Just after Memorial Day, a latest movie statistics were put on Duke's desk.

"Avengers" just spent its fourth weekend in North America. When the weekend received another $47.88 million from North America, the cumulative box office of North America was $5.7 million, which was infinitely close to the top three of the North American total box office rankings, "The Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King", "Titanic" and "Avatar".

Moreover, the film has only been released for four weeks. Although its popularity is gradually decreasing, there is still a lot of screening time in the future to increase box office accumulation.

Similarly, the overseas box office of "Avengers" has exceeded US$1 billion without any suspense, and the global box office has reached US$1.595.71 million, and it is only a matter of time before it breaks through the US$1.6 billion mark.

Everyone knows that "Avengers" will surpass "The Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King" and become Duke's highest-grossing single-piece film.

At the same time, Fast and Furious 5, which once competed with "Avengers", has dropped much faster than "Avengers" which was released in the morning. This weekend, Fast and Furious 5 plummeted 62% last weekend, taking $20.44 million from North America.

However, this number also allowed the North American box office of "Fast and Furious 5" to steadily cross the $200 million mark, reaching $210.44 million.

Overseas, "Fast and Furious 5" has also been firmly suppressed by "Avengers" and has only achieved an overseas box office of more than 320 million US dollars.

But the combined box office figure of $530 million is enough to make this film one of the commercial stars of this summer.

There is no doubt that from the box office perspective, even if "Fast and Furious 5" uses the Van Diesel incident to engage in "emotional marketing", it is obviously not the same level of film as "Avengers".

From the perspective of the film industry chain, these two films are even different by several levels.

"Avengers" has created nearly $1.5 billion in non-themed production value. "Fast and Furious 5" is only tens of millions of dollars.

This result also reflects Duke's comic hero movie business.

Not all movies adapted from comics are superhero movies, and not all superhero movies are adapted from comics, such as "Hancock, the All-Man" directed by Peter Berger and "Indestructible" by Knight M. Chiamalan are both original content.

But for Hollywood, superhero movies adapted from comics are of the greatest value, and shooting sequels is not a worry about the theme. More importantly, it is the main switch that integrates the larger deal in the entertainment industry. As long as the locomotive of the movie starts, including comics, toys, authorized products, audio-visual products, and other links in the industrial chain such as theme parks, there will be a steady stream of new content, which can bring a lot of money.

All Hollywood envies Duke, envious of his huge amount of money he threw out and obtained most of the equity of Marvel Comics that were not optimistic in the United States.

Nowadays, many investment companies and Hollywood manufacturers know that they will not pay an almost crazy price. It is impossible for Duke to give up his Marvel equity, so they have set their sights on another part of Marvel's equity and continue to compete.

Walt Disney, which has gradually weakened in internal friction in recent years, is no exception. In order to raise funds to acquire some of Marvel's equity, it laid off 70% of its independent film department, last year, halving the number of films released every year to two, and this year it simply sold it to a movie private equity fund.

The famous company founded by the Weinstein brothers has a huge library of 700 films, including business cards such as "Pulp Fiction" and "The Patient in the UK".

However, sadly, although Miramax is the "only professional player" on Oscar Night, the price is only US$363 million. The reason is not difficult to understand. Miramax's films are indeed extraordinary in terms of "artistic value". However, they cannot sell authorized products and will not help increase the profits of film industrialization.

Today, the six major Hollywood studios are basically one department of entertainment groups or larger companies, and they are not the departments with the highest turnover. The cost of film and television production is high. After offsetting the expenses, the net profit of film and television products is far less than that of derivative products. However, the pulling effect of film and television products is obvious, which can ensure the turnover and high profit margins of other related departments.

This is the foundation of the Hollywood empire, "content is king", driving the entire industrial chain.

Although "Avengers" has won a stunning box office, it will essentially be an expensive trailer for movies such as "Avengers 2, 3...", "Iron Man 3, 4", "Captain America 2, 3..." in the next few years, and is also a large advertisement for Warner theme parks, toys and licensed products such as the Hulk priced at $37.99 and the Captain America beer mug of $11.99.

In early June, Hasbro Marvel renewed a new licensing agreement, with a new contract until 2017. Hasbro owns overseas franchise rights for more than 1,000 characters including Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc., and its business scope includes toys, games, etc. Hasbro needs to pay a franchise fee of US$400 million, and a certain amount of sales share is required.

For Duke and Marvel, this is the "basis-free profit" obtained through "content".

But Marvel itself is not without problems.

In recent years, Marvel, which has continuously provided content and profits to many Hollywood studios, has a tendency to decline in its basic business, namely comics. In May this year, no comic magazine could be sold for more than 100,000 copies, which hit a record low. Comics has not increased in inflation in recent years, and Marvel and D Comics have maintained a price of $2.99.

In fact, after experiencing the cold winter of the mid-1990s, the comics industry has obviously gone downhill, which is an important reason why Duke did not encounter strong competitors when acquiring Marvel.

Marvel's market share can account for about 40% of the American comics industry, but the annual sales of the entire industry are less than US$1.5 billion. At least in Duke's entire industry, the direct comics business is not very eye-catching.

However, Duke is clear that the real value of Marvel Comics is not the comics themselves.

The overall situation in Hollywood today is not very good. DVDs, once regarded as the savior of the film industry, shrank sharply after 2007. After the rise of the Internet, TV copyrights also shrank rapidly. Large companies must find alternative profit points during the period of industrial transformation. Media are keen on reporting on movie box office (because relevant information is easy to obtain), but do not pay much attention to the series of derivatives behind the box office.

With the huge platforms of Warner Bros. and Time Warner, who are major shareholders and board members, Duke has undoubtedly created a complete industrial chain for Marvel Comics.

For Hollywood in the past, the mainstream "national blockbusters" were original movies such as "Ben Hur", "The Bridge of the River Kwai", "The Male and Female Thieves", "The Tiger and Leopard", "The Godfather" and "E-Alien". It is the ultimate to make sequels or trilogies. Except for the special 007 series, those who shoot again and again are almost all B-level horror movies or comedies.

However, with the arrival of the "franchise" era led by Star Wars, the entertainment industry discovered that "high concept" commercial films were just the beginning of a series of extended product returns. When Hollywood studios were included in the multinational comprehensive entertainment media groups, and huge capital controlled the film industry, film products were more included in the overall planning, and how to maximize profit-seeking becomes the most important issue.

Therefore, films such as "Superman", "Batman", "Men", and "Spider-Man" will emerge one after another, even to the point where it is flooding.

Duke is not only a director, but also a spokesperson for the interests of a huge capital group. His next movie is naturally a superhero movie.

The proliferation of superhero movies essentially reflects the natural profit-seeking side of capital. Although the box office results are not bad, as commercial movies, it is actually far from reaching the point where it relies on box office to recover costs. However, Duke and Marvel Studios are still happy, and Warner Bros., as the publisher, are flocking to it. The most important reason is its huge derivative value.

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner said bluntly when selling Miramax, “Continuing to invest in new Miramax’s movies is not necessary for our core strategy.”

He values ​​videos that can provide content for Disney's theme parks, television and other media, and authorize products, without caring about whether these videos are original and artistic.

This is also the common point among all Hollywood producers and publishers.

For example, Pixar Studio, which also holds a large number of shares, is recognized as the highest artistic value of "Rat King" and "Robot Valli", and the film's box office, which together with the film's box office, brings revenue of less than $1 billion. However, the criticized "Car Mobilization" has now produced a market value of more than $8 billion.

If Duke and Time Warner make a choice, it will definitely be "Car Movement". This does not mean that Duke likes "Car Movement", but his position naturally determines that he must do this.

In order to make "Car Story" worth the most, Duke and Warner Bros. last year promoted "Car Story 2" to be released worldwide, making it an existence that can compete with Disney's classic animation spin-off industry. For this reason, they did not hesitate to postpone "Toy Story 3" until release this summer.

This postponed animation blockbuster officially landed in the North American market in early June. It attracted widespread attention as a highly anticipated sequel and the completion of Pixar Studios.

As long as the film is successful, it can still create huge profits. Just like what the big Hollywood directors do, the so-called "finishing chapter" is just a talk.

Duke is temporarily on vacation and accepted an invitation from Pixar Studios to appear at the premiere of the film. (To be continued.)

ps: Please give me monthly tickets and recommendation tickets!
Chapter completed!