hollywood melon man

Chapter 434: Pixar Controversy

Little Gilbert stayed in the island country for more than a month. Scarlett returned to Los Angeles after spending his birthday with him.

The movie "Lost in Translation" in which she stars will be released in August, and she has to rush back to promote it.

Even though Sofia Coppola's film is targeting the Oscars, it doesn't mean that she doesn't have a little desire to succeed at the box office.

Sofia herself is eager to win an Oscar, but the original intention of the film company to invest in this film was to make money, and to strive for an Oscar is also to make money.

However, "Lost in Translation" will adopt a conservative release strategy and start previews first.

This is also the strategy generally adopted by literary and artistic films, which is to continue the popularity through advance screenings and allow the film to run throughout the entire awards season.

Generally speaking, it is not a problem for an independent film to be screened for two or three months.

Some films disappear after a while, while others will expand their screening scale due to their excellent reputation and quality during the preview.

Miramax Films clearly has outstanding experience in this regard.

The Weinstein brothers are public relations experts during award season. Asking them to help with the award-winning and distribution of independent films, coupled with the channels and resources of the parent company Disney, can simply achieve twice the result with half the effort.

However, there have been some rumors about Miramax recently. It is rumored that the Weinstein brothers are dissatisfied with Disney's excessive restrictions on Miramax, which prevents the two from expressing themselves freely.

So the Weinstein brothers planned to resign and start a new company.

This matter actually has something to do with little Gilbert, because he particularly dislikes the fat man Harvey Weinstein.

The reason is simple, Harvey once had his eyes on Naomi Watts.

Men love power and beauty, and they especially hate other men thinking about their women. Jealous little Gilbert naturally dislikes fat Harvey.

What's more, young Gilbert is a handsome and suave man, known as the handsome man in the Hollywood director circle. How dare Harvey, an ugly and fat man, covet his woman?
Although Harvey stopped in time and did not cross the line like Mel Gibson, Gilbert Jr. still did not let him go.

Beating him up was too stupid. After becoming a shareholder and board member of Disney, Gilbert Jr. encouraged Robert Iger to initiate subsidiary reforms.

Simply put, the subsidiaries used to operate independently. Apart from the year-end financial report, they did not need to report other matters, such as investment projects, to Disney headquarters.

This is also to give subsidiaries some creative autonomy so as not to be restricted.

But Gilbert Jr. encouraged Robert Iger to require that all projects of the subsidiaries must be reviewed and approved by Disney headquarters every year.

In addition, the head office changed its review of subsidiaries from once every two years to twice a year, causing great suffering to the subsidiaries.

What’s more important is that Gilbert Jr. was not acting without purpose and was not deliberately disrupting Disney.

Previously, Disney’s top management was in chaos due to a dispute between Michael Eisner and the board of directors, and the subsidiaries also became local powerful lords due to the chaos in the board of directors.

There are many cases of financial fraud and concealment every year, and even worse are those that undermine Disney's foundation.

So Robert Iger adopted Gilbert Jr.'s suggestion and thoroughly checked all the projects and accounts of the subsidiary. Although it went through some pain, after the pain, Disney was free of all problems and had a better development prospect.

The board of directors was very satisfied with this, and Robert Iger took advantage of this opportunity to seize the power of the board of directors and truly took full control of Disney.

Little Gilbert was a man of few achievements and fame. He not only achieved the goal of cleaning out the bad apples within Disney, but also took a small revenge on fat Harvey.

Fat Harvey certainly understood this. He felt that if he stayed at Disney any longer, let alone becoming the head of Disney, he might even become a partner with Mel Gibson, so he began to think about quitting.

Little Gilbert did not kill him completely. Fat Harvey would eventually step on a landmine and explode anyway, so there was no need for him to fight with a dying man.

Another thing is Pixar Animation Studios, which is still under discussion. Jobs is not in a hurry at all, but Disney is.

Given Jobs' temperament, Disney would not be able to acquire Pixar without paying a huge price.

The most important thing is that there are several giant companies waiting out there!
Everyone knows the value of Pixar Animation Studios, and Jobs himself is still inclined to cooperate with Disney, but the prerequisite is that Disney's bid cannot be lower than that of other companies.

This involves Gilbert Jr., after all, Gilbert Jr. is a shareholder of Apple and has a good personal relationship with Jobs himself.

So Robert Iger hoped that Gilbert Jr. could persuade Jobs to relax some of the conditions and agree to complete the deal in the form of part of Disney shares plus cash.

Gilbert Jr., who was enjoying the sunshine and beach on Ryukyu Island, was discussing this with Robert Iger: “Bob, Jobs himself is actually a very stubborn person.

I think it won’t do much for me to persuade him.”

Robert Iger said: "It doesn't matter, little Gilbert, you just need to show who you prefer. Mr. Jobs is a shrewd businessman, he believes in vision the most."

"Okay, I'll try..." Little Gilbert took a sip of lemonade and continued, "I heard that Warner also has this intention. Doug might ask me for help. You can't blame me then."

Disney and Warner Bros. have been working very closely together in recent years because of Gilbert Jr., but that doesn't mean there's no competition between the two companies.

For example, Warner is more eager to acquire Pixar Animation Studios than Disney.

Universal has Blue Sky Studios, not to mention Disney. When the live-action film business was not doing well, it relied entirely on the animation film department. Paramount and DreamWorks Animation Department work closely together, and 20th Century Fox's animation studio is also very strong.

As for Sony Columbia Pictures…well, they have money!
The only thing that doesn't have a decent animation studio is Warner Bros., so Pixar is what Warner Bros. desperately needs, and Doug Walter will definitely invest heavily in it.

Robert Iger was silent for a while after hearing this. After a while, he said, "It doesn't matter. Just do your best to convince him. I won't blame you no matter who Pixar ends up with."

"I'm relieved when you say that," Gilbert Jr. assured, "Don't worry, I'll talk to Mr. Jobs about it."

"Okay, thank you, little Gilbert..." Robert Egger hung up the phone and sighed.

The daytime on the island country is exactly the night in Los Angeles. Robert Iger is still working overtime in the office because of the Pixar acquisition.

Solomon, who had been promoted to Disney's vice president, saw Robert Iger hang up the phone and asked quickly, "Bob, is the communication with Gilbert Jr. not going smoothly?"

“No,” Robert Egger shook his head. “It went very well.”

"Then do you have any concerns?" Solomon asked doubtfully.

Robert Iger sighed and said, "Little Gilbert is also a shareholder of Time Warner!"

Solomon then remembered that not only did they want Pixar Animation Studios, but Warner Bros. Pictures must have wanted it as well.

"Who will little Gilbert help then?" asked Solomon.

Robert Egger shook his head, indicating that he didn't know either.

After Robert Iger made the call, in the evening, Gilbert Jr. received a call from Doug Walter, who made the same request as Robert Iger.

It can be seen that everyone wants to eat the fat piece of meat of Pixar Animation Studios, and they want to keep it all to themselves.

In fact, before Melon Studios was acquired, Gilbert Jr. was thinking about setting up an animation film department.

After all, he has creativity and technology can be developed.

But later, because he was too busy with work and had no time and energy to set up an animation studio, Gilbert Jr. gave up.

Now he had some understanding of how popular Pixar Animation Studios was. In fact, just look at Disney to know.

"Finding Nemo", which was released at the end of May, has now grossed over 200 million in North America and over 400 million worldwide.

But the film's best performing product is the peripheral products, which have brought in $322 million in revenue for Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, with the cost of the peripheral products being less than one-third of the film's production costs.

The core of an animated film is always its peripheral products.

"Finding Nemo" is the last animated feature film released by Pixar and Disney. Because the contract ended after "Finding Nemo", Pixar attracted the attention of various forces in Hollywood.

Speaking of box office performance, let’s take a look at the film market.

Gilbert Jr. spent more than a month on vacation in the island country. By the first weekend of July, as of July 7, the North American box office of "Pirates of the Caribbean" had reached 6 million US dollars.

Nowadays, the film can still earn hundreds of thousands to one million dollars at the box office every week. It is certain that it will make $3 million in North America. It just depends on where the box office ends up.

In terms of overseas box office, "Pirates of the Caribbean" has seen a small increase as its films have been released in the Chinese and Korean markets.

The overseas box office has now accumulated 4.03 million US dollars, but the box office growth has come to an end and should not exceed 4.5 million US dollars.

Nowadays, it is very normal for Hollywood blockbusters to have higher overseas box office than domestic box office. The performance of "Pirates of the Caribbean" is very consistent with that of a typical Hollywood commercial blockbuster.

For the beginning of a series, "Pirates of the Caribbean"'s current global box office of $6.94 million is satisfactory enough.

The final box office should be around 7.3 million US dollars, which is already the performance of a top commercial blockbuster.

Movie fans who are used to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy earning billions of dollars at the box office may feel that "Pirates of the Caribbean" has performed poorly at the box office.

But in fact, as an original, fantasy pirate adventure movie, this box office result is amazing.

If it was another director, the media would have praised him to the skies by now. But since the director was Gilbert Jr., there were still some media who expressed dissatisfaction.

For example, The Washington Post secretly said something about Gilbert Jr., saying that his performance in this summer's movie season was not as good as expected, which disappointed them greatly.

The Washington Post has never said anything good about Gilbert Jr., and everything Gilbert Jr. does is wrong.

Little Gilbert was angry and donated ten dollars to the Elephant Party because The Washington Post supported the Donkey Party.

Another movie that did well at the box office was "X-Men 2" released by 2.03th Century Fox. Although it was not as popular as "Pirates of the Caribbean", it still grossed 6.22 million in North America and million US dollars worldwide.

(End of this chapter)