After a short period of thought, Matthew realized that Guillermo del Toro was preparing to open up a new genre of commercial films, and if movie monsters had Kong and Godzilla in the past, giant robots or mecha piloted by humans seemed to have never played a leading role in a Hollywood first-line commercial production.

This kind of robot used to fight monsters is infinitely close to Gundam, rather than a completely humanoid Robocop or a Transformer with independent consciousness.

"Gilmour, is this an original?" asked Matthew what he thought was the key.

"Yes, I came up with something borrowed from Japanese manga monsters and Gundam. Guillermo del Toro said directly, "It's not an adaptation, it's an original genre." ”

Hearing this, Matthew's heart was still a little hot, and it cooled down at a rapid speed.

How risky is it to make an original sci-fi commercial film with a budget of $200 million?

Christopher Nolan also plays original A-list big productions, but how many Christopher Nolan are there in Hollywood?

Once he, who didn't pay attention to the behind-the-scenes of Hollywood, knew who Christopher Nolan was, but didn't recognize Guillermo del Toro.

Admittedly, he worked with Guillermo del Toro and knew that this was a very talented and capable director, but an original film with a $200 million production budget was risky enough.

"Matthew ......" Guillermo del Toro wanted to say something, but Matthew did not answer, and continued to think about the question of investment risk.

He didn't know the box office of "Pacific Rim" in the past, only that it was a download hit on the piracy website on the other side.

But the risk of originality reminded him of another thing, there are also many popular films on the other side of the Pacific and North American street fighting, especially North American street fighting, which often means that the entire Western market is not profitable.

What I remember most clearly is undoubtedly the film "Warcraft".

If this is a "Warcraft" type film, wouldn't he cry if he invested?

On the other side of the Pacific, with only 25 percent of the box office, it is absolutely impossible to support a huge production budget of about $200 million.

Moreover, "Warcraft" is an adapted movie, and many game fans pay for it.

"Pacific Rim" is an original!

It's not that he's biased against original movies, it's that the whole of Hollywood is biased against original big productions, ask the top executives of the six major companies, which one dares to easily allocate a budget of $200 million for an original movie?

With the success of "Inception", the media is saying that this is a victory for original films, and Hollywood production companies will be interested in more original stories that have been hidden by directors or screenwriters for a long time, but people like Matthew or the six high-level executives who lead film production are very clear that the downturn of Hollywood original films will not change because of this, but will only decline more and more, and sequels and adaptations are the mainstream of commercial productions.

"Gilmour. Matthew spoke slowly, "The budget of about 200 million dollars is not a small amount, I can't promise you now, I have to think about it carefully." ”

Even if "Pacific Rim" is a sequel to a blockbuster movie, he can't just open his mouth and respond to it, so what's the difference between being a fool?

That's 200 million dollars, not 200 million yen.

Guillermo del Toro was a little disappointed, but Matthew's words didn't mean that the investment failed this time, and he immediately nodded and said, "Okay, I hope we can work together again." ”

Matthew smiled, "Even if you don't cooperate with me, you don't have a shortage of investors." ”

With a faint refusal of the words, Guillermo del Toro heard it more or less, politely said goodbye to Matthew, and left.

Matthew didn't give up completely, after all, Guillermo del Toro worked with him and was also a director who knew the roots, and then specifically asked Bella Anderson to do a targeted investigation.

When the memories of the past can't make him make a judgment, he has to rely on the ability and experience honed in Hollywood in this life.

Although no one can be 100% sure of the success or failure of a movie before it is released, Hollywood has developed to this day, and industry veterans can always rely on years of experience and lessons from successive successes and failures to avoid some obvious pitfalls.

Matthew has worked hard in Hollywood for so many years, and he is not stupid himself, and he still has the most basic vision and ability.

So, when Bella Anderson's investigation was in front of him, Matthew didn't spend much time and decided to abandon this project for Guillermo del Toro.

Because Matthew found that something like Gundam had a really limited audience in North America.

This will directly bring about an objective situation that is difficult to change, no matter how big the scene of this movie is in the future, how good the special effects are, the nature of mecha monsters is still a niche theme, and even Gundam fighting monsters is not an exaggeration to say that it is a quasi-Cult genre.

Guillermo del Toro is filming this quasi-cult theme as a mainstream blockbuster, and it is expected to cost about $200 million, will mainstream audiences buy it?

It's not hard to guess.

How can movies with heavy Japanese anime have an audience base in North America? How many people in North America have watched these? Teenagers are afraid that they still watch American comics.

Even if there are some Japanese comic lovers, the group is not large.

If this film project invests 30 or 40 million or even 50 million or 60 million dollars, these may not be a problem, but it is really too risky to shoot on the scale of a top production.

This is not a question of whether bad movies are bad or not, and there are still fewer bad movies that sell well in North America? There is no need to look highly at the quality of North American audiences.

The most important thing is the subject matter, and now the market has limited acceptance of this kind of theme!

Not only in North America, but also in the mecha monsters, there are few audiences in the Western film market.

Matthew made such a judgment and did not delay much, and quickly replied directly to Guillermo del Toro, telling him that he had tight liquidity, coupled with an unsuitable schedule, and could neither invest nor star in "Pacific Rim".

It's also about asking Guillermo del Toro not to waste his time with him and hurry up to find other investors.

Although there is no collaboration, Matthew will not drag Guillermo del Toro, and the Mexican director was kind when he met him that day.

There are not a few directors or producers who invest in Hollywood, when they first started to attract investment, they said that 80 million US dollars was enough, and then they began to prepare for filming, and they said that they wanted to invest an additional 50 million US dollars, otherwise they would not be able to complete the film, and the investors did not want to make an initial investment, so they would generally grit their teeth and continue to invest.

Among them, the most typical is James Cameron and "Titanic", the original production cost planned by the king of the world to the producer was only more than 100 million US dollars, and after the filming entered the middle stage, he kidnapped Twentieth Century Fox and forced Twentieth Century Fox to make additional investments again and again.

In the words of one Twentieth Century Fox executive, James Cameron's pursuit of investment almost forced Twentieth Century Fox board members to sell their butts to make money.

Twentieth Century Fox wanted to replace James Cameron more than once, but no one dared to take responsibility for such a huge investment failure.

In this respect, Guillermo del Toro is a good director, and he didn't tell Matthew that he could get it for tens of millions of dollars, but directly quoted a budget of about $200 million.

Of course, this project may also be successful, but Matthew judged based on market conditions that even if it succeeds, "Pacific Rim" is unlikely to make much money.

Compared to the huge risk and financial pressure brought by the huge investment of 200 million US dollars, the possible returns are too low.

He'd rather invest in Zack Snyder and Warner Bros.' Superman: Man of Steel than put such a large sum of money on Mecha Monsters.

If you want to talk about feelings, his robot feelings are Autobots and Decepticons, not Gundam.

Refusing Guillermo del Toro, Matthew went to "The Hunger Games" and "Twilight" and "Latent" to look at the two crews, the former has already started filming, and the latter two are in full swing to prepare for promotion and release.

"Latent" will be released before Halloween, the most traditional and strongest schedule of horror films, during this time period, more than a dozen horror films have piled up into theaters, who will become cannon fodder, who can fight their way out of the encirclement, it is impossible to know.

However, basically one or two low-budget horror films sell well during Halloween every year, which is the main reason why so many low-budget productions are crowded into the same schedule.

If it fails, the loss is not much, and the disc and rental market outside the theater chain can slowly pay for itself.

Once successful, the profit is often several times or even higher than the investment.

Matthew saw an interesting title among the many potential competitors for "Latent," from Weinstein Pictures' Piranha 3D.

This film is a giant of the Halloween schedule, as it cost a whopping $24 million to produce!

There are very few horror films in this year's Halloween schedule that cost more than $10 million to produce.

Similarly, the high cost in exchange for a large-scale number of theaters opened, but fortunately, "Latent" was released some time earlier than this film.

Because the investment is too low, even with Warner Bros. as the distributor, "Latent" can only be filmed on a small scale, and then after seeing the real response of the film, the distributor and the theater side will invest more resources.

This is the safest way, and no one wants to waste their resources casually.

Another upcoming film is "Twilight: Lunar Eclipse", which will still be released on Thanksgiving, and this film that has already sold two previous films in a row is much less stressful than "Latent".

Everyone knows very well that the box office of "Twilight: Lunar Eclipse" is definitely not bad, and the only doubt is whether the North American or global box office can surpass the previous work.

After reviewing the work of these three crews, Matthew came to the crew of "Special Forces 2: Total Counterattack" and began to participate in the final preparations for this film.