The media frenzy surrounding Egret's massive $25 billion employee stock plan led to a global surge in both personal computer sales and internet user access. On February 20, The Wall Street Journal even coined the term "New Gold Rush" to describe the phenomenon.
It wasn't just Egret employees who would become wealthy following the company's IPO, but more and more internet entrepreneurs were suddenly striking it rich as well.
During last year's "Information Age" marketing campaign, the Westeros system highlighted numerous success stories of people who had made fortunes in the internet industry. The recent discussions about Egret's stock plan once again brought to light many inspiring stories of self-made entrepreneurs in the internet sector.
One notable case was that of a chef from Iowa. Despite only having basic computer skills, he had spent over a year teaching himself how to use Egret's full suite of basic tools and simple-to-use data center services. In his spare time, he created a food-sharing website that unexpectedly gained a large user base. Recently, he secured $15 million in venture capital for a 20% stake in his site, giving it a valuation of $75 million.
This man, who had previously earned a modest $50,000 per year, suddenly found himself with a net worth of $60 million, something he never imagined possible in his lifetime.
This wasn't an isolated case by any means.
Thus, The Wall Street Journal not only introduced the idea of a "New Gold Rush" but also further commented that this was a new wave of wealth redistribution—one achieved without violence or plunder. Moreover, this redistribution had a low barrier to entry, making it accessible to ordinary people. Just as anyone could once flock to San Francisco in search of gold, now, as long as you owned a computer connected to the internet, you had the chance to create a wealth miracle.
This kind of news, of course, was beneficial not only in driving the growth of the internet industry but also in shifting public attention away from Egret's massive employee stock ownership plan. The Westeros system quickly began to fuel the excitement.
On February 20, Simon and the two Jennys returned from Florida to the West Coast.
Soon after came Simon's 27th birthday.
He celebrated with a low-key party, inviting only close friends, though he received a mountain of gifts—most of which were from the women in his life. This time, Janet didn't get jealous and make the gifts disappear. Instead, she took an active interest in opening and inspecting each one, offering her thoughts on them one by one.
Meanwhile, the production of the song "Young and Beautiful" was still ongoing.
With Janet's encouragement, Simon planned to release the song publicly, alongside two other pieces: Bach's Last Day, which was still being produced, and the instrumental track originally titled Requiem for the Dead, now renamed Blizzard, which Simon had adapted for his assistant.
There was no intention of profiting from these songs.
Instead, the plan was to create music videos and post them directly on online platforms to drive traffic to Egret.
For Bach's Last Day, Simon envisioned a solo dance performed by Yulia Shulshikina in the music video. For the other two songs, he decided not to feature the Jennys in the videos.
Simon soon came up with a great idea: video mashups.
These were a common editing style on many video-sharing platforms in his memory, where clips from various films and shows were combined to match the tone of a song. Such videos were extremely popular.
At present, since the internet was just starting to gain traction and movie piracy hadn't become widespread, video-sharing platforms were non-existent, meaning few people had seen these kinds of mashups.
However, none of these issues posed a problem for Simon.
Not only did Simon's company, Daenerys Entertainment, hold the rights to thousands of films through acquisitions over the years, but if necessary, he could easily borrow clips from other studios, as no one would refuse such a request.
Of course, Simon had no intention of letting others benefit. Daenerys Entertainment's own films from the past few years alone were more than enough to create two fantastic mashup videos.
The plan was quickly set.
For the first song, Young and Beautiful, the video would feature beautiful scenes of famous Hollywood actresses.
However, to avoid the appearance of bias toward actresses associated with him, Simon decided to include stars from Hollywood's Golden Age, such as Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and Elizabeth Taylor, along with more recent actresses. The clips would all be iconic scenes, with a preference for films from the Daenerys Entertainment catalog.
After all, once the mashup video was released, it would likely boost sales of the related films.
Even if the goal wasn't to make money directly from the song, Simon certainly wasn't going to pass up on the associated benefits.
For Blizzard, Simon planned to create a montage of epic scenes from the DC Cinematic Universe, spanning from Batman Begins to last year's Suicide Squad. The song's tone was perfectly suited to the epic atmosphere of the DC films, and the video would serve as a teaser for the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at the end of the year.
After Simon's 27th birthday, on February 24, the long-awaited The Man from Earth premiered.
Since it was a slow period at the end of February with no major releases, the theaters were happy to give the film more screen time. Gaomen Films secured 3,107 opening screens.
Before this, John Travolta's action movie Broken Arrow, which had premiered during the Valentine's Day season, had already been in theaters for two weeks.
The reception for Broken Arrow was a bit disappointing for Simon, with a mixed score of only 5.3, barely passing.
Fortunately, Daenerys Entertainment's strong marketing helped make up for this. Valentine's Day moviegoing is practically a necessity, and with Broken Arrow being the only major release of the holiday, director John Woo's unique style of violent aesthetics at least brought a fresh experience to North American audiences. The film opened on 2,638 screens, earning $24.53 million in its first week from February 10 to February 16, with an average of over $9,300 per theater—though it didn't break $10,000, it met expectations.
In its second week, from February 17 to February 23, with Valentine's Day over and no strong competitors, the movie saw a respectable 27% drop, earning an additional $17.86 million. Its two-week total was $42.39 million, just $8 million shy of its $50 million production budget.
However, with The Man from Earth set to open the following week, Daenerys Entertainment's marketing team predicted that Broken Arrow would likely reach a total domestic gross of around $70 million. Combined with overseas revenue, which would roughly match its domestic earnings, the global total was expected to reach around $150 million.
A production cost of $50 million with three times that in box office revenue would just about break even.
For smaller studios, this would be a cause for concern since they often rely heavily on box office revenue, and any underperformance could lead to financial trouble before they could recoup their investment from home video or TV rights.
But Daenerys Entertainment, being the giant that it was, had no such problems.
Thanks to its massive size and comprehensive channels, the company could capture as much profit as possible within its own ecosystem, allowing it to reduce dependence on box office earnings.
In summary, with the box office already covering production costs, any further revenue would be pure profit, making this a successful project for Daenerys Entertainment.
As the era of Hollywood blockbusters continued, more and more film companies were finding it difficult to recoup their costs solely through box office revenue, relying instead on additional channels. This trend was one of the reasons why smaller studios were struggling to survive. Even when they did have occasional hits—like in Simon's memory with companies like Lionsgate—they often couldn't sustain success due to a lack of comprehensive distribution channels.
In addition to Broken Arrow, Gaomen Films also released The Brothers McMullen, which won the Jury Prize at January's Sundance Film Festival.
Thanks to the prestige of its Sundance win and solid post-release word-of-mouth, The Brothers McMullen, which opened on 513 screens, earned $3.96 million in its first week. In its second week, it saw only a 19% drop, earning an additional $3.21 million. With such a smooth performance, the film, which had a production cost of only $500,000, was on track for significant box office success, with a domestic gross expected to reach between $10 million and $15 million.
Simon had always been a firm believer in Barry Diller's "tentpole theory" from his days running Paramount: blockbusters are the tent's main poles, while mid- and low-budget films are the tent's supporting beams and fabric.
For a tent to stand and weather the storm, it needs both the main poles and the supporting beams. Neither can be missing.
The same goes for film studios.
The reason why major studios are more resilient is that their "tent" is big enough, forming a comprehensive system. Once they evolve into integrated media conglomerates, they go from being a "tent" to a "fortress," making them impervious to the storms of the industry.
Thus, while the box office performance of Broken Arrow and The Brothers McMullen differed significantly, Simon did not overlook the importance of the latter.
Next came The Man from Earth.
Following its official release on February 24, the film was just as polarizing as it had been during its preview screening in Park City.
People either loved it or were deeply disappointed.
However, compared to the subpar reception of Broken Arrow, The Man from Earth garnered much more praise, achieving an impressive media score of 8.2. This was an excellent rating, but because the film was written by Simon himself and wasn't part of the DC Cinematic Universe, it attracted a lot of personal opinions.
After all, criticizing Simon Westeros was sure to draw more attention than praising him.
In any case, not only in the U.S. but in all markets where the film was released, The Man from Earth became a hot topic of discussion.
Given the film's content, these discussions inevitably shifted to Simon himself.
A man who had lived for 14,000 years—was Simon Westeros hinting at something about himself?
Much like the speculation surrounding The Sixth Sense a few years ago.
Because of these suspicions, there were even rumors that people were becoming interested in Simon's "biological samples."
One of the family's maids soon reported privately to Simon that someone had offered $100,000 to buy a strand of his hair.
Since the death of Doris Fletcher, the Westeros family had tightened loyalty requirements for maids, female bodyguards, and male security personnel. During their training, Doris Fletcher was used as an example—more bluntly, as a warning. The family also promised that anyone who reported attempts to infiltrate the Westeros family would be rewarded accordingly.
Simon wasn't stingy with these rewards.
Thanks to these measures, from the time of Doris Fletcher's death to the present, no betrayals had been discovered, at least within the intelligence team's surveillance. Whenever a situation arose, it was promptly reported, and Simon even conducted a few "sting operations," with all involved passing the tests.
Of course, Simon didn't tell anyone the truth and generously handed out rewards.
This time, Simon found the situation amusing.
$100,000? They were clearly underestimating the loyalty of the family's maids and bodyguards. Besides, if someone had approached Simon directly, he might have been willing to sell. After all, a person typically has around 100,000 hairs on their head. Every time Simon got a haircut, he lost a fair number of hairs. At $100,000 per strand, even Simon himself would consider that quite a fortune.
After all these years, Simon was certain his "biological samples" had already been thoroughly studied in various secret labs, even by Simon himself. The conclusion? While Simon's physique was indeed above average, it was far from "superhuman" and remained well within the bounds of human biology.
This little episode was something Simon merely laughed off, not even bothering to track down the source.
Nevertheless, thanks to the high level of attention surrounding The Man from Earth, the North American film market experienced an unexpected surge in activity during this slow February period.
From February 24 to March 2, The Man from Earth grossed a stunning $76.19 million in its opening week, with an average of $24,000 per screen—a blockbuster-level debut.
All of Hollywood could only watch in envy.
Everyone understood that this kind of success was hard to replicate.
The film's success was largely due to Simon's overwhelming popularity. Other studios might be able to produce a similar story, but without Simon's star power, they would likely only see modest profits.
Gaomen Films' marketing team had anticipated that The Man from Earth would perform well, but they hadn't expected the opening week to exceed $70 million.
It's worth noting that The Man from Earth only cost $1.5 million to produce.
Thanks to the film's inherent buzz, Gaomen Films had only allocated a $10 million marketing budget, much of which went toward the cost of producing the 3,107 theater prints. The main promotional efforts were limited to having the cast appear on various late-night talk shows and posting promotional posters at theaters.
Additionally, as Ella Deutschman had mentioned to Simon, some of the funds went toward PR to prevent spoilers.
They hadn't spent a dime on expensive TV ads.
This was because it was nearly impossible to create a spoiler-free yet enticing trailer for the film, so they didn't even try.
Given these circumstances, and considering it was released in a slow period at the end of February, the $76.19 million opening was a record-breaking debut for a February release in Hollywood, surpassing previous records by a wide margin. It was nothing short of miraculous.
Due to the impact of The Man from Earth, Broken Arrow, in its third week, saw a steeper decline of 43%, grossing $10.17 million and bringing its cumulative total to $52.56 million.
With weekly earnings now dropping below $10 million, it was uncertain whether the film could still earn another $20 million to meet the $70 million target. That would depend on whether its fourth-week decline could be held in check.
Meanwhile, The Brothers McMullen was less affected, with a third-week drop of 25%, earning an additional $2.39 million and bringing its total to $9.56 million—just shy of the $10 million mark.
The following week, starting March 3, saw even more audience interest in The Man from Earth, as many who had initially stayed away from the controversial film couldn't resist their curiosity and bought tickets.
As a result, from March 3 to March 9, The Man from Earth saw a much smaller drop than expected. Instead of a 50% decline, it only dropped by 26%, earning a remarkable $56.37 million in its second week, bringing the two-week cumulative total to $132.56 million—surpassing even the box office trajectories of many blockbuster films.
At this rate, The Man from Earth was certain to surpass $200 million in North America, and even reaching $300 million wasn't out of the question.
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