Hollywood Drawing

Less than a day after "Batman Begins" was officially released, around 5 p.m., dozens of theaters made restock calls to Warner Bros.

Along with the phone call came the sales forecast statistics on the desk of the Warner Bros. CEO.

"You actually sold a Batmobile?"

Jeff looked at the sales at the end and raised his head in surprise when he looked forward. These cars are not in stock. The crew just used the remaining four and placed them in four different big cities to attract customers.

"That's it, Bruce." Jeff Robinoff stretched out his hand to scratch his chin, squinted his eyes and said as he considered: "I remember, doesn't the group company have a good relationship with Chevrolet? You go and get in touch to see if you can order a batch. The Batmobile.”

The profits here are so huge. If the design cost of a prop car is excluded, the material cost will not exceed US$10,000 at most. This kind of huge profit business can be compared with the popcorn in the theater.

"I'll get in touch shortly. I'll work overtime with you today to wait for the box office." Bruce Rosenblum nodded, looking at the terrifying peripheral sales statistics, he showed a proud smile.

"The peripheral inventory we prepared is still too conservative. Wayne's films have been creating miracles. Now, he has completely blocked the shortcomings of including offline peripherals for the film. Don't worry, Jeff, just watch. Based on the surrounding sales, the film’s box office will not be less than 20 million US dollars!”

This is just his conservative estimate. In his heart, he even thinks that the film's box office figures will not be lower than peripheral sales.

"After more than a year, I got it right this time!" Jeff Robinov let out a sigh of relief. From the time Wayne proposed the concept of the DC universe to the ten-month preparation time for "Batman Begins," he has been under tremendous pressure.

The investment in a movie project itself takes a long time to recover, but it took nearly two years for Batman to finally officially land in the theater market.

Now it seems that all this is worth it. The profit attributes of superhero movies have begun to show. Judging from the market reaction on the first day, the profit margin is not inferior to that of animated feature films. But an animated feature film The production cost and time are much greater than that of a live-action movie.

Why does Disney still have the largest market value among the six giants during a period of chaos? Not to mention those copyright operations for animated feature films that guarantee a minimum revenue, these offline revenues can support a media group's squandering for many years.

"Our advantage is even greater!" Bruce Rosenblum understood what the other party meant, and he couldn't calm down either. "We own the entire DC universe. As long as the market can accept this genre, there are so many heroes that can be filmed. What a treasure this is!"

As he said, DC Comics, owned by Warner Bros., was already struggling due to the cold winter period of the comics industry and needed to rely on the parent company's copyright operations to survive. However, after Wayne's two comic movies, the company turned into a One of the biggest treasures in the group.

If there was anyone who anticipated this situation first, it was the old CEO of DC Comics. Whether it was the first "Joker" or this one "Batman Begins," DC Comics even sent a producer. I have never given any instructions on the filming and production work.

Jeff Robinoff turned his gaze out the window and looked in the direction of 20th Century Fox. From all aspects of this competition, they are sure to win, and it will open up Warner Bros.'s revenue for the next two decades. The person who owned the treasure was the one Fox gave up with his own hands.

"Wayne's original promise to us will be fulfilled as expected. In two and a half days at most, we will know whether the grand goal of the DC Universe can be realized!"

This is not a matter of two movies. Jeff Robinoff is also waiting and watching. As long as Batman can really create a market miracle, he will fully promote investment in subsequent movies and will definitely remove all obstacles for Wayne. Get enough investment budget from the board of directors and parent company.

Whether or not a superhero movie will be a hit has been tried by everyone except Warner Brothers before, but everyone in the industry knows that the investment in making a superhero movie is definitely the highest among all movie types, and special effects are always a hurdle that cannot be bypassed.

"Is Wayne's promotional activities going well? I'll send him the good news as soon as possible tomorrow morning. He's been under a lot of pressure. Gains are the best thing to relieve stress."

"Not bad. The crew reported on the fan meeting in Times Square this morning and participated in a TV interview in the afternoon. It should have just ended now." Bruce Rosenblum glanced at the time and said.

Jeff Robinoff nodded. "Then don't disturb his rest, and fax the box office, peripheral data and investigation report to New York tomorrow morning."

Friday is the first day of weekend rest. After a busy day of work, ordinary people can finally take a breather from work. But when they are ready to bring their families and make an appointment with a few friends to watch a long-awaited movie together , only to discover that Batman movie tickets have almost been sold out in first-tier cities.

Unlike the previous releases of Wayne's films, most of the previous films were R-rated films, which naturally excluded teenagers from the cinema. The main movie-watching group was this group of urban white-collar workers and young people.

But this time the PG13 rating attracted countless teenagers, and family group viewing finally became a common phenomenon, so all the movie tickets for Friday night were booked early.

Because countless movie fans couldn't buy tickets, they settled for the next best thing and could only order shows on Saturdays and Sundays. The theaters also acted quickly and reported the situation to the theater headquarters.

Cinema managers have the authority to schedule more films to ensure the flow of people in their stores, but they do not have the authority to arrange films beyond their quota. Otherwise, the number of screens for "Die Hard 3" on the first day of Friday will be squeezed out of the contract Minimum requirements.

When the noisy Friday passed and it dawned early on Saturday morning, Wayne opened his eyes in New York and gave Naomi Watts the quilt he had kicked aside to pull up, gently. went to the bathroom.

With the sound of water flushing, ten minutes later, Wayne came out wearing a bathrobe and wiping his hair. He took a look at the Australian beauty who was exhausted from the busy promotional activities, opened the bedroom door and walked into the hotel living room.

"Is the box office out?"

The first thing he said when he saw the naked assistant was that he was concerned about the box office data. At this stage, this was what he was most worried about and most looking forward to. How this works will depend on the market's reaction on the first day of the film.

"It's out." Nina covered her mouth, yawned, and pointed to the files arranged on the coffee table. "Warner Bros. faxed it over early in the morning. Below is the newspaper Sergey bought."

Sitting on the sofa, Wayne took out a cigarette out of habit, lit it in the assistant's eyes, and while flipping through the stacked papers and newspapers, he asked, "What are my plans for today?"

Speaking of the schedule, Nina waved her hand, fanned away the floating smoke, took out the other party's schedule record book, checked it carefully again, and then said in surprise:

"Congratulations, boss. This morning's activities were attended by Christian Bale and Nami. The afternoon movie theater event on the Upper East Side is planned to be dominated by male and female protagonists. Therefore, we can Take a break and catch your breath.”

For promotional activities like this that fly around, almost one city only lasts for more than a day. There are a lot of repetitive activities. One question may need to be answered dozens of times, and one has to pretend to be surprised, not to mention the crew and creators. , even Nina has a headache about these.

And as the film is released longer and longer, and more and more fans watch it, the sensation caused by the crew will become bigger and bigger wherever they go. It often happens that after finishing a TV program, you have to rush to the airport to fly to the next city.

At times like this, there is no time for the crew and creators to rest, and they have to sleep on the plane.

Activities to promote the film, especially for actors, are also a rare opportunity to promote themselves. Basically, no actor will complain during this time. Anyone who is sober understands that this is something that must be experienced on the road to fame. .

"ha!"

As soon as I picked up the first fax, Wayne got a huge surprise. "It seems that in order to expand the audience, I made the right decision to make the film PG13. The enthusiasm of this group of teenagers is too high."

The first thing that comes into view is the first-day box office figures of "Batman Begins" and the survey and analysis of moviegoers.

After the film made 15.8 million U.S. dollars in advance screenings of 2,500 on Thursday, the box office on Friday alone was as high as 20.08 million U.S. dollars. This figure means that the attendance rate of prime theaters in first-tier cities may be as high as 80% or more.

According to the default rules in the industry, including the box office of advance screenings, the film grossed US$35.88 million on the first day of release.

Both Wayne and Warner Bros. know that this number can be so high because too many promotional methods have been used in the early stage to raise the expectations of movie fans and they can't wait to watch the film as soon as it is released.

The subsequent box office figures will definitely decrease significantly, but this is already far beyond their target figure. You know, Warner Bros.'s estimated opening weekend box office is only about US$55 million.

As long as it can reach the estimated numbers, the film will be able to stay in theaters for a long time due to its good storytelling, and it will be easy to recoup the cost through the box office.

Now, on Friday, most of the goals have been achieved. Even if the box office on Saturday and Sunday drops, there will be no difficulty in exceeding the estimated box office.

"You succeeded again, didn't you? Congratulations, boss!"

Nina had already read the statistics and softly congratulated her boss.

"It wasn't me who succeeded again, it was us." Wayne shrugged with a smile and took a deep breath of the cigarette comfortably.

Below the box office figures, Warner Bros. listed the audience in detail. On the first day of the film's screening, teenagers and families collectively accounted for more than 70% of the total audience.

That's why he lamented that the enthusiasm of this group of teenagers was so high that they almost single-handedly supported most of the film's box office.

What cannot be ignored is that the PG13 level does take advantage of it. With this almost year-round screening scale, coupled with the familiar superheroes, there were a lot of families watching the movie together on the first day.

This is the first time this kind of situation has appeared in his work. R-rated movies in the past did not have this kind of treatment.