Chapter 247: Box Office: Latecomers Surpass the Early Ones

Why did these Hollywood film companies campaign for Oscar awards? Why invest massive amounts of money into them? If past campaigns for film awards generally cost around hundreds of thousands, or at most a million dollars—just like this year's Chicago, which invested a total of no more than a million dollars—then ever since The English Patient, with Miramax officially joining this game, Oscar campaign expenses would skyrocket at lightning speed to millions or even tens of millions of dollars.

By the turn of the century, ten million dollars would merely be the entry-level guarantee for winning an award.

Why did film companies invest so much money? For honor and artistic achievement? That was indeed a high-sounding reason that could really elevate their prestige.

But in reality?

Perhaps last year's sweeping victor, Saving Private Ryan, was the best example. The film took home nine Oscar Golden Statuettes. By the time it won, it had basically finished its run in the global market, so the Golden Statuettes it acquired didn't offer much help to its box office.

But! Don't forget that a film's income wasn't limited to the box office. As time passed, the box office's share of total revenue continuously declined!

After the previous Oscars, Saving Private Ryan released Videotapes and VCDs in global markets, including North America, for both sales and rentals. By the new year, the total revenue in this sector across the global market reached 144.58 million dollars!

Then there were the television broadcast rights, which brought in a total global revenue of 41.8 million dollars!

Furthermore, the film had collaborated with Hasbro to release action figures of the rescue squad, Private Ryan, and other characters. Although sales could only be described as very average, it still brought in over 4 million dollars in revenue.

The Best Picture win arguably played a crucial role in all of this.

Before the internet was highly developed, before information fully exploded, and before the Oscars became completely niche and politicized, an Oscar nomination and Best Picture were still the weather vanes many people used to choose what to watch. Aside from a few outliers like The Shawshank Redemption, films that received multiple Oscar nominations generally experienced a massive surge in commercial revenue.

After the list of Oscar nominations was announced, the screening scale for Chicago in North America expanded once again. It immediately surged from the 428 theaters it had previously slipped to, back up to 1,550 theaters. Much like Saving Private Ryan last year, stimulated by the Oscar nominations, many audiences who hadn't originally planned to watch the film stepped into the theaters, and those who had already seen it went back for a second viewing.

On the first weekend following the theater surge, Chicago's box office strongly rebounded, experiencing a massive reverse increase. It brought in 10.78 million dollars over three days. In the three full weeks that followed, the film raked in 8.75 million dollars, 5.89 million dollars, and 4.58 million dollars respectively, bringing its cumulative North American box office to 169.81 million dollars.

As the film's box office potential in North America gradually depleted, its theater count plummeted significantly once more. With a scale of fewer than 500 theaters, it continued to harvest whatever final earnings could still be made in North America.

Also following the announcement of the nomination list, Chicago's overseas screenings officially began. The film simultaneously landed in Europe, Latin America, Australia, Asia, and even some markets in Africa.

Ten Oscar nominations indeed coated the film in a dazzling halo, but musicals leaving the Western world were destined to be unaccustomed to the climate. In the four weeks Duke and Charles Roven spent discussing New Zealand affairs, Chicago raked in 11 million dollars from Australia, 6.37 million dollars from France, 5.32 million dollars in Germany, and took away 9.22 million dollars in Spain.

The film's two biggest overseas box office reservoirs appeared in Britain, which shared the same cultural roots as America, and Japan, which was deeply influenced by American culture. There, it secured its highest overseas earnings of 27.33 million dollars and 25.93 million dollars, respectively. Coupled with other million-dollar markets, the film's overseas box office quickly reached 100 million dollars!

By late February, Chicago's combined global box office had already accumulated 287.55 million dollars!

Following that, Duke Studio collaborated with Warner Records to release the Chicago original soundtrack album. Within two weeks of the disc hitting the market, its sales in North America alone easily surpassed platinum, reaching as high as 1.52 million copies.

The disc was simultaneously launched in overseas markets. By mid-March, the soundtrack album had cumulatively sold over 30 million dollars. Although Duke Studio had to split the profits with Warner Records and the distributors, this single revenue stream alone recouped a quarter of the production costs!

The film's massive popularity also drove the development of other merchandise. Around the same time, Duke Studio reached an agreement with Mattel, licensing the doll model rights for Velma and Roxie for 1.5 million dollars. Even though, according to Hollywood convention, one-third of that had to go toward paying the likeness licensing fees for Naomi Watts and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the remaining 1 million dollars was still a handsome windfall.

Duke Studio and Warner Brothers were also still negotiating with multiple television networks. By this time, they had reached partial agreements, with NBC taking away the North American first-run television broadcast rights for 3 million dollars.

Because the film was still screening in North America across over 300 theaters, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the box office every day, the television broadcast would have to wait until after the Oscar Awards Ceremony.

...

"Charles, at the end of the day, we still have to go inspect it in person."

Inside Duke Studio, Duke closed a thick file folder and said to Charles Roven, "After I get back from London, we'll grab Robin and head to New Zealand together."

Charles Roven checked the time, stood up, and said, "Then I'll wait for your call."

The two shook hands in farewell. Duke watched him leave the office and sat back behind his desk. Actually, it wasn't just New Zealand; he also wanted to take a trip to Hong Kong to find a few action choreographers.

What they were prepping in New Zealand was The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to add kung fu-style action elements to it; otherwise, the film would be an incongruous mess, and the chances of it bombing would be infinitely high.

Duke seeking out action choreographers was naturally for the sci-fi film he had filed years ago. He intended to use kung fu to showcase programmatic conflicts. Using a name he was once familiar with, this project could be titled The Matrix.

This was also a film that would be quite troublesome to prepare. Leaving aside the fact that its special effects would consume a massive amount of time and manpower, just training Hollywood actors into passable, surface-level kung fu performers would take months. Furthermore, there was no way to save time or effort on it; insufficient early-stage training would inevitably lead to endless problems during shooting, and even actor injuries.

Moreover, Duke had already discussed it with the action choreography team he had consecutively collaborated with on several films. They would inevitably participate in the entire process of the film in the future, using high-speed cameras to record the entire process of training and performing, and then using high-tech methods to analyze it frame by frame.

The purpose behind this was very clear: to steal their techniques.

Of course, Duke wasn't a kung fu enthusiast, nor did he have any interest in people flying around or complicated, flashy brawls. Instead, he wanted his own action team to combine kung fu, Muay Thai, wrestling, karate, and freestyle kickboxing to design more direct, fierce, and brutally simple action routines. After all, he knew that the popularity of kung fu films in North America, and indeed the entire Western world, would be extremely short-lived. Once the audience's novelty wore off, the genre would quickly be knocked back to its original state.

Speaking of which, Hollywood's approach to action had remained identical for decades—it was simply unbearable to watch...

This was arguably one of the reasons why kung fu movies were able to gain such massive popularity in North America at the turn of the century. But Hollywood had always been a massive melting pot; if you knew how to blend in, you could become an important member of this circle. If you rigidly adhered to the old ways, you would soon be eliminated by it.

Besides, Hollywood didn't need to understand what kung fu actually was. For highly specialized and tech-driven teams, learning just the superficial basics of kung fu was enough to combine it with other fighting styles and design action routines better suited for global popularity.

As for pushing kung fu movies out to the entire world? Duke believed that in the East, where talents came forth in multitudes, there were countless people far more suited for it than he was.

After thinking for a moment, Duke pressed the intercom and called Tina Fey inside. His female assistant had just experienced a terrifying incident horrific enough to cause many people to break down, and she had only recently recovered enough to return to work.

Duke pointed to the chair across the desk, and after Tina Fey sat down, he asked, "Are you moving out of North Hollywood?"

"Yes, I don't want to stay there anymore."

Through a long period of working together, Tina Fey had found the right way to interact with Duke and knew that her boss treated the people around him quite well.

She said frankly, "I usually stay at Duke Manor and only go back to stay over occasionally on the weekends, yet I still ran into this kind of thing. My impression of North Hollywood has hit rock bottom."

"Have you found a suitable place?" Duke asked. Seeing Tina Fey shake her head, he continued, "For now, just put your luggage at my place. You can take your time looking for a house. Also, I'm heading to London this weekend; you stay in Los Angeles and rest."

"I've already recovered," Tina Fey insisted.

Seeing her resolute gaze, Duke couldn't say much else. He waved a hand at her. "Remember to book the tickets to London."

Tina Fey nodded, stood up, and turned to walk out of the office.

Duke let out a sigh. This woman was quite tough.

On the very last day of February, North Hollywood experienced the most severe bank robbery in Los Angeles history. Two heavily armed robbers holding AK Rifles equipped with drum magazines robbed the Bank of America Los Angeles Branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The unlucky Tina Fey had happened to go to the bank to handle some account issues, unfortunately getting swept up in the incident and witnessing the entire process.

In truth, Duke had seen it too. When the incident occurred, ABC Television happened to have a helicopter nearby doing a live broadcast, and it rushed to the scene immediately. Through the camera lens and television screens, they showed audiences across America how two robbers—wearing Double-Layer Kevlar and wielding automatic firepower—pinned down over fifty Los Angeles police officers so hard they couldn't even lift their heads, until SWAT arrived to provide backup...

Such an incident was highly likely to cast a lifelong shadow over a person.

Recalling the footage he had seen on TV, a thought suddenly flashed through Duke's mind. 'This would be great material for an adaptation, wouldn't it?'

In the latter two installments of The Lord of the Rings series, the narrative structure would become exceptionally complex, with dual- and triple-thread narratives becoming the norm. The film's investment was so enormous that he couldn't afford to fail; making a low-budget, triple-thread narrative film for practice would definitely be helpful.

Duke made a note in his memo. This was just a very preliminary idea. Whether to actually execute it or not was something he would decide after returning from London and attending Victoria's Secret's annual fashion show.