Hollywood (我就是好莱坞) Part I

Chapter 155 - Talking Nonsense Seriously

On July 10th, the first week of《Running Out of Time》's box office was officially released. Although the question posed by George Northern caused a storm in the public, the reputation of the《Running Out of Time》movie itself had not been affected much. More than 70% of the film reviews had praised the film. The first week of《Running Out of Time》was still under the pressure of «Batman», meaning it just won more than 27 million US dollars during the three day box office weekend. For this data, Colombia's view was mixed.

They were happy because this meant that they would likely occupy 40-50% of this summer catalogue week at the box office. The box office of the first seven days of《Running Out of Time》still had the opportunity to hit the $40 million mark, although because of «Batman», they were sure it couldn't catch up with the first week of《Ghostbusters II》's 45 million, but this number was already enough to allow for a good night's sleep for the senior officials of the Colombia who had been worried about the《Running Out of Time》box office. If first week reached 40 million, then the total box office had a good chance to break through 200 million US dollars.

Because of the precedent set《Ghostbusters II》, Colombia was very worried that this film would follow in the footsteps of《Ghostbusters II》, which dropped more than 50% of it's box office in it's second week, and did not rebound again afterwards like «Batman» which became a blockbuster. After the box office curve of《Ghostbusters II》, it was inevitable that Colombia had such concerns. Movies are like gambling, no one knows what will happen next.

Therefore, when the turmoil caused by George Northern's questioning article had just surfaced, Colombia would of course soon convene all the executives to discuss countermeasures. The consequences of such a thing are hard to predict, perhaps after people read it, they would forget after chatting a few words. But Colombia also found that many people do not want this argument to be easily overlooked by others. In just a few days, many media have begun to help fuel the flames.

They would never allow the《Running Out of Time》, which originally had good momentum, to be affected by this question. What's more, Colombia has already understood Eric's idea of 'topic marketing', with the placement of ads in the movie and fragments of Eric's TV series. They wanted to use these to increase hype for the movie in the second week of the box office, but for this plan to be implement smoothly, they must first clarify this wave of doubts, otherwise it will be difficult to predict the effect of topic marketing, as it is likely that because of the previous questioning fans might superimpose their negative ideas creating a worse situation.

When a group of executives had some troubles about how to clarify that《Running Out of Time》was not a ringer's work, the small box of video that Eric bought into the conference room made everyone shine, after playing a few videotapes. The people quickly discussed the possible countermeasures.

CBS was located in a branch office building in Los Angeles. Eric was preparing for an appointment with a female host named Sophia Temple, and they would record a program called «Sophia Talk show». If you want to remove doubts as soon as possible, what better way than to play a videotape on the spot for more than than a million spectators on a talk show?

When an executive made this suggestion, Eric first thought of the famous «Oprah Talk show», after all, this program is really famous, but unfortunately his thoughts were quickly dispelled. Because the airing period of the «Oprah Talk show» was from September of each year to May of the following year, it was currently in the break period of this talk show. Moreover, even if the Oprah talk show was not on break now, it would be impossible to arrange their schedules in just a few days.

As such, Colombia quickly arranged another program called «Sophia Talk show» through their connections at the CBS TV station. This talk show is obviously imitating the «Oprah Talk show», but unfortunately Eric had not heard of it in his past life.