Hollywood Hunter

The North American videotape of "Rola Run" has been released, and the overseas distribution of the film is also continuing.

In order to stimulate the sales of video tapes and overseas market profits, with the help of Orion and Warner, Simon unexpectedly won the Oscar for the best editing award. The media heat in the following days even exceeded the "Last Emperor" who won many awards. ".

Most of the media are inclined to humiliate Simon, believing that Oscar's conservatism and aging prevents "Rola Run" from getting the nomination and honor it deserves.

Next, on April 13, the 41st Cannes Film Festival, which will open next month, announced the shortlist, and "Pulp Fiction" successfully became one of the 21 films that entered the main competition unit.

At the press conference of the Cannes local film festival shortlist, a reporter specifically mentioned the encounter of "Rola Run" at the Oscar and asked whether the famous Italian director Ito Skola will be the chairman of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. Discriminating against "Pulp Fiction" because of Simon Westero's age, although the answer was only official clichés, and the news came back to the United States, it still caused a lot of heated discussion.

"Pulp Fiction" is scheduled for June 3rd, and the news that Cannes' films were shortlisted for the main competition unit was returned to China, and Orion Pictures also released the first TV trailer.

Due to the seamless plot structure of "Pulp Fiction", it is not easy for this movie to cut out a wonderful trailer.

The few trailers provided by Orion could not satisfy Simon, so he had to do it himself.After careful consideration, the first trailer was 1 minute and 30 seconds long. Robert De Niro, John Travolta, Robert Redford and other big coffees all appeared in the series. The dialogue finally fixed the picture on the box with golden light.

The plot of "Pulp Fiction" is still in a state of secrecy, so after the announcement of the trailer, the media quickly judged it to be a'deep treasure' type movie.

The facts are very different from the media's judgment, but this is exactly the result that Simon wants to see. Throwing the topic and triggering media discussion has always been the simplest and most effective way of film marketing. "When Harry Meets Sally" is popular at the box office. The curve has proved this.

In the third week of the large-scale release, "When Harry Meets Sally" received another 12.11 million US dollars, with a cumulative box office of 49.16 million US dollars. The whole week's decline was finally locked at 21%. The box office slip curve relative to other films in the Easter period All must be outstanding.

Although the scale of the next week's screenings expanded by 50% at one time, the second-week box office drop in Tim Burton's "Beetle Juice" is still close to 25%.

At the same time, Orion Pictures and "When Harry Meets Sally" "Good Man Johnny" released at the same time, the box office has even fallen by 51%. This week, the box office only received 1.97 million US dollars. This movie with a budget cost of 22 million US dollars in three weeks. At the box office, it was only $13.3 million.After next week, the one-month screening contract with the cinema will expire, and the movie will basically withdraw from the big screen.

In Simon's view, the failure of "Good Man Johnny" heralds the performance of Orion Pictures this year, which is destined to fall sharply.

In the first two years, after producing several box-office hits, the blindly expanding Orion Pictures production and distribution scale this year is exactly the same as that of the seven majors, and even surpassed several major film companies such as MGM and other relatively weak performers.

However, with the exception of "Pulp Fiction", Simon didn't see the second movie with great sales potential in Orion's long list of films.

After the stock market crash last year, the life of Hollywood will not be too good in the next few years. The decline of Orion is as inevitable as companies such as Canon, New World, and DeLaurentis Entertainment. Simon can only watch with cold eyes.

At the beginning of the month, he negotiated with Disney and signed the overseas distribution rights contract of "When Harry Meets Sally". Daenerys Films received a $30 million sell-off payment in late April.

Compared to the $15 million production cost of "When Harry Meets Sally",

According to the original contract, excluding production costs, Daenerys Pictures will receive 60% of the film's net profit.Calculated in this way, Da Ni Lisi film industry can get 16.5 million US dollars of 30 million US dollars in sales.After the production cost of 15 million US dollars is offset, all the next revenue, Daenerys Pictures will be able to get 60% of it.

Before "Harry Meets Sally" was released, Daenerys had been spending money on water, and now it finally started to pay off, and Amy Pascal's tense mind had obviously relaxed a lot.

Simon can see that she has been worried that Daenerys Pictures will rise and collapse like companies such as Canon.

Although Simon now has a rich net worth, if Daenerys is really following the footsteps of Canon and other companies, he will definitely not continue to throw money at this company. Amy is clearly very aware of this.

However, the expansion of Daenerys seems to be equally blind, but Simon knows how successful the company's series of projects is.

Whether it is the Seventh Party or the second-tier film company like Orion, it is usually through the investment of a large number of projects, such as the way of spreading the net, in anticipation that there will be several box office sales.As long as this can be achieved, the film company can basically achieve good profits.

Because of Simon's prophetic advantage, Daenerys film industry is equivalent to directly raising a few big fish in the fishing net.

April 21.

In the new week, Simon got up early in the morning and saw news from the Los Angeles Times that negotiations between the Producer Union and the American Screenwriters Union broke down again.

Santa monica.

Daenerys film headquarters, arrived at the company at eight o'clock, Simon watched the samples of "Rainman" in the last few days, the time has just arrived at work.Amy also rushed to the company in advance, and when Simon came out of the screening room, she talked about it: "Simon, did you hear the news?"

Because it is Monday, the heads of various departments under Daenerys Films and the heads of a series of projects will hold a weekly meeting.

Simon and Amy came to the meeting room and nodded with several other executives who had arrived, saying: "Of course, so our reality TV project can enter the substantive production stage."

Negotiations between producers' unions and screenwriter unions have broken down. Naturally, it is impossible to say that restarting will restart. Both parties need to take a hold, and it is at least next month's thing to be on the negotiating table again.

According to the operation process of the American television industry, every March and April, large and small TV program producers will start to look for projects and produce pilot episodes, and then to several major TV networks and cable TV stations in the annual TV program promotion season in May. Promote.

Due to the strike of the screenwriter, let alone the pilot episode, many filmmakers now do not even have a few scripts.

Originally, if a settlement can be reached this month, and the construction period is urgently rushed, everyone will not delay the promotion season next month.Negotiations broke down again, and this matter naturally cannot be discussed.Missing this most important time node, the TV business of several major TV networks will be affected throughout the year.

Amy heard Simon say this, nodded, but said: "However, Simon, I heard that WGA is trying to reach an agreement with the second and third line production companies recently, what should we do?"

Simon thought about it. In the memory of the 1988 strike, a large number of second- and third-line production companies did sign agreements with WGA before the major studios and television networks.But the Hollywood giant’s countermeasures were also very decisive. The four major TV networks directly announced that they would no longer purchase programs from those production companies that had signed contracts with WGA in advance. WGA subsequently brought the four major TV networks to court with an anti-monopoly lawsuit. .

Flashing these messages in his mind, Simon shook his head decisively: "No matter what others do, we will not participate."

Even if WGA can win anti-monopoly lawsuits, it is easy for the TV network to wear small shoes for those second- and third-tier production companies that are anti-waterfront.What's more, reversing to WGA in advance will not bring any benefits to Daenerys, and Simon does not intend to blend this muddy water.

Simon chatted with Amy, the executives of various departments and the heads of related projects arrived one after another, and the meeting began soon.

A large series of projects that are spread out require a lot of manpower. After several months of continuous recruitment and expansion, Daenerys Pictures now has various departments such as film, television, distribution, personnel, and finance, even if it is not a temporary hire for a single project. The number of fixed employees under the company has also exceeded 50.

The two-story office building that was leased out now is very crowded. Simon has been looking for new office space for the company recently.

However, this is not an easy task.

If all goes well, Simon plans to upgrade Daenerys Pictures to Daenerys Entertainment next year, and all major departments such as film, television and distribution will also become subsidiaries, which will definitely bring about another large-scale expansion of the company.

Daenerys has moved once, and Simon doesn't want to toss about it once in a year or two.

The meeting took place for more than two hours, near noon, and everyone dispersed.

Overall, all projects under Daenerys Pictures are progressing steadily.

"Instinct" and "Rainman" have already started shooting.

"Scream" will also start shooting in a small town in northern California at the end of the month.

The negotiations between the producers’ union and the screenwriters union broke down, and Simon also strengthened his determination to squeeze the "Death Poetry Club" and "Steel Magnolia" into the two popular schedules at the end of the year, so the preparations for these two projects will also be accelerated. Expect to start shooting in the next one to two months.

From the two low-cost movies "Sisters" and "Metropolis" selected by Sundance, Simon completely let go to the producers below.

As for the Thunderbolt Blue Sky Messenger, Simon just held a kind of'man makes money and women spend money' thoughts, letting go is more thorough, Catherine can do whatever she wants, if you lose it, you will lose it. What about women.

In the end, apart from the four reality shows that are still in the works, only Batman is controlled by Simon.

After the regular meeting in the morning, on the afternoon of that day, Daenerys Pictures opened the first round of cast selection for the actor of Batman.

Simon has already released the harsh conditions of playing Bruce Wayne ahead of time.

With five film contracts and a fifteen-year contract period, Daenerys Pictures has full control over the contract terms for the initiative to pay.

Unsurprisingly, just these three clauses made all the first-line stars in Hollywood who tried to get the role of Batman retire, and most second-line stars also made the same choice.

However, the biggest advantage of Hollywood is that there is never a shortage of actors.

Even though Daenerys Pictures has put forward many other restrictions on the premise of several strict signings, the company still received more than 1,200 resumes before the first round of casting, which is almost a large-scale sea election, Simon Naturally, there is not enough time to participate in person.The cast selection in the afternoon was entirely in charge of several casting directors.

The first round of interviews will not be conducted, but most people will be wiped out by reviewing resumes and performance videos. Only 200 people will enter the second round.

Simon also knows that such an operation will surely cause many originally well-qualified actors to fail the election, and even some private actors will be carried by several casting directors.But this is the case in this world. If the conditions are eliminated, they can only be said that they are unlucky. If you can't meet the conditions but can enter the second round of auditions through the network, that is also strength.

Things like fairness are enough to think about when dreaming.

Meanwhile, Simon came to Culver City with Amy in the afternoon.

Culver City is located east of Beverly City and north of Santa Monica City.Compared to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Burbank and other cities, Culver City is not too conspicuous in the Greater Los Angeles area. The reason why Simon rushed here is because the MGM studio was in Karl. Ephesus city center.

In the process of transforming MGM into a hotel company, MGM owner Kirk Kokrian sold MGM Studios with more than half a century of history to a company called Lorimar-Telepictures. TV production company.

In the past few years, with the support of hot money flowing into the entertainment industry, Lorimar has also expanded vigorously.

With the outbreak of the stock market crash and the current Hollywood strike, Lorimar, which has a simpler business area than New World Entertainment, is inevitably in trouble. If it is not some information from other people in memory, Simon’s previous life has not even heard of Lorimar at all. This company.

Now, Lorimar is already seeking to sell its assets in order to avoid bankruptcy.

MGM Studios with a long history is undoubtedly the most valuable property under Lorimar.It took half a day to make a circle around the 20-hectare MGM studio, and Simon and Amy left together.In the face of Amy's inquiry, Simon just shook his head in regret.

Lorimar's asking price for the MGM studios is not expensive, $100 million.

However, Simon found that most of the studios and buildings in the studio are already dilapidated. If Daenerys is bought, it will have to spend at least another $100 million to repair it.Moreover, despite its long history, the location of the MGM studios is really not satisfactory to Simon.

MGM Studios is relatively close to Beverly Hills, but it is far from Malibu, which is 30 to 40 kilometers away.Simon intends to live in Malibu. If he buys a MGM studio, he just spends at least two or three hours on the way to work every day.