Memorial Day had just passed, and a fresh set of movie data statistics was placed on Duke's desk.
The Avengers had just completed its fourth weekend in North America, earning another $47.88 million domestically that weekend. Its cumulative North American box office had reached $572.3 million, already approaching the top three of the North American all-time box office chart: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Titanic, and Avatar.
Moreover, the film had only been in theaters for four weeks. Although its popularity was gradually declining, there was still plenty of time ahead to boost its cumulative box office.
Similarly, The Avengers' overseas box office had surpassed $1 billion without contest, with a global total of $1,595.71 million. Breaking the $1.6 billion mark was only a matter of time.
Everyone knew that The Avengers would surpass The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, becoming Duke's highest-grossing single film.
Meanwhile, Fast & Furious 5, which once hoped to rival The Avengers, saw its popularity decline much faster than The Avengers, which had premiered a week earlier. That weekend, Fast & Furious 5 fell 62% from the previous weekend, earning only $20.44 million in North America.
However, this figure still allowed Fast & Furious 5 to comfortably cross the $200 million mark domestically, reaching $210.44 million.
Overseas, Fast & Furious 5 was firmly overshadowed by The Avengers, currently accumulating just over $320 million abroad.
Combined, a total box office of $530 million was enough for the film to become one of the commercial stars of this summer season.
There was no doubt that, in terms of box office, even though Fast & Furious 5 leveraged the Vin Diesel incident for "nostalgia marketing," it was clearly not on the same scale as The Avengers.
From the perspective of the film industry chain, these two films were several levels apart.
The Avengers had already created nearly $1.5 billion in non-theatrical revenue, while Fast & Furious 5 had only a mere tens of millions.
This achievement perfectly reflected Duke's business acumen in superhero films adapted from comics.
Not every film adapted from a comic is a superhero film, nor are all superhero films adapted from comics. For example, Peter Berg's Hancock and M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable are both original content.
But for Hollywood, superhero films adapted from comics are the most valuable. Shooting sequels is never a problem for content, but more importantly, it serves as the master switch for the broader entertainment industry. Once the movie—the locomotive—starts moving, other links in the industry chain, including comics, toys, licensed products, audiovisual media, and theme parks, continuously generate new content, bringing in rolling profits.
All of Hollywood envied Duke, envying the huge amount of capital he once threw down to acquire most of the Marvel comic rights when the rest of America doubted their value.
Now, many investment companies and Hollywood studios knew that without paying an almost insane price, Duke would never give up his Marvel shares. So they kept focusing on acquiring other portions of Marvel shares and competed endlessly.
In recent years, the gradually weakening Walt Disney was no exception. To raise funds for acquiring partial Marvel shares, last year it laid off 70% of its independent film division, Miramax. The number of films released each year was halved to two, and this year it was entirely sold to a private film investment fund.
The famous company founded by the Weinstein brothers had a vast library of 700 films, including iconic titles like Pulp Fiction and The English Patient.
Yet sadly, although Miramax was the "only professional contender" on Oscar night, it sold for only $363 million. The reason was clear: while Miramax films had "artistic value," they could not sell licensed products nor contribute to industrialized film profits.
Nowadays, Hollywood's "Big Six" studios are basically departments within entertainment groups or even larger companies. They are not the highest-revenue departments, as the high cost of film production leaves pure profits far lower than those from derivative products. However, films clearly drive revenue in related departments, ensuring high turnover and profit margins.
This is the foundation of the Hollywood empire—"Content is king," driving the entire industry chain.
Although The Avengers captured astonishing box office revenue, it essentially served as an expensive trailer for years of future films—The Avengers 2, 3…, Iron Man 3, 4, Captain America 2, 3…—and also a massive advertisement for Warner theme parks, toys, and licensed products, such as a $37.99 Hulk figure or an $11.99 Captain America beer mug.
In early June, Hasbro renewed a licensing agreement with Marvel. The new contract, lasting until 2017, granted Hasbro overseas licensing rights for more than 1,000 characters, including Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, covering toys, games, and other products. Hasbro would pay $400 million in licensing fees plus a percentage of sales revenue.
For Duke and Marvel, this was "profit without capital" made possible by leveraging "content."
However, Marvel itself was not without problems.
In recent years, Marvel—constantly providing content and profits to several Hollywood studios—saw its core business, comics, in decline. By May of this year, no comic book sold over 100,000 copies, marking a historic low. Comic prices had not risen during recent inflation, with Marvel and DC keeping them at $2.99.
In fact, after the mid-1990s slump, the comic industry had clearly entered a downward trajectory, which was why Duke faced little competition when acquiring Marvel.
Marvel's market share accounted for roughly 40% of the US comic market, but the entire industry's annual sales were less than $1.5 billion. In Duke's overall empire, the direct comic business was not particularly notable.
Yet Duke understood that Marvel's true value was not in the comics themselves.
The overall Hollywood situation was not good. DVDs, once seen as saviors of the film industry, sharply declined after 2007. With the rise of the Internet, television rights also quickly decreased. Large companies had to find alternative profit points during this industrial transition. Media eagerly reported box office figures (as information was easily obtained) but paid little attention to the chain of derivatives behind the numbers.
Leveraging Warner Brothers and Time Warner's platforms as a major shareholder and board member, Duke undoubtedly built a complete industrial chain for Marvel comics.
For old Hollywood, mainstream "national blockbusters" included original films like Ben-Hur, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Bonnie and Clyde, The Tiger Killers, The Godfather, and E.T., with sequels or trilogies being exceptional. Except for the special 007 series, continuous sequels were mostly B-grade horror or comedies.
But with Star Wars leading the "franchise" era, the entertainment industry discovered that high-concept commercial films were just the beginning of a series of extended product revenues. As Hollywood studios were absorbed by multinational conglomerates, with huge capital controlling film production, film products became part of a larger plan, and maximizing profit became the top priority.
Thus, films like Superman, Batman, X-Men, and Spider-Man appeared endlessly, even to the point of saturation!
Duke was not merely a director; he was also a spokesperson for a massive capital conglomerate. Naturally, his next film would still be a superhero movie.
The proliferation of superhero films essentially reflects the capital's inherent drive for profit. Movies like Captain America and Thor, although performing decently at the box office, as commercial films they were far from recouping costs through ticket sales alone. Yet Duke and Marvel Studios remained enthusiastic, and Warner Brothers, as the distributor, eagerly followed suit. The most important reason was their enormous derivative value.
When Disney chairman Michael Eisner sold Miramax, he spoke candidly: "Continuing to invest in new Miramax films is unnecessary for our core strategy."
What he valued were films that could provide content for Disney's theme parks, television, other media, and licensed products, with no concern for originality or artistic merit.
This was a common point among all Hollywood studios and distributors.
For example, Pixar Studios, in which Duke also held a large stake, produced Ratatouille and WALL-E, widely recognized as having the highest artistic value. Including box office revenue, they generated less than $1 billion in total, whereas the widely criticized Cars had unremarkable box office performance but had since spawned over $8 billion in market value.
If Duke and Time Warner had to choose, they would undoubtedly go with Cars. This did not mean Duke personally liked Cars, but his position naturally dictated that he had to do so.
To maximize the value of Cars, Duke and Warner Brothers pushed for the global release of Cars 2 last year, turning it into a film that could compete with Disney's classic animations in terms of derivative industry potential. To achieve this, they even postponed Toy Story 3 until this summer.
This delayed animated blockbuster officially premiered in the North American market in early June. As a highly anticipated sequel and Pixar's so-called finale, it attracted widespread attention.
As long as the film succeeded, it could still generate enormous profits. Like many Hollywood directors, the so-called "finale" was often just a marketing term.
Duke, currently on a temporary break, also accepted Pixar Studios' invitation and appeared at the film's premiere.
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