Without a doubt, The Interview was unable to enter the theatrical markets of many countries, yet it achieved further spread through the Internet. Although the film was affected by online piracy, the number of paid viewings repeatedly hit new highs, even becoming comparable to the online pay-per-view numbers of The Dark Knight Rises, which had just been pulled from North American theaters.
The enormous amount of discussion to a certain extent made The Interview what it became.
As Duke had once said, in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, being talked about is far better than being ignored.
While The Interview was still squeezing out its last bit of profit through television broadcasts, online streaming, and DVD sales, in the distant Korean Peninsula across the western Pacific, the film had turned into a political weapon.
Some South Korean organizations used hot-air balloons to drop the latest discs released by Warner Bros. into North Korea, triggering the North's most violent reaction yet. This time it wasn't just verbal protest — the recently quiet Yeonpyeong Island once again resounded with cannon fire. North Korea fired over a hundred artillery shells toward the South, and South Korea, unwilling to be outdone, retaliated with nearly eighty shells. The situation on the Korean Peninsula instantly became extremely tense.
However, none of this was of any concern to Duke. His role in this entire affair was only that of a businessman. Even setting aside his own interests, he did not possess any sort of lofty internationalist sentiment.
When it came down to it — what did the lives and deaths of the two sides exchanging fire have to do with him?
Duke felt no special sympathy for those so-called suffering people.
"Compared to North Korea and South Korea…"
Sitting in his office at the Warner Studios, Duke said while sipping black tea to Tina Fey, "I'm more interested in the box office numbers for The Dark Knight Rises."
The film had officially been pulled from theaters in North America. The precise statistics had just been faxed to Tina Fey by Warner Bros. She knew Duke had no interest in looking at the papers himself. Glancing at the figures on the fax, she read directly, "Domestic box office: 596.75 million dollars. It's certain to take the North American box office crown this year."
She looked at Duke, who showed no particular reaction, and continued, "Although it hasn't been completely pulled from overseas theaters yet, there aren't many countries and regions still showing The Dark Knight Rises, and most of them bought out the screening rights. The box office generated there isn't directly tied to us anymore."
Although The Dark Knight Rises had been affected by various factors and didn't quite reach Warner Bros.' expectations, Duke still nodded slightly. Warner had believed it would be a film on par with The Avengers in scale. Yet once again, the facts proved that a single superhero could never compete with a team-up extravaganza.
Tina Fey continued speaking, "Including the North American gross of 596.75 million dollars, The Dark Knight Rises has so far earned a worldwide total of 1.54567 billion dollars."
Compared with her initial worries at the time of the film's release, Tina Fey was now calm. Such box office numbers were more than enough to prove the success of The Dark Knight Rises.
Even after experiencing so many unforeseen incidents, The Dark Knight Rises still took the 2013 North American box office crown with unstoppable momentum.
After listening to Tina Fey, Duke temporarily set aside The Dark Knight Rises. The film's merchandise revenue was also astonishing, with many subsequent commercial opportunities yet to be mined. There was no rush; Warner Bros. had an entire department dedicated to handling that side of the business.
Duke continued flipping through documents, signing his name one by one. Among them was a financial report Tina Fey had submitted — the revenue-sharing report for The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises.
For both films, Duke had signed contracts with Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. that included base salaries plus profit-sharing bonuses. Excluding the base payments of 15 million dollars each and the dividend shares he received from both companies, after the most recent 23.5-million-dollar profit payment arrived, Duke's pre-tax income from The Avengers reached 232.7 million dollars — making him one of the biggest winners of all.
Even though The Dark Knight Rises had only made its first round of director payments, Duke still received a hefty sum of nearly 45 million dollars.
Naturally, among all actors and directors in Hollywood, Duke had become the undisputed number one in income. The payments made to him were also the single largest expenditure in all the projects he directed.
However, no one ever questioned this, because Duke could create far greater value for investors. As long as he was willing, the list of projects waiting for his direction could stretch from the Duke Estate in Malibu all the way down to San Diego.
Nevertheless, Duke always remained clear-headed. He knew that among all of Hollywood's records and achievements, there was still one man and one film that firmly stood above him — James Cameron's Avatar.
Duke was a technical-oriented director, never one to reject new technologies or insist on unnecessary location shoots. Yet compared to James Cameron's innovations in cinematic technology, Duke knew he couldn't catch up even if he were driving a race car.
Before The Avengers came along, public opinion believed that no one could rival Duke in total box office earnings. But when it came to a single film surpassing Titanic and Avatar, only James Cameron himself had managed to do so.
Until The Avengers appeared.
It had to be said — the power of a superhero team-up was absolutely immense.
Holding the all-time highest-grossing film title might just be a name, but that name's influence and prestige were unimaginable. Why would certain films go to any length, even spending immense sums, just to seize that top spot across the Pacific?
Because behind that title lay not just fame — but profit.
Since Terminator 2, James Cameron's films had always been synonymous with exquisite craftsmanship and box office dominance. Anyone who knew even a little about the film industry could see that the "King of the World's" movies never triumphed through creativity — in fact, their concepts were rather ordinary at best.
The most typical examples are Titanic and Avatar. In terms of creativity, neither film could even be considered above average.
The greatest feature of these two films is, without a doubt, their technology.
Duke was obviously different from James Cameron. To make Avatar, Cameron could spend several years improving and experimenting with new technology, willing to wait five years or even longer for its perfection. Duke, however, shot films at the pace of roughly one per year, which made it impossible for him to devote years purely to developing new cinematic technologies. He could only make use of the newest and most mature technologies already available for his productions.
Surpassing James Cameron in the use of new technology was simply impossible.
Duke understood this very clearly—unless he, like Cameron, were willing to devote several years entirely to the study of filmmaking technology, there was no way it could ever happen.
Spending several years on a single film was clearly not a choice Duke would ever make.
Choosing a creative script? Setting aside the enormous risks that so-called creativity entails, large-scale commercial films don't actually require highly original stories.
Of course, adaptations were always an option.
Over the past few months, Duke had been paying attention to various online and bestselling books. He even had someone acquire the film adaptation rights for a web novel titled Fifty Shades of Grey, yet none of the projects he saw truly caught his eye.
Warner Bros.' Greater China division, across the Pacific, had recommended to Duke a popular and influential hard science fiction novel. However, Duke had no interest in personally directing it. He was a man of reason; the most irrational thing he had ever done in this lifetime was his infatuation with his former idol, Natalie Portman. When it came to that science fiction novel, he remained completely clear-headed.
As of now, the world's most important film market was still the Western market led by North America—particularly Hollywood's own North American base. The exclusivity of Western cultural products far exceeded most people's imagination. The ideal market for that science fiction novel's adaptation was still across the Pacific, and it could never achieve major success in Western, especially English-speaking, territories.
Without the English-speaking market, relying solely on the market across the Pacific as the main source of revenue, how could Duke possibly sustain one of his typical productions costing over two hundred million dollars?
As for the belief that adapting that science fiction novel could surpass Avatar at the box office—Duke could only think such people were dreaming too much.
That novel was indeed excellent, but it wasn't suitable for Western audiences. Duke was absolutely certain of this. Therefore, Warner Bros. Greater China secured the film adaptation rights, collaborating with several of the strongest production companies across the Pacific in hopes of producing a high-quality Chinese co-production. Its target audience would naturally be Chinese moviegoers.
For a film to achieve major success, it first had to have a clear sense of its own identity.
Unlike what one might imagine of such a science fiction adaptation, Warner Bros. Greater China's proposal described this as an as-yet-untitled series project, with the first film alone to exceed a 100 million USD investment and take at least three years to complete—certainly not one of those shoddy cash-grab productions.
Co-productions were also becoming a viable future model. Warner Bros. Greater China was exploring more such experiments, and one of Duke's film funds had likewise begun entering the Chinese market. Duke himself had personally approved investment in a project adapting a Journey to the West story into an animated feature about spirits and fairies.
One after another, Duke signed his name on the stacks of documents, which Tina Fey collected and distributed to the relevant departments.
At last, he opened a new script. Based on his own outline and character settings, it had been completed by a team of screenwriters hired by Lucasfilm. The title was boldly printed across the cover—Star Wars: The Force Awakens!
Unable to find a more suitable subject or genre, this was, without question, the most reliable plan.
....
Hi For access to additional chapters of
Director in Hollywood (40 chpaters)
Made In Hollywood (Completed)
Pokemon:Bounty Hunter(30 Chapters)
Hollywood:From Razzie to Legend(40 Chapters)
The Great Ruler (30 Chapters)
Join pateron.com/Translaterappu