The King of Directors 2000

Entering November, the North American film market finally got rid of "Joker". This movie shocked everyone. The final global box office was 1.16 billion. Compared with Lee Sheng-yew's previous life, the biggest difference is that the film has a good reputation in Asia. The European box office is better.

Lee Sing-yew's influence undoubtedly gave this film a great boost.

In the 2015 movie market, it surpassed "The Martian", "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay", "3: Specter" and other super blockbusters.

Ranked fifth in the year, behind "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", "Avengers: Age of Ultron", "Fast and Furious 2", and "Jurassic World".

Among the top ten box office movies of the year, "Joker" has the lowest cost.

The total box office of "Minions" was 1.15 billion, but its cost was 74 million, which was 4 million US dollars more than "Joker".

Such results make Warner Pictures, which has been dormant for several years, proud. Recently, newspapers in Los Angeles have been praising "Joker".

Discussion of this movie has become the biggest topic in the Los Angeles area.

On this day, layers of clouds piled up in the sky.

The cold wind was blowing and whistling.

Pedestrians on the street hunched their necks and hid themselves in their coats.

At the headquarters building of DreamWorks, several cars slowly drove into the basement.

Accompanied by the crisp sound of locking the car, several men in suits and ties strode towards the elevator.

One of them had white hair, a big nose, and very Jewish features.

This man is none other than Steven Spielberg, the most successful film director in Hollywood for half a century.

"You heard, Disney is reaching out to Lee and they want to invite him to produce the next movie."

"Not only Disney, but Sony Pictures, Paramount, and Universal Pictures are all taking action. Everyone can see that this guy is indeed a box office wizard."

"Yeah, when The Hangover was a huge success, I knew he could take it to the next level."

"We should contact him as soon as possible. DreamWorks can also cooperate with him."

It was several executives from DreamWorks who walked with Spielberg.

When Spielberg heard the conversation between these people, his face became much gloomier.

But he didn't say much, and strode forward with a smile on his face.

As one of the three founders of DreamWorks, Spielberg once owned a large stake in DreamWorks. However, as the company continued to raise funds, first Paramount vigorously acquired DreamWorks shares, and then Walt Disney and 20 Century Fox acquired shares of DreamWorks, and now everyone's shares have been greatly diluted.

Spielberg, the founder, became a small minority shareholder in DreamWorks.

He can no longer keep his word at DreamWorks.

However, most of Spielberg's relatively low-cost movies usually cooperate with DreamWorks.

Those high-cost movies are cooperating with the Big Six in Hollywood.

From last September to April this year, Spielberg produced a movie - Bridge of Spies.

The cost of this movie is not very high, and it invited the famous actor Tom Hanske, which is a collaboration with DreamWorks.

The movie was produced in April and should have been released long ago. However, DreamWorks felt that the movie was of high quality and could earn high box office, so they carefully selected the schedule.

I kept choosing and pushing back, and finally decided to release it in early November.

Now Spielberg comes to DreamWorks to discuss the promotion of the movie.

DreamWorks has already seen "Bridge of Spies" internally. There is no doubt about Spielberg's ability. Everyone thinks the movie is very good and it is expected to win an Oscar next year.

Arriving at the conference room, Spielberg and his team sat down separately. Soon after, company executives arrived one after another. They began to discuss the scale of the release of "Bridge of Spies", as well as publicity efforts, expenses and other matters.

After discussing it for about an hour, we finally decided on the plan.

Spielberg breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

He is called the king of commercial films by the Hollywood media. In fact, his main achievements were in the last century. After the millennium, the films he directed have not had particularly outstanding box office results.

For example, "The War of the Century", a collaboration with Tom Cruise, required scenes and scenes, stars and stars, and special effects and special effects. As a result, the global box office was only over 300 million.

The movies he serves as a producer have exploded at the box office, like the "Transformers" series and "Jurassic World."

However, after all, none of the films he directed are as realistic as his films. Many Hollywood media believe that his films are outdated and not suitable for today's movie audiences.

Spielberg is naturally unhappy with such comments. He wants to win big awards and high box office, and wants to prove that he is still the king of movies even in this era of developed mobile Internet.

"Bridge of Spies" is adapted from a true story and tells the story of the Cold War era.

Spielberg attaches great importance to it and takes it very seriously from the beginning of writing the movie script.

Now that the film is completed, it is indeed a high-quality film. He is full of confidence and looks forward to a good box office.

"At least 500 million."

"Bridge of Spies" is not a family movie, nor does it have an influential original work, so it will be difficult to achieve high box office.

Spielberg wants 500 million.

In terms of espionage themes, 500 million is already a ceiling-level movie.

"Can't get too far behind that guy."

That guy is Li Shengyao.

Spielberg has publicly criticized Lee Sung Yew before and belittled his films.

Although the conflict between the two parties was later resolved through an intermediary, Spielberg no longer criticized Lee Sheng Yew and praised Lee Sheng Yew's films, while Lee Sheng Yew no longer prevented films directed or produced by Spielberg from entering the mainland market.

But deep down in his heart, Spielberg was still very unhappy with Lee Sung-yew.

He can be said to be the king of movies in Hollywood, with top-notch grades, seniority, and qualifications.

He does not feel that he needs to pay a price for criticizing Lee Sing Yew.

But reality slapped him hard. With the growth of the Chinese film market, Hollywood is paying more and more attention to it. No film company dares to offend theater giants like China Film and Fenghua.

Spielberg is a businessman and he no longer criticizes Lee Sing Yew publicly.

But he was still unhappy, and he had been paying attention to Li Shengyao's results.

There were all kinds of negative news during the production of "Joker", and he felt very happy at the time.

"Joker" participated in the Venice Film Festival, and the screening results were excellent. It received a great reputation and later won the Golden Lion Award.

After hearing the news, Spielberg didn't eat for two days and drank several bottles of wine. "Joker" was released globally and was a hit in beautiful countries, European countries, and East Asia, Brazil and Argentina, with a box office of 1.16 billion.

Spielberg felt like his heart was being stabbed, and he gained six more wrinkles that day.

"Bridge of Spies" is definitely not as good as "Joker" at the box office.

Spielberg hopes not to lose too badly.

In addition, "Bridge of Spies" will definitely participate in next year's Oscars, and will naturally compete with "Joker" by then.

This time, after his active struggle, DreamWorks finally decided that "Bridge of Spies" will open in 4,000 theaters.

After discussing "Bridge of Spies", a senior executive stood up and said: "There is one more thing, and that is about Li. Should we contact Li? If DreamWorks can cooperate with Li, we can definitely Go further."

There is no DreamWorks in the six major Hollywood companies, and there is no DreamWorks in the eight major Hollywood companies.

The media in Los Angeles generally ranks DreamWorks at the tenth position, which means that DreamWorks is the tenth largest film and television production company in Hollywood.

The gap between DreamWorks and the Big Six is ​​relatively large, and its resources are limited, so it is impossible to compete with the Big Six.

But this does not mean that they are not enterprising.

Other senior executives in the conference room heard this proposal and expressed their opinions one after another. Almost no one objected, and all of them approved.

Spielberg felt as sick as if he had eaten a meal of flies.

He didn't want DreamWorks to get too close to Lee Sheng Yew, otherwise he would be very uncomfortable.

"Steven, what do you think?"

Someone pointed to Spielberg.

"Li is a very good young director. His films have high commercial potential. I think I can contact him."

Although he felt unhappy, in order to feel normal, Spielberg still followed the crowd and said good things about Lee Sung-yew.

"Very good. We will vote by a show of hands. If it passes, we will immediately set up a group to make a plan and invite Li to cooperate with DreamWorks."

The vote by show of hands had a 100% pass rate, and it was soon confirmed that DreamWorks would cooperate with Lee Sheng Yew.

After the meeting, Spielberg quickly returned to the office and locked the door.

He lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling gloomily. After a long time, he finally recovered, eliminated the matter from his mind, and focused on the release of "Bridge of Spies".

November is also the off-season for movies in North America. There are almost no super blockbusters in November. It is mainly horror movies and comedy movies. For example, Paramount's "Friday the 13th" is a typical low-budget horror movie, and Warner's " "Midnight Dispatch", this movie is a low-budget comedy.

The only film that's even remotely competitive is DreamWorks' "Bridge of Spies."

After the movie was released, it immediately took the top spot at the daily box office, with a box office of 13 million US dollars.

Just as DreamWorks executives believe, this movie has an excellent reputation. It has a freshness index of 8.8% on Rotten Tomatoes, a score of 8.9 on imdb, and a score of on Yahoo.

The reputation is very good, film critics continue to praise it, and the media also praises it.

However, in terms of the film's appeal, it is still slightly lacking. This is not a problem with Spielberg's ability, but a problem with his age and the selection of materials.

A spy film like "Bridge of Spies" that reflects the Cold War might have been very popular in the 1980s and 1990s.

But the new generation of viewers is obviously not very interested.

Next, the box office of "Bridge of Spies" continued to decline, and it was in a state of being poorly received.

Everyone who has seen it said it was good, but not many young people went to watch it.

Film critics from Yahoo Entertainment predicted the film's North American box office to be around 70 million.

As time goes by, "Bridge of Spies" is released longer and longer, and the final North American box office is really about 70 million.

The overseas box office is about the same as the North American box office.

It seems that not only young audiences in beautiful countries, but also young audiences in Europe are not very fond of Cold War-themed movies.

The film's final global box office was around $150 million.

This box office will definitely not recover the cost.

"Spielberg has been abandoned by young audiences. He must forget those old themes. He needs to prove himself again and he needs to communicate with young people."

"Maybe he should do some superhero movies."

"I'm very confused. I have to say that Spielberg is really old. He no longer has the box office appeal he used to have."

"The audiences who like Spielberg are old and they don't have the energy to come out and support him."

"Compared to Li, the gap between them is really huge."

"Bridge of Spies has a good reputation and the film is very complete. It may win an Oscar."

The Los Angeles media commented on Spielberg and "Bridge of Spies."

In the DreamWorks office, Spielberg locked the door again, lay on the sofa, and stared at the ceiling.

Outside the glass window, the sky was overcast, the wind was howling, and it seemed like it was going to snow.

Outside the office, people were coming and going, and the sound of leather shoes and high heels was clicking.

The strong aroma of coffee wafts everywhere.

Although "Bridge of Spies" lost money, the movie will not affect DreamWorks' operations. They are producing "Kung Fu Panda 4" and this movie will definitely make money.

In addition, DreamWorks executives are still making plans to invite Lee Seung-yew.

"We must show the greatest sincerity and give Li the most relaxed creative environment."

This is a high-level meeting decision.

Spielberg felt unhappy when he thought of this. He lay on the sofa from nine to twelve in the morning, but still did not eliminate the negative emotions in his heart.

I lay down for another three hours in the afternoon and finally recovered.

He plans to no longer consider the box office failure of "Bridge of Spies". He will lobby hard within DreamWorks to get DreamWorks to agree to do public relations for "Bridge of Spies" and strive to win the Oscar next year.

Preferably $10 million in PR fees.

Next year at the Oscars, "Bridge of Spies" will beat "Joker". He will defeat Lee Sing-yew in such a head-to-head competition.

(End of this chapter)