Meiyu: I don’t care about the cost when making movies

Chapter 208 Anxious Barry
"Then you continue to think about it, where is the heroine?" DiCaprio glanced at Tobey Maguire, who was snickering next to him, and quickly skipped the topic.

"The heroine needs to be beautiful, generous, gentle, temperamental, and British-style, so I chose Kate Beckinsale."

After hearing this, Xiao Lizi immediately showed an ambiguous smile.

He had heard that Kate Beckinsale divorced her ex-husband directly for Wayne.

"Is there more? Just a female character?"

"There is another one who is the wife of the second male lead, but she is older in the setting."

After hearing this, DiCaprio couldn't help laughing again. Seeing this, Wayne glanced at him and said calmly: "The fourth and fifth male leads in this movie have been confirmed, and they will be in "X-Men" respectively. Ian McKellen, who plays Magneto, and Liam Neeson, who plays the male lead in "Taken". The actor who plays the third male lead, your 'cousin', is also a guy with good acting skills. "

"."

Xiao Lizi couldn't laugh anymore.

If it's really like what Wayne said, wouldn't it mean that the entire movie is full of talented actors?Apart from the vase heroine, is his acting the worst?

"When will the filming start?" Xiao Lizi asked seriously.

"I haven't decided on the director yet, plus the preliminary preparations, it will take at least two months." Wayne thought for a while and said.

Two months is neither long nor short.

But Xiao Lizi is going to challenge the Little Golden Man, so naturally he doesn't dare to relax at all.

"Give me the script as soon as possible. I need to prepare it in advance!"

"OK, I'll send it to you when I get back~"

Wayne made an OK gesture.

Then we stopped talking about work matters and started fishing with Vlada and the others.

The next morning, Wayne found someone to send the script to DiCaprio. At the same time, he finally decided on the director of the film and the candidate for the second male lead.

For the second male lead, because he was worried that DiCaprio's acting skills would be overshadowed, he didn't choose any of the five people, but chose Michael Caine.

This British actor won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor twice, in 86 and 99.

And he will be nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor next year. His acting skills are not inferior to those of Russell Crowe and others, but he does not have the edge of the leading actor, so he is very suitable for playing a green supporting role.

At the same time, although he has won numerous awards, he is best known to the audience for his role as the old butler 'Alfred' in Nolan's "Batman Trilogy".

Therefore, it is more suitable to find him to play the second male lead 'Rogg', who is also a teacher and friend, rather than looking for Russell Crowe and others.

As for the choice of director, because the original director Tom Hooper has not yet made his debut, he thought for a long time and finally chose Nolan, who was ready to take a good rest after the production of "Resident Evil 1 and 2" was completed.

No way, who made Nolan's "Oppenheimer" not only win a global box office of 9.49 million US dollars, but also scored a super high score of 8.5 points on imdb and 8.8 points on Douban.

This score is already higher than many Oscar best films.

The most important thing is that if Nolan can make "Oppenheimer" well, he will definitely be able to make "The King's Speech" well.

"Believe me, Nolan, you will definitely like this script."

Nolan smiled bitterly after receiving Wayne's call, and then readily agreed.

Although he only had to rest for more than half a month before starting work again, the director's fee paid by Wayne was too high.

For this movie, the generous Wayne directly offered him a director's fee of 1000 million, which was higher than Nancy Meyers. In today's era, this is already the director's fee of [-] million, except for Cameron, George Lucas, and Stewart. Apart from world-class directors like Pielberg, this is the highest level.

Apart from the just-released "Resident Evil 1", his only successful work is "Memento".

Wayne thought so highly of him that even as a 31-year-old mature man, he couldn't help but have a strong urge to die for his confidant.

What's more, Wayne also said that this movie will not only hit high box office, but also help him and Leo compete for Oscars.

This is obviously an irresistible temptation for anyone in the industry.

But in this way, the salary of the director, screenwriter and starring actors of this upgraded version of "The King's Speech" adds up to 8000 million.

Even if it is a drama movie with no special effects, the total cost will not be less than [-] million US dollars.

This is undoubtedly an extremely rare feat in feature films of this era.

Time flies into August.

First of all, on the 1st, the filming part of "Heidi and Grandpa" was officially completed. Lily Collins, who had lived under the Alps for more than a month, couldn't wait to come to Wayne Manor as soon as she came back.

And she even called O Mei.

Originally, although O'Mei often texted Wayne, she was not that close to him in reality.

But after filming this movie, she and Lily had already become best friends, so they mustered up the courage to come together.

It's a pity that because he will be filming "League of Assassins" tomorrow, Wayne is having his last carnival. He just said hello to the two of them, asked a few words about their filming situation, and then got in the car. Went to Roxbury Street.

Although the two little girls were in Europe, they were very concerned about Wayne's news, including gossip news. They couldn't help but feel discouraged when they saw this.

"It would be nice if I could grow up quickly."

The two little girls thought to themselves in perfect agreement.

Immediately afterwards, the American version of "The Ring", released on August 8, successfully won the first-day box office of 3 million in North America and 1021 million overseas, with a total of 875 million US dollars.

Although this achievement is not outstanding compared with other films from Hemera Pictures.

But as a horror film, it is already a pretty good result.

What's more, during this time period, there are two big mountains, "Resident Evil 1" and "Rescue", which have grabbed so much box office.

As of the 3rd, "Resident Evil 1" has been released for just seven days. The cumulative North American box office has reached an astonishing US$1.72 million, and the overseas box office has reached an astonishing US$2.39 million. The total box office has directly exceeded 4 million!
It seems that the final box office is going to reach 6 million.

"Taken" has been released for 21 days in total. The current North American box office is 1.85 million, the overseas box office is 2.62 million, and the cumulative global box office also exceeds 4 million, reaching 4.47 million US dollars.

The final box office target should be able to exceed 5 million.

Just these two movies can earn an average of about 2000 million in North American box office and about 3300 million in overseas box office every day.

Therefore, both Hemera Pictures and Harvey are satisfied enough that "The American Version of The Ring" can achieve such opening results.

Finally, on August 8th, the post-production of "Wedding Crashers", which took a total of 5 days, was completed.Unsurprisingly, Wayne's work phone was blasted again.

But this time, with the excuse of filming a movie, he finally didn't have to go to all the parties and waste time.

"How's the box office of "Jurassic Park 3" going?"

Wayne asked Hannah at lunchtime while eating the blueberry tiramisu cake that Monica Bellucci had made specially for him early in the morning.

"It's miserable!" Hannah said with an unabashed smile: ""Jurassic Park 3" will be released in North America on July 7 and overseas on July 18. So far, it has been released in North America for 7 days and has a cumulative box office of 20 million. U.S. dollars. It was released overseas for 18 days, with a cumulative box office of 9076 million U.S. dollars. The final box office is expected to be only 16 million U.S. dollars, and I heard that Universal's initial box office expectation was 7414 million U.S. dollars."

Wayne couldn't help but raise his eyebrows when he heard this.

"$5 million? Do they really dare to think that this movie's reputation and ratings will be very bad, right?"

"Yes," Hannah nodded vigorously and said with joy: "The reputation is so bad, the imdb score is only 4.9, and it is directly classified as a bad movie! I read the comments and said, if it weren't for "Jurassic" With the name "Park", even 3000 million at the box office for this kind of bad movie is too much!"

"Indeed, this is the power of IP." Wayne said casually, while making secret calculations in his heart.

There is no doubt that under his "Three Lightning Whips", the box office and reputation of "Jurassic Park 3" were worse than in its previous life.

Relying on the power of the sequel to the big IP, the previous "Jurassic Park 3" still received a global box office of 3.68 million, although its reputation and ratings were equally poor.

The rating is also 5.9.

Now, not only has the rating dropped by 1 point compared with its peers, but the box office has also been cut in half, which is really a bit disastrous.

Moreover, the production cost of this movie is as high as 9300 million U.S. dollars, and the subsequent publicity and distribution expenses are almost more than 2000 million U.S. dollars. After all, it is impossible to make back the money at the box office.

However, relying on the subsequent disc revenue, overall, it is probably possible to make a small profit of 2000 million US dollars.

I have to say that big IP movies have great advantages here.

But this result was enough for Wayne.

"Jurassic Park 3" has been cancelled.

Next up is "Ugly Country Party 2" which also has high hopes from Universal.

In order to avoid the double blow of "Resident Evil 1" and "The Ring", there will also be "The Princess Diaries" produced by Disney and directed by Garry Marshall, which will be released on the 11th.

原定于 8月10号上映的《丑国派2》被向后调档到了8月20号。

In the end, this is a bit like "Wedding Crashers".

It just so happens that "Ugly Country Party 2" and "Wedding Crashers" are also comedies, so there will be a lot of overlap among the audiences.

One is an IP continuation, and the other is a superstar traffic blessing. If these two come together, it will definitely have a big impact on both parties.

Wayne is not afraid of losses because he is the boss himself and he has further goals.

But that's not the case here at Universal.

If "Jurassic Park 2" had a box office hit like "Jurassic Park 3", Barry Diller, the president, would be at risk of being fired, right?
So compared to other giants, Barry Diller is particularly anxious.

"Sorry, Mr. Diller, I just finished work today."

After Barry Diller called for the third time, Hannah finally took the phone over according to Wayne's instructions in advance.

"It doesn't matter. I have long heard that Mr. Wayne is very dedicated. I think it is precisely because of your dedicated attitude that every movie you make can win both word-of-mouth and box office success."

Barry Diller on the other end of the phone hurriedly smiled and said with a very low posture.

What Wayne said was the truth. He had learned through his own channels that Wayne had indeed been filming, so he had nothing to be dissatisfied with.

What's more, he still has Wayne to turn to.

After a few simple compliments and pleasantries, Barry Diller finally got to the point.

"That's right, Mr. Wayne, we at Universal Pictures very much hope to establish more cooperation with Hemera Pictures, so we are willing to pay US$2.2 million to purchase the "Wedding Crashers" film."

On the opposite side, Wayne, who had been well prepared, couldn't help but be surprised.

The figure of 2.2 million is a full 1 million US dollars higher than the previous record set by "Resident Evil 3500".

Not to mention Barry Diller, even Wayne himself thought this was already very high.

If this figure includes publicity and distribution, if you want to make money back through the box office, the film's box office needs to reach at least 4.8 million US dollars.

However, Wayne quickly came to his senses and said apologetically in a very sincere tone: "I can feel the sincerity of Mr. Diller and Universal Pictures, and I am very satisfied with this offer."

"It's just that Warner previously sold me most of the DC copyrights, including Batman and Superman. I have to repay this favor."

"Sony also re-shared such an important copyright as Spider-Man to Marvel, a subsidiary of our company. These are also favors."

Barry Diller couldn't help but frowned after hearing this.

As the president of Universal Pictures, he was naturally not an idiot, and he immediately understood the intentions revealed by Venn diagram.

"It turns out he did it on purpose!"

Barry Diller realized it belatedly.

Then nothing can be done.

This is within the scope of normal business competition. If they are targeted, it can only be blamed on the fact that the movies they made are not good enough and cannot beat others.

What's more, all the distribution companies are now rushing to buy movies produced by Hemera Pictures, and no one will have trouble making money.

If he dares to lead Universal and Hemera Pictures into confrontation, he will only be isolated by others and kicked out.

When Wayne borrows the knife from other giants, just like "Resident Evil 1" did to "Jurassic Park 3", for the movies distributed by Universal, it will only be Universal that loses money in the end.

"What about the IP that Mr. Wayne wants from Universal?"

Barry Diller, who thought about the serious situation, took a deep breath, kept his tone unchanged, and asked curiously.

"I'm very optimistic about the movie "Fast and Furious" that your company just released this year."

Wayne didn't mention "Jurassic Park 3" right away but instead clicked on "Fast and Furious" first.

(End of this chapter)