The packaging model pioneered by CAA was first used to promote the TV programs in hand.
In the 1970s, the newly established CAA was not only suppressed by its old club WMA, but also had very few artists under it. In order to find jobs for clients as soon as possible and avoid the disintegration of the newly established small company, CAA president Michael Ovitz and other talents found another way to gather all suitable artists under the company through excellent scripts, and then promoted them to major TV stations as a whole.
This packaging model, which broke the tradition of selecting actors first and then customizing scripts for them, was unexpectedly successful and later gradually developed into film production.
In 1982, CAA's film packaging project "My Fair Lady" was a box office hit and ranked second in the North American box office rankings that year (the first place was "ET"), completely making the packaging mechanism the core of CAA operating model.
As CAA develops and grows, it has more and more top stars, and this agency is becoming more and more powerful in Hollywood. Not only do they demand higher and higher salaries for their stars, they also use commissions from the overall project budget to circumvent Hollywood regulations that prohibit agencies from getting involved in the production field, further pushing up the production costs of film and television programs.
As a result, major Hollywood film and television production companies have begun to become wary of this project operation model that constantly carves up their original power and interests.
As an old brokerage company that has been established for nearly a century, WMA has been aware of the threat of CAA's new operating model in the past few years. However, due to the company's deep-rooted conservatism and the lack of coordination among internal brokers, WMA did not follow up in time.
It wasn't until the death of two core executives in the first half of the year, and internal turmoil within the company that caused a large number of top stars to leave, that WMA woke up from a dream.
Then, Simon's "The Butterfly Effect", driven by Jonathan Friedman, coincidentally became the first packaged project presented by WMA to a Hollywood studio.
Although a large number of top stars have left in recent months, in fact, the overall scale of WMA still far exceeds that of CAA.
As the fastest-growing Hollywood talent agency in recent years, CAA still has only more than 50 agents and its number of clients has just reached 600. In comparison, WMA, which has more than 180 agents, has more than 3,000 artists under its umbrella.
CAA's packaging mechanism has already made studios feel threatened. If Hollywood's largest talent agency also switches to this project operation model, it is not difficult to imagine that major film companies will become more and more passive in film and television production in the future. .
Due to concerns in this regard, although "The Butterfly Effect" has been favored by many studio executives, a week has passed and it should have been the time for the film company to respond, but the heads of several major studios have not given a clear answer. reply.
In the blink of an eye, it is already mid-July.
It's Tuesday afternoon at Paramount headquarters in downtown Hollywood.
Due to the great success of the two films released this summer, "Top Gun" and "The Genius", Paramount President Sidney Ganis has also appeared to be high-spirited recently, because the company has now completely swept away the former In the past two years, executives such as Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg have left.
Affected by the frequent departures of company executives, Paramount's best-performing film "Witness" last year only had a box office of 68 million US dollars. Many media are ridiculing Martin Davis, chairman of Paramount's parent company Gulf Western, for turning Barry into a director. The foolish move of Diller and other senior executives to force him out also predicted that Paramount would never recover from this.
Now that Paramount is recovering, and the grumpy Martin Davis has stopped staring at the top management like a mule in recent times, life will be much easier for everyone in the future.
He enthusiastically welcomed Jonathan Friedman, who came to visit, into the office. Sidney Ganis and other secretaries brought coffee to the two of them, exchanged a few words, and then got to the topic: "Joe, to be fair, Paramount is very We wanted the script of "The Butterfly Effect," but it was difficult for us to accept the overall plan proposed by the WMA."
This is not the first movie company Jonathan Friedman visited today. He had just been to Warner Studios in the morning. After hearing almost similar remarks from Sidney Ganis and Warner Pictures President Ed Morley, Jonathan Friedman has 100% determined that several major Hollywood studios have definitely coordinated in advance for "The Butterfly Effect".
However, on the surface, Jonathan Friedman remained calm and said: "West Germany, you should be able to see that this is a very outstanding project, and WMA has also come up with the best creative lineup we can provide."
"No, I don't think so," Sidney Ganis shook his head: "Just like Brian De Palma, he has messed up two big productions with an investment of over 10 million in a row. Paramount is very It’s hard to trust him to direct this movie.”
Jonathan Friedman retorted: "Sid, the box office performance of Brian's last two movies is indeed not good enough, but it cannot be regarded as a screw-up. Moreover, the responsibility for the film's box office failure is not entirely on him. Just like "" at the beginning of the year "Old Street Lucky", MGM not only arranged this movie in the unpopular April schedule, but also only gave it to more than 300 screens. Even so, the movie still received a box office of 8.5 million U.S. dollars, which is enough to prove that Ryan’s strength. Moreover, ‘The Butterfly Effect’ happens to be the type of film that Brian is best at.”
Sidney Ganis took a sip from his coffee cup and shrugged: "Well, even so, the $2 million director's salary offered by WMA is too high, and Paramount can only pay a maximum of $1 million. Also, that screenwriter..."
With that said, Sidney Ganis put down the coffee cup, stood up and took a document from the desk, sat back on the sofa in the reception area, handed the document to Jonathan and said: "Simon Westeros, right? This is obviously a newcomer without any qualifications. Therefore, we also cannot accept the script quotation of 200,000 US dollars. It is too high. The maximum is 100,000 US dollars, and it is two scripts. 80,000 US dollars for "The Butterfly Effect" and 20,000 US dollars. As... well, this, the deposit for the option of "Death Comes". Hehe, it took a lot of effort to find out the screenwriter's script from the Screenwriters Guild. In fact, there is a script, but the quality is so poor that it is completely unacceptable. It's a story. As for "Death Comes", although it only has an outline, the idea is really good. In addition, these are one-time buyout prices. Simon Westeros is not a union member, and Paramount does not need to follow the union's The basic agreement gave him a share of the video and television rights."
Jonathan Friedman silently turned over the documents in his hand, but he could feel some obvious malice in Sidney Ganis's conditions.
However, after Sidney Ganis finished speaking, Jonathan Friedman still asked unwillingly: "So, Sid, what about the male protagonist, what do you think of Matthew?"
With an inexplicable smile on his face, Sidney Ganis nodded without hesitation and said: "The box office of "The Genius Who Skipped School" was so good, of course we are willing to continue to cooperate with Matthew. 5 million US dollars Although the salary is a bit high, Matthew is worth it.”
After hearing what Sidney Ganis said, Jonathan Friedman was finally convinced that Paramount was obviously targeting him, the initiator of WMA's first packaging project, and even wanted to use this small means to Yellow the entire project.
After all, Brian De Palma and Simon Westeros are both artists in his hands, and their combined compensation is less than half of Matthew Broderick's. Paramount was scrupulous about the salaries of the two of them, but decisively agreed to Matthew's offer of up to 5 million US dollars. This was obviously an attempt to provoke discord within the WMA.