Chapter 459: The Fourth Massive Box Office Hit

For Duke, the biggest difference in this brand-new The Matrix Reloaded was its heavy, oil-painting-like color palette. Although the film still relied on cyan and black tones, Zack Snyder had successfully blended in what he did best. Combined with a reduction in pretentious, philosophy-for-philosophy's-sake plot elements and changes to the film's action style, it won a tidal wave of applause in the theater by the time the screening ended.

It was already the Summer Season of 2002, and kung fu-style action was no longer anything new to Hollywood and North American audiences. The Matrix Reloaded discarded the kung fu currently overused by Hollywood action films, especially the flashy, complex routines. Although the actors' individual fighting styles varied, they had already approached a simple, direct model similar to those of the future.

Hollywood's traditional tough-guy brawling caused aesthetic fatigue, and kung fu would cause aesthetic fatigue just the same.

Even as the center of the global film industry, Hollywood was no less prone to trend-following than Eastern film circles. Nowadays, if a Hollywood action film didn't hire a few action choreographers from Hong Kong and show off a bit of Tiger and Crane Dual Form and Tai Chi, the production would be too embarrassed to even start shooting.

With a massive number of similar films swarming the market, the consequences were not hard to imagine at all.

In Duke's future plans, action elements would carry a heavy weight. Just like Zack Snyder's version of The Matrix Reloaded, he would not use kung fu.

He knew very well that whether it was Muay Thai, Taekwondo, kickboxing, or kung fu, it was impossible to simply cram them into a movie and expect them to sweep the globe. Ever since The Matrix was filmed a few years ago, Duke had asked his action choreographer, Jimmy Carter, to use Hollywood's technical methods, reference Yuen Woo-ping's Hong Kong-style filming techniques, and integrate a variety of close-quarters combat arts to design a completely new action model.

These new action routines did not need overly flashy movements; they needed to be simpler, more powerful, faster, and more direct. At the very least, they would look that way through the camera lens.

As for promoting kung fu and kung fu films, it was too difficult for a non-enthusiast like him. Kung fu was profound and extensive, and not something a layman like him could fully grasp. Countless people on the other side of the ocean were far more suited to it than he was.

After The Matrix 2: Reloaded was released, the overall response was quite positive. Although countless film critics unleashed a chorus of scorn, claiming the film was nothing but non-stop fighting and explosions entirely devoid of depth or philosophical thought, they couldn't stop the passionate surge of moviegoers paying for tickets.

Over the three days of its opening weekend, The Matrix Reloaded surged to $92.77 million at the North American box office, setting the highest opening record for an R-Rated Film in history.

This film's box office explosion directly ended Spider-Man's three-week championship streak, making it the fourth massive box office hit of this Summer Season following The Two Towers, Attack of the Clones, and Spider-Man.

By its second weekend, although The Matrix Reloaded was limited by being an R-Rated Film and could not maintain the exceptionally stable legs of The Two Towers, it still kept its drop to within fifty percent. Taking in $51.02 million over its second weekend, it successfully defended its championship on the North American box office chart. Furthermore, in just ten days of release, its North American box office broke the $200 million mark, reaching a staggering $211.05 million!

The facts were very clear. This was another blockbuster whose North American box office could exceed $300 million.

When July came to an end and the 2002 Summer Season concluded, the two films tied to Duke, The Two Towers and The Matrix Reloaded, undoubtedly emerged as some of the biggest winners.

The Two Towers had started its wide release in 3,876 theaters during the first weekend of the Summer Season. By the time August arrived, its North American theater count had shrunk to 1,462, with a cumulative North American box office of $478.55 million and a global box office reaching $1.12311 billion. Although Spider-Man had also performed extraordinarily well, box office trend estimates indicated that its North American and global grosses would settle around $400 million and $900 million, respectively. Duke had practically pre-booked the North American and global annual box office championships.

Even constrained by the R-Rated Film classification, relying on the explosive word-of-mouth of its predecessor and the impressive quality of the sequel, The Matrix Reloaded's North American box office was already approaching $300 million after a month of release. Ultimately, its North American box office was bound to surpass the $300 million threshold, and it would compete with Attack of the Clones and the Thanksgiving release Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for third place in the North American and global box office rankings.

"What stands out even more than the box office is the merchandise performance for the two franchises."

At the Warner Brothers board of directors meeting, Doug Walter, who had recently taken the CEO seat, was brimming with spirit.

"From the release of The Fellowship of the Ring up to the end of July, the total global sales of Lord of the Rings-related merchandise reached $1.73255 billion. Among them, the highest sales came from The Fellowship of the Ring DVD box set, which reached a global sales figure of $521 million..."

Speaking to this point, Doug Walter looked around at the dozen or so directors participating in the meeting and said with absolute confidence, "The theatrical run of The Two Towers is already approaching its mid-to-late stages. According to the marketing department's research and evaluation, the sales of the film's original soundtrack album and DVDs will inevitably surpass those of The Fellowship of the Ring."

As soon as Doug Walter finished, the eyes of the other directors all turned to Duke. This man single-handedly propped up nearly one-third of Warner Brothers' overall performance!

Duke sat there quietly and didn't say anything. He was the largest individual beneficiary of the films.

Indeed, compared to the total combined profits of the box office and merchandise, the more than 200 million dollars in net dividends he received seemed relatively small. But one had to remember that movie merchandise relied far more heavily on distribution channels than theatrical box office did. Without the support of a conglomerate's platform, merchandise could only generate basic licensing income. Why did Pixar Studio, Blue Sky Studio, and later DreamWorks Animation Studio, as well as other small and medium-sized film companies, scramble or even break their necks trying to join those conglomerates?

Beyond reasons of funding and risk resistance, the advantage large companies had in integrating resources was a major factor that attracted them.

Perhaps many years in the future, Hollywood's era of giants would end, but from the early-to-mid-nineties through the subsequent decade-plus, Hollywood was in a veritable era of giants.

His own experience was indeed extraordinary, but seeing and doing were fundamentally two different things. Hollywood's problems simply could not be solved just by making sufficiently excellent movies.

To put it bluntly, newcomers and new ideas really weren't worth much in Hollywood.

With no past successful experience, could one really just randomly mail a script to a film company or director and expect the other party to eagerly come knocking on their door? Stop joking around.

Duke's initial experience had been slightly better—after all, his mother and family background could at least play some role. Ordinary rookie screenwriters had absolutely no chance of meeting senior executives at film companies. As for famous directors and producers, even a fool knew that scripts mailed to them would never actually reach their hands.

Just look at Duke and Tina Fey—which major director or well-known producer didn't have an assistant?

For a director at Duke's level, Tina Fey managed an assistant team of over ten people under her. Mailed scripts would inevitably land in the hands of these assistants first. Who could reasonably expect those assistants to pass a newcomer's ideas and scripts to the higher-ups?

Put it this way: the screenwriters who wanted to write scripts for major directors and renowned producers could line up from Long Beach all the way to Malibu.

Collaborating with a major director meant an extremely high probability of success. That success would give screenwriters—the most vulnerable among a project's key personnel—a chance to climb the ladder and perhaps even become a gold-tier screenwriter.

Take the former gold-tier screenwriter Ehren Kruger, for example. Was there a single plot he penned that was actually brilliant or even logical? Yet he wrote Transformers movie after movie, and even though countless people complained about him, the production company still didn't replace him.

This was an incredibly realistic circle; the persuasiveness of seniority was a hundred, even ten thousand times stronger than that of pure creativity.

Similarly, countless talented people were buried in this circle. The most typical example was the so-called Hollywood Blacklist; many scripts on it had been completed for years or even longer, yet they languished and could not become real projects. The reasons behind this were not hard to imagine.

Just like the rumors of Bill Gates bowing to Wall Street, a single person wanting to fight against an entire massive system was no different from a pipe dream.

Therefore, from the very beginning until now, Duke had always chosen to stand on the side of the large companies and engage in deep cooperation with them.

Having reached his current status, Duke actually knew very well that if he hadn't had his mother's financial support back then, perhaps only God knew when his first film would have been released.

Just like during Speed, even though the film had received unanimous praise from screening experts and even had George Lucas's help, Twentieth Century Fox still chose the most conservative limited-release strategy that was most advantageous to them, fully prepared to pull the film at any time if the market response was poor.

There were countless ways to climb up in Hollywood, but gaining the appreciation of bigwigs and large companies purely through a script was undoubtedly one of the most unreliable.

Moreover, for quite a few blockbuster films, the scripts were truly very average, and the concepts and tropes were often things Hollywood had worn completely threadbare.

As for innovation? The flip side of innovation was risk. When innovation was combined with an inexperienced newcomer, what kind of choice would directors, producers, and film companies actually make?

He believed that as long as they didn't have water in the brain, these people would only have one choice.

And among those who could climb to high positions through Hollywood's fierce, brutal competition, how many would really have water in the brain?

The board of directors' agenda items proceeded one after another. Most of the time, Duke didn't offer many opinions. Only when discussing film-related topics would he seriously say a few words, and whatever he said could attract significant attention from the Warner Board of Directors.

For example, the meeting focused on discussing matters concerning the establishment of Justice League Studio, and Duke held a positive attitude toward this.

Furthermore, championed by Duke and Doug Walter, Warner Brothers also decided to start contacting Marvel, striving to secure the distribution rights for Marvel films.

Marvel and DC had a relationship of both competition and cooperation. Although the competition was far greater than the cooperation, as long as the benefits were large enough, cooperation was not impossible.