Simon stayed with Janet during her maternity leave, but the year-end period did not stop because of it.
The day before the little one was born, the second week of the Thanksgiving period officially ended.
The three new films released on November 29, Columbia Pictures' My Girl, MGM's GoldenEye, and the crime thriller Cape Fear starring Robert De Niro that Daenerys Entertainment took over from Universal, did not pose much threat to Toy Story.
November 29 to December 5.
Over seven days, after its first week's 46.73 million dollars, Toy Story's second-week box office drop remained at 23 percent, earning another 35.93 million dollars and continuing to hold the top spot on the weekly box office chart.
Two weeks after its release, this first 3D animated film in Hollywood history had already accumulated 82.66 million dollars at the box office.
According to the stepped revenue-sharing rules Daenerys Entertainment signed with the theater chains, the company could take more than 70 percent of the box office in the first two weeks after release.
This meant that the 82.66 million dollars in North American box office over two weeks was already enough for Daenerys Entertainment to recover its entire 55 million dollar combined production and marketing budget.
Considering the long-tail nature that animated films usually possessed, as well as the inevitable box office rebound during the upcoming Christmas period, Toy Story's North American total box office was likely to reach 200 million dollars, becoming the third film after Batman: The Dark Knight and Terminator 2 in 1991 to break through 200 million dollars domestically.
It was not just the box office. Toy Story's merchandise products were also continuing to sell extremely well.
Based on the current merchandise sales momentum, industry insiders generally predicted that although Toy Story's North American box office might only reach 200 million dollars, the comprehensive revenue this project would bring to Daenerys Entertainment could possibly be even higher than Batman: The Dark Knight.
After all, Daenerys Entertainment and Time Warner had to split the profits from Batman: The Dark Knight. This Toy Story project, however, belonged entirely to Daenerys Entertainment.
With the film's success, Toy Story 2 was directly announced as greenlit.
The Lion King 2, which had already entered production, also suddenly received more attention from Hollywood.
The success of the DC Cinematic Universe had just sparked a wave of exploring comic IPs in recent years. Suddenly, Hollywood's attention was once again drawn to 3D animated films.
However, after some investigation, many people regretfully discovered that trying to follow Daenerys Entertainment into 3D animated film production was even more difficult than following Disney into 2D animated films.
Over so many years in Hollywood, only Disney had managed to establish a solid foothold in 2D animated films.
Even so, a few years ago when Michael Eisner had just taken over Disney, he had planned to shut down the declining 2D animation department. It was only because the re-releases of Disney classics in recent years had achieved good box office results, and the Disney animation department had begun to recover under Jeffrey Katzenberg's leadership, that Disney abandoned the idea.
Before Daenerys Entertainment, when people thought of animated films, the only thing that came to mind was Disney. Only Disney had produced a series of very successful 2D animated films.
Animated films, including the large cake of merchandise, had of course always been attempted by other studios.
MCA, which also operated theme parks, had made similar attempts over many years to compensate for its shortcomings in animation IPs. In the eighties it had produced 2D animated films like An American Tail and The Land Before Time, but no project comparable to Disney's classic 2D animations had ever appeared.
For 2D animated films, the lengthy production cycle was the most critical factor preventing other studios from participating in this field.
Because 2D animated films in this era were completely drawn frame by frame by animators.
Calculating for a 90-minute animated film: 90 minutes, 5,400 seconds, 24 frames per second, meaning 24 hand-drawn sheets per second, totaling 129,600 sheets. This was only the theoretical number. Considering mistakes, discarded drafts, revisions, and other factors, the actual number of drawings needed for each animated film far exceeded the theoretical figure.
However, a mature animator could only draw 10 to 20 sheets per day. In addition, to maintain consistency in the animation film's style, the team size for one animated movie should not be too large.
Therefore, before the eighties, traditional Disney hand-drawn 2D animated films required a minimum production cycle of four years.
However, even so, for 2D animated films, as long as one was willing to spend money and invest patiently, the threshold was still not too high. There were still many animation talents in the world.
By comparison, the threshold for 3D animated films was obviously much higher.
Just the software and hardware systems for producing 3D animated films, in this era, Daenerys Entertainment was the only one with them.
Daenerys Entertainment led the industry by at least five years in 3D animation software, image rendering software, and even the world's first rendering farm and other hardware and software facilities.
Even if others spent five years to close that gap, launching a 3D animated film would still require at least another two years at minimum, totaling seven years.
Moreover, continuously investing for seven years and spending tens of millions of dollars, the result was that no one could guarantee whether a film would succeed.
In the original timeline, Toy Story was born in 1995, when similar 3D animation software had already appeared in the industry.
Even so, after Toy Story, other companies' successful 3D animated hits, such as DreamWorks' Shrek or Fox's Ice Age, only appeared after 2000.
The gaps were generally more than five years.
Illumination Entertainment later emerged more than a decade after Toy Story was born.
In 1991 now, due to limited market capacity, drafting software companies like Autodesk had not even planned to develop 3D animation software yet.
Not only that, even if other studios poached talent from Daenerys Entertainment with high salaries to build their own teams, besides the risks in time and capital, they also had to consider technical patent issues.
Daenerys Entertainment had applied for a series of patent barriers on 3D animation software, rendering software, and various hardware facilities that were enough to build a moat. Some core technical talents had also signed non-compete agreements with Daenerys Entertainment. Once they resigned, they could not engage in related professions for at least three years.
In short, unless Daenerys Entertainment was willing to actively open up its technology and talent restrictions, in the short term, besides Daenerys Entertainment, it would be impossible for a second Hollywood studio to produce 3D animated films.
Simon naturally would not easily release the technology in his hands.
Therefore, as long as it was managed properly, the 3D animated film market would be monopolized by Daenerys Entertainment throughout the entire nineties.
After Toy Story, the runner-up for the second week of the Thanksgiving period was taken by GoldenEye.
Although the lead actor was still Timothy Dalton, under the stable MGM management team and with Simon personally overseeing it, the quality of GoldenEye was clearly a level higher than the previous entries. Its production budget therefore reached 50 million dollars.
In its opening week, GoldenEye earned 32.79 million dollars. Although this result could not compare to this year's blockbusters like Batman: The Dark Knight, Terminator 2, and the nearby Toy Story, it still met MGM's expectations.
It should be known that the previous 007 film, Licence to Kill, had only earned 34.66 million dollars in North America total.
GoldenEye had only been in theaters for one week, yet its box office accumulation was already comparable to Licence to Kill.
However, GoldenEye's critical reception was only around 7 points, not particularly outstanding. Based on the film's various data feedback, although its opening week was good, breaking 100 million dollars domestically would still be quite difficult.
Considering the film's 50 million dollar production budget and 20 million dollar marketing expenditure, to recoup costs they could only rely on overseas market performance.
The third place on the chart was The Addams Family from Paramount Pictures.
In its second week of release, The Addams Family's box office drop was 33 percent, earning another 20.88 million dollars for a cumulative total of 52.05 million dollars.
According to this box office curve, whether its North American total could break 100 million dollars was still uncertain.
Columbia Pictures' My Girl starring Macaulay Culkin earned 14.27 million dollars in its opening week, ranking fourth.
With a 30 million dollar production cost and 14.27 million in the first week, it clearly fell short of Columbia Pictures' expectations. The film's word of mouth was also mediocre, with a composite score of only around 5.6.
For a fast-consumption holiday comedy, Macaulay Culkin's popularity had not attracted enough audiences in the opening week. It would be even harder to draw much attention afterward. The box office prospects could only be described as average.
Cape Fear, which Daenerys Entertainment took over from Universal Pictures, earned 14.21 million dollars in its opening week, ranking fifth on the weekly box office chart by a very narrow margin behind My Girl.
This remake of the crime thriller directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro had a production budget of 35 million dollars.
The 14.21 million dollar opening was also below expectations. However, the film's critical reception was very good, and it was expected to produce a rather attractive box office curve.
While the year-end period continued, outside of Hollywood, on Monday, December 2, Ygritte Company officially announced its planned freely open World Wide Web patent list.
Although rumors had already been flying beforehand, when Ygritte Company actually began implementation, it still caused a strong wave in the industry.
Various media outlets had mixed evaluations of the entire matter.
In the broad direction, many media greatly praised Ygritte's Company's decision. However, some media raised objections, believing that Daenerys Entertainment's actions essentially completely eliminated the possibility of a second widely adopted internet technology standard emerging.
Moreover, although Ygritte Company had opened core patents related to technologies like HTTP and HTML, it still retained control over areas such as browser software, email, and online payments. Therefore, later entrants in the industry were destined to be unable to compete with Daenerys Entertainment in many aspects.
Simon had no intention of preventing similar companies from appearing to compete with Ygritte. In the plan, over the next few years, even patents for technologies like email would gradually be licensed out by Ygritte Company.
However, after this patent list announcement, Ygritte Company did not rush to announce the second phase of plans due to media praise or questioning.
As long as one carefully studied the already published patent list, interested parties could discover that after this batch of patents was opened, most of the businesses Ygritte portal was currently involved in, including online forums, personal blogs, online games, and so on, could be followed by other companies with few restrictions.
This level of openness had already exceeded most people's expectations. The industry could not realistically hope for more at this time.
Janet was successfully discharged from the hospital on the third day after giving birth to the little one.
The Johnston family also stayed in Los Angeles for about a week before gradually departing. Janet had hoped her family could stay in Los Angeles to spend Christmas together, but this was obviously unrealistic. The Johnston family all had a lot of matters to handle.
Just like on the day they first arrived at the ward, Veronica Johnston stayed in Los Angeles until the very end.
When Janet had initially hoped Veronica would help watch the child, it was in hopes that the little one would spark Veronica's desire for a family. However, during this period, Janet clearly felt that things seemed to be deviating somewhat.
Her aunt indeed showed extraordinary affection toward the newly born little Melbourne.
It was just that something always felt off.
During her stay in Los Angeles these days, Veronica came to see the child every day. She loved holding the little guy the most and would gaze at him for a very long time.
At certain moments, Janet felt as if her aunt wanted to take the little guy away and raise him as her own child.
This was too strange.
She had also joked privately, 'if you like children so much, then find someone and have one yourself.'
Veronica acted as if she had not heard such words at all.
Therefore, some doubts inevitably arose in her heart.
However, no matter how smart Janet was, it was very difficult for her to think in certain directions. This was almost a mental blind spot. Unless one was personally involved, it was hard to understand. Otherwise, Janet would not have previously developed certain misunderstandings between Simon and her aunt.
Janet had never been someone who liked to dwell on things.
Since she could not figure it out, she simply stopped thinking about it.
Anyway.
Who cares.
The little guy had already been born. After this ordeal, she no longer wanted to have a second child.
It was simply a disaster.
Moreover, for Janet, the happiest thing after the little guy's birth was being able to sleep in all kinds of positions again.
Janet loved snuggling with Simon in bed the most.
However, for the past half year or so, she had felt as if there was a third party between her and Simon.
Of course, getting her figure back was also put on the agenda.
The work she had before pregnancy also began to be picked up again.
Westerners did not have the custom of postpartum confinement. One week after the child's birth, several executives from Cersei Capital successively came to Los Angeles to personally report to Janet on the company's operations over the past half year and brought a large stack of materials.
The anxiety and restlessness from the later stages of pregnancy had also disappeared.
From this, Simon discovered that Janet's mental resilience was actually much stronger than his own.
All in all, after the little guy was born, Janet seemed like a fairy who had been released from a seal, immediately regaining the vitality she had before pregnancy.
As for the little guy, he was simply treated like a treasure by everyone. The phrase afraid of dropping him when holding him in hands, afraid of melting him when holding him in mouth was not an exaggeration at all. Even Janet, as his mother, did not need to worry too much.