Chapter 027: Shocking Everyone
Chapter 027: Shocking Everyone
On November 18, the day after Eric arrived in New York, Home Alone and Back to 17 officially premiered.
Home Alone opened on 1,000 screens, while Back to 17 opened on 1,279 screens, more than two hundred higher than Home Alone. Fox had no concerns about any gambling agreement, so they went all out from the very beginning.
Also releasing at the same time were Universal Pictures’ animated film The Land Before Time on 1,395 screens and Disney subsidiary Buena Vista’s animated film Oliver & Company on 952 screens.
With three children-oriented films releasing simultaneously, the media believed Eric’s chances of winning the gamble had become even lower.
Eric, however, was not overly worried.
Those two animated films might suppress Home Alone’s box office somewhat during the early period, but they definitely could not compare to Home Alone in terms of staying power.
In his previous life, Home Alone had maintained weekly box office earnings above ten million dollars for ten consecutive weeks.
After attending two premiere events, Eric and the rest of the crew returned to the hotel at around eleven at night.
There was still no advanced box office tracking system in this era, so they would have to wait until the following week before learning the box office figures for Home Alone and Back to 17.
After returning to his room, Eric took a shower and was about to sleep when the telephone suddenly rang.
The only person who would call this late was Aniston.
“Hi, Eric, are you asleep yet?” Aniston asked excitedly over the phone.
Sitting on the bed and drying his wet hair with a towel, Eric replied, “Not yet. I just finished showering. Annie, did something good happen?”
“Guess?”
Eric teased, “Oh, I know. You’re pregnant, right? Don’t worry, I’ll take responsibility.”
“Pfft, you big pervert. You only think about dirty things.”
Aniston spat lightly into the receiver before continuing, “I just went to see Home Alone and ran into something really interesting.”
Eric smiled. “Tell me.”
“Well, when I came out of the theater, I happened to see a little boy around five or six years old shouting that he wanted to see Kevin again. His parents refused and said they had already watched it once. Then the little boy started lying on the ground crying and throwing a tantrum. Somebody who saw the scene mistakenly thought the couple were child traffickers, so those poor young parents got beaten up and someone even called the police. In the end, several police cars showed up. It was hilarious, hahaha.”
Aniston merely treated the incident as an amusing anecdote from her moviegoing experience, but Eric saw much more behind it.
After chatting with Aniston for a bit longer, Eric hung up and lay down on the bed, feeling slightly excited.
Because things were once again unfolding along the same trajectory as in his previous life.
The reason Home Alone had achieved such astonishing box office success back then was because countless mischievous kids repeatedly dragged their parents to watch the movie over and over again while imitating Kevin’s every action, ultimately pushing the film to unbelievable box office heights.
Things indeed developed exactly as Eric expected.
On the first day of release, Home Alone and the other two animated films earned roughly similar box office numbers.
However, as Home Alone’s word-of-mouth spread among children at astonishing speed, the film’s daily box office on the second day directly doubled.
On the third day, daily box office numbers surged dramatically again, and lines had already begun appearing outside some popular theaters.
After all, animated films could be watched anytime, but a clever and mischievous kid like Kevin was not something audiences encountered every day.
Most children had fantasized about growing up quickly so they could do things they currently were not allowed to do.
Viewed from a child’s perspective, Home Alone fulfilled many things children wanted to do in real life but could not, dared not, or simply were unable to do.
A craze for imitating Kevin rapidly swept across children throughout North America.
A newspaper in San Francisco even reported a real-life Home Alone incident.
After watching Home Alone, a nine-year-old boy secretly locked himself inside his room while his family was preparing to leave for a vacation in Hawaii.
Astonishingly, his parents, who had six children, truly failed to notice he was missing.
Only after the family arrived in Hawaii did they realize the boy was gone.
The parents had no choice but to abandon their vacation and fly back from Hawaii to San Francisco.
Meanwhile, the boy had already turned the house into a complete mess while preparing for the arrival of the “burglars.”
Unfortunately for him, the people who arrived instead were his panicked parents.
One week later, the film’s first-week box office numbers were finally released.
Although all the previous signs of popularity had already prepared people mentally, Home Alone’s astonishing opening-week box office of 27.55 million dollars still shocked everyone senseless.
A box office figure above twenty million dollars might not compare to the future era’s hundred-million-dollar opening weekends, but in this era, the achievement completely crushed every other recent high-grossing film.
Even Spielberg’s E.T. had not achieved such a stunning opening back then.
The only films that had surpassed Home Alone were George Lucas’s Star Wars movies.
Yet the production cost of Star Wars was more than a hundred times that of Home Alone.
At the same time, Back to 17 also secured second place with an excellent 13.12 million dollars.
The animated competitors The Land Before Time and Oliver & Company only earned 7.12 million and 3.98 million dollars respectively, falling far below the expectations of their studios.
There was no doubt that both animated films had been heavily suppressed by Home Alone.
While Universal and Disney executives lamented Home Alone’s absurd box office dominance, they also envied Columbia’s incredible luck.
Columbia’s luck truly was excellent.
However, after seeing the first-week box office results, Columbia president Blount Cohen was not happy in the slightest.
In fact, he had smashed several teacups in anger.
Based on the opening-week data, Columbia’s reevaluation concluded that Home Alone’s North American box office would definitely exceed 200 million dollars and might even surpass 300 million.
Blount Cohen was filled with regret.
If he had insisted on fully buying out Home Alone’s rights rather than signing that damned gambling agreement, Columbia could have earned several hundred million dollars in profits from the film this year alone.
But now, according to the gambling agreement, if Home Alone reached 300 million dollars at the box office, Columbia would have to pay Eric 120 million dollars in profit sharing.
Columbia itself would only receive around 45 million dollars.
After subtracting distribution costs, Columbia’s own earnings might only exceed the leftover scraps from Eric’s 120 million by a tiny margin.
Blount Cohen had already entertained the thought of tearing up the agreement numerous times.
However, the contents of the gambling contract were now known across America.
If Columbia rashly tore up the agreement, not only would they likely lose the lawsuit, but they would also become the laughingstock of the entire country.
As president, he himself would inevitably become the scapegoat and be thrown out.
“No… we have to find a way to recover the losses. We have to…”
While muttering to himself, his assistant knocked and entered.
“Mr. Cohen, everyone’s here. The meeting can begin.”
Blount Cohen rubbed his temples and walked toward the conference room.
After sitting down, he immediately asked Lester Reed, who was responsible for the Home Alone project, “Lester, how’s the data analysis coming along?”
Lester Reed had originally been scheduled to return with the Home Alone crew late that night, but an urgent call from headquarters forced him to fly back to Los Angeles half a day earlier.
After arriving at Columbia headquarters and learning Home Alone’s opening-week box office figures, Lester instinctively felt that things had gone very wrong.
He nervously glanced at the expressionless Blount Cohen.
Although it had been Blount Cohen who made the final decision to accept the gambling agreement, Lester himself had been the first person during the meeting to enthusiastically support it.
Given Blount Cohen’s stubborn personality, there was a very high chance the blame would now be shifted onto him.
“Mr. Cohen, according to the analysis department, based on the gambling agreement, the maximum profit share we can receive is around fifty million dollars. The peak profit point is estimated to be at approximately 225 million dollars in box office revenue. This is the data curve.”
Blount Cohen took the analysis documents and glanced at the red parabola representing Columbia’s profits and the steadily rising green line representing Eric’s profit share.
The veins at his temples began throbbing again.
Bang—
Another teacup smashed against the mahogany floor with a dull crash.
Everyone else in the conference room shuddered slightly and instinctively lowered their heads, becoming silent as cicadas in winter.
Under normal circumstances, fifty million dollars in box office profit sharing would already be enough to make many film executives laugh in their sleep.
After all, even among the six major studios, annual box office profits during this era were usually only one or two hundred million dollars at best.
But compared to the hundred-plus million dollars Eric might receive, all the excitement Blount Cohen should have felt instantly vanished.
“So,” Blount Cohen coldly swept his gaze across the room before finally stopping on Lester Reed, “you were the one responsible for signing the gambling agreement. What do you think we should do now?”