Chapter 855 Exchange Rate Issues

? Chapter 855

Eric took Cindy back to his usual apartment at the entrance to Sixth Avenue, just after eight o'clock at night.

Following Eric, Cindy looked at the living room that had not changed, and said, "I don't know why, it feels a little strange to think that you always live here alone."

Eric took off his coat and hung it on the hanger, walked to the round table with the laptop next to the floor-to-ceiling window and sat down, pressed the computer's power button, and asked, "What's so strange?"

Cindy also hung up her windbreaker, sat on the steps of the entrance, took off her high boots, thought about it, and said, "Don't you feel deserted?"

Eric typed the power-on password on the keyboard, and replied, "If I remember correctly, you should live alone, right?"

"It's like, yes," Cindy suddenly thought, still thinking in her heart, put away her high boots, stepped on her slippers and walked to the wine cabinet in the corner of the living room, picked up a bottle of whiskey, and then said: "It's strange, I don't feel the same way about you living alone as I do."

"It's very interesting, let me know when you understand," Eric felt that this topic seemed familiar, and he didn't bother to delve into it. He logged into his work mailbox and opened the "Titanic" box office data email sent from Los Angeles.

Cindy tilted her head and opened the small freezer in a distracted way. She turned her head and asked, "Do you want to add ice?"

"Actually, I don't like drinking."

"That's such a waste. The wine in your cabinet adds up to enough to buy a nice house in Manhattan," Cindy said, no longer asking Eric's opinion, and added ice on her own. He came over with two glasses of whiskey. Putting a glass of wine by Eric's hand, Cindy pulled the chair back and asked, "Can I take a look?"

The content of the email is the detailed box office data and some box office trend analysis of "Titanic" in recent weeks, most of which will appear in the public media, and there is no need to keep it secret.

Eric nodded, gave way to the side, and took a sip from the glass of whisky.

With Eric's permission, Cindy was quite happy, but when she saw that the 12-inch laptop screen was covered with dense data tables and text, she suddenly felt a little dizzy and lost all interest.

After patiently watching Eric for a while, Cindy got up and said, "I want to take a bath, Eric, do you want to come together?"

Eric patted Cindy's little hand on his shoulder: "You go first, I'll wait a while."

After Cindy left, Eric turned his gaze to the laptop screen again.

"Titanic" began to pull back after reaching an unprecedented peak at the global box office in a single week of Oscars week.

In its 15th week of release in North America, the single-week box office quickly slid below $20 million to $18 million as its popularity ran out. The overseas box office has not continued the feat of breaking the 200 million box office in a single week. Compared with the 236 million US dollars in the 14th week, the overall overseas box office in the 15th week fell by 25%, and received another 177 million US dollars.

In the following weeks, the North American box office decline continued to expand. In the last week, the total domestic box office reached 571 million US dollars, but the single-week box office also fell below the 10 million US dollar mark, with only 9.3 million.

However, the box office decline in overseas markets has remained at a relatively weak 20%. From the 13th week of the outbreak of overseas markets to the present, the total box office in overseas markets has soared from over US$400 million to a terrifying US$1.281 billion. The figures also pushed the film's global gross to a high of $1.852 billion.

Although the North American box office fell into the million-dollar range, it has begun to end, which also means that the North American box office of "Titanic" will not be much different from the previous life.

However, due to the adoption of a completely different overseas distribution strategy from the original time and space,

A large number of overseas ticket-holding countries were released one after another in the most prosperous weeks of "Titanic", which also inspired more potential audiences to watch the movie, making the overseas box office of "Titanic" better than ever.

Although the continuous decline in the North American box office of "Titanic" in the previous life will definitely have the same effect, but due to the lack of confidence in the film by the distributor Fox, the film's overseas promotion and theater scale are destined to be incomparable to the present. When "Titanic" achieved the double miracle of box office and awards in North America, the release rhythm of many overseas ticket warehouse countries has come to an end, and the awards and box office miracle of "Titanic" in North America can no longer give full play to the effect of stimulating the market.

At the same time, Eric also found that due to different distribution strategies, the recovery cycle of overseas box office is also significantly more concentrated when most overseas markets have been thoroughly stimulated. Since "Titanic" is at its peak, once it is released, most overseas audiences who are interested in "Titanic" will choose to go to the cinema to watch the movie as soon as it is released. This is also the miracle of "Titanic" in the 14th week. The most important reason for the record of $236 million at the overseas box office in a single week.

Moreover, this factor also caused the overseas box office drop of "Titanic" to be significantly larger than that of North America. The 25% drop in the 15th week relative to North America also prevented "Titanic" from continuing to achieve 200 million in a single week.

However, although the overseas box office of "Titanic" has dropped to 68 million US dollars in the last week, the weekly box office decline in overseas markets has obviously begun to narrow to less than 20%, which means that the film has passed a few weeks, squeezed out the pure It's just that after the 'moisture' of ordinary passers-by audiences affected by the halo of box office awards, the larger core group of overseas fans than North America is still making efforts. It is expected that in the next two months, the overseas box office of "Titanic" will still be able to collect more. About $300 million, combined with the North American box office slack, also means that Titanic's global total is likely to eventually hit a high of $2.2 billion.

Looking back at the end of last year, affected by a lot of bad remarks in the media and the lack of confidence of everyone around him, Eric once just hoped that as long as the film could recover the cost, everything would be fine.

Later, the North American box office of "Titanic" began to explode, and Eric put down his anxiety and began to expect the film to reach the box office data of his previous life.

Before and after the Oscars, the film accumulated popularity for several months, began to be released on a large scale, and created a box office miracle of 236 million US dollars in a single week overseas. Eric couldn't help but think that perhaps the film's global box office could exceed 2 billion US dollars. indefinite.

Now, looking at Firefly's final $2.2 billion prediction for the movie's final box office, Eric's mind is running out of ideas.

Perhaps, miracles should be something that breaks the limits of everyone's imagination.

On the email page, behind the global box office forecast, is the detailed analysis of several important overseas box office countries in the issuing section.

Eric was no longer interested in this information, and pulled down the page, intending to quickly browse the rest of the email. However, when he saw the Japanese box office analysis, Eric was suddenly attracted by a number.

30 billion yen.

This is the distribution department's estimate of the total Japanese box office of "Titanic".

"Titanic" currently has a Japanese box office equivalent of 220 million US dollars. The reason Eric noticed this number was not just because it was a full $80 million higher than the box office figure in the original time and space.

More because, this number is almost the same as "Spirited Away", which was the number one box office in Japanese film history in the original time and space. However, after the exchange rate conversion, the 30 billion yen is equivalent to 280 million US dollars, but he happened to remember that the former Historically, the domestic box office of "Spirited Away" is equivalent to 250 million US dollars.

Where did the other $30 million go?

Glancing at the page again, Eric quickly found a set of numbers, 107:1, which is the current exchange rate between the Japanese yen and the US dollar.

In an instant, Eric understood a lot of things.

In the original time and space, "Titanic" was released in North America at the end of 1997, and the release time of Southeast Asian countries is about the same.

At the end of 1997, what time was that!

The financial crisis is raging across Southeast Asia.

In Eric's memory, the currencies of Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines were almost cut in half. Even Japan, affected by the overall economic situation, has depreciated its currency by about 20%. It is obviously impossible for these devastated monetary systems to return to normal in a short period of time.

Then, according to this series of information to convert, once in history, in 1998, the exchange rate of the Japanese yen to the US dollar should be around 133:1, and at that time, the box office of "Titanic" in Japan was equivalent to 200 million US dollars, according to the current 107: If the exchange rate of 1 is calculated, it should be about 250 million US dollars.

The difference of $30 million this time should probably be regarded as an additional gain due to factors such as changes in the release strategy, rather than the somewhat unbelievable $80 million just now.

Realizing this, Eric immediately operated the mouse again and slid the page to the detailed overseas box office numbers.

In addition to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and other major ticketing countries and regions in Southeast Asia, the current cumulative box office has also reached 120 million US dollars.

In other words, Southeast Asian countries and regions, including Japan, will contribute a total of 430 million US dollars to the global box office of "Titanic", and Firefly will eventually be able to get a share of 150 million US dollars in revenue.

But obviously, this has to be while Southeast Asia's monetary system remains stable.

According to the release progress of most Southeast Asian ticket warehouses, if Firefly follows the normal settlement steps in the past and wants to get a share, it will have to wait until September at least. At that time, the Southeast Asian economic crisis is already in full swing, affected by exchange rate factors, Firefly made 22 The $100 million global box office figure will definitely be lowered. If this is still irrelevant, the most intuitive result is that Firefly may eventually lose more than $50 million in revenue.

Even if the Firefly family has a big business, Eric can't give up the $50 million in vain.

After sorting out his thoughts, Eric opened the draft box and began to write an email, detailing a series of findings he had just made, and hoped that the Firefly management would discuss and come up with corresponding solutions as soon as possible.

On the other side of the living room, the bathroom door opened, and Cindy walked out with only a bath towel on her body, dangling her two long white legs.

Sitting down in the position just now, Cindy tidied up her still wet hair. Seeing Eric's face focused on typing on the keyboard, he swayed his calf restlessly, stretched out his toes and scratched twice on Eric's leg. .

Eric's tapping stopped, turned his head and glanced at the woman, took the glass of whisky in his hand to drink the last bit of liquor, shook the glass to Cindy, and handed it over: "Hey, take it."

The original cube of ice in the glass had melted to the size of a walnut, and it made a crisp clanging sound as Eric swayed.

Cindy took the cup, with a smile on her lips, but a bit more water in her eyes, her expression resentful: "Come again, this ice cube has been soaked in whisky, you want to kill me."

"Heh, I'd like to see how you've been killed," Eric glanced at Cindy's glass of whisky that hadn't been drunk much, said with a smile, and started typing on the keyboard again.

Cindy looked at the ice cubes dipped in whiskey in her glass, shrank her neck, picked up Eric's glass obediently, and poured the ice cubes into her mouth, her cheeks bulging and her eyes still staring. Eric.

Eric ignored the woman's deliberately cute appearance, and after thinking about writing the email, he copied Katzenberg, Frank Wells and other high-level executives, and then turned off the computer.

Seeing that Eric was done, Cindy blinked and spit out the ice cubes in his mouth. The original edges and corners of the ice cubes seemed a lot rounder: "It seems, it's still a bit big."

Eric picked up the woman, walked to the sofa, and said with a smile, "Do you like small ones?"

"Bah, um..."

...

When Eric sent that email, some people in Los Angeles were still out of get off work.

It didn't take long for Katzenberg and others to call.

After a weekend in East Hampton, Eric returned to Los Angeles on Monday for the first meeting to formally discuss Eric's email.

"According to our preliminary negotiated plan," during the meeting, Katzenberg recounted the results of everyone's discussions over the weekend, saying: "We can use the hedging method in foreign exchange transactions to cash out the benefits of Southeast Asian countries in advance. , however, it will certainly cause some losses.”

After a weekend in East Hampton, Eric returned to Los Angeles on Monday for the first meeting to formally discuss Eric's email.

"According to our preliminary negotiated plan," during the meeting, Katzenberg recounted the results of everyone's discussions over the weekend, saying: "We can use the hedging method in foreign exchange transactions to cash out the benefits of Southeast Asian countries in advance. , however, there will certainly be some damage." (To be continued.)