Chapter 343: Another Dud
Chapter 343: Another Dud
After returning to Los Angeles, Joanna separated from Eric. Although Eric hoped the woman could move into Pointed Cape Manor for a while, Joanna refused. In her words, she did not want to encounter certain awkward situations again.
However, the woman did accept the little villa Eric bought for her in Beverly Hills as a place to keep his mistress. This was the second house Eric had given away. Previously, Famke Janssen had also chosen a villa near Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, though it was far from the mansion Eric had first purchased and closer instead to West Hollywood.
With Eric’s current wealth, a villa worth around a million dollars was nothing, so he looked forward to the day when the number of places where he kept mistresses would surpass Howard Hughes.
The first thing after returning to Los Angeles was naturally the release of The Silence of the Lambs.
During the previous two weeks, no particularly impressive box office hit had appeared in Hollywood. Compared to the nearly fifty million dollars opening weekend gross achieved by the Indiana Jones sequel during the same period last year, among the films released over these two weeks, only Total Recall, which premiered on June 1, had relatively decent box office performance.
Total Recall was an action blockbuster starring Schwarzenegger and also the first major production distributed by Sony Pictures after its establishment.
Although the film earned thirty-six million dollars during its opening week, it still failed to meet Sony’s expectations, because Total Recall had a production budget as high as sixty-five million dollars, while its marketing and distribution expenses exceeded thirty million. It needed nearly two hundred million dollars at the North American box office just to break even.
However, judging from the film’s opening performance and audience response after release, it clearly lacked the potential to reach two hundred million dollars.
Meanwhile, Back to the Future Part III suffered a forty-nine percent drop in its second week, earning only fourteen million dollars. Breaking one hundred million at the box office was completely hopeless.
As for Disney’s “dud” distributed under Buena Vista International, it was better left unmentioned. Firefly and Disney had gone through considerable effort to shift public attention away from the male lead of that film.
The premiere of The Silence of the Lambs was not especially large in scale. Aside from Eric, there were only several of the film’s lead actors, including Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
Of course, there were also the film’s three producers: Elizabeth Murdoch, Julia Roberts, and… Drew Barrymore.
After a round of “interrogation” from Eric, the girl finally confessed everything about TG Pictures to him. Only then did Eric learn that Drew owned thirty percent of TG Pictures, and that she had also invested three million dollars into The Silence of the Lambs.
That money had naturally been secretly charged to the credit card Eric had given her. Carolyn Elliott, who had previously managed Eric’s personal finances, had mentioned unusual activity on Drew’s card before, but Eric had not paid much attention. He trusted the girl not to do anything reckless.
He had not expected such a pleasant surprise now.
However, if the film really followed its original trajectory and won Best Picture, things would become very lively indeed, because Best Picture could be awarded to at most three principal producers. This version of The Silence of the Lambs happened to list exactly three producers—all women.
Before the future Oscars even arrived, after the film opened on June 8 in 1,500 theaters, the three female producers of The Silence of the Lambs became, along with the film’s content itself, the hottest topic in Hollywood over the following days.
After all, for a bloody horror film about a cannibalistic serial killer and a skinning murderer to have three delicate beauties as producers created an enormous contrast. Moreover, the film’s lead was also the famous Hollywood actress Jodie Foster.
Driven by this powerful topic effect and the film’s outstanding quality, The Silence of the Lambs earned fourteen million dollars during its opening three-day weekend. Given the film’s R rating and the limitations on its theater count, this was already an excellent result.
Box office analysts predicted the film would earn nearly twenty million dollars in its opening week. Moreover, due to strong word of mouth, the movie had an excellent chance of surpassing one hundred million dollars through a long theatrical run.
At this point, another tragic film had to be mentioned: Disney’s second “dud,” The Rocketeer.
This film had already been in development for several years. It was said that for certain visual effects shots, Disney had even specially spent money developing a unique camera rig.
Under the influence of Eric’s butterfly effect, The Rocketeer appeared a year earlier than in his previous life. Although the male lead remained unchanged—the still-unknown Bill Campbell—the female lead had changed from Jennifer Connelly in Eric’s previous life to Brooke Shields.
Because of the fame Brooke Shields gained last year through her role as the mysterious beauty in Dark Battle, although she merely played a decorative role in the film, her salary was three times that of Bill Campbell’s.
Tragically, this major production, whose total investment exceeded forty million dollars and whose marketing expenses alone surpassed twenty million, earned only a little over nine million dollars during its opening three-day weekend. Bombing at the box office was unavoidable.
Although the box office performance of Sony’s and Universal’s two major productions was inferior to films released during the same period last year, both companies would certainly recover their costs through overseas distribution and later make additional profits from home video sales.
But Disney’s back-to-back “duds” were guaranteed losses. Because of the terrible North American box office performance, overseas distribution would undoubtedly face great difficulties, especially for the first “dud.” With results like that, overseas release would not even be possible.
Because of this, Eric specifically studied the other Disney films scheduled for release later that summer. He discovered that aside from Ghost, which was being jointly distributed with Firefly, he had little impression of the other titles.
It seemed Disney’s financial report for the coming quarter would look extremely ugly. The only question was how Michael Eisner would react.
After The Silence of the Lambs, Firefly’s next film, Sleeping with the Enemy, launched an even more aggressive promotional campaign.
Naturally, all of it was being personally handled by Robert Shaye. Because of his growing resentment toward Robert Shaye, Eric simply stopped bothering with it altogether. Anyway, the film was guaranteed to succeed. He only needed to sit back and wait to collect the money afterward.
Although he no longer needed to worry about Sleeping with the Enemy, Eric still had little free time, because he had previously promised Kathryn Bigelow, Cameron’s current wife, that he would personally serve as producer for Point Break. Now he had no choice but to start worrying about that film as well.