On May 31, the second week of the summer season, only two new films opened in North American theaters: Paramount's Soapdish and Columbia Pictures' City Slickers.
Soapdish told the story of a group of soap opera actors caught up in a series of scheming and backstabbing around a show called The Sun Also Sets.
As an ensemble piece, the cast was undeniably star studded.
Oscar winner Sally Field led the way, joined by Oscar winning supporting actor Kevin Kline and Oscar winning supporting actress Whoopi Goldberg, along with a mix of big names and solid supporting players such as Robert Downey Jr., Carrie Fisher, Elisabeth Shue, and Garry Marshall.
The director was Michael Hoffman, who had earned solid critical praise for the arthouse films The Dreamer and Some Kind of Wonderful.
Anyone even slightly familiar with Hollywood could tell at a glance that this was another CAA package film.
Despite the absence of any ten million dollar superstar, the production budget still reached thirty five million dollars.
City Slickers starred Billy Crystal and was essentially riding the coattails of the massively successful Crocodile Dundee series from the eighties. Its budget was a still substantial twenty seven million dollars.
After the first three days, Soapdish opened to just six point seven three million dollars over the weekend, with first week projections around nine million dollars, well below Paramount's expectations.
Although it followed in the footsteps of Crocodile Dundee, City Slickers received decent reviews and respectable box office. It earned thirteen point zero three million dollars over the opening weekend and looked likely to finish its first week between eighteen and twenty million dollars.
Of the six new films that had opened the previous week, only Ice World managed a modest ten percent increase in its second weekend after expanding to eight hundred sixteen screens. The other five films all dropped more than thirty percent.
Columbia's TriStar release Hudson Hawk, starring Bruce Willis, suffered the worst decline at forty seven percent.
Columbia had originally positioned Hudson Hawk as one of its major summer titles, with City Slickers serving as a last minute comedy squeezed in before Batman: The Dark Knight the following week.
Instead, the market performance of the two films had turned out exactly opposite to management's expectations.
Hudson Hawk, made for sixty five million dollars, had earned only eleven point five nine million dollars after ten days of release, less than City Slickers had made in three days.
As June arrived, the release date for the second film in the DC Movie Universe, Batman: The Dark Knight, drew even closer.
In addition to an intensified publicity campaign, the film had begun media and fan preview screenings two weeks early. Some outlets had already published their reactions, and participating North American media had given the movie scores of eight or higher across the board.
In the new week, Warner Bros., which handled global distribution for the film, officially announced the worldwide box office total for the DC Movie Universe's opening title, Batman Begins.
After a year and a half of rolling international release that began at the end of the previous year, Batman Begins had played in fifty one countries and territories.
The final North American total came in at four hundred thirty six million dollars, while overseas earnings reached five hundred thirty one million dollars.
The global box office stood at nine hundred sixty seven million dollars.
Although it fell just short of the one billion dollar mark, the film had easily surpassed the seven hundred ninety million dollar global record set by E.T. the Extra Terrestrial in 1982, becoming the highest grossing movie in Hollywood history up to 1991.
This time, through the coordinated efforts of Warner Bros. and Daenerys, Batman: The Dark Knight would open simultaneously in twenty one countries and territories around the world.
Wide global day and date releases would become common more than a decade later, but in the early nineties this was still a rare innovation that showed just how much confidence both companies had in the sequel.
The marketing budget for Batman: The Dark Knight had been set at an unprecedented eighty million dollars from the start, matching the film's enormous production cost.
That meant the movie would need roughly three hundred million dollars at the North American box office for the two companies to break even on domestic receipts alone.
Of course, everyone understood that while the Batman series produced eye popping box office numbers, the real money came from merchandising.
Public figures showed that Batman Begins merchandise alone had generated two billion dollars in sales during 1990.
With typical merchandising profit margins around fifteen percent, those two billion dollars translated into roughly three hundred million dollars in pre tax profit.
Under the original contract, the majority of that revenue flowed straight into Daenerys Entertainment.
It was therefore easy to see how Daenerys Entertainment had managed to post an astonishing one point one three billion dollars in net profit for 1990 despite a string of major moves that year.
At the beginning of May, timed exactly one month before Batman: The Dark Knight's release, the video release of Batman had rolled out worldwide.
In its first week on shelves, it sold five point six million copies in North America alone.
As the release date for the sequel approached, the latest figures showed that in less than a month the film had already sold more than thirteen million video copies globally, generating nearly four hundred million dollars in revenue.
At the current pace, Batman looked on track to sell more than thirty million video units worldwide, pushing total sales past nine hundred million dollars and possibly even reaching the one billion dollar milestone.
According to the agreements Hollywood studios had signed with the various guilds, only twenty percent of video sales revenue counted toward profit sharing.
In reality, at thirty dollars per tape, the gross margin on video was not much lower than theatrical revenue splits.
Of the projected thirty million plus video sales for Batman Begins, Warner Bros. would receive its distribution cut, but the bulk of the profit, conservatively estimated at three hundred million dollars, would still belong to Daenerys Entertainment.
When everything was added up, just the global box office, video sales, and merchandise from Batman would generate roughly one billion dollars in profit within three years of release, not counting future television broadcast income or long tail revenue from every other channel.
The DC Movie Universe had delivered such spectacular commercial results right from the start that the two companies felt fully justified in committing a combined one hundred sixty million dollars in production and marketing for Batman: The Dark Knight.
The world premiere of Batman: The Dark Knight was scheduled for Wednesday, June 5.
Tomorrow was the premiere.
Simon spent the entire day at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
Or rather, Terry Semel had practically dragged him there. For days now, Semel had been calling Simon every morning, urging him to make time for the Batman: The Dark Knight release, the post production on The Flash, and other joint projects.
Given the profits Batman had already generated, there was no need to explain the importance of the DC Movie Universe to Time Warner.
Terry Semel's persistence had another reason as well.
After the Time Inc. and Warner Bros. merger was completed in early the previous year, neither Time Warner's performance nor its stock price had met industry expectations.
To fend off Paramount Communications' hostile takeover attempt, the two sides had changed the original all stock merger to a cash plus stock deal. As a result, the combined company's debt had suddenly ballooned from just over two billion dollars to ten billion dollars.
After a year of aggressive debt reduction, Time Warner's total liabilities still stood at ten point six billion dollars.
Steve Ross was the type of executive who hated selling company assets, so starting last year he had begun preparing a major equity offering. The plan was to issue roughly three billion dollars in new shares to repay debt coming due over the next year or two.
Time Warner shareholders naturally resisted having their ownership diluted and were unwilling to buy additional shares, while the market outlook for the company remained lukewarm.
The offering therefore faced strong opposition both inside and outside the company.
On top of that, the North American stock market had continued to slide through the second half of the previous year, and the plan had nearly been shelved.
Fortunately, America's swift victory in the Gulf War had triggered a broad market rally in recent months. Time Warner's stock price had risen along with the rest of the market, pushing the company's market capitalization back above ten billion dollars. Investor enthusiasm for the upcoming Batman: The Dark Knight and The Flash at the end of the year had also helped. The share issuance plan was back on track.
The timing had been set for roughly August.
Therefore, even though he had complete confidence in Batman: The Dark Knight and knew The Flash would open after the offering, Terry Semel was still doing everything possible to keep Simon visible at the Burbank lot. The goal was simply to project an image of close cooperation between the two companies to the outside world.
To reinforce that impression, the two sides had recently finalized another co production project outside the DC Movie Universe, counting as one of the two additional joint films Daenerys Entertainment owed Warner Bros.
Today Simon had spent the whole day in Burbank handling exactly those three matters.
In the morning he had been personally escorted by Terry Semel through the post production center working on The Flash. In the afternoon there were two back to back meetings.
The first, from two to four o'clock, was the distribution meeting for Batman: The Dark Knight.
The second, from four to five o'clock, was the production meeting for the newly confirmed co production.
The new film was called The Last of the Mohicans.
It was an adaptation of an 1826 American novel by James Fenimore Cooper.
The story was set during the late 1750s colonial war between Britain and France for control of North America. It followed the last three warriors of the Mohican tribe as they rescued two daughters of a British colonel who had been taken captive and escorted them back to the British fort.
Like Hamlet, the narrative pattern of a knight rescuing a princess made the tale extremely popular with Hollywood.
Since 1920, The Last of the Mohicans had been adapted repeatedly into films, television series, and even cartoons. The most recent version had come out in 1987.
The decision to reboot the project this time had been heavily influenced by the critical and commercial success of Dances with Wolves.
Both films dealt with the colonial wars in North America and the complicated relationship between Native Americans and white settlers.
Put simply, it was a follow up play.
In Simon's memory, the 1992 version of The Last of the Mohians had been directed by Michael Mann and starred Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis.
Although he could not recall the exact box office, Simon knew it had been a very successful film.
Michael Mann was the director who would later make the famous Heat. He had previously worked with New World Entertainment on the police drama Crime Story. After the project was confirmed, Daenerys Entertainment had reached out to Mann. He had responded positively and even offered to write the script himself.
For the male lead, Warner Bros. had immediately thought of Mel Gibson.
There was no avoiding it. From the original Mad Max films through the ongoing Lethal Weapon series, Mel Gibson had become Warner Bros.' go to star almost on the level of Clint Eastwood.
Even though Mel Gibson was set to take the lion's share of profits from Lethal Weapon 3 thanks to his back end deal, Warner Bros. still preferred to use him whenever possible because of his proven box office reliability.
Simon agreed with the suggestion.
The memory of Mel Gibson's later Oscar winning and commercially successful Braveheart proved the actor was more than capable of carrying a period action film.
Since this was not a sequel to a guaranteed hit like Lethal Weapon 3 but an original project, Mel Gibson's asking price would not be outrageous.
However, in addition to the currently shooting Lethal Weapon 3, Mel Gibson had already signed two more projects that pushed his schedule into 1993.
Simon had the patience to wait two years, but Warner Bros. did not.
In the end they had contacted the original choice, Daniel Day Lewis, based on Simon's recollection. Negotiations were still ongoing.
After a full day of work, Simon returned to the Point Dume estate in the evening to find the Shell Villa buzzing with activity.
Anthony Johnston had once again brought his entire family.
Anthony's eldest son, Brandon Johnston, who was the same age as Simon, was a devoted Batman fan. The last time he had even used his cousin as an intermediary to ask Simon for a Batcycle. Since tomorrow was the premiere of Batman: The Dark Knight, Brandon naturally wanted to see it first.
Also present were Anthony's wife Betty Johnston and their two daughters, nineteen year old Sylvia Johnston and eleven year old Chloe Johnston.
Brandon had only recently started working in the family business and was taking this trip as a bit of time off.
Sylvia and Chloe were both studying in Britain, and with the Northern Hemisphere summer vacation underway, they had been able to join the trip to Los Angeles.