Hollywood legendary director

Nowadays, in the era of algorithms and information flow, all show a truth: premium "subscription".

And if you are more careful, you will find that the development of human civilization always revolves around two most primitive desires:

Breed and kill!

Perhaps it is sex and violence in detail.

The content creation of the film and television industry cannot do without these two most important thematic elements from the day it was developed.

Godard said: "Give me a gun for a girl and I can make a movie."

Although exaggerated, there is no doubt that sex and violence hide countless story inspirations and are also inexhaustible material.

HBO is perhaps the most well-versed platform.

From "The Sopranos", "The Wire", "The Brotherhood"...

HBO interprets their brand advertising with one after another fine American TV series-this is not an A movie, but HBO.

Since its inception in 1972, they have used the charm of countless dramas to attract nearly 25 million subscribers, accounting for 80% of the US pay TV channel market.

This means that for every ten paid TV subscribers, at least eight have watched HBO.

Rough calculations, HBO can earn more than 2 billion per year for subscription money alone (users have to spend 10 to 15 dollars a month on the basic package fee of tens of dollars to watch HBO's solo episodes) .

This means that without relying on advertisers, HBO can continue to flourish as long as they fully meet the viewing needs of subscribers.

As soon as the "The Walking Dead" nearly 27 million users watched the data, the conference room suddenly became quiet.

"This……"

The executive of the HBO production department sighed dumbly, as if something was stuck in his throat.

Compared with the layman's attitude towards these data, everyone here can more intuitively appreciate the meaning of such achievements.

After all, the "FireWire" series was HBO's trump card series last year, and it will continue to be produced this fall, with less than 20 million users following the series.

But "The Walking Dead", this is only the first episode, surpassing the achievements of the resource tendency of "FireWire" in the past two years.

Only for a while, he seemed to see the shadow of "Brothers" that brought HBO to the next level...

In terms of filming costs, "The Walking Dead" does not have so many war scenes. It saves a lot of money and may have more profits.

Of course, it is no longer a measure of profit.

What HBO needs is brand influence, which is similar to Disneyland's golden sign in real estate...

"Can you elaborate on it? The statistics are clearer." Someone suddenly raised his head and asked with wide-eyed eyes.

The appearance of some gaffes is also the inner portrayal of some executives.

Only the first CEO frowned in peace...

The person continued to report: "The average ratings of the first episode were 6.1, and the highest statistic exceeded 6.4, and the signs of decline are very stable."

Well, this also means that the audience is not satisfied with their curiosity because of the intensity of publicity, but is really satisfied with the content of the series, otherwise the fluctuation of the ratings will be too stable.

"Could it be a statistical error?" another executive questioned.

"No, the data collected by the company has been compared with Nielsen, there is no problem."

Nielsen is the most authoritative organization in the field of statistics and surveys, and they often get real-time data on movie box office first.

"If there is no calculation error, I think we should have a good talk with Lehman. This is... crazy."

"Of course... and we need to do it as soon as possible."

...

If the success of "Prison Break" can be attributed to reasons such as luck or vision, but also because the ratings of "Prison Break" are not exploding, at least a few TV network's ace dramas can be overwhelmed and not so impressive. If you value it.

But when Firefly Pictures made another move to reconfirm their TV drama production capabilities, many people couldn't sit still.

After the statistics of the specific screenings of "The Walking Dead" came out, it was like a gentle breeze that quickly blew through the entire film and television circle.

Numerous telephone rings rang, and many people were communicating with each other.

In this era, the people's audio-visual entertainment channels are very extensive, so it is not very common for audiences to follow dramas with more than 20 million people.

And those who can get this kind of result are either the pillars of a few TV networks or the hit dramas that have accumulated several years of fame.

What is even more rare is that the second project that Firefly Pictures has stepped into TV series production not only surpassed the previous one, but also has a high audience reputation.

You know, even for HBO, it takes several years for a similar project to appear, and it is carefully selected from countless ideas in the industry.

When "The Walking Dead" came out, it directly rose to the ranks of the ace project, and directly brought more than five million new paying people.

Therefore, as the person who is the most critical cause of all this.

Lehman is still leading the preparations for the "Mist" project, and has to spare his energy to respond to these tireless calls.

The first one was from Barry Meyer himself.Barry Meyer talked a little bit about the popularity of "The Walking Dead", and then he hoped that Lehman would make time. HBO executive Rupert wanted to meet Lehman in person.After that, the two chatted for more than ten minutes. They still wanted to deepen their cooperation. They also wanted to invest in Firefly, and promised that Warner Group would maintain the autonomy of Firefly Pictures, and the personnel management did not interfere.

Lehman hung up after a few vague words.

After putting down the phone, Lehman hadn't had time to carefully ponder the news brought by Barry Meyer, the phone ringing still kept ringing.

The second is Garcia, the third spinning top, and then the fourth, fifth...

For the next more than an hour, Lehman spent time and again answering the phone. It wasn't until noon that he had lunch before he had a reason to refuse, shut down, and the whole world became clean.

Anyway, Lehman has not encountered a similar situation.

When movies were selling hot, they always received phone harassment from these profit-seekers.

To put it bluntly, when others recognize your strength, opportunities and cooperation will always automatically gather around you.

Just like Pixar Animation Studios in the first 3D animation feature film "Toy Story", it first revealed the novel animation expression methods that can be used, which led to its market value rising from more than 20 million to the current estimate of billions. Value, and is still most valued by Disney, and has always wanted to earn it.

Moreover, the purpose of these people calling, except for the congratulations from the staff of the Firefly headquarters, the rest is to cooperate, or the broadcasting copyright of The Walking Dead...