A month after entering the theater, "Blair the Witch" is gradually losing popularity, like all news events, it is impossible to occupy the public eye all the time, most people like the new and hate the old, and Hollywood and the film industry have always been eye-catching news, "Blair the Witch" is becoming a thing of the past.

After the film fetched another $5.21 million in the fifth weekend, the film's single-day output also dropped to about $1 million.

However, the accumulation of $138.9 million at the North American box office has also made "Blair the Witch" step by step towards the $150 million mark.

The box office is only the beginning of the film's revenue creation, and offline operations are being prepared later.

Disc suppression and videotape production have already begun, Ronan plans to launch it into the market during Halloween, and the offline channel department has cooperated with Walmart and Pescard and other chain stores for many years, and Embassy Pictures can maintain more than ten years, and videotape revenue is an extremely important guarantee.

Ronan is willing to spend a huge amount of money to acquire Embassy Pictures at this point in time, not only because of the theatrical distribution capacity, but also because of the perfect offline channels of Embassy Pictures.

Since the birth of videotapes, film distribution has no longer referred exclusively to theatrical screenings.

No one knows better than Ronan that the next decade of Hollywood is about to usher in the era of DVD explosion, and it is not an exaggeration to say that DVDs feed Hollywood companies.

Ronan took the time to talk to Garcia and Terry, the director of offline distribution, for a day, and Embassy Pictures would lay out on DVD in advance and establish long-term partnerships with several disc pressing studios.

Compared with the traditional videotape industry, DVDs and related discs are undoubtedly more promising, and videotapes will soon be surpassed by DVDs.

One of the main factors is profit and cost, even if an ordinary DVD is produced in a place like North America with extremely high labor costs, the cost of pressing is only 50 cents, and the cost of putting it into the terminal sale is only 3 to 5 dollars.

The price of genuine DVDs is generally around $20, and it is common for the unit price to be $100 for luxury sets, commemorative sets, limited editions, etc.

Another point is that the picture quality of DVDs is generally better than that of videotapes.

Hollywood is about to enter an era of crazy blockbusters, and the biggest selling point of those blockbusters is the special effects, which are undoubtedly very difficult to show with traditional videotapes.

For "Blair the Witch," there is little room for spin-offs, and television broadcasts are another major source of revenue for offline, in addition to videotapes and DVDs.

Embassy Pictures has also begun to make initial contact with the TV station to discuss the copyright issue of the premiere of "Blair the Witch".

There are two main ways for Hollywood movies to authorize TV stations, one is to directly sell out the copyright to TV stations for many years, and the other is to charge according to the number of broadcasts, and the first broadcast price is the highest.

For example, Tom Cruise's "Mission Impossible" has a premiere licensing fee of up to $8 million, and the cost of each subsequent broadcast is nearly $4 million.

The film company takes two or three popular films as the core, and then pairs some ordinary movies and bad movies that are not easy to sell, forming a broadcast authorization package to sell to TV stations.

This situation is very common, which can not only make the loss-making bad movie as much as possible to recover the funds, but also effectively dilute the profits of the hit movie.

At the time of the acquisition, due to the limited funds in Ronan's hands, he divested the film library of Embassy Pictures, and was finally acquired by Lionsgate, and at present, Embassy Pictures has no copyright to other films, Ronan initially planned to let Shahai Pictures transfer several videotape films that did not sell TV broadcast rights to Embassy Pictures, and then form a broadcast license package with "Blair the Witch", and then sell them to TV stations.

He was responsible for providing the plan, and it was up to the people in the offline distribution department of the embassy film to run it.

Fortunately, "Blair the Witch" does not involve the cast or crew or other aspects of the share, Ronan's Relativity Entertainment buys out all the copyrights at one time, but there is no need to worry about someone sharing the profits, and there is no need to deliberately dilute the net profit of the film.

The offline operation is on track, there is a special person in charge of all aspects of the work, Ronan's energy has also been transferred to other aspects, "The Grim Reaper is Coming" has moved to the editing stage, and Jessica Felton has also entered the crew to be responsible for the editing of this film.

The editing of "Ace Agent" was personally handled by Paul Greengrass.

Of course, the final decision is all in Ronan's hands.

Release dates for the two films have also been confirmed, with "Death Coming" to be released in early December and "Ace Agent" to be released in mid-November, all of which will be distributed by Embassy Pictures.

"I'm going to have a premiere for 'The Grim Reaper' is coming. ”

In the conference room that was not too big, high-level executives from Shahai Entertainment and Embassy Pictures gathered, and Ronan sat at the front of the long conference table: "The embassy is responsible for making plans here. ”

Garcia told the truth: "We haven't had a premiere, we don't have any experience at all. ”

In the past ten years, Embassy Pictures has bought some independent small productions from overseas to distribute them in North America, and it has never played such a high-level publicity and distribution method as the premiere.

Ronan hadn't done the premiere either, and was worried that the first one would be messed up, and said, "Find an agency to be in charge." ”

There are many similar agencies in Hollywood that can provide a full range of services for films, not only for premieres, but even for editing promotional trailers.

The most typical case in this regard is the "Suicide Squad" released by Warner Bros. in the previous life, the film was very badly made, Warner Bros. realized this very early, and hired a professional company to do publicity, this company condensed the few essences of the film into the trailer, and the trailer caused a sensation, and the box office exploded in the first week.

Although viewers who have seen the film found the trailer to be the only attraction of the film, resulting in a lot of scolding, it did not prevent "Suicide Squad" from being a huge commercial success.

Thomas, the director of theatrical distribution, asked at this time, "Is "Ace Agent" still premiering?"

"No need. Ronan directly vetoed: "The cast lineup of this film has no influence, and there won't be much attention when the premiere is held." ”

The real cost of this film is only $10 million, including director Paul Greengrass, all Hollywood dick actors, and it is not cost-effective to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the premiere.

Ronan also told David Villa, the director of publicity: "The publicity of "Ace Agent" should be targeted, with minorities as the main group, and the upfront publicity cost should be controlled within $3 million. The focus of the publicity is "Here Comes the Grim Reaper", and I'll give you an $8 million publicity budget. ”

With the huge success of "Blair the Witch" and a lot of trust in Ronan's abilities from all over the Embassy Pictures, David Villa answered: "I'll give you a detailed plan next week. ”

Ronan thought for a while, and then said: "Think of more ways to promote "The Grim Reaper", I have an idea. ”

Everyone's eyes in the conference room turned to Ronan's side.

"Spread rumors on the internet that 'Death is Coming' is based on true events. What Ronan said is still not beyond the scope of "viral marketing", but it is definitely conscientious compared to the plan of "Blair the Witch": "Fabricate a plane crash ......"

Speaking of which, he doesn't feel very appropriate, after all, "Blair the Witch" is a big fuss, and using similar methods to stimulate the sensitive nerves of the audience may be counterproductive.

Ronan quickly had an idea and said: "Robert, this job is entrusted to you, you will find a way to collect some cases that escaped the disaster, especially the air crash, and later died unexpectedly, and handed them over to the Propaganda Department for hype." ”

Robert held his chin: "I think I've seen such a case in the newspaper of that year." ”

George Clint, who previously worked in the media industry, responded: "There was a case in the '70s where a member of the Evansville University men's basketball team was killed in a plane crash, and only one member of the team did not take the trip because he was sick, but he was hit and killed by a drunk driver two weeks later. ”

Hearing this, the people in the conference room suddenly felt a creepy feeling.

Ronan was not too affected and said, "Look carefully, there must be other cases." ”

In my previous life, I saw a post on the Internet, which was written as the real "Death is coming", but I only roughly browsed it at the time, and I have long forgotten the specific content.

Ronan turned to George Clint and asked, "When will 'Ace Agent' be ready for post-production?"

George replied, "Early October at the latest." ”

"Paul Greengrass, you pay more attention. Ronan asked his financial director, "Mary, what about the funds?"

Mary looked at her notebook and said, "When the North American box office share of "Blair the Witch" arrives, our financial situation will be significantly better, and we will have enough funds to complete the promotion and distribution of "Death is Coming" and "Ace Agent." ”

Ronan made a decision: "The funds for the publicity and distribution of these two films will still be borrowed by Embassy Pictures from Relativity Entertainment, and the distribution will be 30 percent, no! 40 percent!"

The general distribution percentage in North America is 30 percent, but the production and distribution companies under the same group can even set a 40 percent distribution in North America.

This is a typical left-handed inverted right-handed game.

Originally, the profit of the left hand had to be distributed to the investor, but the profit of the right hand was higher, and the profit of the left hand was naturally less.

"Is it only a box office commission?" Garcia asked tentatively, "Should the publicity and distribution costs be counted separately?"

It turns out that everyone's hearts are dark.

Ronan is weighing the pros and cons, especially the possible impact on the Abu Dhabi side.

If it's just a private foundation, it's black, and the investment bureau is an official institution of the UAE after all, so he still has some concerns.

A country, even if it is an Arab country, has a lot of energy.

After all, Relativity is not Warner Bros., a huge company with strength and heritage like Warner Bros. dares to make "Harry Potter", which has accumulated countless fortunes from the box office to the periphery, into a loss......

"Tentatively set a 40 percent commission. Ronan didn't make a decision right away.

It's still early for the release of the film, let's see the specific situation later.