Chapter 727

Is the phone ICM's Kapoor? Sid called personally.

After Columbia decided to shoot a Godzilla movie, it couldn't wait to start looking for a director for the project. Johnston is undoubtedly the most suitable candidate. On the other hand, actors, directors and producers who have a close relationship with Firefly, most of the brokerage contracts are in ICM, and although the two parties have no direct interest in the relationship due to the antitrust law, the relationship between ICM and Firefly has always been very close among the three major agencies.

Therefore, the news of Sony's attempt to dig into the wall reached Eric as soon as possible.

Bill? Michanick is a veteran manager in Hollywood, the information is not difficult to find, his management style tends to be conservative, and he has a cautious personality. After Michanik became the CEO of Colombia, Eric once thought that Sony would give up the money-throwing strategy of deep pockets and start to accumulate money step by step, but the moment he heard that Sony planned to launch "Godzilla", Eric immediately determined that Sony would follow the old path of his previous life.

In the original plane, although the expulsion of Peter? Cooper and strong? Peters is a big moth, but Sony still hasn't reined in the strategy of blindly throwing money to find a sense of existence. Carrey offered the first $20 million salary in Hollywood history, and blindly invested in a number of big-budget films that ended in failure, of which the 1998 version of "Godzilla" is undoubtedly the most typical failure.

With Godzilla's strong popularity around the world, Sony had ambitions to make it into a trilogy in the early days of film preparation, and invited Roland, who achieved a huge box office success with "Alone Day"? Emmerich.

But many things are often inseparable from the cycle of greater expectations, greater disappointments.

In my memory, the 98 version of "Godzilla" was not only rated as childish and cheesy, inexplicable, and lacking in logic. Moreover, fans focused more of their complaints on Godzilla itself in the movie.

The reason why Godzilla is called the 'King of Monsters' is mainly because of its strong combat effectiveness, the Japanese version of Godzilla, not only has the indestructible body of King Kong and powerful attack methods such as radiation hotlines, but also can even carry a nuclear bomb attack. Even occasionally pulled out to fight against alien invasions, this is the real king of monsters who destroys the world.

Looking at the 98 version of "Godzilla", the first reaction of most Godzilla fans after watching the movie is basically 'You are kidding me', the dignified king of monsters, gave up the classic image of the Japanese version, and was designed to grow a Tyrannosaurus rex with a dorsal fin, but the strength is so weak that it can't move just because it is entangled in the steel cable of the bridge, is Godzilla's strength so small?

That's it. That's it, but the most unbearable thing is that Mr. Tyrannosaurus Rex was hit by a few missiles from the US military, and he hung up so easily, hung up, hung up......

And, before hanging up, there is no unwilling struggle. There was no near-death counterattack, at the last moment of life. Mr. Tyrannosaurus Rex chose to look at the male protagonist affectionately, with reluctance and nostalgia in his eyes, and after leaving the subtext of 'you got his person, but I got his heart' to the woman behind the male protagonist, he passed away peacefully, leaving only the poor audience in the movie theater. If you die, you will die, what's the matter with COS a King Kong for the time being!

In Eric's memory, the box office of "Godzilla" was not a complete failure, but its reputation was so bad that even after more than ten years, it would often be pulled out by fans and whipped to the corpse.

The film not only won a number of nominations for the worst remake, the worst director, the worst screenplay and the worst supporting actress after its release, but also received unanimous condemnation from fans around the world.

The copyright owner of Godzilla was originally in 1995 after the twenty-second Godzilla. I'm going to finish this set completely.

But after the 98 version of "Godzilla" was released, in order to save the image of Godzilla in the hearts of fans, it had to be restarted again, and it was not until 28 films were filmed that it stopped. Things developed later, and the 98 version of Godzilla was even given the God prefix and only named Zilla.

After learning about this, Eric began to think about how to make this thing go in the direction he had in mind.

Under his influence, Hollywood history has changed a lot, and Eric is not sure if "Godzilla" will fail like his previous life if he changes directors, so he quickly made up his mind to guide "Godzilla" towards the trajectory of his previous life.

Although Sony's determination to run the film business far exceeds that of Panasonic, if it suffers successive blows from major production failures, Eric does not believe that Sony will continue to hold on as he did in his previous life, not to mention that now Sony is destined to no longer have the "Spider-Man" series as a life-saving straw.

In current Hollywood, there are not many directors who are suitable for directing "Godzilla", Cameron counts as one, Spielberg counts as one, Eric himself counts as one, and Joe himself? Johnston, Roland? Emmerich, Jane? Morality? Bonthe, Paul? Verhoeven and a few others, most of these people are related to fireflies, after all, in recent years, Hollywood's most successful special effects blockbusters have come from Fireflies, Cameron, Roland? Emmerich and several others have also accumulated enough experience in special effects films with the support of Firefly.

Want to make "Godzilla" repeat the mistakes of the past and bring Roland again? Emmerich pushes Sony to be the easiest and most straightforward way to do it.

Therefore, what Eric has to do is very simple, just block Sony's way to find several other directors.

In this regard, Cameron doesn't care, he's working on Titanic, and Sony definitely can't get started, Joe? Johnston signed an option contract with Fireflies before taking over "Jurassic Park 2", and even if Sony can offer a sky-high price of $20 million, it is not enough to pay liquidated damages, so he doesn't have to think about it, and the other people Eric is not too worried, before excluding several directors of the first sequence, Eric believes that Sony will definitely not settle for the next best.

Then, the most unstable factor is Spielberg. "Jaws", which Lao Si relied on to become famous back then, is actually a monster movie.

There is no doubt about it, even if Eric deliberately released the water. Sony is also likely to be in Spielberg and Roland? Emmerich chose the former.

Of course, there are no absolutes in the world, and right now, Roland? Emmerich has the best chance to improve his competitiveness. You know, "Alone Day" definitely has to be regarded as Roland? Emmerich's career as a director is at its peak.

While Eric is paying close attention to the preparations of Sonny Godzilla, the Hollywood summer season is still in full swing to harvest the box office. Among them, although the weekly box office performance of "Forrest Gump" has not been high, it is definitely the most eye-catching.

The $47 million box office in the first week reached $30,000 compared to 1,500 screens, far exceeding the average box office blockbuster of $10,000.

Subsequently, on June 16, Firefly's "Toy Story 2" was released, and it topped the weekly box office list with a first-week box office of $69 million without suspense. "Jurassic Park 2" in the second week of $77 million, with a 45% drop to the total box office to $217 million, the third week box office fell by 49%, $39.25 million, relatively speaking, "Forrest Gump" fell only 18% in the second week, the box office reached $39.2 million, "Jurassic Park" only a slight advantage of $50,000. narrowly held on to his position as the runner-up at the box office.

When June 23 arrived, while Time Warner's "Batman Forever" word-of-mouth was polarized. When fans salivated while witnessing the screen shows of several famous villains, they were painful and happy to pay money to enter the show, and the accumulated strength of "Forrest Gump" was finally revealed.

After the weekly box office from June 23 to June 29 was released, although "Batman Forever" topped the list with a box office of $78 million, everyone's eyes were firmly attracted by the box office of the second place "Forrest Gump" with $35 million, and the box office decline was even weaker. Only 10 per cent. However, the box office of "Toy Story" has slipped to $33 million the next week, ranking third, and "Jurassic Park 2" continues to follow its ladder commercial box office rule, shrinking by 40%, only earning $23.5 million. Ranked fourth.

Unknowingly, in three weeks, the box office of "Forrest Gump" has unexpectedly accumulated $122 million.

Moreover, according to its hot topic and the weak weekly box office decline trend, the box office evaluation agency adjusted the box office expectations of "Forrest Gump" again and again, and when the box office of the third week came out, everyone was surprised to find that most of the box office evaluation agencies and media had unknowingly set the box office tone of "Forrest Gump" at a high level of $300 million.

Although the box office of "Jurassic Park 2" has reached $279 million in four weeks, and the total box office of $300 million is just around the corner, there are hardly too many people who doubt that "Forrest Gump" has unwittingly shown its strength to compete with "Jurassic Park 2" for the annual box office championship.

For the box office results of "Forrest Gump", the most excited is of course the producer Flower Pictures, and the most complicated mood is undoubtedly because of the dispute between "Men in Black" and "Jumanji" at the beginning of the year, Sony-Columbia, which was won by Eric for the distribution rights of "Forrest Gump" and "Night at the Museum".

When Sony found itself abandoning "Forrest Gump", which could bring them at least more than $100 million, for the sake of "Men in Black" and "Jumanji", two films that were likely to make a little hard-earned money because of the greatly increased cost (according to the original agreement, Sony only had a 40% interest in two films), some shareholders even publicly questioned the decision of the American division, if it wasn't for Nobuyuki Idei himself to come forward for Howard? Stringer endorsed that the newly appointed head of the U.S. branch may be about to 'resign'.

The wind blows, Howard? Stringer is also more determined to get rid of the shadow of the fireflies and make "Godzilla" a super-selling series.

Inviting Joe? After Johnston's intention to direct "Godzilla" was directly rejected by the other party, Howard? Stringer soon had his eye on Spielberg. Howard, though? Stringer is finally better than the German film investors who only pick big stars regardless of whether the other party is out of luck or not, because "Jurassic Park" was taken away by Eric, Spielberg's films in the past two years have been good at the box office, but they are not too dazzling, and his "Jaws" and "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" that he created box office miracles were already ten or twenty years ago.

What's more, a few years ago, Columbia cooperated with Spielberg in "**** Captain", in the early one-sided applause, it also ended in a failed failure, and, in recent years, Spielberg has been maintaining close cooperation with Universal Pictures, the box office "Ghost Pony Elf" at the beginning of this summer, is the result of Spielberg's **** Lin Pictures and Universal's cooperation, this fantasy family comedy is crushed by super blockbusters like "Jurassic Park 2", It has tenaciously achieved a box office of more than 80 million dollars.

It is even said that he is about to be David? The new studio co-founded by Geffen will also be affiliated with Universal, so Howard? Stringer's confidence in inviting Spielberg was also not so strong.

In this hesitation, "Day of Solitude" was released.

"Solo Day", which opened on June 30, got a box office of $56 million in three days on the first weekend, because the solo day holiday on July 4 in the United States happened to be on Monday, and the box office on that day rose instead of falling compared to the previous weekend, therefore, with a strong word-of-mouth and marketing company, the box office of "Solo Day" reached $85 million in the first week, breaking through its $75 million production cost in a week, and even, according to the sharing rules, producers often get 90% of the box office share in the first week, therefore, theoretically, Firefly has already recouped all of its production costs in the first week.

The original "Heaven and Earth Collision" has already made Roland? Emmerich is among the first-line directors, and the box office of "Alone Day" is released. Emmerich's prestige skyrocketed.

And, Howard? Stringer was pleasantly surprised to find that Roland? Emmerich, and not Joe? Johnston is comfortable with an option contract.

In other words, as long as it pays a sufficient price, Sony can invite Roland completely? Emmerich directs Godzilla.

Now the question is, what if Sony to Roland? How will the fireflies react when Emmerich sends out an invitation?

Although he wants to do his best to get rid of the shadow brought by the fireflies, but Howard? Stringer knew very well that it was impossible to completely get rid of the influence of fireflies. At the very least, the film definitely needs the support of the digital field in terms of special effects. (To be continued.) )