Over the next few days, there were two indicators that continued to grow in Hollywood.
The first one that continued to grow was the number of female celebrities who publicly accused Harvey of sexual assault.
When Zombie-master's box office hit a hundred million, the number of female celebrities who publicly accused Harvey also exceeded ten. A total of twelve female celebrities came forward to denounce the harm they had suffered.
Of these twelve female celebrities, almost half of them had come forward to accuse Harvey in order to protect themselves. This was because someone had anonymously exposed Harvey's scandals online, mentioning that Harvey had slept with these female celebrities in the past.
This matter was somewhat hypocritical. Harvey had indeed done a lot of f * cking things and humiliated a lot of female celebrities. However, most of the female celebrities did it willingly or reluctantly. In order to protect their own reputations, they all pushed the responsibility to Harvey. For Harvey, it was no longer a burden when there were too many debts and lice. However, for these female celebrities, they were unwilling to ruin their future because of Harvey.
Another statistic that continued to grow was Zombie-master's box office.
On the first day, it was 18.5 million USD, and on the second day, it was 33 million USD. The occupancy rate was 100%. On the third day, the theaters were convinced by Zombie-master's strong appeal, and increased the number of screenings by 20%. Coupled with the rumors about Harvey and the movie on the internet, the popularity of the movie continued to grow. On the third day, the occupancy rate remained the same, at an astonishing 100%. The total box office broke 41 million USD.
On the fourth day, the theaters continued to squeeze out more screenings, and gave the movie a higher screening rate. The screening rate increased by 10% compared to the previous day, but the occupancy rate decreased slightly. Overall, it remained at 95%. The total box office was 42 million USD. On the fourth day, the box office broke the one hundred million USD mark, reaching 134 million USD.
Another piece of good news that was expected to increase the box office was that Coca-Cola and McDonald's had obtained the rights to use the new version of Hua Xia's zombie character in Plants vs Zombies Online. They were already preparing to release it. Soon, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and toys with Hua Xia's zombie character would appear in the North American market. This would definitely increase the box office of the movie to a certain extent!
Lucas estimated that the box office of this movie could break the three hundred million USD mark. This completely subverted his understanding of the entire movie industry. What was even more unexpected was the desire of the DVD industry for this movie. Now, many DVD companies had approached him to collaborate, hoping to obtain the rights to distribute the North American DVD from him. According to estimates, if the box office broke three hundred million USD, then the total DVD production value should also break one hundred million USD in the next year.
Lucas carefully chose the most reliable DVD distributor, and signed a 5: 2: 3 three-way cooperation agreement. The DVD distribution rights in North America would be licensed to Lucas by Makino Image, and Makino Image would receive 50% of all the DVD distribution income. Of the remaining 50%, Lucas would take 20%, and the DVD distributor would take 30%.
It might seem like Lucas was losing out, but in fact, he was the one who benefited the most. As the copyright owner, Li Mu had to pay the cost of the copyright when he obtained the rights. On the other hand, the DVD distributor not only had to handle the production, promotion, and sales of the DVD, but they also had to bear the risk of losing money from the production costs. Lucas didn't have to do anything. All he had to do was sit down and sign the three-way agreement, and he would get 20% of the profit.
The North American box office income of 300 million US dollars, and the DVD distribution income of 100 million US dollars. These figures made Hollywood speechless. Seeing an old 1985 Hong Kong film make so much money, many Hollywood distributors began to set their sights on Hong Kong.
The success of "Zombie-Master" made Hollywood realize that the North American film market did not have obvious peaks and troughs. It might seem like the box office was at its peak during Christmas and summer, but that didn't mean that the box office in March, April, May, September, October, and November would be bad. The key was to have a film that could motivate the audience to pay for it.
In order to maintain their income, Hollywood's blockbusters were mainly released during Christmas and summer. This created an awkward situation where big movies were rarely released during other time periods. Although Hollywood was reluctant to release big movies during those time periods, they could use these time periods to import high-quality movies from overseas at low cost, and then use them to tap into the box office potential of the non-popular time periods.
After all, cinema chains were not like popsicle stalls. The latter could be found all over the streets in the summer, but after the summer, they would disappear without a trace. However, whether it was during peak or troughs, every theater, every theater, and every seat would be there. Even if they were empty during the troughs, it was impossible to tear them down or use them for other purposes.
"Zombie-Master" took advantage of this coincidence. Since there were no other films competing, there were not many people fighting for the cinema chain resources. This gave "Zombie-Master" the hardware foundation to explode at the box office.
Hollywood also learned a practical lesson from this incident. Since this was the case, they might as well do what Lucas did with "Zombie-Master" and then cooperate with Makino Technology to promote it. They could also use this time period to take advantage of some ready-made movie rights from overseas.
A few days ago, the Hong Kong film industry was still cursing Li Mu's cheap sweep. He took all the zombie film rights in Hong Kong to make a lot of money. In the end, the money he gave to the Hong Kong film companies was not even one percent of what he earned. Based on this ratio alone, in their eyes, Li Mu was the most treacherous businessman in the world.
But as the box office of "Zombie-Master" rose higher and higher in North America, it became a huge success in just a few days. The Hong Kong film industry ushered in a new spring.
Hollywood distributors and film companies approached the various Hong Kong film companies, taking the initiative to seek cooperation. They hoped to reach a copyright cooperation with them. The cooperation model was for them to choose suitable Hong Kong films, and then negotiate a buyout price with the copyright owner for the North American screening rights. After signing a buyout agreement, the Hollywood distributor would release the film in North America.
Originally, Hollywood might not even be able to buy a few film rights from Hong Kong in a year. But now, there were more than 50 Hong Kong films that Hollywood was interested in. Many of these Hong Kong film companies had already reached cooperation agreements with Hollywood film companies. Because of the success of "Zombie-Master", the price of Hong Kong film rights had increased by several times.
One of the more representative films was "Infernal Affairs," which was released in Hong Kong last year. This film was hailed as the savior of Hong Kong's film industry, and its quality was very high. It was one of the rare high-quality works in recent years. However, in Huan Ya's opinion, this film had no chance of being released in North America. But this time, several Hollywood film companies rushed over to fight for the film rights of "Infernal Affairs," and the price was inflated to 8 million USD. One must know that the total box office of "Infernal Affairs" in Hong Kong was only 55 million HKD, which was around 7 million USD.
Huan Ya had fallen into Li Mu's trap before. He had sold the rights of "Mr. Zombie" and a bunch of other zombie films to Li Mu for only around 100,000 USD. In the end, after Li Mu took them, the broadcasting rights of the films were sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, the North American box office was converted to more than one billion HKD. In comparison, Huan Ya had really suffered a huge loss.
So this time, when Hollywood wanted to buy the rights of "Infernal Affairs", and offered 8 million USD, Huan Ya hesitated.
In Huan Ya's eyes, "Infernal Affairs" was much better than "Mr. Zombie" in terms of production costs, production scale, and star lineup. Not to mention, the quality and depth of the movie were incomparable. If "Mr. Zombie" could earn a few hundred million dollars at the box office in North America, then a phenomenal movie like "Infernal Affairs" could at least earn a hundred million dollars, right? If the box office was calculated according to 100 million USD, even if Huan Ya only took a 25% share, he would still earn 25 million USD, which was much better than selling it for 8 million USD.
So, Huan Ya offered Hollywood the North American distribution rights of "Infernal Affairs" for 30% of the box office, with a guaranteed income of 10 million USD.
In other words, whoever wanted the North American distribution rights of "Infernal Affairs" would first have to give Huan Ya a guaranteed income of 10 million USD, and then release the film in North America. If the box office reached 33.33 million USD, according to the 30% share, it would be the same as Huan Ya's guaranteed income of 10 million USD. If the total box office didn't reach 33.33 million USD, Huan Ya wouldn't refund a single cent, and the distributor would have to bear the losses.
If the total box office exceeded 33.33 million USD, the distributor would have to give Huan Ya an additional share. For example, if the box office reached 100 million USD, Huan Ya would get 30 million USD based on the 30% share. In addition to the 10 million USD guaranteed income, the distributor would have to pay another 20 million USD to Huan Ya.
The reason why Huan Ya offered such a deal was because of the success of "Mr. Zombie". However, Hollywood wasn't stupid. They knew why "Zombie-Master" was so successful. The most important reason was the support of the popular game, "Plants vs Zombies Online", in addition to the strong marketing capabilities of Makino Technology, the unstinting support of the Shadow Mugu ticketing system, the huge profits that Li Mu gave to the cinemas, and the various promotional activities that Li Mu did through the Shadow Mugu ticketing system.
Li Mu had so many resources as the key to the success of "Zombie-Master," but did "Infernal Affairs" have the same resources?
The answer was, of course, no.
Therefore, 8 million USD was the highest price that Hollywood could offer Huan Ya. Not a single Hollywood company was willing to give Huan Ya a guaranteed income, which made Huan Ya feel bad, but he still insisted on his offer.
Huan Ya's ambition made Hollywood's distributors start to retreat. They were fighting for the North American distribution rights of the movie a second ago, but in the next second, they all announced that they were withdrawing from the competition, and set their sights on other Hong Kong films.
Huan Ya thought that this was a joint effort by Hollywood companies to lower the price. At first, they were very stubborn, but after seeing that these companies had all left, they started to panic. Then, they went back to the companies and expressed that they were willing to make some concessions on the original guaranteed income and share. Previously, it was a 30% guaranteed income of 10 million USD, but now it was a 25% guaranteed income of 8 million USD.
The Hollywood companies still didn't accept it.
A negotiator from one of the companies said to the person in charge of Huanya's negotiations, "If you can bring in Muye Technology to cooperate with us, we are willing to give you a minimum of 20 million. But if you don't have Li Mu, we have to think about it carefully. The previous buyout offer of 8 million dollars is a bit irrational. The highest buyout offer we can give should be about 5 million dollars."
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