Chapter 77: Coming to the Door
Chapter 77: Coming to the Door
After Super Bowl night, what people discussed most was not the San Francisco 49ers winning the championship, but the Pretty Woman trailer that had appeared during the Super Bowl broadcast for the first time.
This year’s Super Bowl reached an audience of 150 million viewers, accounting for fifty percent of North America’s total population. Combined with word of mouth, within just one day, every American knew that Home Alone director Eric Williams had a new film coming out.
The major film giants also keenly sensed the astonishing influence of Super Bowl trailers. They mobilized massive resources to conduct detailed investigations and analyses of the various data following the airing of the Pretty Woman trailer. As for the conclusions they reached, they would probably only become visible during next year’s Super Bowl advertising bids.
In his previous life, the first Super Bowl movie trailer had been Independence Day in 1996. Fox had risked a huge investment to bid for Super Bowl advertising space to air the trailer, and the disaster sci-fi film ultimately earned 300 million dollars at the North American box office. From then on, it opened the era of movie trailers battling for dominance during the Super Bowl.
Eric believed the effect achieved by the Pretty Woman trailer would not be much weaker than that of Independence Day. Next year, securing an advertising slot easily would no longer be merely a matter of money. It would also require maintaining a good relationship with whichever media company held the Super Bowl broadcast rights that year.
Although the Super Bowl had more than sixty commercial slots in total, strict proportional limitations existed for every type of advertisement in order to maintain effective advertising results. It was impossible for all the ads to be used for movie trailers. That was precisely why, in later years, Super Bowl advertisements were practically monopolized by the major film studios. Compared to the increasingly high costs of movie production, many film companies could afford commercials costing several million dollars. But if your studio lacked sufficient influence, even if you wanted to spend the money, they might not necessarily sell you the slot.
Over the following days, the media, with their sharp instincts, also began reporting on and analyzing the matter.
The New York Times even published an article calling the Pretty Woman trailer the biggest winner of this year’s Super Bowl.
The most direct consequence of this was that Home Alone, also directed by Eric, experienced another surge at the box office. This happened during the film’s ninth week in theaters. Originally, tracking agencies estimated the new week’s earnings would be around 12 million dollars, but one week later, Home Alone had taken in 18 million, bringing its total box office to 198 million dollars.
Even calculated according to Eric’s current profit-sharing ratio, the extra 6 million dollars in box office revenue was enough to recover the 1.5 million dollars spent on the Super Bowl advertisement.
“Not bad, not bad,” Eric said in the Firefly office after seeing the latest Home Alone box office report, letting out a sigh of relief.
Sitting across from him, Jeffrey smiled. “Yeah, thankfully it stopped at 198 million. If it had broken 200 million this week already, it would’ve wasted a great publicity opportunity.”
The reason they said this was because, during the week after the Super Bowl trailer aired, Pretty Woman’s attention level had already reached its peak. If Home Alone had broken 200 million then, the resulting publicity would only have been icing on the cake. But if the milestone were delayed until the following week, after the Super Bowl trailer’s heat faded slightly—
then Home Alone crossing 200 million would become the first film in three years to reach that mark. That would create an entirely new publicity topic. Combined with the normal promotional campaign, Pretty Woman achieving excellent box office results after release was practically guaranteed.
“Eric, you really don’t plan to personally participate in the promotion for Pretty Woman?” Jeffrey asked.
Eric shook his head. “Al and Julia working with Fox on the promotion is already enough. I might have another matter to handle. Of course, I’ll still attend the premiere.”
The “other matter” Eric referred to involved Pixar.
On the second day after the Super Bowl, Eric received a call from Steve Jobs. After introducing himself, Jobs warmly proposed meeting to talk. Eric asked whether it was about Pixar’s price. After receiving confirmation, he directly hung up on Jobs.
Once he confirmed Jobs’s intentions, Eric no longer hesitated much. Using the Home Alone contract as collateral, he applied for a 50-million-dollar bank loan.
Although he deeply resisted the idea of borrowing money, Eric had no choice now. Even without the Pixar issue, he would still have needed a loan because the money he had left was not even enough to cover the upcoming taxes.
It wasn’t that Eric had never considered borrowing money from others. But based on the memories left behind by the original owner of this body, combined with what he had seen over the past half year, Eric knew that in America, even between relatives and close friends, borrowing money was rarely discussed. It was an awkward matter.
Compared to Easterners being accustomed to helping one another financially among relatives and friends, Americans were more accustomed to borrowing from banks. After thinking it through, Eric could only “do as the locals did.” Since he was borrowing anyway, he directly applied for a massive 50-million-dollar loan.
It even conveniently covered the investment funds for his next movie.
Fifty million dollars was indeed an enormous sum in this era. If Jobs applied for such an amount now, the bank would probably tell him to get lost immediately. But when Eric proposed the figure, the bank even tentatively asked whether he wanted to borrow more.
By calculation, it had already been over a week now. Jobs would probably call again soon. Although Jobs had an extremely arrogant and explosive personality, he was also someone capable of yielding when necessary. Moreover, according to the information Eric had gathered these past few days, both Jobs’s NeXT computer company and Pixar studio had already reached the brink of collapse due to their inability to make ends meet.
Although the 20 million dollars Eric offered was far less than what Jobs had invested into Pixar, it would solve the crisis facing NeXT. And Jobs’s ambitions primarily lay in personal computers.
Eric was not worried that Jobs would give up such a good opportunity to rid himself of the huge burden that was Pixar.
Of course, Jobs might also test whether Microsoft was interested in taking over Pixar like he had in Eric’s previous life. But Eric was certain that under the current circumstances, Microsoft’s offer would be even lower than his own.
After more than a week of tense post-production work, Pretty Woman was officially completed.
Yet even after entering February, and with the loan funds already transferred into Eric’s account, he still had not received another call from Jobs. Eric had begun admiring Jobs’s patience. Even so, Eric maintained an outwardly calm and indifferent attitude toward the matter. When dealing with a high-IQ genius like Jobs, exposing even the slightest weakness would allow the other party to seize upon it and exploit it easily.
One week before Pretty Woman’s release, Fox held a critics’ screening for the film in Los Angeles.
Afterward, the long-awaited reviews for Pretty Woman finally began appearing in newspapers.
Whether out of guilt over forcing Eric to pay for the Super Bowl trailer himself, or because Fox had genuinely gained greater confidence in Pretty Woman, Eric could clearly feel that Fox’s advertising campaign had already reached the scale normally reserved for major productions. Correspondingly, their efforts in courting film critics were also extremely thorough. The reviews appearing in newspapers were almost universally full of praise.
Of course, this also had much to do with the film’s own quality being genuinely excellent.
If Pretty Woman had been a terrible film, then no matter how generous the red envelopes were, critics who relied on their reputations to make a living could not possibly praise a bad movie with straight faces.
On February 9, at the TCL Chinese Theatre, Pretty Woman officially held its premiere.
Under Fox’s arrangements, aside from the Pretty Woman cast and crew, more than a dozen celebrities of varying fame also came to support the event. Even the short red carpet segment sparkled with stars.
After a brief speech, the movie quickly began screening.
Eric returned to his seat and quietly admired his own version of Pretty Woman. Originally, sitting to his left had been Fox executive Carta Hunt, but at some point, the seat had been replaced by another man in his thirties. Because the lighting was dim, Eric did not pay much attention.
But after a while, the man took the initiative to speak with him.
“Mr. Williams, hello. I’m Steve Jobs.”
Eric turned in surprise. At this time, Jobs was only thirty-three years old, in the prime of his life. He had not gone bald yet and still looked somewhat handsome. However, Eric knew that beneath that handsome appearance hid arrogance and volatility.
Since the other party had already come to him personally, Eric could only smile and extend his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Jobs.”
After exchanging greetings, both men shifted their attention back to the movie. Neither had any intention of speaking further first.
Only more than an hour later, after the movie ended, did Jobs speak again.
“Mr. Williams, can we talk?”