American Wedding and The Equalizer had their premieres happen on the same day.
They were both mid-budget movies, and both movies also had a budget of $55 million.
The production budget for movies kept increasing and $55 million was now considered mid-budget for movies. A decade ago, $55 million was already a huge amount for making a movie.
After a week of screening, American Wedding grossed $49.75 million, it was an amazing achievement since American Wedding was an R-rated comedy movie. Perhaps a lot of adults could relate to the humor of the movie.
The Big Six were surprised that this franchise actually had the power to perform greatly at the box office... Unfortunately, for Universal Pictures, this sex comedy movie couldn't maximize its profit because its rival was far stronger.
If American Wedding grossed $49 million, then The Equalizer showed how important world-building was. The Continental Cinematic Universe was a universe where hitmen, assassins, agents, and ninjas lived with their almost superhuman physiques. CCU was molded throughout the years and created a perfect universe. The audience loved it very much.
Everyone in the industry understood that the success of The Equalizer was because of the Continental Cinematic Universe. If this action movie was not part of this huge universe, then it might be nothing to the moviegoers.
With that, the first seven days of The Equalizer was $92.97 million.
Obviously, The Equalizer acquired first place in the weekly box office ranking.
Universal Pictures couldn't help but shake their heads and accept the outcome. It would be detrimental if they changed the schedule of American Wedding, they would lose their money since they already promoted the movie a few months ago.
August was the last month of Summer and they didn't have a choice but to put it on the first week to make it relevant... And it seemed that 20th Century Fox and Grey Pictures also thought the same idea, putting The Equalizer on the same week.
Most of the time, the Big Six made sure not to release their movies in the same week. But cases like this also happened, where two mid-budget movies were released on the same day. Both sides would be affected because they couldn't maximize the potential of their movies. One of the two would surely lose their grounds and fall from the scene, American Wedding suffered that fate while The Equalizer continued thriving.
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"Haha, Bob. I know it's late, but congratulations on becoming the CEO of the company. You deserve it. That old man Michael needs to retire anyway." Harvey greeted his friend, being clueless that he was also becoming old.
The CEO/Executive Chairman, Robert "Bob" Iger laughed and shook Harvey's hand.
The two had an alliance to kick Michael Eisner and Michael Ovits out of Walt Disney.
It was funny that the two Michaels wanted to kick Harvey Weinstein but they suffered the outcome instead. Fate truly knows how to joke around.
Harvey and Bob rallied the shareholders and the executives to dethrone the two Michaels. And now, Harvey and Bob were experiencing the harvest of their hard work. Most people in Walt Disney respected them, afraid that they might be the next to get fired.
"Did you hear the news that 20th Century Fox is investing more in Blue Sky Studio? Those fools, they think that they will beat Walt Disney in terms of animation. Hah, their movie last year, Ice Age, looks bloke and boring compared to Pixar. Even DreamWorks has a better animation than them!"
Harvey Weinstein scoffed.
Ice Age was the first movie created by Blue Sky Studio to be released in theaters. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox, the company that owned Blue Sky Studio.
In Hollywood, the very best computer animation was none other than Pixar. Pixar was the first company that produce computer animation movies, it was Toy Story. Since then, Pixar kept dominating the computer animation industry.
Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo were the current projects that Pixar released. Finding Nemo which was released this year gained a lot of reputation and positive reviews. Finding Nemo has been in theaters for almost three months now and currently grossed more than $322 million. Animation movies usually have longer lifespans in theaters because of obvious reasons, unlike horror movies and R-rated movies.
Below Pixar was DreamWorks Animation. This company also had amazing movies but they couldn't compete against Pixar, at least in the 90s and 00s eras... Things would change around 2020, when people started losing interest in Disney movies.
So far, DreamWorks created Antz, The Prince Of Egypt, The Road To El Dorado, Chicken Run, Joseph: King Of Dreams, Shrek, Spirit: Stallion Of Cimarron, and Sinbad: Legend Of The Seven Seas. DreamWorks only made two 3D animated movies currently which were Antz and Shrek, with Shrek becoming one of their most profitable franchises of all time.
Next to these two were Blue Sky Studio and Illumination.
So far, Blue Sky only made one movie and it was Ice Age. The movie was released last year, grossing $383 million at the worldwide box office. Honestly, the movie was not bad since the movie only cost $59 million to make.
The main problem of 3D animation movies was the time. It took a lot of time to make one 3D animation movie, especially when the technology was just blooming. Pixar could only make one movie every two years, that's how difficult it was. That was already considered to be fast.
As for Illumination, this studio was owned by Universal Pictures... And It was currently not existing.
Illumination would release its first movie in 2010, their starting movie was Despicable Me.
So yeah, there are only three computer animation studios in Hollywood right now. With Blue Sky Studio being the weakest.
"Blue Sky, huh... Their first movie is not that. Yeah, the animation is not that great but they can polish that with experience."
Bob Iger thought of Blue Sky Studio which had its debut last year. Suddenly, he had an epiphany