章節 77: Chapter 77 - Come to his door

After the Super Bowl night, the most talked about topic was not San Francisco 49ers who won the Super Bowl championship, but the first movie trailer to appear in the Super Bowl TV broadcast.

In this session of the Super Bowl, the highest ratings went up to 150 million people, accounting for almost 50% of the total population of North America. With word of mouth, after just one day, all Americans knew about Home Alone director Eric William's new movie.

The major film giants also keenly felt the amazing influence of the Super Bowl trailer. They mobilized a lot of resources, to carry out a detailed investigation and analyze the data released after the broadcast of Pretty Woman's trailer. It was estimated that the results of this investigation would only be seen in the next Super Bowl ad bidding competition.

In his past life, the first Super Bowl movie trailer was in 1996 for the movie Independence Day. Fox spent a rather large sum of money to bid for an ad spot in the Super Bowl, and ultimately this disaster science fiction film won a huge box office of $300 million domestically and $500 million worldwide. From then on, there had always been a struggle among the giants of Hollywood for the spots at the Super Bowl.

Eric believed that the trailer of Pretty Woman would not be any less effective than the trailer of Independence Day in his past. From next year, wanting to win a Super Bowl ad slot would not just be a question of having money. One would also need to have a good relationship with the Super Bowl broadcasting media.

Although there were more than 60 ads in the super bowl, to achieve good advertising results, the number of each type of ad had a strict limit. Thus, not all ads could be used to show movie trailers.

That's why, in the future, the Super Bowl ad slots for movies would all be monopolized by the movie giants, because of the increasing cost of making movies and also, because the Super Bowl ads cost a lot. Small movie companies can't afford that much money.

Over the next few days, some savvy media reporters also began to report and analyze the topic.

The New York Times even wrote that the Pretty Woman trailer was the biggest winner of this season of the Super Bowl.

As a direct result of this incident, the box office of Home Alone once again experienced a rebound, due to Eric being the director of both Home Alone and the new movie. This was the movie's ninth week in cinemas. Originally, some statistical agencies estimated that Home Alone would harvest about $12 million at the box office this week. But a week later, Home Alone got more than $18 million and the total box office reached $198 million.

According to Eric's current share of the profits, this extra $6 million in the box office would have earned back the $1.5 million spent on the Super Bowl ad.

"That's fortunate," said Eric after seeing the weekly box office report.

Jeffrey, sitting on the opposite side, laughed and said: "Yes, fortunately, it's $198 million. If this week broke $200 million, it would have been a waste of a good hype topic."

The reason why he said so, was because, after this week's Super Bowl trailer, the attention on Pretty Woman had reached its peak. If Home Alone broke the $200 million mark now, the topic can only play the role of icing on the cake. However, if it was delayed until next week, the heat of the Super Bowl trailer would be carried forward to an extra week through this news.

Now, next week, Home Alone would become the first movie in 3 years to break the $200 million mark at the box office. This would be another new topic for speculation and alongside the normal publicity, Pretty Woman would be guaranteed to get good results at the box office.

"Eric, are you really not going to personally participate in the promotions of Pretty Woman?"

Eric shook his head and said: "Al Pacino and Julia will be participating, and the two of them plus Fox executives would be enough. I may also have other things to do. Of course, I'll still be attending the premiere."

The other thing Eric mentioned, had to do with Pixar. The day after the Super Bowl, he received a call from Steve Jobs, and after warm introductions, Jobs offered to talk to him. Eric asked if it was about Pixar's price, and after getting a positive reply, he directly hung up on Jobs.

Having determined Jobs' intentions, Eric, without much hesitation, applied for a $50 million loan from the bank on Home Alone's contract as surety.

While deep down very much against taking loans, Eric had no choice but to keep taking loans. Even without Pixar's business, Eric had to apply for a loan, because his remaining money wasn't enough to pay this year's taxes.

Eric didn't even think about borrowing money from other people. Anyway, based on the memories of the original owner of the body, and his experiences in the second half of the year after waking up in this timeline, Eric knew that in the United States, even among family and friends, it was an embarrassment to borrow money.

Americans were more accustomed to borrowing money from banks than Asians who are used to mutual rotating money between families and friends. When in Rome, do as Romans do, thus Eric also had to go the American way. Having decided to borrow anyway, a huge $50 million loan was applied directly. This would also easily cover the investment needed for his next film.

$50 million is indeed a huge sum in this age. If the current Steve Jobs were to try to borrow this amount, Eric reckoned the bank would probably directly kick him out their doors. But for Eric, when he requested the amount of $50 million, the bank executives even tried to tempt him to borrow more as he was eligible.

It's been a week since the phone call, and Jobs was expected to call again soon. While rather irritable, Jobs was also a resilient man who can reach out. And, judging by what Eric has gathered these days, Jobs' NeXT Computer Company and Pixar Studios have reached the brink of collapse.

The $20 million price offered by Eric, though much less than Jobs' investment so far into Pixar Studios, would solve the crisis at Jobs' NeXT computer company. And Jobs' ambitions, were mostly still on personal computers.

Eric wasn't too worried that Jobs would give up such a good chance of getting rid of the big baggage of Pixar. Of course, Jobs may also try to see whether Microsoft was interested in buying Pixar, as it did in the former world, though Eric was sure that Microsoft, in this case, would give a lower price than him.

After more than a week of intense post-production, Pretty Woman was officially finished.

By February, the loan amount had been transferred into Eric's account. He had still not received any more calls from Jobs, and he began to admire Jobs' patience. He however still maintained his cool on the matter. Against a high-IQ genius like Jobs, as soon as you reveal even the slightest hint of a crack, the other side can easily grab and take advantage of it.

A week away from the release of Pretty Woman, Fox held a film critics premiere session in Los Angeles.

After that, the long-awaited film reviews of Pretty Woman began to appear in newspapers.

Maybe because they felt guilty that they let Eric pay for the Super Bowl trailer, or Fox itself had greater confidence in Pretty Woman, Eric sensed that Fox's advertising for the movie had reached the level of a big production, and accordingly, PR for film critics was also in place. Now the film reviews in the newspapers were almost all full of praise. Of course, this was also related to the quality of the Pretty Woman film.

If Pretty Woman was a flop film, even if the red envelopes were full, the film critics who relied on their reputation to earn would not be able to blindly praise a rotten film.

On February 9, the Pretty Woman officially hosted the premiere show at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.

Under Fox's operation, in addition to the members of the Pretty Woman crew, more than a dozen stars appeared to give their support, and the short stretch of the red carpet became star-studded.

After a brief speech, the movie quickly started playing.

Eric returned to his seat, quietly admiring his own version of Pretty Woman. Originally sitting on Eric's left-hand side was Carter Hunt, a Fox executive. However, sometime in between, he was swapped for another thirty-something male. Eric didn't care to recognize him because the lights were dim.

But after a while, the other person took the initiative to talk to him.

"Hello, Mr. Williams. I'm Steve Jobs."

Eric was surprised and turned to look, it was indeed Steve Jobs. At this time, Jobs was 33 years old still, a young man, not yet balding, and looked handsome. But Eric knew that under this handsome appearance, he was indeed an arrogant and irritable character.

Now that the other party had come to his door, Eric smiled and held out his hand: "Hello, Mr. Jobs."

After saying hello to each other, the two of them once again turned their attention to the screen. Neither had the intention of taking the initiative to start the real talk.

It was not until more than an hour later when the film ended, that Steve Jobs once again said: "Mr. Williams, can we talk?"