The Best Entertainment Era

Paramount Pictures headquarters in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Shirley Lansing looked at a document in her hand and asked her assistant, What's the situation with Relativity Entertainment? From Halloween last year to the present, there are four films that have been sold in succession?

She flipped through the document and frowned slightly: Purge 2 has a global box office of 135.89 million U.S. dollars, and there are still regions overseas. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a North American box office of 161.2 million U.S. dollars. The global box office of Dead House is 46.87 million U.S. dollars. Shadows is on track to exceed $150 million worldwide...

Among these films, except for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was purchased by Relativity Entertainment's Embassy Pictures in North America, the other three films were produced and distributed by Relativity Entertainment itself, and the overseas screening has not yet ended.

The assistant said at this time: Relativity Entertainment was founded in 1999. The founder is Ronan Anderson. It currently has two subsidiaries, namely Shahai Entertainment as a production company and Embassy Pictures as a distribution company.

Shirley Lansing nodded slightly: Ronan Anderson?

The name seems familiar.

The assistant reminded: You once met Ronan Anderson at a party. It was introduced by Tom Cruise. Ronan Anderson and Tom Cruise are very close now. It is said that the two have a very good personal relationship.

I remembered. Shirley Lansing flashed a young face in front of her eyes, The Blair Witch was also released by Ronan Anderson's company, right?

Yes. The assistant replied.

Shirley Lansing frowned slightly: This company is developing very fast?

The assistant said: The development speed is very fast. From the establishment of Relativity Entertainment in 1999 to the present, according to incomplete statistics, the total film revenue has reached 445.2 million US dollars. Of course, this figure is not accurate. The other party is not a listed company. Evaluators can only make rough estimates.

Shirley Lansing's wrinkled face was full of thoughts: This is among the second-tier film companies, and the performance is also top-notch.

The assistant echoed: In 2000, among the second-tier Hollywood film companies, Relativity Entertainment's revenue was second only to DreamWorks and Summit Entertainment, but the latter's income came more from the re-release of its huge film library.

Shirley Lansing quickly made a judgment: Relativity Entertainment is a young company with great potential. Compared with Summit Entertainment and DreamWorks, which have a relatively strong background, its strength is relatively not very strong, but its advantage lies in having many serialized movies.

The records are very clear,

The Human Purge Project has filmed two films, Reaper is preparing for a sequel, Bourne is a trilogy, and has also reached a long-term film adaptation cooperation with Japan's Capcom for the Resident Evil game.

Movies that can be serialized are a sharp weapon for revenue.

Shirley Lansing instructed the assistant: Let the people in the market research department pay more attention to this Theory of Relativity entertainment, and submit a related report to me every quarter... no, every six months.

The assistant quickly took notes.

Shirley Lansing's energy is quickly turned away. A film company that is not even comparable to DreamWorks is not worth her wasting too much time. Paramount Pictures will not invest too much energy in it. If Relativity Entertainment develops It's going well, just like those small and medium-sized companies that have developed in the past, just find a suitable opportunity to buy them directly and turn them into subsidiaries.

Not every studio is as ambitious as DreamWorks.

Although the situation of DreamWorks is not very good, and good friend Spielberg is in many troubles, but no one can ignore the influence of DreamWorks giants and the international consortium behind them, such as opponents of this level, if they are not paying attention, they will really be defeated. Counterattack superior.

The capacity of the North American film market has almost reached its limit, and the six companies standing on the first floor of the cake are already very crowded.

This layer really cannot tolerate new companies coming to grab the cake.

Some time ago, I met with Ron Mayer. The giant of Universal Pictures was right. No matter how good their relationship with Spielberg is, they must not be merciful when they should suppress DreamWorks, otherwise the current position will not be firm.

In early July, The Bourne Movie's North American box office officially broke the $100 million mark, and the global box office reached $168.9 million.

With a long running time to follow, it can be said that the film has been a success.

Various negotiations for the sequel have also made key progress, especially Matt Damon as the leading actor. After changing the brokerage company, Ronan conducted three rounds of negotiations with him and reached an agreement on Matt Damon's salary. The subsequent detailed negotiations were handed over to the deputy producer of the crew.

Matt Damon's salary for the sequel is as high as $10 million, not including the post-production share.

This is also the result of Ronan's efforts to negotiate. There will be a third part later, and the later share will become an important bargaining chip in the next part of the negotiation.

Matt Damon is also quite satisfied with the salary crossing the tens of millions of dollars in one step.

Both parties are very sincere about continuing to cooperate, and can feel each other's sincerity.

In addition, the salary of director Paul Greenglass has risen to 5 million US dollars, which is also in line with the worth of a director with a box office of 100 million yuan.

Ronan is still very tight in terms of salary negotiations, which is basically the case in business negotiations, especially in the face of stars whose self-confidence is almost exploded. If the price is not properly lowered, these guys will definitely dare to rebound to a jaw-dropping level .

For example, a certain crew of Warner Bros. wanted to invite a certain star to play a role in a small role. Because the director admired him so much, he relaxed a bit in terms of salary. As a result, the actor directly asked for nearly twice the actual amount. Net worth of $ 13 million salary.

And this is not a protagonist or a supporting role, but a cameo role, which is more classified as a friendship price in Hollywood.

The cooperation naturally fell through, and I'm afraid the crew is also regretting the invitation strategy they adopted.

On top of that, this sort of thing has a pretty scary continuum, especially for a studio.

Today, you can hire a male lead regardless of the salary, but what about the female lead and the director? Is there a follow-up film project for the company? None of those celebrities' managers are simple.

This is not a matter of a little money, but of very large sums.

Bourne Shadow 2, which is Bourne's Hegemony, will start preparations in August, and filming will start around the beginning of next year, and it will be released in the summer of 2003.

With a one-year gap, Spy Shadows can leave more room for offline market development.

According to Ronan's judgment, the film's offline market revenue may be much higher than the theater's box office.

The Spy video tapes are in the process of being produced, and the goods will be distributed in August, and it is expected to be officially launched in November or December.

During this period of time, the impact of social and political changes will definitely be reduced a lot.

Moreover, the offline market is different from public places like theaters, which are afraid of terrorist attacks. When people are traumatized, they can just hide at home, sit in front of the TV, and watch some interesting and videotapes to heal their wounds.

Having said that, in this special time period, will the sales of art blockbusters produced in the San Fernando Valley be particularly good? This kind of film kills hostility, consumes energy, exercises the body, is beneficial to physical and mental health, and can also make the anger of the people of the United States have nowhere to vent, and has a suitable outlet...

It's a pity that Ronan only studied the film itself in his previous life, but didn't carefully study the manufacturers behind the film.

Like woodpeckers,,,,, black factories and the like, he really doesn't know what to do.

It seems that this industry is very profitable. It is said that the overall market value even exceeds that of Hollywood. If the opportunity is right in the future, should we also find a related manufacturer? Would this be too low-key?

But I heard that the shareholders behind those major art factories in the San Fernando Valley are all star companies or general groups like General Electric.

If true, it's not surprising.

As long as it can make money, capital will not let go of every industry.

It was also at the end of July that Ronan met Uwe Ball who was rushing back to Los Angeles from Irvine.

They look so condescending!

I don't know why, Uwe Bauer's face is full of flesh, and there is a faint emotion called grievance: No matter what I do, I am also a director who successfully adapted a game into a movie!

Knowing that Uwe Ball was talking about his contact with Blizzard, Ronan asked, What's going on?

Even Uwe Bauer's voice was a little hoarse: They don't sell me the rights to the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo games, and they say they would rather never make a movie than sell me the rights to these games This kind of director.

What's wrong with a director like me? Uwe Bauer raised his voice unconsciously: No matter what, my first film sold nearly 50 million US dollars at the box office all over the world!

Ronan didn't have any special feelings for Blizzard, so he asked, No hope at all?

Uwe Ball shook his head: There is no normal way, unless we find a way to trick Blizzard.

Let's forget it. Ronan thought it was not worth investing so much energy in Blizzard's game adaptation movie, and left it to Blizzard's future operations to hit the street, and said to Uwe Ball: The game industry is developing rapidly, and the electronic There are so many movies and so many film adaptations that you can keep looking for other projects, especially the games that just came out.

After some game projects are launched, they are eager to recover capital. It should be easy to sell some movie copyrights for money.

Uwe Ball nodded and said, A friend of mine played the internal version of a role-playing stand-alone game. It is said to be very interesting. This game will be released soon. I will contact the game company first.

Ronan encouraged: Uwe, I believe in your ability.

Even if no new projects are found, Uwe Ball could return to direct a sequel to House of the Dead.