Meizong Wealth Life

Chapter 162 Suicide casting, finding a person who has just been released from prison as the protagonist

Of course, Jamie would not tell Ovitz on the phone that the "Bloodshot" in his previous life was destroyed at the hands of Vin Diesel.

Blood Warrior is not the first superhero role played by Vin Diesel. Before this, he voiced the tree man Groot in "Guardians of the Galaxy".

During the promotion of the film, Vin Diesel also publicly called Marvel more than once to express his interest in participating in Marvel movies.

But Marvel all pretended not to hear.

The reason is simple. At that time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already progressed to its second stage, and its take-off was already visible to the naked eye.

All fools know that as long as you participate in one of the superheroes, you have a chance to become as popular as Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow.

You ignored me at first, but now I am beyond your reach!

At this time, it's not that Marvel can't afford Hollywood superstars, but ordinary actors are more cost-effective.

Under such circumstances, most Hollywood movie stars have their own concerns, so superstars like Leonardo DiCaprio have expressed their disinterest in playing superhero roles.

Anyway, they know in their hearts that Marvel will definitely not spend a lot of money to hire them to star.

So I simply acted dismissive, so that I could still show that I was very capable.

Vin Diesel belongs to a small number of opportunists. In addition to creating traffic topics, public speaking is also a kind of test.

What if Marvel really gets excited and comes looking for him to cooperate?

Although the probability of this happening is extremely low, you still have to have dreams. What if you see a ghost one day?

Vin Diesel is calling out Marvel, but he actually has another hidden agenda.

At that time, the situation of Marvel was very good, so naturally they would not waste money to invite big-name movie stars to join.

But DC next door is just the opposite. Several movies have not performed as expected, and it is a time of gloom and gloom.

The most direct way to save the sluggish DCEU is to invite big-name movie stars to join in and use their box office appeal to boost the morale of the entire DCEU.

Vin Diesel is shouting out to Marvel, but his wink is actually for DC.

DC also received the "heartbeat signal" from Vin Diesel, and then turned around to find Dwayne Johnson, who was at odds with Vin Diesel, and invited him to star in Black Adam.

Vin Diesel, who failed to steal the chicken and sent a wave of "magic assists" to his rival, was so angry that he chose to cooperate with Warrior Comics, which he had never liked before.

If it succeeds, Vin Diesel can become the absolute core of the Warriors movie universe just like Marvel's Iron Man. It will be a great satisfaction for his own career and to satisfy his inner need to show off as a superhero. .

Of course, there is a reason why Vin Diesel disdained Warrior comics before.

Although Warrior Comics was acquired by Sony a few years ago, Sony holds the copyright to "Spider-Man" and has reached a cooperation agreement with Marvel, focusing its resources on developing its own son's "Spider-Man" series.

Warrior Comics, on the other hand, is adoptive. Even if a big-name movie star like Vin Diesel joins the franchise, Sony will only give it a budget of over $5000 million for a B-level movie.

Fortunately, Sony didn't invest too much, otherwise Sony's executives would have cried to death when the box office results of "Bloodshot" were released.

An investment of US$5000 million resulted in a global box office of only US$3000 million.

The Warriors Cinematic Universe failed to make a successful start and was directly thrown into the cold palace by Sony.

As the star of the film, Vin Diesel can be said to have single-handedly destroyed the entire Warriors movie universe.

Of course, this matter is mainly due to the blindness of the producer. From the moment Vin Diesel was asked to star, the film was doomed to fail.

What kind of virtues does Vin Diesel have that the producers don’t know about?

He obviously has the appearance of a muscular tough guy, but he suffers from the same disease as some popular celebrities.

No matter what movie you make or what role you play, you must have a perfect character.

Specific to Vin Diesel himself, the protagonists he plays are all tough guys who can fight and value love and justice, and they must be surrounded by beautiful women with beautiful cars.

It is absolutely impossible for him to play the villain.

Even if he was brainwashed and blackened by the villain for a while, his behavior is completely incompatible with the villain.

The most important thing is that in the movie Vin Diesel stars in, he must be the absolute core, and other characters can only revolve around him and not steal his limelight.

After all, Vin Diesel has suffered at this point.

When Dwayne Johnson was originally invited to star in the "Fast and Furious" series, he originally wanted Dwayne Johnson to be his green leaf.

As a result, Johnson became famous in one fell swoop.

In the subsequent sequel, Vin Diesel decisively revised the script and greatly reduced Johnson's role.

Even so, during the filming of the film, the two bald heads still had a lot of trouble.

In order to satisfy Vin Diesel, the director and screenwriter of "Blood Hunter" had no choice but to change the protagonist's character.

In the comics, Garrison was a complete bastard and scumbag before he lost his memory. He cheated on her during marriage and eventually forced his father-in-law to attack him.

A bad guy mistakenly thought he was a good guy after losing his memory, but eventually discovered that he was actually a villain, and the drama was full of tension.

But in the movie, in order to satisfy Vin Diesel's requirement to play the leading role of Long Aotian, Garrison was forcibly transformed into a model husband who loves his wife deeply.

Such a good man had no reward. He was arrested, reformed and brainwashed, and became an emotionless killing machine.

Good guys get framed and then fight back.

Can you believe that this kind of vulgar routine that was filmed countless times in the 2020s and s actually appeared in ?

The problem is that Vin Diesel really dares to act, and he doesn't feel embarrassed at all.

Moreover, with such a change to the script, the protagonist basically loses any character arc and room for growth, giving it the familiar feeling of an internet-beating novel.

Of course, not only did the characters in the movie not grow, Vin Diesel also didn't grow in any way outside the movie.

With Vin Diesel also starring, "Bloodshot" 20 years later and "XXX" 20 years ago are almost matryoshka dolls made from the same mold, regardless of the advancement of special effects.

They are all protagonists with perfect characters, top-notch combat power, awesome and powerful, pushing and crushing them all the way, and the heroine actively throws herself into his arms.

The only difference is that 20 years ago, "XX" was successfully faked by Vin Diesel, and the audience at that time also liked this set of cool movie routines.

This is also true for the subsequent "Fast and Furious" movies.

In this life, because of the butterfly effect brought about by Jamie, "Bleeding Warriors" was released nearly twenty years earlier. Although it was announced by Warrior Pictures that Vin Diesel would play the leading role, Jamie knew that the plot of "Bloodwatch" would inevitably follow the same path as its previous life.

But at this time, the audience was not as bombarded by superhero movies as it would be twenty years later, and there was still a large market for the vulgar plot routines of "Bloodshot".

As long as "Bloodshot" doesn't overdo it in terms of special effects, as an upgraded version of "Xxx", it will be difficult to make a big hit at the box office, but it can still be achieved with a small hit.

Although for David Messer and Disney behind him, who are ambitious to establish the Warriors movie universe, it is difficult for the small-scale "Dragon" to carry their ambitions.

But as long as "Blood Warrior" does not lose money, it is estimated that both David Messer and Disney will continue to shoot the next movie in the Warriors universe as planned.

Just like Warner in the previous life, even if the box office of "Man of Steel" was not satisfactory, it still gritted its teeth and filmed "Batman v Superman" and "Justice League".

The difference is that the Warriors movie universe in the previous life was wiped out by the "Blood Warrior" movie. If the Warriors comics make a movie that has not appeared in the previous life, Jamie cannot predict whether the movie will be successful.

Messer is the creator of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he created "Iron Man" which was the first film for the MCU in his previous life.

In this life, Jamie just took Messer's way first, and coupled with Ovitz's backstab, Messer was defeated in Warrior Comics.

The Warriors comic is indeed not a good one, but no matter how bad it is, it is still better than Marvel in the previous life before "Iron Man" was made.

Although its superheroes are not as famous as Marvel and DC, this is not a big problem.

Movies and comics are not the same thing.

In particular, Warrior Comics also relies on the strong thigh of Disney. As long as it is successful, niche and unpopular superheroes can still be turned into super IPs.

"Harry Potter", which really started to become a global hit through movie promotion in its previous life, is the best example.

This is why Jamie didn’t want to “snatch the enemy” and expose Vin Diesel’s hypocrisy right away.

After all, Vin Diesel is the most fatal weakness of the movie "Dragon" so far known.

Jamie had even thought about it. Even if the security guard left no evidence when he took the hush money from Vin Diesel, Jamie would send someone to find the security guard and encourage him to extort money from Vin Diesel again and leave a recording. , video and other evidence.

Waiting until "Blood" is finished filming and about to be released, and then exposing the evidence will not only ruin Vin Diesel's reputation, but at least it will cause him to lose a lot of popularity.

Jamie learned this trick from his previous competitor at Warner Bros.

"The Flash" star Miller's scandal broke out sooner or later, but it happened just when the movie was finished filming and was about to be released. Who would believe this is a coincidence?

It's a pity that Vin Diesel's lying is not considered fatal in Hollywood.

When it is exposed, it will definitely make Warrior Pictures scramble for a while, but the final result will definitely be Disney's demise and then try to protect Vin Diesel.

After all, the cost of changing actors and reshooting is too high.

The final result may only affect part of the reputation and box office of "Blood Fighter".

The most effective means of competition is to launch a series of superhero movies with excellent reputation and explosive box office to reduce the dimensionality of "Dragon".

Aren’t today’s audiences still at the stage where they like to watch fun movies?

Then it will directly improve everyone's viewing and aesthetic taste for superhero movies. When the time comes, everyone will go to the cinema to watch "Dragon" with higher expectations. In the end, what they saw was just a commercial popcorn movie that barely passed the mark. It will inevitably lead to huge disappointment.

Originally, Jamie's plan was to create a "Mutant Cinematic Universe" pie for Weststar Pictures, encourage the other party to join in, and "attack" Warrior Pictures together with Universal.

After all, in terms of character setting, Wolverine is the biggest threat to the Bloody Warriors.

But Sif's previous phone call made Jamie realize that Vesta might be "cowarded" again this time.

Given Logan Sr.'s scheming character, the most likely option is to sit on his hands and wait until "Dragon" loses in the box office war before releasing "The Wolverine" to take advantage.

Therefore, Weststar Pictures can't count on it. Now the only ones that can directly compete with "Dragon" are "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" co-produced by Universal and Marvel.

Although "The Incredible Hulk" is a remake of "Venom" in the previous life, especially the anti-hero gimmick when there are only a few superhero movies, it is absolutely unconventional, but will the audience buy it? Jamie is thinking Not completely sure.

So the only thing I really count on is "Iron Man."

In order to ensure that he does not miss a beat, from the script to the director to the actors, Jamie is preparing to completely recreate the "Iron Man" in his previous life.

Especially the starring role, it has to be Robert Downey Jr.

Ovitz has been communicating and negotiating with Universal about this matter. During the phone call, he told Jamie that the current progress of this matter is not particularly ideal.

Universal executives had great misgivings about casting an actor who had just come out of drug rehab.

If it weren't for Jamie holding the rights to "Iron Man" and naming Robert Downey Jr. as the leading actor, Universal executives wouldn't even consider this option.

“What does Marvel think about this?”

Jamie followed and asked.

"I'm going to talk to Palmater in person tomorrow and try the method you mentioned. The question now is what if I convince the Marvel board of directors, but Robert Downey Jr. can't accept such a low salary?"

Ovitz was worried.

A salary of US$50 is almost like a humiliation for Robert Downey Jr., who became famous at a young age and is still a second-generation star.

But Jamie wasn't worried at all.

Looking at today's Hollywood, there will be no other company besides the "Iron Man" crew who is willing to pay $50 to invite an actor who has just come out of a drug rehabilitation center to star and play a core role in the subsequent movie universe.

As long as Robert Downey Jr. doesn't completely lose his mind, he knows what to choose.

The most important thing is that Jamie not only lowered Downey's salary, but also the salaries of other characters in the "Iron Man" movie were uniformly lowered.

The black actor who played War Machine in the previous life of "Iron Man 1" received a salary of 250 million, five times that of the protagonist Downey.

Later, in "Iron Man 2", this guy was so open-minded that Marvel finally replaced him directly.

In this life, Jamie directly used Don Cheadle, who played War Machine in "Iron Man 2", and his salary was only US$100 million.

It also saves you the trouble of substituting again later.

(End of this chapter)