hollywood melon man

Chapter 541 DreamWorks Falls Apart

After Halle Berry joined the cast, the other main characters were also confirmed one by one. They are basically all powerful Hollywood actors with no problem in acting.

With a superstar like Tom Cruise around, there's naturally no need for anyone else to carry the box office.

Besides, this is Gilbert Jr.'s project, and his name is the signature.

Because there will be a lot of action scenes in the film, although Tom Cruise is very good at action scenes, he still received training after signing the actor contract.

The other actors who had action scenes also received training together. Even the actors who did not have action scenes took the initiative to participate in the training so that director Gilbert Jr. would feel that they were also working hard.

In addition to special effects, the zombies in the film were mostly played by real people in makeup. The film was shot in Australia, which can provide many professional extras, so there is no need to select them specifically from Los Angeles.

But for little Gilbert, the most important issue is actually what length of text to use to complete the story. This is a problem.

You have to know that "The Last of Us" was originally a game, and the game has enough space to accommodate battles and plots.

But movies are different. Once a movie is more than three hours long, it will make the audience sit uncomfortably in the cinema. So when the script was first written, the screenwriters of Cantaloupe Studios suggested dividing the story into two parts.

But Gilbert Jr. disagrees. He believes that the story created by a movie must be complete and follow the three-act structure of traditional film creation, namely the beginning, the middle, and the end.

Putting aside the controversial "The Last of Us 2", the first "The Last of Us" has already told a complete story and it is not appropriate to tell it separately.

So Gilbert Jr. finally decided that even if it was a little longer, he had to tell the story of "The Last of Us" in one movie.

This posed a great challenge to the screenwriters, but fortunately everyone worked hard to find a solution, and the final script met Gilbert's requirements.

The script structure is very compact. If filmed according to the script, this movie will be a movie with very high information density.

Of course, in order to prevent the audience from getting bored and unable to continue watching, there will naturally be a large number of action scenes, and various classic shots in zombie movies are naturally indispensable.

In addition, most zombie movies in the past were small- to medium-budget productions, so they inevitably looked a bit shoddy. But The Last of Us is different. It is a movie with an investment of $1.2 million, and additional investment may be required later.

Such a huge amount of money is not just spent on the actors' salaries. Money is also spent on scene construction, special effects and model production. The accumulated effect is the selling point of the film.

Of course, "The Last of Us", which contains a lot of horror scenes, inevitably has a disadvantage in ratings and will eventually become an R-rated film.

But it’s not that R-rated movies can’t sell well. “The Matrix” is also an R-rated movie. Didn’t it become a classic science fiction movie and a model of commercial films?

As long as the rating is not too outrageous, R-rated movies can also sell well in the cinema market.

By the time the main actors were confirmed, it was already July. Ellie's audition was scheduled for the middle of the month, and something big happened in July.

Gilbert Jr. had told Scarlett before that there was a high chance that Escape from the Island would fail.

Sure enough, even though Gilbert Jr. attended the premiere for Scarlett's sake, the quality of the film was still just as Gilbert Jr. said.

Michael Bay, who kept repeating his past self, suffered a big setback. The film only earned 1254 million US dollars in its first week, which was even worse than the first week of "Kingdom of Heaven".

The film's box office in the second weekend was only over 4 million US dollars. If this trend continues, the North American box office of "Escape from the Island" will not exceed 50 million US dollars.

This incident was a huge blow to Scarlett, because this was the first time she played the leading role in a commercial film when she switched from art films to commercial films, and it was a film with an investment of over 100 million US dollars.

As a result, the film failed, shattering Scarlett's dream of becoming a Hollywood A-list actress. But fortunately, she still has Gilbert Jr. to rely on, and the role of Agent Romanov will help her realize her dream.

Michael Bay also has hope. Although "Escape from the Island" failed, he has signed a director contract with Sky Studios and is confirmed to be the director of "Transformers".

The film's male lead Ewan McGregor had a bad experience, as the big commercial production in which he played the male lead had messed up, but he still has the movie "Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith" this year.

Currently, "Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith" has grossed $3 million in North America and over $2230.5 million worldwide, which is a very good result.

But then again, when watching the "Star Wars" series, you basically don't pay attention to who the actors are.

Even Harrison Ford became famous through other roles, such as Indiana Jones in the Indiana Jones series.

The one who was most unlucky in the failure of "The Island" was actually DreamWorks, the producer and distributor.

DreamWorks has been struggling to survive in recent years, and last year DreamWorks Animation Studio was separated from DreamWorks.

Jeffrey Katzenberg parted ways with Spielberg and merged DreamWorks Action Studios into Paramount's distribution system.

DreamWorks Animation Studios released "Madagascar" at the end of June this year, which earned 5031 million US dollars in the first week. The North American box office has now exceeded million US dollars.

With the loss of DreamWorks Animation Studios, its only profitable division, and the fact that Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" released this year was not very successful, "Escape from the Island" became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

In mid-July, DreamWorks announced bankruptcy reorganization, closing its loss-making TV production and record divisions, and most importantly, giving up distribution rights.

This is very important. Distribution rights are an important reason why Hollywood giants are besieging DreamWorks.

David Geffen, one of the three giants of DreamWorks, took a breakup settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars, announced his farewell to Hollywood, and devoted himself to his charity work.

The live-action film department of DreamWorks fell into the hands of Spielberg.

Looking back, I still remember the grand occasion when DreamWorks was founded. The three giants were ambitious and wanted to challenge the traditional Hollywood giants.

Those who are dissatisfied with the dominance of Hollywood giants have high hopes for DreamWorks, hoping that DreamWorks can become a pioneer in fighting against the giants.

At the beginning, DreamWorks did achieve certain results, but later under the siege of giants, DreamWorks faced failure and crisis again and again.

The three giants of DreamWorks often have conflicts over their ideas, but if DreamWorks develops smoothly, such conflicts would not break out.

But DreamWorks did not develop smoothly, so the difference in concept became a fatal point, which was also the reason for the separation of DreamWorks Animation Studio.

Spielberg is currently looking for a suitable distributor, which shows that he is back to his old ways.

Spielberg, who has given up the idea of ​​competing with Hollywood giants, is still one of the most popular film directors in Hollywood.

But can Spielberg go back to the past? No one knows.

To be honest, although Gilbert Jr. and Spielberg were nominally in a teacher-student relationship, he was also involved in the disintegration of DreamWorks.

There is no way. Friendship is friendship, but when it comes to issues involving interests and positions, there is no room for compromise.

(End of this chapter)