Heads Up Hollywood

Tang En Pictures' acquisition of Universal Pictures will definitely cause turmoil in the other party's management, which Tang En predicted many years ago.

So in the past few years, on the one hand, he has strengthened his personal relationship with Lon Mayer, as well as the cooperation between Tang En Pictures and Universal Pictures; When he was able to lead Universal Pictures, he was justified and full of prestige.

It will not be like when Sony acquired Columbia Pictures and Panasonic acquired Universal Pictures, the senior management resigned collectively.

The current situation is very favorable to Tang En, at least he has controlled the structure of Universal Pictures.

Several executives, including chairman Ron Meyer, president Adam Ferguson, and vice president Donna Langley, all expressed their support for Tang En and recognized his leadership.

However, there are always exceptions. Just yesterday, Peter Adi, the head of the global marketing department of Universal Pictures, officially resigned.

MGM invested 120 million US dollars in the war film "Windtalker", which was released for three weeks, and only received more than 33 million US dollars in the North American box office, which is simply miserable.

The stock price of MGM Pictures, also affected by the serious box office loss of "Wind Talker", has fallen sharply in a row. In the past two weeks, the stock price has fallen by more than 22%.

Robert Levin, president of MGM World Marketing and Publishing, resigned, and the new executive was Peter Addy, who jumped from Universal.

Of course, the stock price of MGM plummeted. In addition to the culprit of "Windtalker", there were also three accomplices in "A Night with a Thieves", "Blooded Bowls", and "Battle of Hart".

Losing money for four consecutive movies put MGM under pressure.

MGM hasn't had a good movie in the past few years. Last year, only Anthony Hopkins' "Hannibal" and Reese Witherspoon's "Legally Blonde" made a profit. This year... No profitable movie yet!

The "Wind Talker", which was given high expectations and directed by the popular director John Wu, failed miserably. After three weeks, the box office was only 33 million. You know, "Mr. Rich", whose investment is only a quarter of that of "Windtalker", had a box office of 37 million US dollars at its premiere.

Continuous deficits and losses have plunged MGM into bankruptcy.

Now, only one film may be able to save the crisis - "007 Die Another Day"!

"007: Die Another Day" will be released at the end of November.

However... Half a month ago, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was released, and half a month later, "The Lord of the Rings 2: The Two Towers" was released.

Under the attack of these two annual masterpieces, how much room can "007: Die Another Day" have?

With such a schedule, MGM is in danger!

Now is the golden age of DVD sales, MGM has 4,200 film copyrights, of which 2,000 are exclusive to MGM, and 2,200 are shared with other film companies.

The annual disc sales of these films can bring MGM nearly 500 million US dollars in revenue.

However, if the box office of "007 Die Another Day" falls short of expectations, then the fixed income of 500 million US dollars may not be able to save MGM.

Twain has his own plan. He is very interested in content copyrights, especially the distribution rights of the "007" series, "Hannibal" series, and "The Hobbit" movies owned by MGM. .

If MGM falls into bankruptcy crisis and the stock price keeps falling, it will definitely be a good thing for him!

Tang En was secretly looking forward to the success of "Harry Potter 1" and "Lord of the Rings 2" in the box office market.

Although half of MGM's film library was taken away by Warner before, it is still huge and a treasure.

Not to mention the Christmas file, the summer file was completely taken over by Tang En Pictures.

After the popularity of "Spider-Man 2" ceased, "Pirate Alliance: The Curse of the Black Pearl" rose rapidly. In the first three days, it took a box office of 82 million U.S. dollars, and it also won a box office of 80 million U.S. dollars in the second week.

Of the $162 million at the box office, 75 imax theaters took in $7 million.

"Pirate League: The Curse of the Black Pearl" was screened in 3,585 theaters and 13,951 screens in North America. There were only 75 imax theaters with 75 screens, accounting for 0.5% of the total screens, but 4% of the total box office!

As soon as this data came out, the potential of imax theaters was immediately reflected.

As the owner of imax, Tang En obtained a piece of data. Ten days after the release of "Pirate Alliance: The Curse of the Black Pearl", he has received requests for cooperation from movie theaters from all over the world one after another.

Among them, North America has plans to build 150 new imax theaters, and developed countries such as Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and South Korea have also sent over 120 new imax theater construction and renovation plans.

The construction price of an imax theater is very expensive, not counting hard items such as venue rent, seats, office supplies, sound insulation materials, air conditioning, etc., the imax equipment alone is a huge sum of money.

It includes four pieces of imax screen, surround sound, projector and server, with a total price of more than 2.2 million US dollars!

In other words, with the release of "Pirate Alliance: The Curse of the Black Pearl", imax immediately received an order worth about 600 million US dollars!

What kind of terrible income is this?

Of course, in fact, in order to reduce investment risks, the theater chain will not adopt the situation of buying out, but will cooperate with imax theaters in the form of dividends.

In other words, in addition to sharing the box office revenue of the theater chain with the film company, it also needs to share the account with imax, and the remaining box office belongs to the movie theater.

The imax company must provide corresponding equipment, services and technical support.

Usually, imax's accounting ratio is between 3% and 10% of the total box office, and most of them are maintained between 7% and 10%.

If the theater chain does not give a penny of the equipment fee and needs imax to provide it free of charge, then it has to take out 10% of the box office share; if the theater chain has invested part of the equipment fee in the early stage, the proportion of future payment will be reduced. .

If the theater chain spends $2.2 million to buy out the imax equipment at one time, it usually needs to provide the imax theater with a 3% share of the box office, because it needs the technical support and brand naming of the imax company.

No way, in a country with a very high intellectual property status, the patent side is so tyrannical!

The merger of Tang En Pictures and imax is definitely a deal that benefits both sides!

The imax company welcomes the order, and Tang En Pictures is also happy with it.

In addition to this good news, Dunn also got another piece of good news.

Tang En Pictures and George Miller cooperated on the project of "Mad Max". Under the operation of Mel Gibson, a bigwig in the Australian film industry, a breakthrough has been made.

George Miller finally agreed to cooperate with Tang En Pictures to shoot "Mad Max 4".

It's just that the specific details gave Tang En a headache.

"Boss, your request is impossible to realize." The producer Grant Hill was in charge of running the project, and he bluntly rejected Twain's idea, "The importance of "Mad Max" to George Miller's film production The company is like "Star Wars" to Lucasfilm. It is impossible for you to buy out the copyright of the series."

Tang En said disapprovingly, ""Star Wars" can't be played anymore, it's about to be auctioned off, and "Mad Max" can't be bought?"

Grant Hill said: "You give me a billion dollars and I can do it."

Tang En's face immediately turned black.

Grant Hill said sternly: "George Miller's career has been terrible in recent years. He can only make cartoons. He can only rely on "Mad Max" to make a comeback. He must not be able to sell easily."

Tang En frowned, "What does he mean?"

Grant Hill said: "He wants to participate in the investment and use the copyright of "Mad Max" as a share."

"Um?"

"He has written the script for the fourth part a long time ago, but Mel Gibson's salary is too high, and his personal requirements are also very demanding. It is difficult to start the sequel project."

"Harsh?" Tang En raised his brows, "What is his request?"

Grant Hill said: "George Miller estimates that the production cost of "Mad Max 4" should reach at least 100 million US dollars. He will participate in the investment of 10 million and get 20% of the profit share."

"This is impossible!"

Tang En flatly rejected it.

20% profit dividend, including box office, disc, TV and other peripheral profits.

Invest 10%, want to get 20%, the appetite is too big!

George Miller is no Tom Cruise.

The fame of "Mad Max" is far less than that of "Mission: Impossible".

Grant Hill immediately said: "I'm just in contact with him, and there should be room for negotiation. It should be no problem to reduce the dividend...to 15%."

Tang En said in a deep voice: "This project is not only for George Miller, but also for Mel Gibson. Mel has acted in the three films "Unsinkable", "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and "Signs of the Sky". No box office dividends, but for the project "Mad Max", he will definitely ask for box office dividends."

Grant Hill nodded, "There is no way to do this. The market is like this. After all, this is a sequel."

Tang En thought for a while, and said: "George Miller said he was willing to invest 10 million? Tell him, I don't need it, the movie I invest in doesn't need others to share the risk. Correspondingly, his dividend requirement must be lowered." Well, uh... better talk to Mel Gibson."

"Get George Miller's production company out of investment?" Grant Hill was slightly surprised.

After all, in Hollywood, multi-company collaboration is the mainstream and trend.

"Mad Max" is famous, but it's an Australian film series, and in the US... a bit outdated, "Mad Max 3" box office was terrible.

Also, it's an R-rated movie.

Spending $100 million to make an R-rated film is too risky, which is why other film companies are reluctant to cooperate with George Miller.

Tang En said: "George Miller can keep the series of films, but I hope to keep the copyright of individual films in Tang En Pictures."