The packaging model pioneered by CAA was originally used to promote the TV program in hand.

In the 70s, the newly established CAA was not only suppressed by its old club WMA, but also had very few artists. In order to find jobs for clients as quickly as possible and avoid the collapse of the newly established small company, CAA President Michael Ovitz and other talents have found another way to gather all the right artists through excellent scripts, and then sell them to major TV stations as a whole.

This unconventional packaging model of selecting actors first and then customizing scripts for them was an unexpected success, and then gradually evolved into filmmaking.

In 1982, CAA's film packaging project "My Fair Lady" was a box office hit, achieving the second place in the North American box office list that year (the first place was "Alien ET"), which completely made the packaging mechanism the core operating model of CAA.

As CAA grows and grows, its top stars are increasing, and the agency is becoming stronger and stronger in Hollywood. Not only does it demand higher and higher salaries for its stars, but it also bypasses Hollywood's restrictions on brokerages from getting involved in the production field by taking commissions from the overall project budget, further pushing up the production costs of film and television programs.

As a result, for this project operation model that constantly carves up its original power and interests, Hollywood's major film and television production companies have also begun to become jealous.

As a veteran brokerage company established nearly 100 years ago, WMA was aware of the threat of CAA's new operating model. However, due to the company's entrenched conservative practices and the lack of coordination and cooperation mechanisms among internal brokers, the WMA did not follow up in time.

It wasn't until the death of two core executives in the first half of the year that the company's internal turmoil caused a large number of top stars to leave, and WMA woke up like a dream.

Then, Simon's "The Butterfly Effect" coincidentally became WMA's first packaged project to Hollywood studios.

Although a large number of top customers have left in recent months, the overall size of WMA is still much larger than that of CAA.

At this time, CAA still had only more than 50 brokers, and the number of customers had just reached 600. In comparison, WMA, which has more than 180 agents, has more than 3,000 artists.

If Hollywood's largest talent agency also switches to this project operation model, it is not difficult to imagine that major studios will become more and more passive in film and television production in the future.

Due to this concern, although "Butterfly Effect" has won the optimism of many studio executives, a week has passed, which should have been the time for the film company to reply, but the heads of several major studios have not given a clear reply.

It's mid-July in the blink of an eye.

Paramount Corporate Headquarters in downtown Hollywood, Tuesday afternoon.

Due to the success of Paramount's two films "Top Gun" and "Skipping Class" released this summer, Sidney Garnis has also been in high spirits recently, because the company has now completely swept away the haze of the departure of Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and other executives in the previous two years.

Hit by the company's top management, Paramount's best film "Witness" last year only grossed $68 million, and many media outlets were ridiculing Paramount's parent company, Gulf West, chairman Martin Davis, for forcing Barry Diller and other executives away one after another, and predicting that Paramount would collapse from now on.

Now, Paramount is back in full swing, and the grumpy Martin Davis has stopped staring at the top management like a mule in recent times, and everyone will have a much better life in the future.

Warmly welcomed Jonathan Friedman, who had come to visit, into the office, and Sidney Garnis and other secretaries brought coffee to the two and exchanged a few words before entering the topic: "Joe, in all fairness, Paramount really wanted the script of 'The Butterfly Effect', but it was difficult for us to accept the overall plan of the WMA. ”

This is not the first studio Jonathan Friedman has visited today, he has just been to Warner Studios this morning. Hearing Sidney Garnes and Warner Pictures President Ed Morley's almost similar rhetoric, Jonathan Friedman has already determined 100% that several major Hollywood studios have definitely concatuded "The Butterfly Effect" in advance.

However, on the surface, Jonathan Friedman remained unmoved: "West Germany, you should be able to see that this is a very good project, and the WMA has also come up with the best creative lineup we can provide." ”

"No, I don't think so. Sidney Garnis shook his head and said, "Just like Brian de Palma, he has already messed up two big productions with an investment of more than 10 million in a row, and it is difficult for Paramount to feel at ease to let him direct this movie." ”

Jonathan Friedman retorted: "West Germany, Brian's last two films are really not good enough at the box office, but they can't be considered screwed up. Moreover, the responsibility for the film's box office failure is not entirely on him. Just like "Lucky Star in the Black Street" at the beginning of the year, MGM not only arranged the movie in the unpopular April schedule, but also only gave more than 300 screens. Even so, the film still grossed $8.5 million, which is enough to prove Brian's strength. Moreover, "The Butterfly Effect" also happens to be the genre that Brian is best at. ”

Sidney Garnis took a sip from his coffee cup and shrugged, "Well, even so, the $2 million director salary offered by the WMA is too high, and Paramount is only willing to pay $1 million at most." Also, the screenwriter ......"

With that, Sidney Garnis put down his coffee cup, got up and took a document from his desk, sat back down on the sofa in the reception area, handed it to Jonathan, and said, "Simon Westeros, right? So, again, we can't accept an offer of $200,000 for a script, which is too high, $100,000 at most, and it's two scripts. $80,000 for "The Butterfly Effect" and $20,000 for ...... Well, this, the option deposit for "The Grim Reaper". Oh, it took a lot of effort to find out the screenwriter's script from the screenwriters' union, in fact, there is a script, but the quality is too poor to be considered a story at all. As for "The Grim Reaper", although there is only an outline, the idea is really good. In addition, these are one-time buyout prices, Simon Westeros is not a union member, and Paramount is not required to give him a share of the rights to the tapes and television under the union's underlying agreement. ”

Jonathan Friedman silently flipped through the documents in his hand, but he could feel some obvious malice in Sidney Garnis's conditions.

However, when Sidney Garnis's voice fell, Jonathan Friedman still asked unwillingly: "So, Sidney, what about the actor, what do you think of Matthew?"

Sidney Garnis nodded with an inexplicable smile on his face and almost without hesitation: "The box office of "Skipping Class" is so good, of course we are very willing to continue to cooperate with Matthew." Although the salary of $5 million is a bit high, Matthew is also worth the price. ”

Hearing Sidney Garnis say this, Jonathan Friedman finally determined that Paramount was obviously targeting himself, the initiator of the WMA's first packaging project, and even wanted to mess up the project through this small means.

After all, Brian De Palma and Simon Westeros are both entertainers in his hands, and the combined remuneration of the two is less than half that of Matthew Broderick. Paramount was careful about the two of them, but decisively agreed to Matthew's offer of up to $5 million, which was clearly an attempt to provoke discord within the WMA.