Hollywood Director 1992.

Chapter 473 I'm not tired at all, this is so relaxing!

"Link, I heard there was an accident last night. That's really unfortunate."

Under the sunshade in the director's area, Ovitz stood with a blank face and a heavy tone, not daring to show the slightest hint of schadenfreude.

"There was a minor accident, but thankfully it didn't have a major impact."

Link's expression was calm, making it impossible to tell whether he was genuinely indifferent or just putting on an act.

Ovitz thought it was the latter. He said with a smirk, "Be more careful next time you shoot scenes on the sea. Spend money where you need to, don't be too frugal."

Link laughed and said, "The Caribbean is so far away, how come you have time to come all this way?"

"I've come to see you all. It's a very hot day, and you often film outdoors. It must be very hard for you."

Ovitz wiped the sweat from his brow and spoke from the depths of his heart.

The Caribbean Sea is located in the tropics, with a hot and humid climate and plenty of sunshine throughout the year. Tropical storms and continuous heavy rains often occur from June to August.

The climate conditions can be described as extremely poor.

Filming here would be very tough.

Moving around here feels more like torture than sitting in a comfortable office.

Link is worth billions and ranks fourth on the Forbes list. With his status and assets, he could have easily lived a life of luxury and decadence in his villa, but he chose not to.

To make a movie, he was willing to give up his comfortable life and come here to suffer.

Ovitz sighed inwardly. Although Link was a very annoying person, sometimes he had to admire his professionalism. He was more diligent and hardworking than his peers in the entertainment industry.

It's no wonder that someone like that can succeed.

"It's a bit hot here, but the scenery around here is quite nice. You can go and take a look when you have time."

"I will. It's beautiful here, and it would be a great place to vacation."

Looking out at the blue sky, the sea, the golden sand, and the white sailboats floating on the blue sea, Ovitz felt a sense of exhilaration.

Link smiled. He was busy filming and didn't have time to receive Ovitz. He handed over the task of receiving him to producer Mike Statham and continued filming on the island.

To prevent accidents from happening again, Link and the crew were more cautious during filming and modified the shooting plan, moving more than ten scenes at sea to a giant tank in Rosalito, Baja California.

The Rosalieto Giant Tank was one of the filming locations for Titanic.

When director James Cameron was filming scenes involving the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking, he built a huge pool at the site. The pool was 0.9 meters deep and could hold 130 million liters of seawater. On camera, the huge pool was indistinguishable from the sea surface.

Earlier this year, while filming "The Truman Show," he shot two scenes there.

The scenes on the sea in "Pirates of the Caribbean" are also planned to be filmed in a giant water tank.

After a day of filming, Link returned to the hotel to rest in the afternoon and invited Ovitz to dinner to discuss work-related issues.

Also present were Catherine Zeta-Jones, assistant director Yu Feihong, assistant Aishwarya Rai, and several girlfriends who came to visit the set, including Jennifer Lopez, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts, Izumi Sakai, Shizuka Kudo, and others.

When Ovitz arrived at the restaurant, he saw a table full of Caribbean seafood delicacies and more than a dozen beautiful women at the table, and his admiration for Link suddenly diminished.

He had previously seen Link, a billionaire, filming under the scorching sun on set, and he greatly admired Link, feeling that it was only natural that he could become a top director and that his films would be box office hits worldwide.

After seeing these beautiful women, he had to change his mind.

Link, that bastard, may seem to be working hard filming outside, but he gets to enjoy beautiful scenery, delicious food, and be surrounded by all sorts of beautiful women every day. If he had to endure that kind of hardship, he could grit his teeth and persevere.

"Mike, come and try the Caribbean's unique lobster and wild yellow croaker. It's hard to find fresh of these in other places."

After we started eating, Link pointed to three large shrimp in the middle that were over two feet long and introduced them.

“Link, your life here is quite enviable.”

Ovitz smiled knowingly.

"If you enjoy the food and scenery of the Caribbean, you can stay here for a longer period of time."

"Forget it, I have too much work at the company, and I don't have time to rest even if I want to."

Ovitz shrugged.

"Disney's performance in the past two years has indeed been poor. Its stock price has fallen by more than 30% compared to the year before last, and its annual dividend has also dropped significantly. If you and Eisner don't find a way to improve the performance, shareholders will probably choose to sell their shares next year."

Link dared to say this because Flash Capital is also a Disney shareholder, owning 2.6% of the shares, worth more than $500 million. This is less than $100 million in profit compared to when they acquired the shares four years ago, far below expectations, making it better to invest in other stocks.

Upon hearing his words, Ovitz's face flushed red and then darkened. He had originally intended to be friends with Link, but Link had acted unethically, speaking to him as a shareholder and placing them in an unequal position, which put him under considerable pressure.

Furthermore, why has Disney's performance deteriorated in recent years? Doesn't Link know? Link knows all too well.

The reason lies with him.

If Guessing Films hadn't grown so rapidly and its films hadn't performed so strongly at the box office, how could Disney's performance have declined? How could MGM have gone bankrupt? And how could the shareholders and management of the remaining five film companies have been so anxious about box office performance, even developing mental illnesses?

That bastard Link knew this all along, yet he still blamed them for mismanagement, leading to Disney's declining performance.

This is absolutely outrageous.

Ovitz took a big bite of the lobster, his resentment even greater than his athlete's foot. If it weren't for the fact that Link was a company shareholder and an important partner of Disney, he would have thrown the lobster at Link and given him a good scolding.

"hehe!"

Ovitz chuckled twice, his expression a mix of embarrassment and helplessness, and said, "In the past two years, Eisner and I have racked our brains to improve Disney's performance, and we've lost a lot of hair."

But guess what? The film industry is so powerful. It produces a constant stream of great movies, releasing several films that gross over 100 million dollars every year. It eats up most of the profits in the film industry, making it difficult for Disney and other film companies to survive.

Even so, we did not give up. Through our persistent efforts, although Disney's box office revenue in the past two years has not matched that of Guess the Movies, it has still outperformed the other six major film studios.

Finally, he joked in a humorous tone, "Link, if you let Guess Movies take a year off, we at Disney are guaranteed to see our performance skyrocket."

Link smiled slightly, "Guess what? Film Studio competes fairly with its peers in the film market. Winning or losing depends on one's own ability. If you expect Guess what? Film Studio to make concessions so that Disney can develop, that would be nothing short of disrespect to Disney."

Disney is the world's largest animation film production company, with countless IPs worthy of adaptation. Its potential in this area is enormous. If you can deeply explore Disney's potential in animated films, you also have a chance to surpass Guess Movies at the box office.

Ovitz secretly scoffed. Anyone could say something like that, but the key is to do it well.

In the past two years, he and Eisner have also focused on animated films as a key part of the company's development in order to avoid competing with Guessing Pictures' films in the live-action film market.

However, animated films are more complicated to produce, have a longer production cycle, and are more expensive. These films have a fixed audience, and although they rarely suffer huge losses after release, they also don't make much profit.

In addition, computer animation companies, represented by Pixar Animation Studios, have developed rapidly, competing with Disney's hand-made animation in the animation field and taking away a significant portion of the market share that originally belonged to Disney.

Now Link is actually advising them to focus on developing animated films.

This suggestion sounds harsh.

If Link hadn't been a company shareholder and hadn't been treating everyone to dinner today, Ovitz would have really wanted to give him a good scolding.

"Okay, let's not talk about work anymore, let's continue eating."

Link greeted him.

After dinner, Ovitz took out a script and asked him to look at it, which was also the reason why Ovitz had come over.

The new script is called "Pearl Harbor," and it tells the story of two best friends, Rafe and Danny. They learned to fly planes together when they were young and worked as pesticide sprayers in their hometown. After the outbreak of World War II, Rafe and Danny joined the army and met Evelyn, a battlefield nurse, in the army.

Rafe and Evelyn fell in love. Later, the United States mobilized elite troops to the European continent to assist European countries in resisting the invasion of Nazi Germany. Rafe volunteered to go to the war and entrusted Evelyn to Danny's care.

On the European battlefield, Rafe's plane was unfortunately shot down by the Germans in an air battle, and his fate was unknown.

Evelyn and Danny were devastated upon hearing the devastating news. They encouraged and comforted each other, and gradually, sparks flew between them, leading to a one-night stand.

While the two were deeply in love, Rafe returned from Europe, and all three faced the test of love and friendship.

Just when the three were unsure how to face each other, the Japanese air force launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War broke out, and Rafe and Danny participated in the bombing of the Japanese mainland.

After the bombing was successful, Rafe and Danny landed their plane safely at the University of Tokyo.

They were just unlucky.

Danny dies while saving Rafe during an attack by Japanese soldiers. Before he dies, Rafe tells Danny that Evelyn is pregnant.

Rafe returns to America with Danny's coffin and embraces Evelyn, mourning the passing of Danny.

Years later, Rafe and Evelyn, along with Danny's son, lived happily ever after.

Link had seen the movie before, but when he read the script, he still felt the story was a bit melodramatic.

This script draws inspiration from "Titanic" and "Saving Private Ryan" in terms of its selling points, namely, integrating the stories of ordinary people into real historical events to illustrate the impact of macro-historical background on individual fates, while also praising certain human virtues of ordinary people in the context of the larger historical context.

The film deals with a serious subject matter and has a grand background.

However, the screenwriting for this movie was lacking, and the love story it told wasn't moving enough.

This also resulted in the film being far inferior in quality to The Big Ship and The Soldier.

(End of this chapter)