In more than a month, the management of Firefly Group has drawn up a detailed 'reald' plan and a '4200' plan to promote the timetable. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The start date of "Iron Man" is set for March next year, and the filming period is three months.

The filming of "Iron Man" will be completed in the first half of the year, and the preliminary preparations for "Gravity" will also be ready, and Eric will be able to put into the production of "Gravity" in the second half of the year, from the start of filming to the final 3D and IMAX version of the transformation, one and a half years is enough.

As a result, the final completion of the two plans was set at the end of 1999.

Moreover, not only "Gravity", but also the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which has completed casting, is also confirmed to start filming early next year.

Because it is a trilogy of back-to-back shooting, the shooting cycle is as long as a year, and after a year of post-production, the first part of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" schedule will also be determined at the end of 1999, "The Lord of the Rings" series such an epic fantasy masterpiece is obviously also suitable for the pursuit of visual experience of 3D and IMAX screens, Eric will naturally not let go.

"Gravity" and the first part of "The Lord of the Rings" can guarantee that 4,000 3D screens and 200 IMAX theaters will have two blockbuster films.

As for Cameron's "Spider-Man", although according to the plan, the film will also be completed by the end of 1999, but the Firefly Group has no expectations from top to bottom that Cameron will complete the film as planned, and Eric simply did not include this film in the plan, intending to be tossed by Cameron.

However, according to the proposed schedule, as Marvel's first superhero movie, "Iron Man", which was scheduled to be in the summer of 1999, could only be excluded from the list of the first batch of 3D-IMAX films. The first Star Wars Prequel released by Fox and the next three MGM Secret Service Cinematic Universe blockbusters were also unable to catch up with the first wave of 3D-IMAX.

In this regard, Eric can only express regret, after all, many things cannot be done overnight.

Eric is back in Los Angeles, and Katzenberg has completed the first of two plans to acquire the Canadian company IMAX.

In 1994, Wall Street investor Richard Gelford was optimistic about the prospects of IMAX, pressed all his net worth to obtain a controlling stake in IMAX, and made every effort to promote the commercialization of IMAX technology in theaters.

However, due to the lack of support from Hollywood studios and several major theaters in North America, Richard Gelford's plan has hardly made any progress, and IMAX technology is still limited to all kinds of museums for the screening of science and education films. Eric had the company invest a sum of money in IMAX for the research and development of DMR technology for converting ordinary movies into IMAX films, although IMAX saw a glimmer of light, but it did not make the company's performance improve substantially.

Before Firefly launched the acquisition, IMAX could be said to be heavily indebted, with the entire company having a market value of less than $200 million on the NASDAQ market, but owed a huge debt of $150 million, including the $30 million that Firefly had lent at the beginning.

Since Eric intends to bet on IMAX, Firefly will naturally not hand over the dividends brought by the promotion of IMAX technology in the future, and at the same time, the company does not want to be controlled by others in the process of IMAX technology promotion, so the management unanimously believes that the company should be bought, but it is an acquisition of less than $500 million, and Eric will naturally not object.

After several years of fruitless efforts, IMAX was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Richard Gelford did not hold on to it, although he sensed that the acquisition of the Firefly Group would bring about a sea change for the company.

After weeks of negotiations, Firefly eventually won the company for $230 million in cash and $150 million in debt from IMAX, a deal that actually totaled only $350 million, since $30 million of the $150 million debt came from Firefly.

Preavista.

While plans for the expansion of Firefly Studios haven't officially begun yet, the plot west of Lincoln Avenue has already been cleaned up by a number of workers.

After many revisions, the team of dream engineers responsible for the construction of the theme park finally came up with a satisfactory design for the skywalk.

The entire corridor will be four kilometers long and 20 meters high, roughly equivalent to seven floors. In order to avoid the perception of buildings such as reinforced concrete viaducts, the entire corridor will be constructed entirely of steel and glass. Although the height of 20 meters is easily comparable to many buildings in other metropolises, in the vicinity of Preavista, where housing heights are generally no more than three floors, this corridor will undoubtedly be the most striking landmark within a radius of several tens of kilometers.

"At a conservative cost of $50 million, it's definitely going to be the most expensive building in the entire studio, but I think anyone who has seen the renderings will think it's worth the $50 million. Climb this sky corridor to see the ocean to the west, Mount Fox to the east, Los Angeles Airport to the south, and Santa Monica to the north. ”

In the still somewhat potholed wasteland, Katzenberg and Eric walk side by side, while talking about the theme park's expansion plans with some excitement.

Eric looked at the surrounding empty land waiting to be developed, imagining the picture of the future construction of Firefly Studios theme park here, and suddenly understood why Michael Eisner would step by step to achieve 5 billion from Disneyland Paris with a budget of 1 billion US dollars. Eric has never been a man of great accomplishments, but as Katzenberg talks about the expansion of the Firefly Studios theme park, he can't help but want to make the scene he depicts realistic.

At present, the area of this land is less than one-tenth of the 2,000 hectares of Disneyland Paris, but just one air corridor will cost 50 million US dollars, and the total construction of the entire cinema will certainly not be less than 1 billion US dollars.

Firefly Studios theme park, the 'reald' and '4200' plans, the newly acquired IMAX, and the planned Hasbro company...... Although I have been thinking about slowing down the pace of expansion of the Firefly Group, before I know it, the company is still growing rapidly.

Kicking a stone under his feet at will, Eric said, "Jeffrey, I don't have any opinions on the design of attractions with the themes of "Jurassic Park" and "Ghost Street". However, you've probably seen Peter Jackson's set for The Lord of the Rings, and I'm very optimistic about the project, so I hope there's plenty of room for the Lord of the Rings theme. ”

"Of course, I also think the design of the pit at the bottom of the bag is very interesting," Katzenberg nodded, "Speaking of which, aren't you planning to have Miss Kidman play the Elven Queen Galadriel, who is not here during this time, and we don't know how to talk to her about it." ”

"Well, I've already negotiated with Nicole, you can just ask someone to sign a film contract with her, and the salary will be calculated according to $3 million. ”

Katzenberg asked, somewhat uncertainly, "Three for three million?"

"yes," Eric nodded.

For Nicole's current coffee position, 3 million to appear in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is indeed a bit shabby. However, her role was originally similar to a cameo, and her $3 million salary was actually the highest among all actors.

Eric was chatting with Katzenberg when one of Katzenberg's assistants hurriedly walked over and said, "Mr. Williams, Mr. Katzenberg, the representative of Deyi has arrived, and I have someone to take them to install the equipment." ”

During this time, management has been considering how to reasonably reduce the budget for the implementation of the two programs. A large portion of the $1.6 billion budget will be spent on updating the RealD cinema projection system. As it happens, Texas Instruments was looking for the commercial possibilities of a newly developed digital projector, and Katzenberg arranged the demonstration.

The two of them heard from Katzenberg's assistant and walked together towards the studio to the east.

"I've already read the data, although the resolution of the prototype of the digital projector developed by Deyi can only reach 1280*1024, but give them two years, I think it is not too difficult for them to develop a device with the same resolution as the film projector 1920*1080. ”

The two walked back together, and Katzenberg was the first to speak his mind.

"Jeffrey, have you ever thought that if we use a digital projector, maybe we will be boycotted by the whole industry?"

Hollywood is just in North America, and the industry chain around movie copies reaches billions of dollars every year, and the number will be even bigger when it spreads to the whole world.

Katzenberg heard Eric's question, but his tone was a little teasing: "I still remember what you said at the Fireflyer player launch event at the beginning of the year." ”

Eric shrugged and smiled, "Okay, though, I just don't think it's the time to promote digital projectors." ”

Eric has already seen the data of the digital projector developed by Texas Instruments, strictly speaking, Texas Instruments has only developed the core DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology, which can convert digital signals into projector optical signals. In my memory, many later digital projectors or office projectors used DLP chips from Texas Instruments.

However, like today's digital cameras, Eric is not too optimistic about digital projectors.

Both technologies are in their infancy, which means that both digital cameras and projectors, even if they reach the corresponding resolution, are certainly far from being able to compare with film in terms of color reproduction of film images. Film uses a chemical method to record color, and this method reproduces the color of the image in a way that is far superior to that of the less mature digital technology, if not at the level of biological eyeballs.

For a simple example, in a relatively dim lighting environment, film can still record all kinds of things in a dim environment very sensitively, but due to the limited color recognition range of today's digital cameras, when a certain color cannot be 100% restored, it will automatically make up for it with similar surrounding colors.

As a result, Eric felt that it would be appropriate to wait at least another 10 years to promote digital cameras and projector technology. In fact, the digital movies in memory did gradually become popular after ten years.

Katzenberg obviously did a lot of homework, and when Eric said this, he nodded slightly: "I actually feel this way, but I always have to look at it first, you know, if we can really use digital projection equipment, we can release a movie in the future, just the cost of copying, we can save millions of dollars, especially dual-camera 3D copy and IMAX copy, then we can save even more money." ”

"But some money can't be saved," Eric sighed with some regret.

Speaking of which, after the implementation of the two plans, at least for the next ten years, because film will still be used, the cost of copying is definitely an important factor restricting the conversion of many films to 3D and IMAX, after all, the two-camera 3D projector that Eric plans to use is equivalent to directly doubling the cost of film copying.

However, this actually has an advantage, the high cost of conversion, can avoid the appearance of too many inferior 3D movies, which is exactly the point that Eric is most worried about in the process of 3D promotion. Eric didn't think that he would be able to monopolize the 3D market for too long, and once 3D movies were popularized in advance, there were really not many studios that could keep the rules for the sake of profit.

Texas Instruments apparently took the demonstration very seriously, and the vice president in charge of DLP technology research and development came in person.

Eric and Katzenberg knew that it was unlikely that the two plans would use digital projection equipment for the time being, but they still took a serious look at the entire demonstration. As Eric imagined, although reaching a resolution of 1280*1024 is already good, in terms of film color, the digital projection prototype developed by Deyi is undoubtedly full of too many things that can be improved.

After watching the demonstration, I discussed some technical details with the vice president of Deyi, and it was soon time to get off work.

Today is November 20th, and Thanksgiving is approaching, but Eric does not return to the Sharp Corner Manor after work, but rushes to the Grand Theater in Hollywood with Katzenberg. Because the first film produced by Disney Animation Studios after the digital transformation, "Monster Electric Company", will hold its premiere at the Grand Theater in China today, and tomorrow will be the official release time.

Although it was only an animated film, Eric and Katzenberg arrived at the premiere together, and the front of the Chinese Grand Theater was already crowded.

Disney Animation Studio is in charge of Katzenberg himself, and after the summer files "The Lion King 2" and "Finding Nemo" are considered to be great successes, Katzenberg is both looking forward to and quite apprehensive about the Disney Animation Studio's film. Many people are also waiting with mixed feelings to see what the new Disney animation studio will do. (To be continued.) )