Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1489 Conservative Fudge

Let Senior Sister Zhen Yu handle the matter of Netflix.

She took three assistants and two bodyguards with her and left on her special plane. This trip may have to fly many times in several big cities such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, and New York.

Zhou Buqi's focus is still Ziwei Star Global.

The shareholding structure of the new company has been determined, but the innovation of the organizational structure still has a long way to go.Subsidiaries such as Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, and Marvel Pictures all have their own filming plans, which must be carried out step by step, and the basic business cannot be affected by changes in equity.

The management teams of these companies have all remained the same.

In contrast, MGM is different.

There must be a major change of blood.

The previous CEO only took office in February this year, and the board of directors invited him over to operate the MGM transaction.Now that the deal is closed, he walks away with a $2 million commission.

Zhou Buqi recruited a new management team for MGM from a small company, Summit Entertainment, which produced the famous "Twilight".

"Twilight" has a lot of fame and a lot of money.

However, Summit Entertainment has very little reputation and very weak ability to make money.

The total cost of acquiring this company was only US$2.7 million, of which US$1.6 million was cash and US$1.1 million was assumed debt.The reason is the tragedy of the Hollywood independent film industry.

A small company is short of money, and cannot independently bear the production cost of a movie.Even if you can afford it, you don't dare. What if you throw all your money into it and put all your eggs in one basket, but the movie loses money? Wouldn't that be miserable?

Therefore, the films of small companies will not invest independently, but will try to get a lot of financing from outside to share.As a result, although Summit Entertainment holds the production rights of "Twilight", the proportion of equity is very low, and it is all distributed to financing institutions.

For example, Jieyu Media’s platter investment business accounted for as much as 2% of the investment in "Twilight" 3, 4, and 43.This is still a sequel, Summit Entertainment can get half of the proceeds. For the first part of "Twilight", Summit Entertainment only invested 340 million US dollars, and the share of the equity was 20%.

Fortunately, the regional nature of this film is obvious. The main audiences are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, which are English-speaking countries. It is easy to distribute.

The chairman and CEO of Summit Entertainment is Bob Friedman, a senior executive in Hollywood. He was the president of Warner Publishing Company and the COO of Paramount. His resume is very prominent.

"Is "Twilight" released by Summit Entertainment?" Zhou Buqi was quite surprised by this. Summit Entertainment is a small company that doesn't even have a publishing department.

Bob Friedman said with a smile: "Rely on my old connections."

"Can you be specific?"

"The six giants have large-scale global distribution capabilities. There are about 3200 theaters in North America. If it is a blockbuster like "Transformers", it must be distributed to every theater. At the same time, it must be distributed to every theater in the world. The country, this is the distribution ability of large companies. "Twilight" does not, I just contacted some American theaters and movie theaters based on the contacts I have accumulated in the past few years, and released it on a small scale. When it was first released, "Twilight" only had more than 500 theaters, and then the market mechanism came into play."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "500 theaters, after the release, found that the box office is very good, and other movie theaters also want to come in and make money, so they will take the initiative to ask you for copies?"

"Yes, because I had a hunch from a very early stage that "Twilight Saga" would definitely be a hit. If you find a big company to cooperate with, it will seriously damage the interests of this series. It's better to take it slowly and rely on word of mouth to ferment."

"Yes."

Zhou Buqi understood this very well.

For a small company like Summit Entertainment, if it finds Universal Pictures to distribute "Twilight", the price will be very high.

Universal Pictures will not only ask for the distribution rights of the entire series of "Twilight", but also a large part of the production rights.In the future, if Summit Entertainment wants to make another "Twilight" movie, it will have no right to speak, and Universal Pictures will have the final say.

The most typical example is the "007" series.

This was originally a project of a British film company, but due to insufficient funds and no distribution channels in the United States, United Artists Pictures, one of the eight major studios, was found to cooperate with it.

It doesn't matter if you cooperate, power must be transferred!
Then, United Artists Pictures didn't spend a single penny, just cooperated with the film company opened by the author of the "007" novel to make the first "007" movie, and got the distribution rights of the whole series of movies, and 80% production copyright.Small companies in the UK only retain the right to cast directors and leading actors, as well as the right to adapt the plot.

Later, MGM acquired United Artists, and "007" became MGM's core asset.

After Zhou Buqi's approval, the new version of "007" has entered the preparatory stage.

Bob Friedman will go to the UK in person to communicate with the cooperative company of "007" on the creative concept.

It happened that Zhou Buqi was going to watch a football match in Manchester, so he dropped in.

The road is long, and Zhou Buqi can also ask this Hollywood professional some more questions, "MGM has made serious mistakes in its strategy in the past few years, spending too much money on big stars."

Bob Friedman smiled, "The "Wind Talker" suffered too badly back then. MGM's previous management was frightened, and their strategy was too conservative."

"keep?"

"you can say it this way."

"It's conservative to spend a lot of money to invite big stars? Tom Cruise's salary is 2000 million US dollars!"

After all, Zhou Buqi is a layman, so he can't see the way.

What's wrong with $2000 million?
The total investment of a movie is only about 6000 million US dollars, and 2000 million US dollars was spent on Tom Cruise alone. What is this for?

Wouldn't it be nice to spend a little more money on production?
Just for the traffic of big stars?
Bob Friedman said: "In the past few years, MGM's films have been very homogeneous. When a theme becomes popular, they will follow up immediately. The characters are similar and the plot is similar. The main reason is that they are different. Dare to take risks. Creating a new theme requires taking great risks. But Hollywood is a creative circle, and conservatism is inherently contrary to Hollywood."

"I go!"

Zhou Buqi suddenly realized.

There is such a saying?
No wonder Hollywood unequivocally supports the Democratic Party, because the Republican Party is a conservative party.

Bob Friedman went on to say: "If there is a risk, there must be investment, but is there any benefit? I don't know. It is not that there are excellent talents inside MGM, but they are restricted by the past bosses and are afraid of failure. , afraid of taking risks, but more failures occurred.”

"Where are the big stars?"

"Big stars have the same logic, they just don't dare to take risks. Using big stars, although the price is a bit higher, compared to other unpredictable risks, this is the safest, and the benefits are straightforward and clear."

"Um……"

Zhou Buqi nodded, thoughtfully.

Bob Friedman said: "Using big stars has three main advantages. First, people will watch the filming, and the first audience will be his huge fans; second, the media will actively follow the big stars to report. There is no need for the film studio to pay additional promotion fees; third, the big star has his own team. Although the salary of 2000 million US dollars is very high, it also requires him to participate in many entertainment programs and accept many TV interviews. Propaganda is done."

Zhou Buqi felt that he had been taught, "I see, if the big stars use it well, maybe they can save money!"

"Actually, there is another reason, um... this is very important to you, this is my advice."

"what?"

"For professional managers, there is a hidden benefit of using big stars, that is, they can shirk responsibility."

"Well, that makes sense!"

Zhou Buqi felt a sense of enlightenment at the moment.

Bob Friedman is very sincere, saying: "When I left Paramount to join Summit Entertainment, it was because I couldn't bear this star responsibility system."

"Star responsibility system?"

"In Paramount back then, the top star was Tom Cruise. The Redstone family was very optimistic about Cruise, so they appointed him to make some blockbuster films. Paramount's production team had a reason. Once If the movie failed, then it wasn’t that the movie was made badly, it was that Cruise didn’t act well, he was no longer popular, and his popularity became unpopular, which led to the failure of the movie. Later, the Redstone family couldn’t stand Cruise, We broke up with him. That’s how MGM and Cruise’s long-term cooperation came about.”

"It really is shirking responsibility."

Zhou Buqi was instructed a bit, and felt that he must be warned,

The Redstone family was obviously blinded and teased by Paramount's management.

Uh……

Then, he started to associate.

The domestic dramas in the previous life, those traffic stars... It seems to be the same routine.

Although traffic stars are expensive, they have many benefits!
Fans are audiences, and they can be harvested when they come up.Moreover, these fans are also very hardworking, and they will spontaneously help to make data, help publicize, maintain word of mouth, and quarrel with others.

Save a lot of publicity costs.

If a drama is not filmed well, it must be because the traffic stars are not good at acting, they are not popular, and the popularity of passers-by is not good, which affects the reputation of the entire drama.

There is also a back-to-back man.

On the routine of shirking responsibility, it really knows no boundaries!

In Paramount’s lesson, the producer relied on Tom Cruise to fool the big boss, Lei Shidong, to take responsibility for big projects; the domestic traffic star is the producer leading a group of small fresh meat to fool Investors, to defraud a large amount of production funds.

In the final analysis, it is a group of experts joining hands to fool the laymen.

Zhou Buqi was very vigilant.

On the Internet, he is very expert.When it comes to the entertainment industry, he is a layman.

Be careful with this, and be on guard at all times.

Fortunately, he has been in the company for so many years, and he also has management experience. It is enough to get the results through the team. Don't get involved in the process, it is easy to be fooled!

(End of this chapter)