I’m in Hollywood - Chapter 790
[Chapter 782 The Best Stage]
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Elizabeth is only one step away from the president at Fox, plus the special status of Murdoch’s daughter, so she has a lot of real power.
However, large projects that the company invests more than 50 million US dollars must still need to be approved by the board of directors. The chairman of Fox, of course, is her old man.
Eric’s suggestion to let Fox participate in part of the investment in “Titanic” is actually to fine-tune Murdoch, and by the way, secretly fight for more power for Elizabeth.
He knew that Murdoch, as a standard businessman, would never agree to throw money into a bottomless pit like “Titanic”. In his previous life, because Fox was too shrewd, in order to avoid risks, he used a mere $60 million to sell North America The distribution rights were sold to Paramount, and as a result, the North American box office of “Titanic” was 600 million, and all Fox cried.
This time, if “Titanic” is not a big success, that’s fine. Once the film hits the box office like the original, Murdoch will definitely pay more attention to Elizabeth’s advice in the future.
Elizabeth has correspondingly more decision-making power in the company.
The next day, when Eric was in the office, he received a call from Elizabeth, and the outcome was completely unexpected.
After the Academy Awards ceremony, “Forrest Gump” won six heavyweight awards including best picture and best director from thirteen nominations, especially Tom Hanks’ re-election, which immediately became the focus of the media. For example, the box office of the film that is still showing in hundreds of theaters in North America has rebounded significantly again. In the ninth month of the film’s release, it still received a box office of more than 3 million US dollars a week, and obtained the North American distribution rights of “Forrest Gump”. The copyrighted Firefly has also begun the next phase of the film’s distribution plans.
Firefly Studios, the time is Friday. After a period of research, Katzenberg came up with the evaluation plan of 3D and imax technology.
“According to the detailed investigation of the strategic planning department, everyone thinks that the current 3D technology may still have the possibility of promotion, but imax will not work. There are too many restrictions on this technology, and there is no possibility of large-scale promotion at all.”
The two were still sitting in a cafe in the studio at this time. Eric pushed the coffee aside, flipped through the materials that Katzenberg had sorted out, and asked, “What’s the main reason?
” In the meantime, Eric actually prefers the latter, which may be the result of being poisoned by too many fake 3D movies in his previous life.
“The main thing is the cost,” Katzenberg obviously did a lot of homework, and blurted out without reading the materials, “Just taking the cost of the theater renovation, for 3D, most theaters only need to replace one set of projection systems. The price of an advanced polarized 3D movie projector is only about 100,000 US dollars. With other hardware such as 3D eyes, the total renovation cost will never exceed 150,000 US dollars. However, the imax is different. As a five-story building,
more than 99% of the movie theaters in the United States and Europe are not eligible for conversion. If you want to build an imax theater, you can only start from scratch. The venue construction plus the projection equipment, the whole set will cost about 150 yuan. Ten thousand dollars, which is ten times the cost of 3D theater renovation.”
Listening to Katzenberg’s explanation, Eric suddenly understood why the mainland of his previous life would become the area with the fastest development of imax technology. Because of the popularity of imax and the film industry there The outbreak is almost simultaneous, and a large number of newly built theaters can determine the imax specification reads() from the beginning; Li Xiang’s Northern Song Dynasty.
However, North America and Europe are different. In these regions, the film industry has developed for a hundred years, and the supporting cinemas have long been finalized. The screening halls of these cinemas basically do not meet the imax reconstruction standards.
In the face of such a high cost of imax theaters, the enthusiasm of traditional theater chains to rebuild imax theaters will certainly not be too high.
After reading the information in hand, in addition to the cost of the theater line transformation, if you want to popularize imax, from film shooting to film conversion, almost all are accompanied by very high cost requirements.
Relatively speaking, the difficulty of popularizing 3D technology is much lower. At present, imax technology cannot support a complete movie duration of more than 90 minutes, but 3D technology has been roughly mature. Lack of cinemas.
Even, the current ‘reputation’ of 3D technology is not very good, because many theaters with 3D equipment show **** movies that give people a sense of curiosity.
Eric is not a blind idealist, many things need to be done step by step, after thinking about it for a moment, he said: “I see that imax is recently developing a dmr reset technology for converting ordinary film to imax film, you should pay attention to it , the other party’s financial situation doesn’t seem to be very good, we can invest a sum of money in. In addition, on our own side, we set up a special 3D technology research and development department in the digital field, um, when I finish filming “Casino Royale”, the next part Maybe you can try 3D for the movie.”
Katzenberg nodded, and he generally considered Eric’s suggestion, but after Eric finished speaking, Katzenberg continued: “Eric, I also think, 3D technology is definitely a brand new development area for the film industry in the next few years, so don’t you think this is a great driver for us to enter the cinema industry?”
“Cinema?” Eric raised his eyebrows unexpectedly, but he Didn’t take this into consideration.
In the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, the federal government gradually loosened its control over the entertainment industry. The Paramount Act, which stripped film companies from theater chains, has now existed in name only. Viacom, Time Warner, Universal Each has its own cinema chain, among which Viacom has the largest cinema chain, with a super-high 3,000 screens in the United States.
However, Firefly’s development and rise was relatively late, and it had not had time to get involved in the theater business. Being bound by the deep-rooted concept of the Paramount Act, Eric also subconsciously did not consider this matter.
At this time, after being reminded by Katzenberg, Eric realized that in recent years, it is indeed the best time for Firefly to get involved in the theater business.
Although many people think that “Avatar” is the beginning of the rise of 3D movies, in fact, 3D movies have already appeared in the new century. The well-known “Spider-Man” and “Harry Po” “Special” and other films, all have 3D versions, but because of various constraints, these films have not reached the powerful influence of “Avatar”.
Both 3D technology and imax have been around for more than 30 years. Therefore, the promotion of these technologies is not technically difficult. The difficulty is only the lack of strong institutions to promote them.
Well, at this time, it is not bad for Firefly to be such a ‘pioneer’.
After all, according to the historical trajectory, the North American film market reached saturation around 2000, and the market growth for more than ten years in the future was only driven by the increase in ticket prices. If UU Kanshu www.sonicmtl.com can promote 3d and imax Kailai will undoubtedly break through the limitations of market saturation and promote further growth of the industry.
After thinking for a while, Eric put down the empty coffee cup and said, “Jeffrey, this matter can be added to Firefly’s next development plan, but I hope you can be very cautious. I have always hoped that Firefly can be more Powerful, but also worried that fireflies will become dull and bloated due to blind expansion, do you understand?”
“Of course, without 100% certainty, I would not do this lightly.”
Eric nodded and said
He picked up the coffee pot, filled himself with a cup of coffee, and said, “Do you know what Steve and the others are doing?”
“David also talked to me and hoped that I could go over and help, but I refused,” Carson Berg did not hide it, saying: “They will officially announce the news about next month, but I don’t know the details.”
David Geffen and Katzenberg have always been good friends, and Eric also knows that, but the friendship factor is unlikely to drive a determined business elite to change schools. Katzenberg was nothing else. Choice, at this time, he obviously understands that fireflies are the best stage for him to stretch his talents.
(To be continued.)
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[End of this Chapter]
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