hunt hollywood

As a country with separation of powers, the legislative power of the United States is mainly in the hands of Congress.

Members of the Senate and House of Representatives, after being elected, the core job is to propose, formulate, modify or abolish various bills (Bills) according to the actual situation of all walks of life in the United States.

The U.S. Congress accepts thousands of bills of various types every year, ranging from the national economy and the people's livelihood to trivial matters.

Of course, the importance of bills is also differentiated.

Take Hollywood as an example. The Motion Picture Association (MP), which is mainly responsible for helping major Hollywood studios to lobby, has recently focused on abolishing the merger restriction bill between Hollywood studios and the American Public Television Network.

The abolition of this bill will involve tens of billions of industrial changes.

Members of Congress, on the other hand, naturally can't just sit in their offices and dream up some bills out of thin air.

Most of the bills are negotiated by the public, labor unions, business owners, interest groups or federal government agencies and members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Therefore, the United States has also produced countless professional lobbying companies, responsible for matchmaking between various groups and members of Congress.

Although the so-called lobbying in the United States cannot avoid behind-the-scenes power games or exchange of interests, the overall situation is very formal.At least on the surface, no member of parliament would be so foolish as to accept someone's dinner and gift stuffing red envelopes knowing that some people want something from them.

Getting a bill through starts with contacts, usually lobbying firms.

If you can't find the 'temple gate', everything is in vain.

It is worth mentioning that most lobbying and consulting companies are often established by politicians who have left office at all levels in the United States.The more top-level politicians are, the higher the fees will naturally be. This is another form of high salaries to maintain integrity.

Based on the huge number of bills submitted by the US Congress every year, one can imagine the huge income of these people.

When you get in touch with your contacts, it is impossible for others to help you persuade a congressman to submit a bill with empty words, and it is even more impossible to bluntly put money into someone's hands for you.If you want to promote any bill, you must collect and organize the corresponding data and data to prove the necessity of enacting or repealing a certain bill.

After obtaining sufficient data, members of parliament draft bills and submit them to Congress, and then enter the process of deliberation, debate, and voting.

The process after the bill is submitted is often the focus of the game.

In most cases, the more important the bill is, the more you will not only be able to ensure the passage of the bill with solid evidence and detailed data.

This requires the promoters of the bill to continue to show their talents, such as political strife, mutual compromise, public opinion building, interest exchange, etc., and so on.

The frequent back-and-forth between the White House and Congress over the annual government budget bill and even the shutdown of the government is the most intuitive manifestation of this kind of game.

Of course, most of the dark confrontations hidden behind the scenes are often not visible to ordinary people.

The bill that Simon discussed with Joseph Schlapp this time is that operators are not allowed to participate in the field of telecommunications equipment manufacturing, which is a relatively important economic bill.It will take about two or three years from the proposal of the bill to its approval, and it may be lobbied together with other telecommunications control bills.

The two discussed for more than an hour, initially finalized some details, sent Joseph Schlapp away, and Simon boarded the plane back to the West Coast at the Westchester County Airport near Greenwich.

Back at Cape Dume, it's lunch time on the west coast.

After having lunch with Janet and casually chatting about the trip to New York, Simon rushed to work in Daenerys Studios in the afternoon.

Today is Monday, June 5th.

The following Friday, the summer file for 1991 will start.

However, today is another day, another Cannes Film Festival in France closed today.

There is a 9-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Cannes. When he came to Daenerys Studios in the afternoon, Simon soon received the results of the film festival awards from Cannes, which was already at night.

Daenerys Entertainment's two films entering the main competition this time, the Coen Brothers' "Barton Fink" and Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever", both missed the highest Palme d'Or in Cannes. Back then, "Barton Fink" won the best director award, and Samuel L. Jackson in "Jungle Fever" won the best supporting actor award.

In Simon's memory, "Barton Fink" should have won the Palme d'Or in Cannes this year.

However, two of the three Palme d'Or works in the previous three years, "Pulp Fiction", "Cinema Paradiso" and "Wild at Heart", were American films.Two American films, one produced by Daenerys Entertainment and one distributed by Daenerys Entertainment.

This time, the Cannes jury obviously had some balance.

The final Palme d'Or winner was French director Jacques Rivet's "Beautiful Bohemian".

Jacques Rivett's reputation is not too great, but a heroine in "Beauty Unruly" is well known, named Jane Platinum.Hermès’ platinum bag, which is so expensive that it makes people flock to countless actresses and ladies, is named after Jane Platinum.

Because of such a gimmick, coupled with the blessing of the Palme d'Or, Ella Deutschman is already in contact with the copyright owner, hoping to obtain the North American distribution rights of "Beauty Unruly".

"Barton Fink" and "Jungle Fever" both failed to win the Palme d'Or, and only won two minor awards, which actually met Simon's expectations.

After all, it is impossible for Daenerys Entertainment to occupy all the light, and it is necessary to keep a low profile.

Moreover, the focus of Gaomen Films' overseas awards business this year is actually the Venice Film Festival.

Due to the production schedule, Jane Campion's "Farewell to the Piano" was unable to participate in the just-concluded Cannes Film Festival, but it has already applied for the main competition unit of this year's Venice Film Festival.

Jane Campion's "Angel at My Table" received very good reviews at the Venice Film Festival last year. "The Piano" is obviously more suitable for the artistic temperament of Venice than Cannes. This film is very promising. Impact this year's Venice Golden Lion Award.

Ella Deutschmann and Sofia Fissi's contacts in the Italian entertainment industry are also enough to support "The Piano" to win the first prize.

Apart from Cannes, Simon's busy main work this week when he returned to the West Coast was "The Flash", which had been successfully completed in Melbourne and returned to North America.

As the first producer of "The Flash", Warner expressed a lot of misgivings and dissatisfaction with Simon's behavior of not going to Melbourne to visit the set in person during the filming.

Simon didn't refute this, and he really didn't have time.However, Simon actually invested a lot of energy in this film, enough for him to get the salary in the original producer contract.

For several consecutive working days, Warner Bros. CEO Terry Semel took time to review the dailies with Simon every day.

Terry Semel was not relieved until it was confirmed that there were no major problems with the film samples, and Simon personally presided over the finalization of the film's post-production plan.

In a blink of an eye, Friday, May 5th.

The summer file of 1991 officially opened.

Just this week, a total of six new films above the scale were released. Except for the Antarctic documentary "Frozen World" released by Gaomen Films and the summer comedy "Fred the Troubled" by New Line Films, the opening of the other four films The screen size of the painting has reached more than 1000 pieces.

The four films are the fire-type crime action film "Backfire" starring William Baldwin and Kurt Russell, which is still under the distribution label of Universal Pictures for the time being. The opening screen scale is 2036 yuan.

Bruce Willis's funny action film "The Ultimate Condor" released by Columbia Pictures' Samsung label has an opening screen size of 1621 yuan.

Last year, Chris Columbus, who was promoted to the top line by directing "Home Alone", has a new romantic comedy "The Big Boy Gets Married", with a screen scale of 1561 yuan.

And finally, Disney produced a horse trainer-themed film "Prancing Horse Heroes" adapted from real people and events, with an opening screen size of 1521 yuan. .

The opening screen sizes of "Frozen World" and "Fred the Troublemaker" are 687 and 821 respectively.

Perhaps because the competition is too fierce, or because none of the six new films has the potential to sell well, in the first week of filming from May 5th to May 24th, there was no single-week box office film in North American theaters that exceeded 5 million U.S. dollars. Appear.

Universal Pictures' "Backfire" finally won the single-week box office champion, and the seven-day box office in the first week was only 1921 million US dollars.

Then, No. 2 on the list was an old Disney movie "Genius is Crazy". A string of jokes.

"Genius is Crazy" started painting last week, and in the second week of its release, due to the ferment of word of mouth, under the attack of many old films, it actually achieved a 5% box office decline, earning 1353 million US dollars.

The new movie "Flying Tiger and Condor" starring Bruce Willis ranked third, but the box office dropped directly to 864 million US dollars.

The production cost of "Flying Tiger and Condor" was as high as $6500 million.

With a bad reputation and a bleak start of $864 million, according to commercial action movies, the drop may reach 50% in the next week. The total box office of the film in North America may be less than $2000 million. Columbia Pictures is destined to lose everything. The owner, Sony, once again paid an expensive 'tuition fee' to Hollywood.

Chris Columbus's new film "Men's Marriage" ranked No.4, earning 773 million US dollars.

Based on the film's production cost of 2000 million US dollars, it was also a failure.

Immediately afterwards, the fifth place was not Disney's "Prancing Horse Heroes" or New Line's "Fred the Rascal", but "Frozen World", which brought a refreshing feeling to this summer.

In the first week of its opening, "Frozen World" opened with a screen size of 687 yuan, which exceeded many people's expectations and won a box office of 697 million US dollars.

After careful calculation, "Frozen World" became the only film with an average box office of just over [-] in the first week of the summer.

As we all know, for a new film with a large-scale opening, it can be regarded as a big hit if it breaks through [-] theaters in the first week.

From the original fashion documentary "Gucci Mark", to this year's Easter Madonna music documentary "True and Brave", and then to the Antarctic scenery documentary "Frozen World", Hollywood has no choice but to find that its studios have been trying their best to Following the pace of Daenerys Entertainment, a fashion documentary was launched, a music documentary was brewing, and now, a landscape documentary has emerged.

What is even more frustrating is that it is said that the budget of this documentary is only 300 million US dollars, and it is just a birthday gift from the Westeros couple to a little girl.

The box office of 697 million US dollars in the first week can be regarded as directly recovering the production cost.

According to such opening data, we will step up publicity next, brew word-of-mouth and popularity a little bit, and expand the screening scale appropriately. It is not a problem for this documentary to easily accumulate a box office of 3000 million US dollars.

Although the box office of 3000 million US dollars is still far from the "Emperor Penguin Diaries" in Simon's memory, it is already a rare success in the eyes of other Hollywood studios.

Compared with the budgeted cost of 300 million US dollars, the North American box office alone has a return rate of 10 times!

Hollywood studios that were still trying to support the success of "Gucci Mark" and "True and Brave" were following the trend. After the box office of "Frozen World" was released, they turned their attention to various scenic spots on the earth.

Some producers also began to take the opportunity to sell expedition projects such as the Antarctic, Arctic, Amazon jungle and Sahara desert to the studios, and even a documentary plan to explore the African savannah appeared on the Simon's table.

However, in this series of film lists, Simon is more concerned about "Fred the Trickster".

Or New Line Pictures, the production company of Fred the Trouble.

In the original time and space, New Line Pictures relied on the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series to make a fortune. After "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" broke [-] million at the box office, it entered the mainstream studio's field of vision. It was eventually acquired by Time Warner and created "Lord of the Rings", "Spike Moments" and other blockbuster series.

Now, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has been cut off by Daenerys Entertainment.

The loss of a movie from the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series, which was enough to prop up the profits of a second-tier studio for several years, has basically exhausted the potential of the "Emma Street" series. In addition, New Line has blindly expanded film production and distribution in the past few years. In terms of scale, the summer release of "Fred the Rascal" is one of New Line Pictures' last attempts before its decline.

"Freed the Bad," starring Carrie Fisher and Phoebe Cates, has a budget of about $670 million, according to information obtained by Simon.Just from this figure, it is not difficult to see the fineness of the new line.

Although after so many years of accumulation of distribution resources, New Line forcibly squeezed this fantasy comedy film into the summer file, but the box office did not start well, only 439 million US dollars, basically hopeless to break through the 1000 million mark.

However, including the cost of publicity and distribution, the total budget invested in "Fred the Troublemaker" is about 1000 million US dollars.

Clearly, this was a failed project.

For Daenerys Entertainment, the failure of a $1000 million project is nothing serious.

After all, the foundation of New Line Films is shallow, but it is impossible to withstand similar losses several times.

Simon has inquired about New Line's 1991 film list, and there are as many as 11 theatrical distribution plans.

With the exception of "A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Last Nightmare," Simon didn't find any of his films to have blockbuster potential.

A film company barely squeezed into the second-tier film company, tossing 11 films a year, basically exhausted all the wealth accumulated in the past few years. If Simon's secret sniping is included, this film company will only regress in the future. For the dismal operating situation.

Speaking of which, another company that has been secretly watched by Simon, Miramax Films of the Weinstein Brothers, has been in a complete crisis because it missed "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" and "Paradise Cinema" in succession. It is a small workshop operation state.

Since they have no production ability at all, the brothers can only earn a little bit from some copyrights from Europe to North America in the past two years.

In the final analysis, just as the total number of moviegoers in the American film market is relatively fixed each year, Hollywood's luck is also fixed.

The rapid development of Daenerys Entertainment for several consecutive years not only captured a large number of blockbuster films that originally belonged to other studios, but also took away a large part of Hollywood's other resources.

Even several other major studios feel pressured by Daenerys Entertainment, not to mention those second- and third-tier film companies that cannot form scale effects and have mediocre anti-risk capabilities.

In the past few years, Daenerys Entertainment has continuously devoured the best scripts in Hollywood, the best filmmakers, the hottest movie schedules, the hottest public opinion attention, and the best publicity resources...

Losing the studio that originally belonged to its own blockbuster project, even if it can still produce other good-quality films, but in the case of film and television production and marketing resources shrinking in all directions, those films produced by Daenerys Entertainment have captured a lot of attention The film can no longer compete with Daenerys Entertainment at the box office.

Chapter 414 Time Warner's Additional Issuance Plan (Revised)

On May 5, the second week of the summer vacation, the number of new films in North American theaters was reduced to two, namely "Soap Platter" produced by Paramount and "Urban Hillbilly" released by Columbia Pictures.

"Soap Platter" tells the story of a series of intrigues among a group of soap opera actors around a soap opera called "The Sun And West".

As a group play, the lineup of "Soap Platter" is luxurious.

Oscar-winning actress Sally Field leads, Oscar Best Supporting Actor Kevin Kline and Oscar Best Supporting Actress Whoopi Goldberg join, Robert Downey Jr., Carrie Fisher, Elizabeth Shue , Garry Marshall and a group of big and small coffee participated.

The director is Michael Hoffman, who has gained a good reputation for his two literary films "Land of Dreams" and "Sisters".

Anyone who is a little familiar with the inside story of Hollywood can probably tell at a glance that this is another C-packaged movie.

Therefore, although there are no superstars with a salary of tens of millions to join, the production cost of the film is still as high as 3500 million US dollars.

"City Hicks" starring Billy Crystal, roughly following the box office hit "Crocodile Dundee" series in the 80s, the budget cost also reached 2700 million US dollars.

After three days of painting, the box office of "Soap Platter" was only US$673 million in the first weekend of its release. It is expected that the box office in the first week will be around US$900 million, which is far lower than Paramount's expectations.

Although it follows the trend of "Crocodile Dundee", the word-of-mouth and box office of "Urban Hillbilly" are not bad. It earned 1303 million US dollars in the first weekend, and the box office in the first week is expected to be between 1800 million and 2000 million.

Among the six new films that were intensively launched last week, except for "Frozen World", which increased the number of screens to 816, it achieved a decline of about 10% in three days over the next weekend, and the other five films all fell by more than 30%.

Among them, Bruce Willis's new film "The Ultimate Condor", which is also produced by Samsung, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, fell by 47%.

Columbia originally made "Ultimate Condor" the main feature of this summer's file, and "Urban Hillbilly" is just a comedy that has to be stuck before "Batman: The Dark Knight" next week.

Unexpectedly, the market performance of the two films was completely opposite to the management's expectations.

With a production cost of US$6500 million, "Ultimate Condor" has a cumulative box office of only US$10 million in 1159 days of release, which is not as good as the three-day box office of "Urban Hillbilly".

Entering June, the opening date of the second film of the DC movie universe "Batman: The Dark Knight" is getting closer.

In addition to a more intensive publicity campaign, "Batman: The Dark Knight" also started half a month in advance for the media and fans to test screenings.Some media have already released word-of-mouth reviews of the film's test screenings. The North American media that participated in the test screenings basically gave a score of 8 points or more.

In the new week, Warner Bros. Pictures, which is responsible for the global distribution of the film, also officially announced the global box office of the opening film of the DC movie universe, "Batman: Beginning of War".

Since the end of the previous year, after a year and a half of release, "Batman: Beginning of War" has been released in 51 countries and regions around the world.

In the end, the North American box office of "Batman: Beginning of War" was 4.36 million U.S. dollars, and the overseas box office accumulated 5.31 million U.S. dollars.