Conquer America, Start with a Boxing Champion

The 84th Academy Awards came to a successful conclusion, but the aftermath of this year's Oscars could not be calmed down for a long time after the awards ceremony.

The most controversial event was undoubtedly the 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence's upset victory over the 63-year-old veteran Meryl Streep in the Best Actress Award.

Before the awards ceremony, 90% of the media predicted that Meryl would win the Best Actress Award again. One reason was that she performed very well in "The Iron Lady". Considering her more than ten Oscar nominations in the past, she should win it again this time.

On the other hand, the person who helped her publicize the award was Harvey Weinstein, the "Oscar winner maker".

The two of them joined forces and there was almost no possibility of failure.

Even before the Oscars ceremony began, many entertainment reporters had already written news articles about Meryl winning the Oscar for Best Actress again after 29 years, and they would publish them immediately after the announcement on the stage to gain more readers.

But the result was beyond everyone's expectations. Meryl failed, and Jennifer Lawrence, who was less than 22 years old, became the Oscar winner, and the youngest winner in the history of the Oscars.

After the news came out, the entire entertainment industry was boiling, and they were puzzled by Jennifer Lawrence's award.

Although Jennifer Lawrence is a talented actress, her acting skills are very good, and she has the strength to win the Oscar for Best Actress, but she is too young, and her competitor Meryl is too strong.

She has almost no chance of winning the award.

But she won the award.

The stars in the entertainment industry did not dare to make any unfriendly remarks publicly because of their concerns about Link behind Jennifer Lawrence.

But the media did not care who Link was.

Before the award ceremony was over, almost all media questioned Jennifer Lawrence's victory over Meryl. The voice of doubt was even louder and hotter than the voice of 1 Parrott's award.

There are four key issues questioned by the media:

First, is Jennifer qualified for this award?

The official website of the Los Angeles Times launched a voting campaign, and 78% of netizens supported Meryl's award, while only 19% supported Jennifer Lawrence, and the rest of the netizens were neutral.

Before the awards ceremony, 35% of people supported Jennifer's award, only 8 percentage points lower than Meryl.

Second, why did the Academy of Oscars give this award to Jennifer Lawrence?

After the awards ceremony, Nielsen officially announced the ratings data. The average ratings of this year's Oscars reached 13.5 million, 2.8 million more than last year.

When Jennifer Lawrence won the award, the ratings reached 22 million, which was also the peak ratings of the night.

The Hollywood Reporter questioned that the Academy of Oscars broke the rules and unexpectedly awarded the Best Actress Award to Jennifer Lawrence, also to create a hot spot and save the sluggish ratings, and awarding it to Meryl, a candidate that everyone could predict, would not increase the ratings.

But if the Academy of Oscars gives the award to Jennifer Lawrence because of the ratings, it will be very unfair to Meryl, and it will also affect the century-old reputation of the Oscars.

Third, how much influence does Oscar public relations have on the award process?

It is understood that every year during the Oscar selection process, each nominated film will spend at least more than 100,000 US dollars on public relations for the corresponding awards, and some even spend millions.

The purpose is to put the Oscar label on the film. With the Oscar's golden label, whether in the domestic and overseas box office market, the DVD market, or cable TV broadcasting rights, it will get rich returns.

According to CNBC, the average box office revenue of the Oscar Best Picture winners from 2000 to 2010 increased by 22.2% to about 20.3 million US dollars after being nominated for the best picture.

After winning the award, the average box office revenue will continue to increase by 15.3%, about 14 million US dollars.

Take the 2011 Oscar winner "The King's Speech" as an example. After being nominated for the Best Picture, the box office revenue increased by 42%, and continued to increase by 16% after winning the award, with a total profit of more than 80 million US dollars.

High investment returns are also the reason why film companies are willing to spend money on public relations.

During the Oscar selection process this year, Lionsgate is said to have invested millions of dollars in public relations for various awards, and there are even rumors that it is as high as tens of millions of dollars, most of which was used for public relations for the Best Actress Award.

Mainstream media represented by the New York Times believe that Jennifer Lawrence's unexpected award was entirely the result of Lionsgate or Link's public relations.

Fourth, is the entire selection process fair and just, and is it interfered with by the outside world?

After the award ceremony, many media published articles questioning Link's spending money to buy votes, and there may be illegal and irregular issues such as bribery and fraud, and asked the police to intervene in the investigation.

In response to this, Steven Biggs, president of Lionsgate, said in an interview with the media that this was absolutely not the case. He also said that everything was done in accordance with normal procedures during the public relations process, and there was absolutely no violation of regulations. He was willing to face all doubts and investigations.

The third-party agency responsible for the Oscar vote counting, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that all statistical work was carried out in accordance with the rules, and the votes from the judges were counted before being received. Finally, the results were submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organizer of the Academy Awards, for public disclosure. The entire process ensured fairness and justice, and there was no external interference.

John Bailey, president of the Academy of Oscars, also said that this was the result of thousands of judges voting. Although the result was controversial, the judges' right to vote would be respected.

Since PwC has maintained a good reputation in the past decades of cooperation, and the Academy of Oscars also awards awards according to the voting results, there is no fact of fraud.

Then the problem lies with the group of judges who voted.

The media began to discuss why the Oscar judges voted for Jennifer Lawrence instead of the popular figure Meryl Streep?

The New York Post believes that this result is related to the hype of Lionsgate before the awards ceremony.

In the second round of voting, there were many comments in the media that the Academy Awards praised British films and looked down on American films.

And this year's Oscars, the French film "The Artist" won the Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actor awards, the best screenplay was "Midnight in Paris" set in Paris, and the five technical awards were "Hugo" set in France.

If the British film "The Iron Lady" won the Best Actress Award again.

All the important awards of this year's Oscars were won by foreign films or films set in foreign cities, and American films were completely wiped out.

This will definitely arouse doubts from many American netizens.

Perhaps considering this, many American judges were influenced when voting and voted for Jennifer Lawrence.

Although the New York Post's statement has some truth, it has too many loopholes.

If American judges really care about this, they can make different choices in the three awards of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

For example, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "Descendants" and "The Help", which were nominated for Best Picture, are all good quality films. George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who were nominated for Best Actor, are also strong competitors for the award.

There is no need to make a big upset in the Best Actress award.

The media has been arguing about this, and there is no unified conclusion. Some netizens even rated Jennifer's victory over Meryl to win the Oscar for Best Actress as one of the top ten unsolved mysteries in Hollywood.

Until a report from "The Hollywood Reporter" revealed a corner of this mystery.

According to the newspaper, after the Oscars, they secretly visited hundreds of judges and asked them about their votes. 58 of them said they would vote for Jennifer, 32 for Meryl, and the rest for other nominees.

Among the 58 judges who voted for Jennifer, many claimed that they were influenced by Lionsgate and Weinstein during the selection process, and the public relations departments of both companies hoped that they would vote for Jennifer Lawrence.

They believed that doing so would not only allow Jennifer to win the award, but also allow Meryl to gain widespread sympathy from the public, paving the way for a successful award in the next session.

This is a win-win choice.

The Hollywood Reporter believes that this is probably the main reason why Jennifer will win the award.

After this article was published, colleagues in the entertainment industry and ordinary people were stunned by the answer, speechless and admired.

Since December last year, Lionsgate and Weinstein have been fighting overtly and secretly for the Oscars, throwing dirty water on each other.

One day, the media exposed Harvey's past sexual harassment cases, and the next day, the media said that Link was ready to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote his girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence to the top, using the Oscars as a means of hunting for beauty.

The spectators saw the two sides fighting each other, and thought that Lionsgate and Weinstein Pictures had a very bad relationship and had reached the point of no return.

But the result was that the two companies were playing a double act.

The scenes of fighting were all performed for outsiders to see, and their goal was to sweep all the Oscars this year.

As a result, the two companies did it. This year, Lionsgate and Weinstein Pictures jointly won the Best Picture/Best Director/Best Actor/Best Supporting Actress/Best Costume Design/Best Original Score/Best Makeup, accounting for almost half of all the awards.

In addition, after Jennifer won the award, the box office of "Silver Linings Playbook" will continue to grow, and Lionsgate and Weinstein Pictures are also beneficiaries.

And after Meryl lost the Best Actress award, she did gain everyone's sympathy, and her reputation continued to rise.

It can be said that she will definitely win the Oscar for Best Actress in the next session.

This is not only a win-win situation, but also a win-win situation.

At the beginning, many people did not believe it, claiming that Link and Harvey did not have a good relationship. On the night of the Oscars, Harvey looked very bad, but some people refuted that if the relationship was not good, would they jointly invest in "Silver Linings Playbook" and "The Master"?

The reason why people did not see it was because Link and Harvey's acting skills were too good, and their tactics were too clever, and they deceived everyone.

Even if the media made the answer public, there were still people who did not believe that they were deceived, which only showed that the tactics of the two were too deceptive.

Some people even mentioned Link's struggle with the East Coast rap gang, and the result was often a win-win situation. Not only did Link gain a lot of benefits in the struggle, but as the loser, East Coast rap also benefited a lot. Only the singers who released records at the same time as them suffered losses.

Now Link and Harvey's "contradiction" is just a repetition of the old things.

And the colleagues in the entertainment industry were stunned, and many question marks popped up in their minds? ?

So the rumors about Harvey and Link not getting along were false? Harvey's threat to ban Link was also an act? Are the two companies joining forces to fight against the Big Six and compete with other independent production companies?

Judging from the performance of the two companies last year, one ranked seventh and the other eighth, and the total box office combined was more than that of 20th Century Fox, which ranked sixth.

From this point of view, the two companies' tricks did succeed.

When the senior executives of the Big Six Hollywood studios and other independent production companies saw this news, they had to admire that Link and Harvey's business war level was too high, as high as hundreds of floors. No wonder the two companies' movies can sell well. First of all, in terms of competitive strategy, they are much worse than Lionsgate and Weinstein.

Even Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Pictures held a special company senior meeting to explore the possibility of learning from the business war model of Lionsgate and Weinstein.

Those who responded to Harvey's call last year and were ready to join forces to deal with Link were secretly cursing. Link and Harvey's move was too insidious. They thought they could please Harvey, but in the end they were not popular at all and offended two big guys at once.

"Harvey, is this true?"

Matt Damon walked into Harvey's office with a dark face and asked.

Harvey, holding a newspaper in his hand, looked even worse than him, his eyes twitched constantly, and there was a raging anger in his eyes.

Hearing Matt Damon's questioning, Harvey gritted his teeth and said with all his strength: "It's fake, it's The Hollywood Reporter who is making it up. How can I cooperate with that damn bastard Link on this matter? It's impossible, never possible."

Matt Damon saw Harvey's expression and secretly sighed that this guy's acting skills are so good, it's a pity not to be an actor.

"Harvey, if it was fake, why did you co-produce "Silver Linings Playbook" with Link, and then give the distribution rights to Lionsgate?

If it was fake, why did you continue to co-produce "The Master" with Palm Beach? And this Oscar, I asked several familiar judges, and someone from your company's public relations department did send them an email, hoping that they would support Jennifer Lawrence to win the award and pave the way for Meryl to win the award next time. How do you explain this?"

Matt Damon asked.

Harvey wanted to explain with a gloomy face, but he didn't know how to explain.

The reason why he cooperated with Link on "Silver Linings Playbook" was because he was threatened by Link last year. This kind of thing can't be said openly. Later, he cooperated with Palm Beach Pictures to invest in "The Master" because the movies invested by Palm Beach Pictures made money. This was Bob's idea.

And then at the end of last year, "Silver Linings Playbook" was handed over to Lionsgate for distribution, and it was also to cheat Link in the Oscar award, but it didn't cheat him, but cheated himself instead.

These things are too embarrassing, and there is no way to tell Matt Damon.

Harvey took a deep breath and suppressed his anger. "Matt, we were fooled by Link before, and we definitely did not cooperate with Link for this Oscar. There must be some misunderstanding. Wait a minute, I am investigating this matter and will tell you the result. In short, I have never and will not cooperate with that damn bastard Link."