Chapter Eight Hundred and Eighty Nothing to Say
On June 16, just after the working day, the "Wall Street Journal" appeared on the news about the abnormality of the foreign exchange market in Southeast Asia.
In the major foreign exchange exchanges in Tokyo, Hong Kong Island and Singapore, the major financial centers in Asia, the exchange rates of Thai baht, Indonesian rupiah and other currencies have begun to show obvious fluctuations. sense of urgency.
In recent months, the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries have experienced a short-term rapid appreciation as international foreign exchange speculators secretly absorbed the currencies of Southeast Asian countries to open positions. The Thai baht even peaked at 22:1 against the US dollar, an appreciation of nearly 12%.
After the last two days of accumulation, on Wednesday, international foreign exchange speculators led by the Quantum Fund and Tiger Fund led by Soros suddenly officially opened their fangs to the Southeast Asian currency system. Appearing on major exchange platforms, the sudden attack caught the Thai government completely by surprise, and even failed to organize an effective counterattack in the first place.
Subsequently, the continuous selling of the Thai baht for three consecutive days easily brought the short-term appreciation of the Thai baht back to the prototype, and even fell out of the average exchange rate of the Thai baht to the US dollar in recent years of 25:1. As of Friday's close, the Thai baht to the US dollar exchange rate has plummeted to 263 :1, the depreciation rate in three days has reached an astonishing 195%.
In 1997, the total currency circulation in Thailand was about 9.2 trillion baht, which is equivalent to 370 billion US dollars based on the average exchange rate of 25:1 in recent years. But in just three days, when the exchange rate fell to 263:1, the total value of Thailand's currency had fallen to 350 billion, and the wealth of 20 billion US dollars had disappeared. And many people know that this is just the beginning.
At a time when the currency market in Southeast Asia is full of smoke, the competition at the box office of summer movies in North America is equally fierce.
After the first weekend of three days with a box office of 70.25 million US dollars, "Finding Nemo" continued to harvest the box office at a rate of 6 to 7 million US dollars a day.
In the end, the box office of "Finding Nemo" reached 97.45 million US dollars in the first week. Not only did the new film "Contact in Time" released in the same period exceed a total of more than 66 million, it was almost equivalent to the total box office of "The Lion King 2" in the first two weeks.
Affected by "Finding Nemo", the second-ranked "Macro Contact" only made $31.29 million at the box office in its first week.
"The Lion King 2" finally expanded to 36%, and only earned $27.09 million in the third week, with a cumulative box office of $12.5 billion, ranking third.
The most tragic at the box office this week is undoubtedly the fourth-place "Godzilla". Due to the one-sided negative reviews and the strong impact of "Finding Nemo", "Godzilla" fell by nearly a terrifying 68% in the second week, and the box office only There is a pitiful $23.57 million, and the two-week box office totals $97.23 million, which is not even as good as the first-week box office of Finding Nemo.
The dismal box office performance of "Godzilla" not only turned Sony's original $1 billion global box office ambition into a joke, but even the media didn't bother to comment on this doomed film.
Although Firefly's "Prison in the Sky" ranked fifth, due to the unsatisfactory performance of the two live-action blockbusters "Godzilla" and "Contact", "Prison in the Sky" still maintained a good third week of decline. On 34% of the total, it collected another $15.28 million, and the cumulative box office steadily climbed to $72.65 million. Although it is still unpredictable whether the North American box office of the film can break 100 million, compared with several films such as "The Fifth Element", "Godzilla" and "Contact", "Prison in the Air" performed quite well. What's more, the cost of "Prison in the Air" of US$75 million is the lowest among several live-action blockbusters, and there is little pressure to return the cost.
With the release of the box office data of the previous week, on Friday, June 20, "Batman and Robin", which has been tightly held by Warner, was finally released in more than 2,900 theaters in North America.
The quality of the film did not "live up" to the speculations of many media and film critics, and it is difficult to describe it with a single word.
A review in The Wall Street Journal may be able to express some of the sentiments of the majority of film critics: "Throughout the film, the images of the protagonists such as George Clooney, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc., are undoubtedly It's very close to the manga characters, but I can't really think of anything to comment on the storyline, the movie lines, the character acting, and so on."
As a superhero character that has been selling for decades in North America, Batman can be said to have the largest fan base in North America. However, with the frequent replacement of the main creator throughout the series and the decline in the quality of the film, the patience of Batman fans seems to have finally been exhausted. Although the film still won the single-day box office championship with a box office of 16.11 million US dollars on the first day, but only on the second day of its release, "Batman and Robin" was kicked down by "Finding Nemo" to the top of the single-day box office list.
Even, "Batman and Robin" also set a record for the first first Saturday box office drop in the summer. According to the usual box office rules, the first week of most films, the Saturday box office will be higher than the Friday box office. Even for "Godzilla", which also suffered a lot of bad reviews two weeks ago, the Saturday box office is higher than the Friday box office. About $2 million. But "Batman and Robin" dropped to $15.09 million the next day after making $16.11 million on its first day.
"Finding Nemo" jumped to a high of $17.5 million in a single day the next day after the $14.3 million box office was briefly suppressed by "Batman and Robin" on Friday. Still at more than $60 million, the box office performance is even better than the first-week box office of many big-budget films.
By comparison, "Batman and Robin" is expected to gross only $55 million in its first week. Considering the $125 million production cost of this manga adaptation, since the current overseas box office appeal of the Batman series is not even as good as that of "Godzilla", Warners will have to recover at least $80 million in the first week before they can rely on the box office. Achieving break-even, but now it seems that the hope is obviously very slim.
The failure of "Batman and Robin" has made many people completely lose confidence in the summer real-life blockbuster. MGM's "007 Casino Royale", which will be released next week, will naturally bear the brunt, and some entertainment media have even taken the schadenfreude. The tone awaits the appearance of Waterloo, the first box office film of Eric himself.
Eric has no time to care about these remarks in the media. The official outbreak of the Southeast Asian economic crisis has not only affected the entertainment business of the Firefly Group involving Southeast Asia, but also the entire Firefly system. Nokia, Qualcomm, and ltd have three companies in Southeast Asia. A large number of businesses, the main product factories of Nokia and ltd are also located in Thailand, the Philippines and other countries, and companies such as Yahoo and Cisco have also invested heavily in Southeast Asia in recent years. Businesses will be severely impacted.
Eric has always liked to be the shopkeeper, and usually has Chris to help take care of some affairs that he should have been involved in. But this time, Chris went to Tokyo to sit in person, and many things fell on Eric. After all, he has a lot of memories of the economic crisis in Southeast Asia in his previous life, and Eric is also willing to intervene at this time, using his memory in his previous life to make a more reasonable layout of the business of several companies.
After a busy week of various documents and conference calls, it was not until Saturday afternoon that Eric returned from Qualcomm headquarters in San Diego to Los Angeles, where he had a short break and turned his attention to Hollywood again.
Kris Jenner's mood in the past half month can only be described as ups and downs.
At the beginning of the month, my daughter, who was going to Los Angeles for the summer vacation, suddenly called her home in New York, claiming that she had received an opportunity from Eric Williams to supervise a reality show. Kris Jenner's first reaction was naturally that her daughter was joking with her, associating their family with a big man like Eric Williams, which was a joke.
After her daughter repeatedly told everything that happened in detail that day, and reported the phone number left by Eric, Kris Jenner dialed the number suspiciously, although the assistant Eric Williams called the number. The office was immediately confirmed, and Kris Jenner was still stunned for half an hour, and then she was ecstatic.
Kris Jenner has always been a woman who yearns for Hollywood Vanity Fair. When she married Robert Kardashian, she also valued that the other party has her own record company and has a very wide range of TV, music and sports celebrity circles. Networking, when Robert Kardashian sold her record label for an unrelated juice business, Kris Jenner quickly parted ways with each other, quickly splitting with TV sports personality Bruce Jenna is married.
However, although Bruce Jenner was a sports star in the 1970s, his influence has not been as strong as before since he retired. Now he can only occasionally attend some TV shows or act as a commentator on sports channels. , and the entertainment industry and Hollywood can only be regarded as barely touching.
As a loyal TV viewer, the sudden opportunity of being a reality show producer made Kris Jenner realize that if she could seize it, it would definitely take her to the sky. For this, see "Project Runway" and "America" The two producers and hosts of "Supermodel Contest" knew it.
There was no time to think about other things at all. On the day of the confirmation, Kris Jenner dragged her husband and a bunch of children to Los Angeles in a hurry, and stayed at the house of her ex-husband Robert Kardashian, and asked her daughter about it again in person. The ins and outs of the reality show, Kris Jenner bought a lot of reality show video tapes and related books and materials, and began to write the reality show program materials while referring to and pondering. The information that her husband Bruce Jenner participated together was automatically ignored by her.
A week later, Kris Jenner personally rushed to the headquarters of the Firefly Group in Burbank and handed the completed plan to one of Eric's assistants. What followed was a long and painful wait. In order to avoid the resentment of Eric's assistant, Kris Jenner only dared to call once every three days to ask for news.
I was expecting that the daughter who entered Drew Barrymore's best friend circle would be able to help find out some news, but then I found out that because of her daughter's companion, the girl from the Hilton family was kicked out of the small circle because of offending others. . As for the husband and ex-husband, when I asked about it, I discovered that the two men, who were barely considered celebrities in Los Angeles, turned out to be so far away from the inner circle of Hollywood that they could not get in touch with any useful people at all. Although Sharphorn Manor is located in a prominent position in Malibu, Kris Jenner did not have the courage to come to the door. (To be continued.)
...