The Crying Game, which opened on September 25th, earned $1.26 million on 37 screens in its first week. In its second week, it expanded to 86 screens, grossing $2.67 million.
In the third and fourth weeks, The Crying Game increased to 155 and 173 screens, respectively, earning $4.03 million and $3.97 million. By October 22nd, four weeks into its release, The Crying Game had quietly amassed a cumulative box office of $11.93 million, nearly four times its $3 million production cost.
On October 23rd, entering its fifth week, The Crying Game saw a significant expansion to 535 screens.
Despite the excellent box office performance of this low-budget art film, Gaomen Pictures remained patient and controlled the release pace, continuing a cost-effective radiating distribution strategy. This involved gradually releasing the film in different regions to maximize copy resources and better target audience demographics.
The last week of October flew by.
From October 23rd to October 29th, with the screen count increased to 535, The Crying Game maintained an average of $16,000 per screen, and weekly box office revenue surged to $8.61 million. The film's cumulative box office also broke through $20 million, reaching $20.54 million.
For an art film, breaking the $20 million mark is often a difficult hurdle.
As The Crying Game's domestic box office in North America surpassed $20 million, various media began to pay more attention to this unconventional low-budget film, further increasing its popularity.
The distribution methods employed by Gaomen Pictures, such as radiating distribution and rating conflict hype, are replicable. Hollywood studios have even poached many marketing talents from Daenerys Entertainment in recent years. However, Daenerys Entertainment remains unrivaled in the art film domain.
The success of The Crying Game once again instilled a sense of powerlessness among many Hollywood peers.
A careful study of the film's journey from conception to release led Hollywood executives to recognize an undeniable fact.
Ultimately, it boiled down to Simon Westeros.
Take The Crying Game, for instance. The script was written ten years ago and went through a slow and tumultuous development throughout the 1980s. It wasn't until Simon Westeros noticed it that the project received the green light and eventually became a box office dark horse.
Looking at other projects, whether it's the DC Movie Universe led by Daenerys Entertainment, the rapidly rising Pixar studio with its 3D animated films, or various other movie projects, all roads lead back to a young man's discerning eye.
Thus, the success of The Crying Game, and Daenerys Entertainment as a whole, is fundamentally non-replicable. Other studios cannot find another Simon Westeros.
As The Crying Game garnered increasing industry attention, on October 30th, after a long five-month run, Daenerys Entertainment's summer blockbuster Wonder Woman officially ended its run the day before The Ring's release. The film's North American box office totaled $371 million, just $20 million shy of The Dark Knight's $373 million.
Overseas, by the end of October, Wonder Woman had accumulated $351 million, bringing its global box office to $724 million.
Considering the film was still showing in many markets, it had about $150 million more in box office potential, so Wonder Woman's global total was expected to reach around $870 million.
With a total production and marketing investment of $160 million, Wonder Woman's $870 million global box office generated substantial profits for Daenerys Entertainment and Time Warner Group. However, the biggest profit came from merchandise sales.
By the end of October, excluding the 7.3 million copies of the soundtrack sold, Wonder Woman's related merchandise had already brought in $1.3 billion in revenue.
Assuming a net profit margin of about 15% after all development, production, distribution, and tax costs, this $1.3 billion in merchandise sales was expected to bring nearly $200 million in net profit to the two companies.
In comparison, Wonder Woman's expected global box office of $870 million could only bring about $150 million in pre-tax profit after deducting production and marketing costs.
Even with various Hollywood tax avoidance strategies to minimize the tax burden on box office revenue, Wonder Woman's box office income could not compare to the profits generated from merchandise sales.
Moreover, while Wonder Woman's box office revenue had essentially been fixed, the upcoming holiday season was expected to trigger another wave of merchandise sales.
It was projected that within the next two years, sales of superhero movie-related merchandise would exceed $2 billion, with net profits reaching $300 million.
$300 million is typically the annual net profit of a major Hollywood studio in a good year.
However, for the DC Movie Universe, this was just the merchandise revenue from one film, Wonder Woman.
On the other hand, several important summer films related to Daenerys Entertainment, including Indecent Proposal, A Time to Kill, and The Last of the Mohicans, had also ended their runs before Wonder Woman.
Among the three films, only A Time to Kill surpassed the $100 million mark in North America, with a final gross of $113 million.
Indecent Proposal's North American total was $93.11 million, falling short of the $100 million mark by about $7 million.
The Last of the Mohicans had the weakest performance of the three, with a North American gross of only $87.92 million.
However, A Time to Kill had its shortcomings due to its focus on local themes of judicial justice and racial issues, resulting in lower overseas box office than Indecent Proposal, estimated at around $70 million.
Indecent Proposal, bolstered by the star power of Robert Redford and Valeria Golino, was expected to surpass its North American box office overseas, with an estimated $130 million, bringing its global total to over $200 million.
The Last of the Mohicans, being even more local in theme than A Time to Kill, also had the lowest overseas box office of the three. Based on its performance in countries where it had already been released, the film was expected to achieve a total overseas gross of around $50 million, with a global total between $130 million and $140 million.
Even though these three films couldn't compare to Wonder Woman, their box office performances were among the best in North America for 1992.
As of the end of October, all three films were temporarily in the top ten of the annual North American box office chart.
On October 30th, as the atmosphere grew increasingly tense with the approaching U.S. presidential election voting day, the Halloween season kicked off in North America.
New World Pictures, a subsidiary of Daenerys Entertainment, released The Ring on October 30th, with 2,356 screens. Competing with it was Columbia Pictures' TriStar division's horror thriller Candyman, which opened on 1,732 screens.
The story of The Ring needs no introduction.
Candyman, on the other hand, tells a similar story of a vengeful spirit.
Set in the post-Civil War era, the film revolves around deep-seated racial issues in America. A young black man falls in love with a slave owner's white daughter. When their relationship is discovered, the black man is smeared with honey by the whites and slowly and painfully killed by a swarm of bees.
For revenge, his spirit becomes a vengeful ghost hiding in a mirror. If anyone repeats the name "Candyman" five times in front of a mirror, the ghost is summoned.
Despite being a vengeful spirit story, unlike the Japanese horror of The Ring, Candyman was more of an imitation of New Line's A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The "Candyman" ghost in the film, from its appearance to its killing methods, bore many similarities to Freddy from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, with many plot elements borrowed as well.
After years of exploitation, the A Nightmare on Elm Street series had long lost its appeal. As such, a copycat horror film like Candyman had little chance of drawing much interest from audiences.
Thus, upon release, the two films quickly diverged in both reputation and popularity.
Candyman received a media score of only 4.6, failing even to reach a passing grade.
In contrast, The Ring was unanimously praised by both media and the public, with a media score almost double that of Candyman, achieving an excellent 8.7.
As The Ring premiered, Simon began arranging his schedule for the end of the year.
David Johnston and Leslie Wexner's wedding was set for November 21st.
Simon and his wife were definitely going to Australia for the wedding, planning to take a month-long vacation there until after the New Year.
To arrange company affairs before his year-end vacation, Simon had been working tirelessly, even on weekends.
Though it was still the end of 1992, Daenerys Entertainment's key projects for 1993 were largely set.
1993 Easter Season: Home Alone 2.
Summer Season: Superman, Sleepless in Seattle, The Firm, The Pelican Brief.
Superman was solely produced by Daenerys Entertainment, with Warner Bros. handling distribution.
Sleepless in Seattle was a co-production with Disney.
The Pelican Brief was a co-production with Warner Bros., the last of the ten-film deal.
The Firm was independently produced and distributed by Daenerys Entertainment.
Following that:
Halloween Season: Se7en.
Thanksgiving Season: The Lion King 3D, Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg.
Christmas Season: Mission: Impossible, in collaboration with Paramount.
To avoid internal competition in terms of box office and awards, Simon rescheduled Forrest Gump, initially planned for the end of 1993, to the summer of 1994.
The listed films were just the key projects for 1993. Other
films like In the Name of the Father starring Daniel Day-Lewis and an African savannah documentary inspired by the success of last year's Antarctic documentary Frozen World were not included.
In 1993, Daenerys Entertainment, under its three labels—Daenerys Pictures, New World Pictures, and Gaomen Pictures—planned to release about 40 films.
Malibu.
Daenerys Studios.
November 1st, Sunday.
At noon, in the executive dining room of the studio, Simon was having lunch with Dario Argento and his daughter Asia Argento, who had come to North America with him. Also present were New World Pictures president Danny Morris and assistant Jennifer.
Dario Argento's Suspiria was a classic horror film.
With the fame garnered from Suspiria, Argento had maintained collaborations with Hollywood over the years. Today, they were discussing a crime thriller titled Trauma, written and to be directed by Argento, about a young couple searching for and confronting a serial killer.
Argento also secured the lead role for his daughter Asia Argento.
Seventeen-year-old Asia, raised in a film family, had been acting in her father's films since she was ten and had already starred in several Italian films. Her acting skills were sufficient, so Simon did not object to Argento's request for his daughter to play the lead.
In fact, Trauma was largely a vehicle to launch Asia's Hollywood career.
While Italy's film industry was relatively flourishing in Europe, it was still a small pond compared to Hollywood.
With Hollywood's global rise, the small ponds of European cinema were drying up, and breaking into Hollywood became the best path for European filmmakers.
Simon had read the Trauma script. Although it wasn't as good as Suspiria, it was still decent. With a production budget of just $5 million, it was a low-cost project for New World Pictures and received the green light.
However, as it wasn't a key project personally endorsed by Simon, the release schedule for Trauma was yet to be determined.
The film was slated to begin shooting early next year, with a production cycle of about five months, to be completed by mid-1993.
Depending on the final product, if it turned out average, it would be released around September or October next year. If it was below par, it would be slated for early 1994. If it was excellent, it might be moved to Easter 1994.
Despite the varying production scales, levels, and types of films under the three labels of Daenerys Entertainment, Simon did not underestimate any project. Although executives had significant autonomy, all films ultimately needed his approval.
Simon consistently promoted the idea that films are Daenerys Entertainment's "products," with no hierarchy in genres. Everyone's job was to make these products as good as possible and to adopt appropriate marketing strategies to maximize their commercial returns.
Simon led by example with this approach.
Trauma was no exception.
Simon personally reviewed the script, communicated with Dario Argento, and monitored the budget and main cast. Though he wouldn't be involved in the specific production, he would watch the initial cuts and oversee the marketing strategy.
Through this working style, Simon kept track of every film project within the company.
Moreover, with his foresight advantage, this approach ensured that Daenerys Entertainment consistently secured more box office hits from Simon's memory, thereby outperforming other film companies in the industry.
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