Malibu.
On the new Monday morning, the windows had been left open overnight. The cool morning breeze kept teasing the floor-to-ceiling curtains leading to the balcony, slipping into the bedroom.
When the sky had fully brightened, Janet opened her eyes. She knew Simon must already be awake, only staying still because she was wrapped around him. She wriggled a little, quickly ending up sprawled completely on top of him, her cheek pressed against his chest as she murmured sleepily, "Can we sleep a little longer?"
Simon slipped an arm around Janet's slender waist, enjoying the skin-to-skin contact, and said softly, "The designers the company hired have finished a Batmobile model. Want to go take a look this afternoon?"
Janet gave a slow, vague "mm," then added, "Not interested."
"All right."
Simon smiled, patiently letting her linger on him for a while longer. Only after her dissatisfied little hums did he lift her aside and begin to get dressed and wash up.
It was seven o'clock in the morning.
After jogging on the treadmill for half an hour, Simon took a quick shower, got dressed, and started preparing breakfast for the two of them.
He had just placed two neatly stacked sandwiches into the oven and taken a few oranges out of the fridge to make juice when Janet drifted in from outside, wearing only an oversized men's shirt.
As he cut the oranges with a knife, Simon glanced at her and smiled. "Why aren't you sleeping anymore?"
"Because you're not with me," Janet said, coming over to hug him. She rose slightly on her toes, kissed him on the lips, then suddenly froze. Raising her hand, she measured above her own head toward his mouth, gesturing several times in succession. Her eyes widened. "You got taller again?"
Janet's beautiful eyes always held an irresistible allure for Simon, especially when she widened them like this in surprise.
He nodded, studying her eyes with a smile. "Seems like it."
Janet immediately looked heartbroken. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, burying her head against his shoulder and lamenting, "Oh my God, my boyfriend is still growing taller. Wuwu, I'm already an old woman."
Sensing the obvious insecurity beneath her half-joking tone, Simon cupped her face, which was every bit as tender as that of an eighteen-year-old girl, leaned down, and kissed her gently. "All right, baby. You take such good care of yourself. Even ten or twenty years from now, you'll definitely look just like you do now."
Janet rubbed her cheek against his, then asked mischievously, "What about thirty years from now?"
"Well, thirty years from now, I'll already be fifty."
Hearing that, Janet buried her head against his shoulder again and whimpered, "A fifty-year-old man will definitely be even more attractive to young girls."
Simon sighed helplessly. "I'm already very attractive to young girls right now. There's no preventing that."
Janet raised a hand and punched him lightly. "You little bastard."
After lingering affectionately for a bit, Simon sent her off to get dressed and soon carried both breakfasts to the dining room.
When Janet came back, she had changed into a simple T-shirt and casual pants. Though she was still rather dejected about discovering that her boyfriend had grown taller again, ever since becoming aware of some of Simon's potential preferences, she rarely wore the high heels she used to love so much.
Wearing high heels too often deforms your feet.
During meals, people usually sit facing each other at the table, but Janet preferred to sit close beside Simon.
She took a sip of orange juice, picked up her sandwich, and took a small bite, as if she had completely forgotten what just happened. "Mom called yesterday. She asked when you're going to Australia."
After deciding to set the filming location for Batman in Melbourne, Danerys Pictures had already sent people there to scout locations. Simon himself would definitely need to go and take a look before shooting began.
After thinking for a moment, Simon said, "Next month. After we take over New World Entertainment, I'll focus most of my energy on Batman's preproduction."
"Australia's been offering a lot of support for the film industry these past few years," Janet tilted her head slightly, clearly not very certain about the details. "Anyway, Dad will definitely help you."
After breakfast, Neil Bennett and Ken Dixon had already prepared the cars. Simon headed to Santa Monica for work, while Janet was going to an architectural design firm in Beverly Hills.
The land at Point Dume had already been secured. Based on his memories of Iron Man's cliffside mansion, Simon had provided a rough sketch. Recently, Janet had been closely overseeing the detailed design work. Construction was expected to start next year. However, building such a villa on the tip of Point Dume would not be easy. If Simon wanted to move in, he would likely need to wait two or three years.
Since they were headed in the same direction, Janet and Simon rode together until they reached Santa Monica, where she switched to the burgundy Land Rover driven by Ken Dixon and continued on to Beverly Hills.
Simon's old Chevrolet SUV had already been disposed of by Janet and replaced with a black Land Rover as well. As the car entered Fourth Street in Santa Monica, where Daenerys Pictures' headquarters was located, Simon noticed that the crowd gathered outside the company had grown even larger today.
After the success of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, not only Daenerys Pictures' reality shows, but also many other production companies and even the networks themselves were planning reality programs that did not require writers. Moreover, after the producers' alliance proposal had been rejected by the Writers Guild last month, the shift in circumstances brought about by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire meant that the new contract the alliance was preparing was rumored to be even harsher than the previous one.
With the strike dragging on for half a year, the WGA was running out of options.
If the two sides still failed to reach an agreement next month, the fall season would already be completely delayed anyway. The producers' alliance might simply dig in and continue the standoff. But with tens of thousands of mouths to feed, if the WGA persisted, it could truly lead to the catastrophic collapse of the union.
As one of the main catalysts behind the current reversal of fortunes, Simon had been seeing groups of writers gather outside Daenerys Pictures' headquarters to express their dissatisfaction almost nonstop. Such scenes were very common in society, and Simon had gradually grown accustomed to them. As long as they did not interfere with the company's operations, both sides could coexist peacefully.
However, when Simon's vehicle reached the entrance to the headquarters parking lot, he realized that today's newcomers were not all members of the Writers Guild. Or rather, there were two separate groups today.
Some WGA members were still tirelessly gathered outside Daenerys Pictures as usual. But the larger group today had come to protest Basic Instinct.
Looking at the signs reading "Basic Instinct Is Garbage," "Westeros, San Francisco No Longer Welcomes You," "Discrimination Is Discrimination," "Stop Smearing Homosexuals," along with the rainbow flags in some people's hands, Simon immediately understood what was going on.
Over the past few days, Basic Instinct had indeed stirred up intense controversy in the media, though not to the level of the original timeline, where Lionsgate's release of Dogma had provoked mass protests by touching on core religious beliefs. However, as the main hub of the North American gay community, LGBTQ organizations in the San Francisco area were extremely dissatisfied with the film's portrayal of homosexuality.
At heart, as someone from the East, Simon neither supported nor opposed homosexuality. Or rather, he felt almost nothing about it at all. As a result, he found it difficult to understand why the community reacted so strongly against this film. He had even heard that in recent days, many LGBTQ groups in San Francisco had handed out spoiler leaflets outside theaters reading "Catherine Is the Killer" in an effort to keep audiences from entering.
The Land Rover slowly passed through the crowd and entered the company parking lot. Simon went into the office building through a side entrance.
After a weekly meeting that lasted more than an hour, confirming the progress of all the company's projects, the executives dispersed to attend to their work. Simon and Amy remained in the conference room, while Jennifer brought in the box office reports for the past weekend.
After so much preparation, the results were finally in.
Despite mixed media reactions, leaning heavily toward criticism, Basic Instinct still earned $16.75 million over its opening three days, successfully taking the top spot on the North American weekend box office chart. With 1,776 opening screens, the per-theater average was close to $10,000, a standard already indicative of a hit.
Eddie Murphy's Coming to America, now in its third week, held onto second place.
After a steep 45 percent drop the previous week, Coming to America's weekend decline narrowed to 21 percent, bringing in another $10.41 million. Thanks to its impressive $36.15 million opening, the film had already reached a cumulative gross of $66.51 million in just two and a half weeks.
By comparison, this week's third-place new release, Tightrope, produced by Warner Bros. and starring Clint Eastwood, earned only $9.07 million over its opening three days. While this result was not terrible and the full first-week gross was expected to reach around $13 million, compared with Basic Instinct's $16.75 million, it could only be described as a failure.
Coincidentally, Warner Bros.' two summer releases this year, Funny Farm on June 3 and Tightrope on July 15, had directly clashed with Danerys Pictures' Pulp Fiction and Basic Instinct.
Due to lukewarm market response, Funny Farm, starring Chevy Chase, was already nearing the end of its run with a total gross of under $25 million. Tightrope's performance might end up slightly better, but it was still far below Warner Bros.' expectations.
In addition, A Fish Called Wanda, starring Sandra, earned another $5.63 million over the weekend. Thanks to strong word of mouth, the film had reached a cumulative total of $30.96 million in just two and a half weeks.
As Simon and Amy reviewed the weekend box office figures at Daenerys Pictures' headquarters, the same reports were already circulating throughout Hollywood.
Taking in $16.75 million in just three days meant that, using the usual assumption that weekends account for 70 percent of weekly box office, Basic Instinct's first-week gross would not fall below $23 million.
Although Coming to America had just posted an opening of $36.15 million, in this era, films that surpassed $20 million in their first week were extremely rare. As long as Basic Instinct did not suffer a massive second-week drop like Coming to America's 45 percent, it had more than enough potential to continue its run toward the $100 million mark in North America.
In fact, upon seeing Basic Instinct's opening weekend numbers, few people doubted that it would follow Danerys Pictures' other two films, When Harry Met Sally and Pulp Fiction, in charging toward the $100 million milestone.
The film's topical heat was simply too intense. Even viewers who avoided theaters in the first week due to the controversy might choose to watch it in subsequent weeks, influenced by the ongoing discussion and word-of-mouth effects.
With $23 million in the first week, even assuming a 20 percent drop in the second week, the film could still earn another $18 million.
Surpassing $40 million in just two weeks would not only be enough for Fox and Daenerys Pictures to fully recoup the $20 million production budget, but would also place the film firmly within the top twenty of the annual North American box office rankings.
And so—
As soon as the opening weekend numbers were released, the entire Hollywood industry began analyzing the formula behind Basic Instinct's success.
The femme fatale.
This was one key element that many studios latched onto. And of course, there was also "sex." Even though the Hollywood strike was still ongoing, studios had already begun searching for scripts with similar elements.
Simon, however, knew that the true core of Basic Instinct's success lay in the intense discussion generated by its many controversies.
In the film industry, box office performance is certainly influenced by a movie's quality. But when a film's topical buzz reaches a certain level, even an outright terrible movie can still achieve very strong box office results.
The Blair Witch Project from 1997 in the original timeline proved this point. Riding a phenomenon-level wave of discussion, a DV film that cost only a few tens of thousands of dollars managed to gross nearly $250 million worldwide, delivering a return of several thousand times over, a true miracle.
To be fair, Simon's previous films had also benefited greatly from topical buzz in addition to their inherent quality: the eighteen-year-old director of Run Lola Run, the youngest-ever Palme d'Or winner with Pulp Fiction, and now the intense controversy surrounding Basic Instinct.
Simon also understood that after multiple films over more than two consecutive years, the public's curiosity about him was bound to cool. If Daenerys Pictures' films were to continue succeeding, beyond ensuring quality, the company would need to devote far more effort to marketing and promotion. The current shortcuts would not always be available.
Amid the ongoing media discussion, the first week quickly passed.
From July 15 to July 21, Basic Instinct's box office performance exceeded general media expectations, reaching $23.92 million. Close behind, Coming to America earned $16.03 million in its third week, bringing its cumulative total to $72.34 million.
Warner Bros.' Tightrope ranked third, with a final first-week gross of $13.19 million.
Judging by the current situation, Warner Bros. was very likely to repeat last year's disappointment.
In 1987, Warner's highest-grossing film had been Lethal Weapon, dumped into an unpromising early-year slot. This year, so far, Warner's best-performing release was still Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, a fantasy comedy that had not been highly anticipated for the Easter season. Now nearing the end of its run, it had just passed $70 million in cumulative box office.