Chapter 448: The First Day of Negative Impact

"Morning, Chairman..."

"Hello, Mr. Eisner..."

Passing through the long corridor, Michael Eisner nodded slightly to the people greeting him. He pushed his door open, stepped into his office, and sat down. He took a sip of the coffee on his desk; both the temperature and the taste were flawless.

Setting down his cup, he pressed the intercom and told his assistant, "Cullen, bring me the latest theatrical box office statistics."

A short time later, a soft knock came at the door. After Eisner called for him to enter, Dick Cook walked in holding a report.

"I saw Cullen getting ready to bring this to you," Cook said, sitting down across from Eisner, "so I brought it over instead."

Eisner took the report, glanced at the data, and frowned slightly.

"Although our public relations department joined in on the internet siege..." Cook said, knowing what the report contained, "the results clearly haven't met expectations."

"An excellent movie paired with excellent marketing and distribution," Eisner said, shaking his head. "It's impossible to defeat that easily."

"But it did have some effect." Cook quickly relayed the news he had gathered. "Warner Brothers publicly announced a first-day expectation of $28 million for The Two Towers. Internally, however, many of them believed the opening day would definitely break the single-day box office record set by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone last year."

A hint of a smile appeared on Eisner's serious face. "From that perspective, it can be considered a success."

Despite his words, the self-mockery in his tone was evident. The first-day box office of $32.27 million for The Two Towers did indeed fall slightly short of the $33.55 million single-day record held by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. But it could hardly be considered a failure by any means.

Yesterday, after receiving notice from Michael Ovitz, he had formed a tacit understanding with Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures to collectively give Artists Management Company a push from behind. Aside from those studios, Eisner had also seen the shadows of several others. The situation was very clear: the major Hollywood studios were all tired of Duke Rosenberg always taking the biggest, most delicious piece of the cake during the summer season. While they wouldn't go to war directly against him and Warner Brothers, they also wouldn't let slip an opportunity to hinder him with effortless little tricks.

In truth, they all saw it very clearly: Duke had a team under him that constantly stirred up trouble online. Many of them had been his victims, so they were simply throwing his own tactics back at him.

However, judging from the internet public opinion last night, Eisner knew their actions had achieved some effect, yet still fell far short of expectations.

Duke's internet PR department had reacted with astonishing speed, and their methods for guiding online public opinion were skilled and subtle. It was clearly not something the newly established teams of these traditional media conglomerates could match. Over the past ten years in particular, Duke had won a massive number of supporters nationwide as a top-tier director. Furthermore, those supporters were the young people who made up the core demographic of the internet, and they had stood by him without hesitation.

Eisner knew very well that Duke's internet PR staff had merely offered a little guidance. In response, those true movie lovers had eagerly unleashed a wave of supportive public opinion, suppressing the negative voices online.

Getting people to support you voluntarily—now that was a brilliant strategy.

Sighing inwardly, Eisner set down the box office statistics and said to Cook, "Have the internet PR department keep an eye on The Two Towers. Give me a summary report afterward."

He valued the role of online media just as much and was determined to use this incident as practice.

"It's a little higher than my psychological expectation of $30 million."

Inside The Lord of the Rings Studio, Duke closed the folder in his hands and said to his PR manager, "Penny, this incident won't just end here. Even though we suppressed the negative voices, we can't relax."

"I know what to do," Penny Kalis said, standing up. "If there's nothing else, I'll head back first."

Duke nodded and opened the data statistics again. Over the course of yesterday, the film's word-of-mouth among audiences saw no obvious changes, but its IMDB rating had rapidly dropped to 9.2. Although their counterattack had been highly effective and the voices of his supporters and the film's fans were loud enough online, the negative impact couldn't be completely avoided.

Originally, Duke had thought the film's box office might explode on its first day. After all, the reception for The Fellowship of the Ring was there for all to see. It wasn't that he hadn't believed The Two Towers could break the North American single-day box office record, but the negative reviews had circulated online for the better part of a day, and that certainly influenced the choices of some audiences, especially new ones.

'Is all of Hollywood tired of me running rampant through the summer season?'

Duke saw it very clearly: such large-scale negative reviews probably weren't the masterpiece of a single studio. However, he wasn't too worried. He wasn't some arrogant fool who thought one person could sweep through Hollywood relying purely on good movies; he had the entire Time Warner Group standing behind him.

In suppressing the negative reviews in less than a day, those supporters and organic fans had played a crucial role. Moving forward, they would remain an important link in the online marketing campaign.

Getting an audience to form a spontaneous wave of support under guidance was easy to say, but not so simple to do. The most critical part was making the organic fans believe that the thing they supported was absolutely worth supporting. In other words, there had to be sufficiently excellent content; that was the foundation for transforming an audience into organic fans!

Why was it that when his paid online shills smeared Godzilla, Pearl Harbor, Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie, and others or their films, the other side couldn't form this kind of counter-wave?

A very important reason was that their content itself simply wasn't excellent enough. How many die-hard supporters could they really win over?

Glancing at the time, Duke tidied up briefly and prepared to leave his office for the editing room on the second floor to continue post-production work on Return of the King. Just as he walked out, however, he saw an executive from The Lord of the Rings Studio leading three people toward him.

Two of them were unfamiliar, though he could tell from their black hair and dark eyes that they were of Chinese descent. Despite having lived in this country for over thirty years, it was still a breeze for Duke to distinguish Chinese people among Asians.

The third was a tall blonde woman with a rather conspicuous baby face.

If Duke remembered correctly, she was a former Victoria's Secret angel supermodel.

"Hi, Duke."

Seeing The Lord of the Rings Studio executive greeting him, Duke nodded. "Hello, Jeremy."

Immediately after, Duke saw one of the two Chinese men gently nudge Jeremy. Jeremy quickly added, "These are two of our clients..."

Duke always paid attention to etiquette, and since the other party were clients, he nodded to each of them.

Jeremy introduced them at the right moment. "Duke, this is Edward Yang, and this is Peter Coe. They're distributors for our merchandise."

"Hello." Duke shook hands with the two of them. With a stir in his mind, he couldn't help but think of the merchandise sales and asked, "Are you frontline distributors?"

"Yes," Peter Coe nodded.

Edward Yang followed up, "We run a chain of stores."

Piqued, Duke asked, "Which of the newly released merchandise are selling the best?"

Aside from continuing the merchandise lines from The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers had also launched new products, such as the Warg Rider, Gandalf the White...

Peter Coe didn't even have to think before answering directly. "The Lord of the Rings Necklace, the Evenstar Pendant, Gandalf the White, Warrior Arwen, and Legolas."

This answer wasn't too unexpected. Duke asked another question. "May I know your single-store sales figures? If it's inconvenient to share..."

"No problem," Peter Coe continued. "At the Santa Monica Commercial Square store where I've been these past few days, sales for The Lord of the Rings merchandise have exceeded $300,000. I haven't received the statistics for the others yet, but a lot of the inventory is sold out across all our storefronts."

He laughed with a hint of embarrassment. "Edward and I are here to coordinate restocking."

Duke could hear that the chain stores managed by Peter Coe were doing quite well with The Lord of the Rings merchandise sales. This also met his expectations; compared to the box office, the profits brought in by The Lord of the Rings merchandise were even higher.

After briefly asking a bit more about the merchandise situation, Duke ended the short conversation and subsequently went up to the second-floor editing room.

Down in the first-floor office, Peter Coe and Edward Yang were fighting hard for their product quotas. Now that The Two Towers was showing a fiery momentum surpassing that of The Fellowship of the Ring, with many merchandise items selling out, how could they let this money-making opportunity slip by?

Their business focus for May and June was on The Lord of the Rings merchandise, and by July, it would shift to The Matrix merchandise.

Whether it was Peter Coe or Edward Yang, they had made up their minds on one thing: if they wanted to make money during this scorching summer season, they absolutely had to cling tightly to Duke Rosenberg's massive coattails.

"Jeremy, two million dollars' worth of goods is far from enough!" Peter Coe looked serious. "I'm asking to triple that. If possible, please give us all your inventory!"

"That's impossible!" Jeremy shook his head instantly. "Peter, Edward, do you know? From this morning until now, I've received at least forty calls asking for goods. I can only give you this much..."

"We can pay in cash..."

"And in the future, as long as it's Duke's movie, no matter what kind of merchandise it is, we are willing to stock it..."

In the outer area of the office, Miranda Kerr sat listening to the arguing voices coming from inside. Thinking of the director she had just met, her curiosity deepened. Just what kind of magic did he possess to drive such a massive commercial group, making them all revolve around him?

A young man suddenly walked into the outer area of the office. Seeing Miranda Kerr, he blanked for a moment before asking, "Is Jeremy not here?"

After asking that question subconsciously, he got a clear look at the young woman sitting there. He walked straight over and introduced himself generously. "Hello, beautiful miss, may I get to know you? My name is Orlando Bloom..."