Chapter 338: Dud
Chapter 338: Dud
At the end of May, the filming of Ghost officially wrapped in Manhattan, New York. Eric returned to Los Angeles with the main creative team and began post-production work.
At the same time, as schools across North America gradually began summer vacation, the 1990 summer box office season officially arrived.
On May 25, Universal Pictures’s Back to the Future Part III and The Walt Disney Company’s Fire Birds, distributed by Buena Vista International, both opened in more than 2,000 theaters.
The production of Back to the Future Part III had been extremely rushed. After all, Back to the Future Part II had only been released at the end of last year. As for the reason, it was almost identical to why Columbia Pictures revived the Ghostbusters series after a five-year gap last year.
Universal’s parent company, MCA Inc., had already entered the final stage of acquisition negotiations with the Japanese Matsushita conglomerate. In order to sell MCA at a better price, Universal Pictures needed stronger financial performance to support the deal.
Because time was tight, even though the film had Steven Spielberg as producer and Robert Zemeckis as director, the movie was heavily criticized by critics after release. Even with strong support from many diehard fans of the series, it only earned 19 million dollars during its opening three-day weekend.
However, compared to another film released during the same period, the performance of Back to the Future Part III could only be described as dazzling.
That film was Disney’s Fire Birds.
It was a story about pilots in the U.S. Army Apache helicopter corps. Compared to the controversy over the quality of Back to the Future Part III, Fire Birds had undergone an intense promotional campaign before release, yet the moment it premiered, it immediately became a dud, barely creating any buzz at all.
The film was very similar to the movie that had made Tom Cruise famous worldwide with a 350-million-dollar global box office performance. As a result, whenever critics mentioned it in newspapers, the best it received was comments like “a clumsy imitation of Top Gun.”
Despite also opening in 2,000 theaters, Fire Birds earned a pitiful six million dollars at the box office. That result caused theater managers who had signed two-to-three-week screening contracts with Disney to complain bitterly.
Three weeks later, the 30-million-dollar production would face removal from theaters. Including distribution costs, the movie would bring Disney losses of at least 30 million dollars.
Disney’s opening shot for the summer season had turned into a dud. Eric should have been gloating over it.
But because of the film’s male lead, he could not feel happy at all.
The male lead of that 30-million-dollar movie was none other than Nicolas Cage, the male lead of Eric’s version of Ghost.
On the morning of May 29, just as Eric and several members of the main creative team of Ghost walked out of Los Angeles Airport, they were immediately surrounded by a large group of paparazzi asking Eric for his opinion on Fire Birds.
Eric had gotten up early to catch the flight back to Los Angeles and still knew nothing about the situation surrounding the movie, so how could he possibly have any opinion?
Moreover, the paparazzi’s questions were full of verbal traps. Eric naturally would not respond rashly and could only hurriedly leave under the protection of bodyguards while remaining silent.
But that silence was obviously not a good strategy.
The next day, tabloids ran headlines such as “Williams Gives Cold Response When Asked About Fire Birds.” The articles quickly shifted from Eric to Nicolas Cage, then soon targeted the currently-in-post-production Ghost.
Combined with the earlier example of Back to the Future Part III suffering disappointing box office results due to rushed production, many media outlets once again began questioning the quality of Ghost.
By the time the matter was causing an uproar, Eric had already left Los Angeles and flown to San Francisco.
After all, this sort of issue could only be handled by the publicity departments of Firefly and Disney. Eric merely needed his representatives to issue some statements.
Having just experienced a box office failure, Disney certainly would not take Ghost lightly.
Although Los Angeles and San Francisco were not far apart and the flight only took a little over an hour, Eric had not been there in more than a year due to constant busyness. The last time he came had been for the acquisition of Pixar.
Over the past year, Eric had fully entrusted Pixar’s affairs to John Lasseter. Most of the time, the two communicated by phone, and even when face-to-face discussions were necessary, it was usually John Lasseter who traveled to Los Angeles.
Because of Eric’s unwavering injection of funds, Pixar was no longer the shabby animation studio cramped inside a small building in Richmond near San Francisco Bay as it had been over a year ago.
Pixar headquarters had now relocated to a small city called Emeryville near Berkeley. The staff had expanded to more than 300 employees, with over 100 engineers specifically providing technical support for 3D animation production.
Compared to the scale of Pixar when Eric had first acquired it, the current team could practically be described as luxurious.
“John, compared to Steve Jobs, I’m practically an angel of a boss, right?”
After hugging John Lasseter, who had come out of the Pixar office building to greet him, that was the first thing Eric said.
“Of course, Eric. Let’s head inside.”
Knowing Eric was joking, John Lasseter shook hands with Allen and Joanna behind Eric before repeating:
“Of course, Eric. Let’s go in.”
As Eric followed John Lasseter into the office building, he pretended to sound displeased.
“But for Toy Story, I originally only agreed to invest 30 million dollars. Yet now you’ve already spent nearly that much, and I still haven’t even seen the shadow of the animation.”
Even though John Lasseter knew Eric was not truly blaming him, he still looked embarrassed.
In Eric’s previous life, the first Toy Story had been completed under extremely difficult circumstances, which was why its cost had only been 30 million dollars and many details were rather rough.
But after receiving Eric’s abundant financial support, John Lasseter’s perfectionist tendencies as an artist inevitably caused the budget to exceed expectations.
As a result, the animation was only about two-thirds complete, yet costs had already approached 30 million dollars.
Fortunately, John Lasseter was not as reckless with spending as James Cameron. After all, he still did not possess absolute confidence in 3D animation. In order to minimize the impact and losses if the project failed in the future, he remained extremely restrained in how he used funds.
In Eric’s previous life, however, because the first Toy Story had been successful, the second film’s budget had directly soared to 100 million dollars, while the third reached as high as 200 million.
From this, it was clear that in terms of pursuing perfection, director John Lasseter was fundamentally the same type of person as James Cameron.
He simply was not as crazy as Cameron.