Made in Hollywood

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

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

Moreover, the film has only been screened for four weeks so far. Although the popularity is gradually decreasing, there will still be a lot of screening time in the future to increase the box office accumulation.

Similarly, the overseas box office of "The Avengers" has exceeded US$1 billion without any suspense, and the cumulative global box office has reached US$1.59571 billion. It is only a matter of time before the US$1.6 billion mark is broken.

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

At the same time, "Fast and Furious 5", which once competed with "The Avengers", has dropped in popularity far faster than "The Avengers", which was released a week earlier. On this weekend, "Fast and Furious 5" "Plunged 62 percent from last weekend, taking $20.44 million from North America.

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

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

But the combined box office figures of $530 million are enough to make the film one of the commercial stars of this summer.

Undoubtedly, from the box office point of view, even though "Fast and Furious 5" used the Vin Diesel incident to engage in "emotional marketing", it is obviously not the same level of film as "The Avengers".

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

"The Avengers" has generated nearly $1.5 billion in non-theatrical sales. And "Fast and Furious 5" is only tens of millions of dollars.

This achievement also appropriately reflects Duke's comic book hero movie business experience.

Not all movies based on comics are superhero movies, and not all superhero movies are adapted from comics, such as Peter Berg's Hancock for All and Nate M? Shyamalan's Unbroken is all original content.

But for Hollywood, superhero movies adapted from comics are the most valuable. It is one aspect and more critical to shoot sequels without worrying about themes. It is the master switch to integrate the larger business of the entertainment industry. As long as the locomotive of movies is started, there will be a steady stream of new content in other links of the industry chain including comics, toys, authorized products, audio-visual products, and theme parks. Come make money.

The whole of Hollywood is envious of Duke, envious of him throwing huge sums of money back then to get a majority of the shares of Marvel Comics, which the entire United States is not optimistic about.

Today, many investment companies and Hollywood manufacturers know not to pay an almost crazy price. It is impossible for Duke to give up his stake in Marvel, so they are eyeing another part of Marvel's stake, and continue to fight for it.

Walt Disney, which has gradually weakened due to internal friction in recent years, is no exception. In order to raise funds to acquire part of Marvel's equity, last year it laid off 70% of its independent film department Miramax. The number of films released each year has been halved to two, and this year it was simply sold to a film private equity fund.

The famed company founded by the Weinstein brothers has a library of 700 titles, including such titles as "Pulp Fiction" and "The English Patient."

However, it is sad to say. Miramax, despite being the "only professional" on Oscar night, sold for just $363 million. The reason is not difficult to understand. Miramax's films are indeed of extraordinary "artistic value", but they cannot sell licensed products, nor will they help increase the profitability of film industrialization.

Today's six major Hollywood studios are basically a division of an entertainment group or a larger company. Moreover, it is not the department with the highest turnover. The cost of film and television production is high. After offsetting the expenses, the net profit of film and television products is far lower than that of derivative products. profit margin.

This is the foundation of the Hollywood empire - "content is king", driving the entire industry chain.

Although "The Avengers" has won an astonishing box office, it is essentially "Avengers 2, 3...", "Iron Man 3, 4", "Captain America 2, 3..." and other movies in the next few years. Expensive trailers, but also large-scale advertisements for Warner Bros. theme parks, toys and licensed products such as the Hulk** for $37.99 and Captain America's beer mug for $11.99.

In early June, Hasbro Yu Marvel renewed a new licensing agreement. The new contract lasts until 2017. Hasbro owns the overseas franchise rights of more than 1,000 characters such as Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. The scope includes toys, games, etc. Hasbro needs to pay a franchise fee of 400 million US dollars, and also needs to pay a certain amount of sales share.

For Duke and Marvel, this is the "no profit" obtained by virtue of "content".

But Marvel itself is not without its problems.

In recent years, Marvel, which has continuously provided content and profits to many Hollywood studios, has a declining trend in its basic business, that is, comics. In May of this year, none of the comic magazines sold more than 100,000 copies. However, it has hit a record low. Comic books have not increased in price during inflation in recent years. Marvel and DC comics have maintained a price of $2.99.

In fact, after experiencing the cold winter season in the mid-1990s, the comics industry has obviously gone downhill. This is also 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 annual sales of the entire industry is less than 1.5 billion US dollars. At least in Duke's entire industry, the direct comics business is not very impressive.

However, Duke is well aware that the real value of Marvel Comics is not the comics themselves.

The overall situation in Hollywood today is not very good. DVD, which was once regarded as the savior of the film industry, has shrunk sharply after 2007. After the rise of the Internet, TV copyrights have also shrunk rapidly. Large companies must find alternatives during the period of industrial transformation. Profit point-the media are keen to report on the movie box office (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 created a complete industrial chain for Marvel Comics.

For Hollywood in the past, the mainstream "national blockbusters" were original films such as "Ben-Hur", "The Bridge on the River Kwai", "The Heroine", "Tiger and Leopard Cub", "The Godfather" and "ET Aliens". , making sequels or trilogy is already the ultimate, except for the special 007 series, almost all of them are B-level horror films or comedies.

However, with the advent of the era of "franchise rights" led by "Star Wars", the entertainment industry has discovered that "high-concept" commercial films are only the beginning of a series of extended product revenues. After being included under the banner and taking control of the film industry with huge capital, more film products are included in the overall plan, and how to maximize profits has become the most important issue.

Therefore, films such as "Superman", "Batman", "X-Men" and "Spiderman" 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 movie will naturally be a superhero movie.

The proliferation of superhero movies essentially reflects the natural profit-seeking side of capital. For films such as "Captain America" ​​and "Thor", although the box office results are not bad, as commercial movies, they are far from reaching the box office. The point of recovering the cost, but Duke and Marvel Pictures are not tired of it, and Warner Bros., as the distributor, is even more flocking to it. The most important reason is its huge derivative value.

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner was blunt when selling Miramax, "Continuing to invest in new Miramax movies is not necessary for our core strategy."

He valued films that could feed Disney's theme parks, television and other media, and licensed products, regardless of their originality and artistic merit.

This is also common to all producers and distributors in Hollywood.

For example, Pixar Studios, which Duke also holds a large share of, is recognized as the highest artistic value of "Ratatouille" and "Wall-E". Including the box office of the film, the total brought in is less than 1 billion US dollars. , while the much-maligned "Cars" had a modest box office presence and now has a market value of more than $8 billion.

If Duke and Time Warner were to choose among them, it would definitely be "Cars". This does not mean that Duke likes "Cars", but his position naturally determines that he must do this.

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

This postponed animation masterpiece officially landed on the North American market in early June. As a highly anticipated sequel and the finale of Pixar Studios, it has attracted widespread attention.

As long as the film is successful, it can also generate huge profits, just like what the big Hollywood directors do, the so-called "final chapter" is just talking.

Duke, who is on furlough, accepted an invitation from Pixar Studios to appear at the film's premiere. (to be continued ~^~)

PS:  Ask for monthly and recommendation tickets!