Highlight the atmosphere

On September 7th, while the entire crew enjoyed their break, Lyman had to make the effort to attend the Golden Globe Awards ceremony.

In the car, Lyman sat next to Eva, and their companions were Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood.

All four of them were nominated for Golden Globe Awards, but not for the same film.

Or rather, Clint was nominated for his role as the director of "Mystic River", with nominations for Best Director and Best Picture. Lyman, on the other hand, was nominated for his outstanding work in "Miscreant", with nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, among others.

As for Morgan, he was both a presenter and nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a police officer in "Miscreant". Eva received her nomination for Best Newcomer based on her performance in the same film.

However, René and Thomas chose not to accompany them, which disappointed Lyman. Besides, Thomas, being a cinematographer, was nominated for Best Cinematography, but he wanted to go on a spree with René. If he won, he even wanted René to accept the award on his behalf.

Although this was quite common at the Golden Globe Awards, such as in the animation category where as long as there was Pixar, they usually swept the awards, and they often sent just one or two people to handle it.

But Lyman still disapproved.

After the car ride, they each went their separate ways.

Lyman and Eva naturally returned to the luxurious mansion in Beverly Hills.

By the time they were ready to rest, "Saw" had just finished its final run in the overseas market. While the Japanese movie market was quite open to Hollywood films, they had strict domestic protection policies, meaning they allowed screenings, but the timing was determined by them.

This had caused "Saw" to finish its run here over half a month after it had ended in other overseas markets.

However, it was worth noting that due to the film's quality and possibly the Japanese audience's acceptance of horror genres, "Saw" had grossed ¥762M in Japan alone, equivalent to over $6.9M. This brought the total box office earnings to $346M, making for a perfect finale.

You see, even with the enormous box office draw of someone like Tom Cruise and the very crowd-pleasing "The Last Samurai," it had only earned ¥1.072B in Japan. "Miscreant", which wasn't exactly a Japanese favorite to begin with, had only grossed ¥536M.

Firefly Films originally had over $100M in funds on their books. However, they spent over $27M on the production of "Saw II" and "Million Dollar Baby", plus an additional $3M on internal operations, as well as the purchase of another floor in the office building to expand the office space, which cost over $3M. With the funds from Mann Studio also pouring in, the company now had over $460M in its accounts.

However, if you looked at it now, the overseas share of "Saw" would be paid in after a period, which meant that they would have over $20M more in box office revenue.

With this calculation, the company's current liquid assets were over $480M.

Amazingly, they had earned so much money without even realizing it.

It seemed that making movies did indeed yield higher profit margins than stock trading. No wonder the bigwigs on Wall Street were all eager to enter Hollywood's film and television production circle.

Damn it, as long as a movie became a hit across America, Franklin would continuously flow in from all directions.

As an example, in 2012, Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4B, solely to obtain its numerous movie rights, with the most significant being "Star Wars".

And the profits from "Star Wars: Episode VII", "Star Wars: Episode VIII", and "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" exceeded $1.5B. In other words, considering the company's other values aside, the ongoing development of just one movie could recoup 40% of the acquisition price.

Now, let's dive into the details of "Star Wars: Episode VIII" to make it more straightforward.

This film had a North American box office of $620M, an overseas box office of $710M, and a global box office total of $1.3325B.

The theatrical split accounted for approximately $600M, and earnings from global home entertainment yielded $389M.

After deducting production costs and marketing expenses, the net amount was 385 million dollars.

Subtracting copying, transport, and losses, which amounted to over $90M, and adding interest and management fees that brought in over $30M, the total expenditure was $578.3M.

The film's net profit for the production company was $417.5M, with a staggering return rate of 1.72.

In other words, thanks to this single film, Disney had already recouped nearly two years of Lyman's hard work. Of course, this was because Lyman was an investor and didn't actually participate in distribution. The biggest piece of the pie had gone to EuropaCorp and Paramount Pictures.

Just think, with four films, the total global box office had nearly reached $1B, and with peripheral operations, they could earn around $600M. Adding in character licensing and the like, total earnings should be around $1.9B. Even after deducting labor costs, production costs, losses, and theater splits, they should still have around $1B.

However, Lyman had personally received less than $300M of that money. The profits from investing in "Saw" and "Transporter" were not included in this portion.

In other words, in two years, the company's books had $480M, thanks to simple financial operations, and was supported mainly by the big returns from "Saw".

If he were to work a regular job, he probably wouldn't be able to achieve the value of an entire film series even if he worked to death.

It seemed that to truly rise, he needed to establish his own distribution channels and earn more from them.

Take DreamWorks, for example. They worked very hard as well, producing a hit film every year, along with many small profit films. They even improved their domestic distribution channel by purchasing a distribution company, but they were still unable to compete against the six major Hollywood studios, who directly crushed them and split them apart.

The six major Hollywood studios all had strong media platforms behind them, and they were indeed not to be underestimated.

However, he couldn't give up on the determination to get a piece of the pie.

Even if he couldn't establish overseas channels, he had to take care of North American distribution.

By then, he could cut down on some of the profit-sharing, move a little upstream in the industry, and avoid so much exploitation.

In terms of film distribution, the most important thing was still being able to get the film out there.

It was just like running a retail business, setting up one store at a time was manageable.

This meant that each state needed relevant departments to communicate with local theaters. The challenging part was setting up offices and hiring personnel. As long as this was resolved, distributing films across the United States would be relatively easy.