Vol 2 Chapter 605: Ellison's new film

From the last failure, David Ellison has learned a lot of experience and lessons, and he also fully understands that it is definitely not an easy task to succeed in Hollywood, and it is not easy to achieve with money and scripts. .
After the complete failure of "Air Combat Heroes", he dormant for a while. This is not to lose confidence, but to think clearly about some things. For example, why did "Air Combat Heroes" lose to "Batman: Hour of War" so badly? Apart from the directors and other gaps between the two parties, what other factors have affected the market response?
David Ellison quickly discovered that "Heroes of Air Combat" was an original film without any audience and fan base before, and "Batman: Hour of War" was a restart of the failed series, but Bruce ?Wayne has tens of millions of fans in the United States...
This alone opened the gap between the two films.
Later, David Ellison discovered the fact that Hollywood studios rarely give opportunities for original scripts, but instead have a huge enthusiasm for popular novels and comics.
With David Ellison’s mind, it’s not difficult to find the truth. Originality means that there is no audience base and huge investment risk. Popular novels and comics have a certain audience. Even if they are adapted into movies, they will be affected. The rejection of these fans can attract a lot of attention.
Therefore, he put the production direction of the second film on the adaptation of the famous work.
After a series of investigations and competitions, David Ellison obtained the right to adapt a famous science fiction novel and raised a huge sum of 150 million US dollars to start filming and production.
In order to ensure the success of this investment and to be able to compete with Duke Rosenberg’s new works, David Ellison disregarded the strong resistance of Michael Ovitz, who was cooperating with him, from caa. The marketable Will Smith starred.
In addition. He also saw Duke’s past campaigns in publicity and marketing, and specially invited Will Smith’s daughter to star in the film as a father and daughter with Will Smith.
Moreover, this Richard Matheson novel is well-known enough, and it was put on the big screen twice in 1964 and 1971. This time he heavily hired the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for "Beautiful Mind". Aziva Gosman wrote the script and did enough preparations.
After the crew started filming. It has also been going well, everything is foreshadowing to David Ellison, this will inevitably be a profitable and even hot film.
Standing in the middle of Washington Square, watching Will Smith’s performance, David Ellison walked to a trailer and found Michael Ovitz, who continued to work with him.
He asked directly, "Michael, did the things I want you to confirm get the results? When will Duke Rosenberg's new film be released?"
Michael Ovitz frowned slightly, somewhat unhappy. But he still said, "Neither Warner Bros. nor Duke Studios announced a specific time, but according to Duke Rosenberg's habit in the past few years, "The Dark Knight" should begin to be released in the summer next year."
"Early May next year?" David Ellison put his arms around his chest and said for a while, "make sure that our film can be completed before April next year."
Although he felt uncomfortable with David Ellison's tone, Michael Ovitz resisted his unhappiness, "It will definitely be done."
Finished. He walked towards the shooting location.
David Ellison stared at his back and shook his head slightly.
From the failure of "Air Combat Heroes". He also saw another thing, that is, the famous Michael Ovitz has fallen behind. His vision for films and projects is seriously lagging behind this era, and his concept is still stuck in the last century.
Discovering this situation, David Ellison will of course not give his project to Michael Ovitz to operate. In the new film, he directly rejected the other party's packaging policy. For example, the lead actor uses Will Smith who joined caa only last year, and the director is Francis Lawrence of William Morris.
Due to the use of Michael Ovitz and his artist management company, David Ellison also left enough positions for the other party.
It's just that he already has a plan in his heart, after this project. His team will accumulate a lot of experience, and it's time to throw away this outdated artist management company.
He also doesn't like the package service policy. In fact, people with a stronger desire to control don't like this service policy very much.
For example, Martin Scorsese and Hollywood are circulated a message that for Michael Ovitz, the old Martin, who switched from caa to the artist management company, is also fed up with this policy and the severe decline in Oscar public relations capabilities of the artist management company. Ready to quit again.
In the Hollywood circle, everyone is very clear that the artist management company that carried Michael Ovitz’s second entrepreneurial ambitions has not developed into a first-line entertainment agency at all. After several years of ups and downs, there is hardly any rise. It is hoped that the actors and directors whose future is optimistic are ready to change jobs.
Even Michael Bay, the director who was uninterested after the failure of "Escape from the Island", is preparing to terminate the contract with Michael Ovitz.
Otherwise, after seeing some intentions of David Ellison, Michael Ovitz would not choose to forbear.
After all, the major production projects he can get now are very few.
David Ellison is thinking, Michael Ovitz is thinking too.
Strictly speaking, he does not have much right to speak in this project. After fighting Duke Rosenberg for so many years, he gradually feels old and tired, especially when working with David Ellison and found that Hollywood is right. Moving in some new directions, foreign capital is also changing the rules of the game in this circle.
Thinking of the old friend Martin Scorsese telling him that he was leaving the artist management company, Michael Ovitz suddenly felt that he should retire?
Michael Ovitz and the artist management company are not doing well these days. Of course, Duke also knows that the competition between management companies is even more fierce than production and distribution companies. Companies such as caa, icm, and William Morris have The digging hand reached for the artist management company.
"Nancy, aren't you contacting the client of the artist management company?"
In the office, Duke said to his agent, "Shove Michael Bay as far as possible."
"Michael Bay?" Nancy Josephson was a little strange, said, "Since the failure of "Escape from the Island" directly led to the collapse of DreamWorks, no one cares about Michael Bay. He is recognized as a past tense. "
Duke shook his head. "In Hollywood, there are many directors who can make niche independent films and literary films, but there are not many big production directors who can integrate many commercial elements."
Nancy Josephson thought for a moment, "I will let someone contact Michael Bay."
Bombshell can be said to be the director most affected by Duke's appearance. In particular, he took the right to adapt to "Transformers", which directly caused Michael Bay to lose the opportunity to restart his rise.
"Transformers" live-action movie has been included in Duke's plan, but this is a long series, he is always looking for a suitable director for the future of the film.
There is no doubt that no director is more suitable for this series than Bang Bei.
Nancy Josephson now controls icm and is also the largest partner. How to dig a wall can be said to be familiar, and Duke is not too worried. After all, Michael Bay is at the lowest point in his life.
He put more energy on the preparation of the film.
Entering October, the preparatory work has come to an end, including the two new actors, Heath Ledger and Nicholas Cage, all the main actors have entered the crew, and they are also communicating and rehearsing with each other to kick off the curtain. Prepare for shooting.
In addition, the preparations that Duke explained are either ready or about to be completed.
After doing a lot of experiments, Jos Williams found a suitable way to explode; the film crew in charge of John Schwarzman can operate the imax camera very skillfully; Lamborghini specially modified a Batmobile and Batmobile , The front position of the car can be set up relatively heavy imax camera.
Since the Batman movie has been prepared once, the second preparation has been particularly smooth.
As the preparatory work for "The Dark Knight" came to an end, "Iron Man" also ended more than five months of screenings, and was officially released from major theaters in North America.
In fact, since August, the box office numbers that "Iron Man" can get have been better than nothing. The box office has not increased significantly compared with August, and the final North American box office has stayed at $389.95 million. .
However, after this period of screening, without waiting for Marvel's shot, "Iron Man"'s global box office successfully crossed the 700 million US dollars mark, and has reached 720.11 million US dollars.
The overseas screening of this film is not over yet, and there is still room for growth in the global box office.
As the film went down in North America, DVDs were officially released and released. Compared with the movies of the same box office level in the past, the DVDs of "Iron Man" were affected by the overall market trend, and sales declined slightly, with the regular version worth $19.9 and the $39.9 The deluxe version sold 4.5 million copies in the first week, and the sales amount just exceeded $100 million.
However, on the network side, the video-on-demand revenue of films has increased significantly compared with last year's movies of the same level. In a week, they received about 4.2 million US dollars from paid on-demand.
Although this number is not eye-catching, the future potential is unlimited.
Soon after "Iron Man" was released, "The Dark Knight", which had been in preparation for several months, also reached the shooting stage. (To be continued...)