Chapter 304: HWI 304
Hollywood What If Chapter 304
For those who think otherwise, xXx was indeed a movie. Some might mistake it for another triple x...
xXx was produced by Sony-Colombia and starred Vin Diesel as Xander Cage. A daredevil who became a spy for the National Security Agency. This movie was a box office hit, grossing more than $277 million. The production cost of the film was $88 million.
Actually, Kazir thought about including the movie in the Continental Cinematic Universe, but he decided not to. Simply for the reason that CCU already had a lot of movies to focus on.
Kazir knew that he could not acquire all the promising scripts in Hollywood, or else the Big Six might get together and attack him.
Besides, Vin Diesel was already cast in Fast and The Furious. If they decided to add xXx to the CCU, they would have to find another actor to play Xander Cage.
Ice Cube was the protagonist of xXx: State Of The Union, the sequel to the first film, and State Of The Union grossed $113 million. It's not a bad performance, but it's not that good. Maybe 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 felt that CCU was already bloated. So yes, Kazir passed on the project.
Now that Kazir thinks about it, Vin Diesel had some good franchises under his belt, even though many audiences hated the guy.
Fast and The Furious
xXx
Pitch Black/Riddick
Guardians of the Galaxy
Vin Diesel was able to keep his career going as long as he was involved in one of these franchises.
On its first weekend, xXx grossed $50.34 million.
As for Mr. And Mrs. Smith, the movie grossed $96.69 million after ten days in theaters.
So both movies had their fair share of tickets sales. There was some friction, but in the end it all came down to audience choice.
Sony-Columbia could have sabotaged Mr. And Mrs. Smith by spreading dirty rumors about the cast, but Sony-Columbia held back. It was not worth it, especially when they needed Kazir to direct Spider-Man 2 in 2004.
Kazir had already proven that he could make billions at the box office, and Sony-Colombia didn't want to end their relationship because of a small dispute.
Another thing was that Vin Diesel was also a cast member of CCU and Sony-Colombia's 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 month.
By the end of August, Mr. And Mrs. Smith had earned $146.08 million, while xXx had earned $117.26 million.
Of course, the cast of Mr. And Mrs. Smith had to travel around the world to promote the film, even though it had only been in North America for a month. The international screening was a serious money.
If Sony-Columbia's home court was Japan, then Australia was 20th Century Fox's home court. In fact, most of the movies 20th Century Fox invested in were filmed in Australia because the studio could get a tax break there. After all, Rupert Murdoch was Australian, and he could snap his fingers to make way for 20th Century Fox.
September came and the cold treatment in theaters obviously happened. Most students and people went back to their usual things.
...
...
...
After almost half a year of waiting, Sony-Colombia has already made its payment to Kazir Grey. Calculating the worldwide box office for Spider-Man took a long time because the movie made a lot of money.
After some math-thingy, 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 one project, but he made that much.
Of course, Sony-Colombia paid this amount per round and not as a single payment.
Kazir already received $27 million from them as his salary and the $294.3 million was his box office share.
In the contract, both parties agreed that Kazir would receive $27 million as his salary and 27% of the worldwide box office, he also had a 7% peripheral profit share.
The amount he received from Sony-Colombia was already over $300 million.
It may seem that Sony-Colombia lost a lot in this deal. They sacrificed their short-term profit for the long-term.
Fortunately, after the success of Spider-Man, Sony-Colombia earned $300 million from peripherals such as DVDs and action figures. The peripherals they could sell with Spider-Man were endless.
They could sell toy cars with Spider-Man design, then boom, easy profit.
They could sell t-shirts with printed Spider-Man, boom, easy profit.
Hell, they could sell a toilet bowl with a Spider-Man design and crazy people would buy it.
That was the power they got after hiring Kazir. They didn't regret hiring someone like him. His value was equal to the amount they pay him.
No one could guarantee that a superhero movie like Spider-Man would succeed in theaters, but Kazir made sure it did.
... Although they admit that it was a bit painful to give Kazir that amount of money. After all, $300 million was a huge amount of money.
On top of that, Marvel Comics also had their share, so Sony-Colombia couldn't take all the profits.
Still, everyone was sure that Spider-Man 2 would happen. Sony-Columbia wanted to make it a trilogy and they wanted Kazir to make it.
A single movie grossing 1 billion dollars? Are you kidding me? Of course Sony-Colombia would milk this franchise for all it was worth! Spoiler alert, Sony-Colombia had three different franchises of Spider Man with three different actors. They were MILKING it.
This was also the reason why Sony wanted to buy Grey Pictures. Grey Pictures could make profitable movies and Sony wanted them. More specifically, they wanted to continue working with Kazir Grey.
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