This year's Thanksgiving fell on November 28.
As Scream 3 finished its third week of screening, on November 15, the week before the Thanksgiving period, the first major heavyweight film to open in North American theaters was The Last Boy Scout from Warner Bros. Pictures.
Directed by Tony Scott and starring Bruce Willis, this action comedy told the story of an unlucky private detective getting involved in a football gambling case.
After the summer box office disaster of Bruce Willis's 65 million dollar budget film The Ultimate Eagle, this current The Last Boy Scout followed a similar black-and-white buddy cop movie model like Lethal Weapon. With a budget also reaching the mid-to-upper level of 30 million dollars, it was crucial for Willis whether he could maintain his star status.
However, after The Last Boy Scout opened on 1,823 screens, the media reviews and word of mouth were only mediocre, with a composite score of just 4.6, not even reaching a passing grade.
From November 15 to November 21, basically occupying a week of blank release period, The Last Boy Scout accumulated only 10.72 million dollars over its seven-day opening week.
In the original timeline, after Bruce Willis became famous overnight with the Die Hard series, he then suffered a string of bad luck, starring in a series of box office failures. His career gradually fell into its lowest valley.
The turning point came in 1994 when Pulp Fiction burst onto the scene. Bruce Willis relied on the role of that unlucky boxer to once again squeeze into the over-100-million box office club.
After Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis's acting career seemed to receive a new boost. In the following years he continuously starred in hits like The Sixth Sense and Armageddon, returning to the ranks of A-list superstars.
Simon had already made both Pulp Fiction and The Sixth Sense ahead of time. This time, it was unknown whether another project would come out to save Willis.
Speaking of which, the couple Bruce Willis and Demi Moore had their statuses completely reversed after the summer period's two films, The Ultimate Eagle and A Few Good Men, had completely different box office fates, plus the box office failure of The Last Boy Scout.
Of course, many things after this became less certain.
Having fulfilled the two-film contract signed with Daenerys Entertainment, she gave up the similarly promising big-earner Indecent Proposal over salary issues and also rejected the Van Cleef & Arpels spokesperson invitation. Demi Moore had completely cut ties with Daenerys Entertainment.
First-tier Hollywood actresses had always been in surplus compared to male stars of equivalent status. Now that the two sides had gone their separate ways, Simon definitely would not give this actress much more resources. It was hard to say whether Demi Moore would head down the same path of continuous decline as in her original timeline.
November 22, the Thanksgiving period officially arrived.
Besides three other extremely limited-release independent films, there were two heavyweight new releases this week. Paramount Pictures' film adaptation of the comic and TV series The Addams Family opened on 2,411 screens, and Daenerys Entertainment's long-prepared Toy Story opened on 2,686 screens.
The Addams Family comic had been serialized in The New York Times since 1932. After it was made into a TV series in the sixties, it also remained popular for a long time. It therefore had a very deep foundation of popularity.
Although the media reviews and word of mouth could only barely be considered passing, because of the IP's widespread popularity, many people flocked to buy tickets to watch it.
By comparison, Toy Story's disadvantages were somewhat obvious.
The first major 3D animated film on the big screen, this gimmick might attract quite a few people. However, in most people's traditional view, animated movies were ultimately for children to watch.
Disney's traditional 2D animated films had always been positioned this way.
After Daenerys Entertainment's internal executives watched Toy Story, most of them gave this 3D animated film very positive evaluations. However, they strongly disagreed with Simon promoting Toy Story like a traditional blockbuster film.
The opening on 2,686 screens was even viewed as a waste.
Traditional 2D animated films generally followed a long-tail screening strategy, targeting children and the resulting family audience groups. Their usual opening screen counts were around 1,000 screens.
As Toy Story opened, the development of events clearly exceeded all of Hollywood's expectations.
First was the critical reception.
Compared to The Addams Family which was only barely passing, Toy Story received completely one-sided acclaim. In the statistics from Daenerys Entertainment's distribution department covering dozens of mainstream media outlets, not a single one gave a negative review. That is to say, this very unconventional 3D animated film for its era had almost achieved a perfect 10-point score.
The Hollywood Reporter did not hesitate to call Toy Story a "visually stunning and incredibly creative groundbreaking masterpiece."
Even as the range of review media expanded, although some differing voices would inevitably appear, it was easy to imagine that Toy Story's composite media score was destined to stay above 9.5 points.
Even Batmanfrom two years ago had not received such one-sided media praise.
Unlike the original Toy Story which was only a Pixar work-for-hire and ultimately not Disney's own child, this new version of Toy Story completely belonged to Daenerys Entertainment.
Therefore, whether in terms of marketing intensity or opening screen count, the new Toy Story surpassed the original version.
Coupled with its phenomenal critical acclaim, driven by curiosity, audiences of all age groups flocked to buy tickets. This also quickly broke Toy Story out of the restriction that animated films were only for children.
In just the three-day opening, Toy Story easily earned 31.06 million dollars on 2,686 screens, successfully achieving over 10,000 dollars per screen average.
This time the three-day opening weekend per-screen average exceeding 10,000 dollars was obviously very different from Scream 3's three-day opening per-screen average exceeding 10,000 dollars during Halloween.
Scream 3 was able to exceed 10,000 dollars per screen in its opening three days mainly due to the popularity accumulation from the first two films and the audience's continued viewing inertia. The film then saw over 50 percent drop in its second week.
Now, Toy Story had earned 31.06 million dollars in its first three-day weekend. Relying on the film's near-perfect critical reviews and constantly rising topic, this 3D animated film definitely would not experience the kind of drop that Scream 3 had in its second week.
Under Hollywood's close attention, the seven days from November 22 to November 28 flew by.
On the second day of Thanksgiving, Toy Story's first-week box office was officially released. The 46.73 million dollar figure easily claimed the top spot for the weekly box office championship.
By comparison, the similarly popular The Addams Family only earned 31.17 million dollars over its seven-day opening week.
Of course, compared to its 30 million dollar production cost, The Addams Family's 31.17 million dollar first-week box office still appeared very successful.
In third place, Bruce Willis's action comedy The Last Boy Scout, under the impact of the two strong new films Toy Story and The Addams Family, saw its second-week box office drop by 37 percent, earning only 6.75 million dollars.
According to this box office curve, The Last Boy Scout's North American total was likely to stop under 25 million dollars, failing to even reach its 30 million dollar production budget. The defeat was already decided.
On November 29, North American theaters once again saw three important new films open.
The crime thriller Cape Fear that Daenerys Entertainment took over from Universal Pictures, the new film My Girl starring last year's Home Alone lead Macaulay Culkin, and MGM's new 007 film GoldenEye.
Cape Fear was directed by Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro in the lead role.
In his memory, Cape Fear was also a film that achieved both critical and box office success. Simon had once considered snatching this project from Universal, but gave up the idea because the plan to acquire MCA was already in motion.
My Girl was invested and produced by Columbia Pictures. Besides Macaulay Culkin, the film also featured stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd. The budget reached 30 million dollars, of which Macaulay Culkin alone took away 5 million dollars.
Speaking of which, although a comprehensive contract had been signed in advance, in the upcoming Home Alone 2 that would start shooting after the new year, Macaulay Culkin's salary was also 5 million dollars. This allowed the 11-year-old young actor this year to leap to become the highest-paid child star in Hollywood, bar none.
Earning 10 million dollars from two film contracts, some things became inevitable.
For example, Macaulay Culkin's bizarre parents. To avoid that couple's various troubles affecting Home Alone 2, Daenerys Entertainment had even sent them a lawyer's letter warning the couple not to leak too many negative stories to the media.
As for the person involved, this was destined to be a tragedy.
When even his own father and mother did not care, no one could be his savior. Perhaps those who wanted to reach out and save him would even be seen as enemies by that profit-driven couple.
Simon personally attended the Los Angeles premiere of GoldenEye on the Wednesday before its opening.
The Johnston family's investment in MGM, becoming the largest shareholder with 30 percent stake in this old Hollywood studio, had of course caused some ripples at the time.
Many people knew that the Johnston family's investment in MGM was essentially equivalent to Simon Westeros controlling the company.
Over the past year, many facts had also proven this point.
However, before the transaction, MGM was already an asset of Australian capital. Any investigation that someone in Washington tried to stir up was suppressed through the Westeros system's operations. Many of MGM's creditors were also happy to see it happen and even secretly pushed it along.
Letting Simon Westeros control this company was absolutely beneficial for MGM in many ways, and the interests of all creditors could be protected to the greatest extent.
As long as it did not harm their own interests, or even benefited them, capital did not mind monopolies.
The other major Hollywood studios that were most likely to raise objections originally were not too optimistic about Simon taking over MGM's mess. Moreover, several of them had already formed close ties with Daenerys Entertainment. Even Paramount, which had some past friction, had reached reconciliation during Daenerys Entertainment's acquisition of MCA.
Therefore, MGM had almost naturally fallen into Simon's control.
Over this past year, besides the summer hit A Few Good Men, MGM had also reached multiple cooperations with Daenerys Entertainment according to the initial plan, including IP character licensing and classic film video distribution.
In addition, with Daenerys Entertainment's support, MGM had re-signed agreements with Turner Broadcasting Company, which had previously taken away a large portion of the company's film and television broadcast rights.
The way Turner Broadcasting had taken away MGM's large batch of classic film television broadcast rights back then had always been controversial. Through negotiations between both sides, although the broadcast rights were not reclaimed and would still fulfill the original licensing period until 2003, Turner Broadcasting had raised the payment price and relaxed the restrictions on MGM simultaneously selling broadcast rights to other television networks.
This also meant that Daenerys Entertainment's television stations could now also air MGM films going forward.
All in all, in just this one year, the entire Hollywood could feel the signs of MGM's improving business conditions.
Neither Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro's Cape Fear, Macaulay Culkin's My Girl, nor the four-years-early GoldenEye could overshadow Toy Story's brilliance.
As the Thanksgiving period continued, more information was disclosed.
It was not just the first week's 46.73 million dollar box office. According to a Los Angeles Times report, with Toy Story's screening, the 3D animated film's merchandise toys were also selling extremely well.
Toy Story, just the name of this 3D animated film, showed how great the value of developing peripherals was.
Moreover, after audiences finished watching, they discovered that retail stores such as Toys "R" Us had already stocked many Toy Story merchandise toys in advance. Americans had always been very willing to spend on movie peripherals, and likewise very willing to spend on their children.
Therefore, in just one week, according to rough statistics, Toy Story's toy sales had reached 230 million dollars.
The various retailers who had completed the 200 million dollar distribution in advance had originally expected at best that these toys could sell out within a month. However, in less than one week, retailers had to begin restocking.
The brand cooperation partners like McDonald's who had signed letters of intent in advance also quickly reacted to Toy Story's popularity and launched corresponding peripheral products one after another.
Considering the even hotter Christmas season ahead, industry insiders predicted that in just the next two months, Toy Story's peripheral sales would steadily exceed 1 billion dollars.
Calculated according to the roughly 15 percent net profit ratio that Daenerys Entertainment could obtain from peripheral product sales, 1 billion dollars in peripheral sales was expected to bring Daenerys Entertainment 150 million dollars in net revenue.
Obviously, this was only the beginning.
According to the data from Simon's memory, the two Toy Story films had brought average peripheral product sales of 4.5 billion dollars each.
While the media focused on the astonishing revenue brought by Toy Story, their attention inevitably also fell on Pixar Studios.
Of course there had been media attention on this animation studio before. Pixar, which had won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film with Tin Toy, was not completely unknown.
However, at the time most people felt that Simon Westeros continuously pouring money into a new animation format that had yet to prove its prospects was very unwise.
Now, no one would hold similar thoughts anymore.
With Toy Story's success, Business Week directly raised its valuation of Daenerys Entertainment by 5 billion dollars. This included Pixar's own value as well as the powerful boost that 3D animated films brought to Daenerys Entertainment's consumer products department and theme park business.
In addition, Business Week extended the topic to the powerful synergistic effects between various business departments within a comprehensive media group.
Toy Story's success driving growth in other major business departments of Daenerys Entertainment was undoubtedly the most vivid embodiment of this kind of synergy.
Business Week predicted that as the increasingly powerful synergistic effects shown by Daenerys Entertainment's various business departments continued, horizontal integration in the American media industry would further accelerate.