including comics, toys, licensed products, audio-visual products, and theme parks, will have a steady stream of new content, which can bring a lot of money.

All Hollywood admire Duke, envy him that year when he threw a huge sum of money to get most of the equity in Marvel comics that the United States was not optimistic about.

Nowadays, many investment companies and Hollywood manufacturers know not to pay near-crazy prices. It is impossible for Duke to give up the equity in Marvel, so he has eyed on another part of Marvel's equity and continued to compete.

Walt Disney, which has gradually weakened due to internal consumption in recent years, is no exception. In order to raise funds for the acquisition of part of Marvel’s equity, last year it laid off its independent film department Miramax by 70%, and the number of films released each year. Halved to two, and 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 business cards such as "Pulp Fiction" and "The English Patient".

Sadly speaking, Miramax is the "only professional player" for the Oscar night. The price is only 363 million U.S. dollars. The reason is not difficult to understand. Miramax’s films are indeed of extraordinary ‘artistic value’, but they cannot sell licensed products, nor do they help increase the profitability of film industrialization.

Today’s six major Hollywood studios are basically departments of entertainment groups or larger companies, and none of them have the highest turnover. Film and television production costs are high. After offsetting expenses, the net profit of film and television products is far inferior to derivative products. But the pulling effect of film and television products is obvious. It can guarantee the turnover and high profit rate of other departments related to it.

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

Although "The Avengers" has won a staggering box office, it is still essentially the next few years "Avengers 2, 3...", "Iron Man 3, 4", "Captain America 2, 3..." and other movies The expensive trailers are large advertisements for Warner theme parks, toys and licensed products, such as the Hulk** for $37.99 and the Captain America beer mug for $11.99.

In early June. Hasbro and Yu Marvel have renewed a new licensing agreement. The new contract will last until 2017. Hasbro has overseas franchise rights for more than 1,000 characters such as Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. The business scope includes toys, For games, Hasbro needs to pay a franchise fee of US$400 million, in addition to a certain amount of sales share.

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

But Marvel itself is not without problems.

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

In fact, after the winter season in the mid-1990s, the comics industry has clearly gone downhill. This is an important reason why Duke did not encounter strong competitors when it acquired Marvel.

Marvel’s market share can account for about 40% of the American comics industry, but the entire industry’s annual sales are only less than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. At least in Duke’s entire industry, the direct comics business is not very eye-catching.

However, Duke is very clear that the real value of Marvel comics is not the comic itself.

The overall situation of Hollywood today is not very good. DVD, once regarded as the savior of the film industry, has shrunk sharply after 2007. After the rise of the Internet, TV rights have also shrunk rapidly. Large companies must find alternatives during the industrial transformation period. Profit point-The media are keen to report on the box office of movies (because the relevant information is easy to obtain), but they don't pay much attention to the series of derivatives behind the box office.

With the help of Warner Bros. and Time Warner's huge platforms as major shareholders and board members, Duke has undoubtedly built a complete industrial chain for Marvel Comics.

For Hollywood of the past, the mainstream "national blockbuster" is "Ben Xu", "The Bridge of Kwai", "The Male and Female Thief", "Little Tiger", "The Godfather" and "ET Alien" and other original movies , Shooting a sequel or a trilogy is already the ultimate, except for the special 007 series, almost all the people who shoot and shoot are B-level horror or comedy.

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 being used by multinational integrated entertainment media groups. After being included in its subordinate and huge capital to control the film industry, film products are more included in the overall plan, and how to maximize profit has become the most important issue.

Therefore, "Superman", "Batman", "X-Men", "Spiderman" and other films will emerge in endlessly, even to the point of flooding.

Duke is not only a director, but also a spokesperson for the interests of a huge capital group. His next film is naturally a superhero movie.

The proliferation of superhero movies essentially reflects the natural profit-seeking side of capital, such as "Captain America" ​​and "Thor". Although the box office results are not bad, as commercial movies, they are actually far from relying on the box office. To the point of recovering the cost, Duke and Marvel Pictures are happy to do so, and Warner Bros., as the distributor, is eager for it. The most important reason is the huge derivative value.

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner said bluntly when he sold Miramax, "Continuing to invest in new Miramax movies is not necessary for our core strategy."

He values ​​the films that can provide content for Disney's theme parks, television and other media, and licensed products, and he doesn't care whether these films have originality and artistic value.

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

For example, Duke also holds a large number of Pixar studios, "Ratuitou" and "Robot Walli", which are recognized as the highest artistic value, plus the film's box office, which brought a total of less than 1 billion US dollars. However, the criticized "Cars Mobilization" box office is inconspicuous, but now it has derived a market value of more than 8 billion US dollars.

Let Duke and Time Warner choose among them, it will definitely be "Cars". This does not mean that Duke likes "Cars", but his position naturally determines that he must do so.

In order to maximize the value of "Cars 2", Duke and Warner Bros. last year pushed "Cars 2" to be released worldwide, making this a derivative industry that can compete with Disney's classic animation. Let "Toy Story 3" postpone its release until this summer.

This postponed animation giant officially landed on the North American market at the beginning of June. As a highly anticipated sequel and the end of Pixar's mouth, it attracted widespread attention.

As long as the film is successful, it can still create huge profits, just like what the big directors in Hollywood do, the so-called "closing chapter" is just talking.

Duke was temporarily on vacation and accepted the invitation of Pixar Studios to appear at the premiere of this film. (To be continued.)

PS: Ask for monthly and recommended tickets!