For the people who have different thoughts, xXx was indeed a movie. Some might mistake it for another triple x...
xXx was produced by Sony-Colombia, starring Vin Diesel as Xander Cage. A daredevil who became a spy by the National Security Agency. This movie was a box office hit, with its box office grossing more than $277 million. The production cost of the movie was $88 million.
Actually, Kazir thought of adding the movie into the Continental Cinematic Universe but he decided not to. Simply because of the reason that CCU already had a lot of movies to focus on.
Kazir knew that he could not acquire all of the promising scripts in Hollywood, or else the Big Six might join together and attack him.
Besides, Vin Diesel was already a cast of Fast and The Furious. If they decided to add xXx to the CCU, then they have to find another actor to become Xander Cage.
'Ice Cube is the protagonist of xXx: State Of The Union, the sequel of the first movie, and State Of The Union grossed $113 million. It's not a bad performance but it's not that good either. Perhaps the audience wanted to see Vin Diesel instead of Ice Cube. Which was right because the third movie, xXx: Return of Xander Cage grossed $346 million.'
xXx was actually a good franchise, but Kazir already felt like CCU was already bloated. So yeah, Kazir passed on the project.
Now that Kazir thought about it, Vin Diesel had some good franchises under his belt despite many audiences hating on the guy.
Fast and The Furious
xXx
Pitch Black/Riddick
Guardians of The Galaxy
Vin Diesel had his ways to keep his career as long as he participated in one of these franchises.
On its first weekend, xXx made $50.34 million at the box office.
As for Mr. And Mrs. Smith, ten days into the screening, the movie grossed $96.69 million.
With that, both movies had their fair share of tickets. There was some friction but in the end, it all depended on the choices of the audience.
Sony-Colombia could sabotage Mr. And Mrs. Smith by throwing dirty rumors directed at the cast but Sony-Colombia held back. It was not worth it, especially when they needed Kazir to direct Spider-Man in 2004.
Kazir already proved that he could make billions at the box office, but Sony-Colombia didn't want to end their relationship because of a small dispute.
Another thing was that Vin Diesel was also a cast of CCU and his feelings towards Mr. And Mrs. Smith were complicated.
After the release of xXx, nothing big happened in August and most of the movies that were released were mediocre and nothing surpassed $100 million at the box office except Spy Kids 2, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, and xXx. The latter two dominated the theaters this month.
So when August ended, Mr. And Mrs. Smith already made $146.08 million, while xXx grossed $117.26 million.
Of course even though the screening in North America just passed a month, the cast of Mr. And Mrs. Smith had to travel around the world to promote the movie.
If the home court of Sony-Colombia was Japan, then Australia was the home court of 20th Century Fox. In fact, most movies invested by 20th Century Fox were filmed in Australia because the studio could get a tax discount in the country. After all, Rupert Murdoch was Australian and he could move his fingers to give way to 20th Century Fox.
September arrived and the cold treatment in theaters obviously happened. Most students and people returned to their usual stuff.
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...
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After almost half a year of waiting, Sony-Colombia already completed its payment to Kazir Grey. Calculating the worldwide box office of Spider-Man took a long time since the movie made a lot.
After some math stuff, Sony-Colombia confirmed that Spider-Man actually grossed $1.09 billion.
Now, do not be shocked, but Kazir actually earned $294.3 million as his box office share! This was just a single project but he already earned that much.
Of course, Sony-Colombia paid this amount per round and not a single payment.
Kazir already received $27 million from them as his salary and the $294.3 million was his box office share.
On the contract, both parties agreed that Kazir would receive $27 million as his salary and 27% worldwide box office share, he also had a 7% peripheral profit share.
The amount he received from Sony-Colombia was already over $300 million.
It might look like Sony-Colombia lost a lot in this business. They sacrificed their short-term profit in exchange for the long-term.
In fact, after the success of Spider-Man, Sony-Colombia earned $300 million on peripherals such as DVDs and action figures. The peripherals they could sell using Spider-Man were endless.
They could sell toy cars with Spider-Man stickers, boom, easy profit.
They could sell t-shirts with Spider-Man images, boom, easy profit.
Heck, they could sell a toilet bowl with a Spider-Man design, and crazy people would buy it.
This was the power they received after hiring Kazir. They didn't regret hiring someone like him. His worth was equal to the amount they gave him.
No one could assure that a superhero movie like Spider-Man could find success in the cinema but Kazir made sure to make that happen.
... Although they admit that it was a bit painful to give that amount to Kazir. After all, $300 million was a huge amount of money.
On top of that, Marvel Comics had their shares as well so Sony-Colombia couldn't take all of the profits.
Still, they were all sure that Spider-Man 2 would happen. Sony-Colombia intended to make it a trilogy and they wanted Kazir to film them.
1 billion dollars? Are you freaking kidding me? Of course Sony-Colombia would milk this franchise for all of its worth!
This was also the reason why Sony wanted to acquire Grey Pictures. Grey Pictures could produce profitable movies and Sony wanted it. To be precise, they wanted to keep working with Kazir Grey.