I’m in Hollywood

Beverly Hills Morton Restaurant.

Roland Emmerich sat opposite Columbia Film Company CEO Bill Michalnik, some silently dealing with the steak in front of him, trying to make himself ignore the eyes of the guests around him from time to time, he even regretted why he chose this house today. Dining at a restaurant where Hollywood filmmakers gather.

This is already the second week of the release of Godzilla. It was approved by the media for a week. In the morning, the first week of the film’s box office data was released. Roland Emmerich felt no sigh of relief. In the afternoon, a person drove to some theaters in Fernando Valley and looked at it. Compared with last Friday's hot attendance rate, it was only a week. Most of the theaters that showed "Godzilla" were empty. I can't even imagine how much the box office will drop this week, 60%, 70%, or worse?

There is no doubt that Godzilla will be a very heavy Waterloo in his career.

After years of accumulation, Roland Emmerich already has tens of millions of dollars in net worth, even with Godzilla’s $20 million pay and the next box office split, even if he chooses to retire now. Guarantee a lifetime of food and clothing.

But in the vanity fair of Hollywood, the success of a person is far from being limited to the scope of money. Most people value their career success and their status and influence in Hollywood. Everyone wants to climb higher. position.

As long as Hollywood is a slightly popular star, it basically has enough to support its own rich and even luxurious life, but these people will still give birth to a variety of spiritual and physiological problems under the pressure of career ups and downs. Because for most Hollywood celebrities, suddenly abandoned by Hollywood, without the follow-up of the spotlight, without the attention of the public, this sense of loss is definitely more unacceptable than the sudden loss of all money.

Although Roland Emmerich knows that it is only a failure, it is absolutely impossible to cause a devastating blow to his cause, but it certainly means that in the next few years, unless he once again produced "Donely Day" and "World of Heaven" Big collision, the quality of the film, otherwise, he is absolutely impossible to enjoy the kind of rich treatment before the release of "Godzilla", strong control over the production of the film, the industry's top 20 million US dollars director's pay, and so on .

Even if, before Godzilla, he didn’t have to personally appear here to discuss the follow-up contract with Bill Michal tonight, these things were only needed for his agent.

If you can come back again.

The thought rose and Roland Emmerich immediately shook his head in self-deprecating.

Suddenly remembered that the fireflies had just announced the director of the "After the Day", this project should belong to him. Fireflies may not be able to offer a $20 million director's pay, but in the case of the continuous cooperation between the two sides, "The Big Crash" and "Don Liri", the fireflies are not too embarrassing. He believes that by fixing the pay and dividends, he takes it himself. It is not difficult to get the total income of 30 million US dollars equivalent to "Dongli".

At the moment, Godzilla is based on 20 million pay, 15% of the box office in North America, perhaps still can guarantee that he got 30 million US dollars, but because of the "Gothic" word of mouth and the box office's double defeat, the lower part of him The film can never get such a rich reward, and the damage caused by Godzilla to his popularity is even more difficult to estimate.

Compared to Roland Emmerich’s faint self-blame, Bill Michal’s mood is even more irritating.

The "Godzilla" project was originally pushed down by Sony Pictures from the top down. In the sense that the project failed, the responsibility should not be blamed on him anyway.

However, this obvious and reasonable inference obviously does not really happen to a Japanese group with a well-defined management group like Sony. If Godzilla is successful, it will naturally be a joy, and everyone will celebrate the feast together. But now it has failed, and the chairman of the group will not be at fault. The CEO of Sony's US branch, his immediate supervisor, Howard Stringer, will not stand up to take responsibility. The layer is laminated. This pot can only be backed by the head of Bill Mickey, the most direct film business. .

Fortunately, Sony knows what is going on, and although he needs to come back to the pot, there is no substantive punishment. This is the only place that makes people feel better.

However, there is still another very tricky thing that has fallen on him, the contract between Sony Pictures and Roland Emmerich.

At the time, due to the company's high-level confidence, Sony signed a trilogy contract with Roland Emmerich.

"Godzilla" opened the box office all the way down a week, the next two sequels certainly can not talk about.

However, the contract between Sony and Roland Emmerich is not automatically invalidated.

During the contract signing process, the two parties discussed the solution that could not be initiated once the sequel was initiated. The result of the deliberation was that if the sequel to Godzilla could not be activated, Roland Emmerich had the right to choose from other projects under Sony Pictures. Pick two parts for directing.

Toho's special photo of the Godzilla series took 22 shots in 40 years. No one can expect that after introducing Godzilla into Hollywood, it is hard to proceed after just taking one. Therefore, no one has taken this sub-clause in mind.

But now, Godzilla's total investment is 220 million US dollars. According to the current situation, the film can recover 150 million in North America, which is a luxury, not to mention the initial expectation of 300 million US dollars. From the bleak box office performance of Japan, the overseas market is also not optimistic. This project has already confirmed that it will bring huge losses to Sony Pictures. As the producer and director who directly led to the failure of the project, Sony executives had the heart of Roland Emmerich's death, and naturally he was not willing to fulfill the sub-clause.

The chore of solving this contract problem naturally fell to Bill Michalnik.

No director in Hollywood has ever failed, even if Cameron, who just created the box office miracle, the original Abyss also made Fox lose his toothache. But no one is sure that these directors will make a comeback in the days and have been in Hollywood for decades. Bill Michalnik understands this truth naturally, so he doesn't want to ripped his face with Roland Emmerich.

Until dinner was coming to an end, Bill Michnik, who had brewed a lot of rhetoric, talked about the topic: "Roland, I remember that there are at least five disaster series in the fireflies, and you directed "The Great Clash" and "Don Liri" The box office is very good, Williams should be eager to continue working with Fireflies?"

Roland Emmerich listened to Bill Michal in the words of the Lord, but his mood did not get better. Eric certainly said that he is welcome to go back at any time, but Roland Emmerich also has his own self-esteem. He gave up his good cooperation with fireflies for a high amount of money. Now the project fails, he naturally cannot immediately Put down your face and return to the fireflies.

Roland Emmerich knew very well that Bill Michnik had his own purpose today. He did not actually hold on to the subordinate clause. The two sides can't cooperate willingly, and the project he forcibly taken over from Sony will certainly not work. This state will only affect the quality of the film. The project failed again, and the wealthy Sony just lost some money, but after two consecutive films, he estimated that he could only retire early.

Putting down the tableware, Roland Emmerich wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked up: "Bill, thank you for your dinner, so you still talk about Sony's thoughts directly."

Roland Emmerich’s attitude gave Bill Michalk a sigh of relief: “This is the case, Roland, we are currently preparing a project, a story about the American independence war, called Patriot, director The candidate has not yet been determined, and if you are interested, the film can be directed by you."

"I have never been exposed to war-themed films," Roland Emmerich said, suddenly realizing what he was, and asked keenly: "Is the candidate for the film determined?"

Bill Michalnik didn't expect Roland Emmerich to react so quickly, paused, and confessed: "We are in contact, there are two suitable candidates, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner. ""

The atmosphere between the two sides has once again fallen silent.

Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, these two are not only Hollywood's A-class superstars, but they have also won the war-type films like Braveheart and Dance with Wolves. Nomination or award for the best director of Oscar.

No matter who is the actor of the Patriots, Roland Emmerich’s control of the project as a director will be greatly weakened. Even without his director, the project will obviously proceed smoothly.

Roland Emmerich could feel that Sony was the director of a type of film that he was not good at, and it was more like a ‘flower vase’ that would not have much impact on the whole film. This arrangement is simply an insult to his coffee shop in Hollywood.

Taking a sip of the red wine on the table and calming down the emotions, Roland Emmerich asked: "So, if we directly cancel the contract?"

"One million dollars," Bill Michalnick has obviously considered this possibility. However, when he said that this amount of perfunctory compensation, he could not hold his face, adding: "This is what I can do." The highest amount, if you want this, I can talk to Howard, maybe I can improve it."

How much can you improve?

Roland Emmerich thought so, and her heart was a bit tangled.

The solution given by Sony is already very clear.

He came to be the director of Patriots. This film has Mel Gibson or Kevin Costner. The quality of the film and the box office should be guaranteed. After completing the film, both parties can take the opportunity. The subsidiary terms were removed. I can imagine that if you accept the job of the director, the rewards he can get will never be too high. The $20 million box office is definitely not to think about it, even if he is keeping him before Godzilla. The $8 million fixed director’s pay is not too easy.

But if he wants to cancel the contract immediately, he can only get a symbolic compensation.

Moreover, the loss of this contract, in the case of "Godzilla" has just failed, in the next year or two, Hollywood film companies will certainly not easily cooperate with him, this is not because of his personal guidance ability. The problem, but the one-sided bad review of Godzilla will definitely have a very bad impact on the box office appeal of his lower film. The first solution Sony gave was to take advantage of the influence of Mel Gibson or Kevin Costner to minimize this effect.

Obviously, Sony definitely wants him to automatically choose to cancel the contract, but at the same time he is not willing to pay too much compensation, so he will come up with such a solution that is difficult to choose.

Sony also expects that he will not take fierce measures such as litigation to solve this problem. After all, just smashing someone else's big production and then prosecuting others, then who will dare to cooperate with you.

In the end, Roland Emmerich said: "Bill, give me some time, let me think about it."

Roland Emmerich didn't mention the cancellation. Bill Michalnik knew that he had decided to accept the position of the Patriots director, but he couldn't put it down for a while and immediately agreed. Bill Michanik was not urging, he was able to get the matter done, and there was nothing too unpleasant about the two sides. He was very satisfied.

The two did not continue to talk about the interest, Bill Michalnick was about to wave the waiters to check out, there was some commotion on the other side of the restaurant, a man and two women came out of the deck not far away, causing The warm greetings of other guests.

Roland Emmerich heard the movement behind him, and turned to look at it, just to the eyes of Eric.

There are only two weeks left before the release of "The Royal Casino of 007". Eric can still be lazy in the early propaganda work, but at this last moment, as a director, he must still participate in the film promotion. Today, with a **** and a meal with Amy Pascal, the main thing is to discuss this matter.

Politely responding to the greetings of the people around, Eric is walking with his head and Amy Pascal. He didn't expect to meet Roland Emmerich, and he couldn't stop.

In the recent days, Eric should definitely be one of the people Roland Emmerich didn't want to meet.

It was the two films of "World and Earth Clash" and "Don Liri" that cooperated with Firefly that pushed him to the ranks of super directors, and also prompted Sony to open the huge contract for him.

Roland Emmerich was somewhat disheartened when he gave up the cooperation with Fireflies for the rich rewards of Sony Pictures. At this time, Godzilla’s word of mouth and box office were bleak, facing Eric, Roland Emory. It’s even more embarrassing.

"Good evening, Eric," although my heart was uncomfortable, Roland Emmerich took the initiative to open a greeting with Eric, but he was hesitant for a while, not knowing if he should get up.

"Night and, Roland, oh, and Bill."

Eric also sees his current state of mind from Roland Emmerich's expression. There are many Hollywood insiders. If he stops at this moment, there will definitely be a new paragraph in Hollywood tomorrow. I don't want Roland Emmerich to be too embarrassed. Eric just nodded softly and the two men nodded, and both sides passed by.

Roland Emmerich’s reaction to Eric was both relaxed and somewhat confusing. He looked at Bill Mischanik and they didn’t have the idea of ​​checking out immediately. At this point, leave in case of parking again. When I met, I really didn't know what to say.

The parking lot outside the restaurant, Shantou still hangs on Eric, smiles and Amy Pascal: "Oh, Amy, just if you have noticed Roland's expression, it is really interesting."

Amy Pascal just smiled and didn't agree with the girl.

"Well, don't gloat," Eric knocked on the door of his mind, and said to Amy Pascal: "For the acquisition of E! Entertainment, talk about it as soon as possible, preferably at the end of the month. I came up with the results before."

"Eric, Warner Cable saw us suddenly took the initiative to take the deal, it seems that no longer eager to sell shares. They may guess that you are interested in E! Entertainment."

The twins drove the Land Rover's Land Rover. Eric didn't rush to get on the bus and leaned against the door. "I recently read some information. The Rainbow Media of the Basic Cable Company also seems to have a sale. You can also have them at the same time. In contact, the Bravo TV station in the hands of Rainbow Media is similar in nature to E! Entertainment."

"I also noticed this," Amy Pascal nodded. "But basic cable companies should not sell too many shares. Moreover, GE is also interested in Rainbow Media, which has been expanding over the years. Its own cable TV business."

"Basic cable companies must know which side has more potential to cooperate with. If possible, we don't need to seek too many shares at once, just need to get the right to operate. And your main energy is still to be placed in E. Entertainment, above, Rainbow Media as an alternative, "I thought, Eric said again: "But, I guess next week, "Batman and Robin" released, Warner should be willing to leave E! Equity burdens. Time Warner’s losses have widened this year, and Terry Semel’s CEO position may have to be replaced.”

Amy Pascal immediately realized the meaning of Eric's words and asked: "Eric, are you not optimistic about Batman and Robin?"

"I haven't seen the filming of "Batman and Robin", but I don't dare to be too sure. However, if you pay a little attention, you should find that Warner has made "Batman and Robin" too strict, and now So far, in addition to the trailer, the substantive news related to the content of the film is pitiful, and there is no public screening of the film."

Amy Pascal combed the information in her mind and found out that it was.

Warner sealed the content of the film before the release, perhaps to maintain the mystery of the film, but there is another possibility, that is, they have no confidence in the quality of the film, worrying about the leak of word of mouth in advance, will affect the opening of the film box office .