If "Dragon Kills" was the spark, then Richard Gere's interview in the "Hollywood Information" was the spark that ignited it.
On the day this interview was published, CAA's spokesperson refuted Richard Gere's remarks in the media as nonsense that completely disregarded the facts, and vowed to declare that if the other party made these irresponsible remarks again, CAA would sue Various legal means to seek justice for oneself.
Although many people can see that Richard Gere's remarks are indignant, and he put himself in a 'victim' point of view. There are many loopholes in his remarks as long as there are some industry Anyone with knowledge can easily break through. But this does not prevent the media from digging deeply into some of the facts in his remarks.
The power of gossip is powerful, so, from the next day, articles on the inside story of the grievances between Michael Ovitz and Kapoor Sheed began to appear in the media. The fact that he was almost forced to go to Europe has also been exposed again.
Although caa has grown into a towering tree, it does not have any black history, coupled with its forced bundling sales strategy, it will definitely lead to the failure of some movies, and these failures will naturally be pulled out by the media.
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With more and more articles smearing CAA, a trend of demonizing CAA started unknowingly.
The development and growth of CAA over the years has not only severely squeezed the living space of other Hollywood brokerage companies, but also, the whole set of bundled sales strategies invented by Michael Ovitz has also caused many Hollywood film companies to suffer. CAA not only greatly increased the remuneration of the stars, but also because of the bundling strategy, the film company had to pay a lot of costs beyond the budget.
The six major Hollywood film giants are a little bit better. Usually, they can still get most of the right to speak in the confrontation with CAA. However, the large number of second- and third-tier Hollywood film companies, as well as those independent filmmakers, have a bundling strategy in CAA. They have no power to fight in front of them. They don't have Eric's reputation and confidence that every movie sells well, so they can only obediently accept the binding conditions of CAA.
There are a large number of brokerage companies, a huge group of film companies, countless independent filmmakers, and finally there is a TV media that is critical of CAA's bundled sales of TV drama projects. Using the power in his hands to smear caa is enough for caa to drink a pot, not to mention that almost all the power is instinctively exerting force this time without communication at all.
Of course, it's not that no one expressed support for CAA. Some actors under CAA more or less said a few good things for CAA when they were interviewed. After all, CAA increased the production cost of the film company, and The biggest beneficiaries are indeed these actors. But these voices basically didn't make any waves, mainly because under the manipulation of those forces, they deliberately downplayed the supportive remarks of the CAA stars.
Although caa also has a strong media public relations force, but in this trend, the power in his hands basically has no effect, and he is completely in a passive state of being scolded.
Immediately afterwards, the executives of United Artists, who were devastated by the disastrous box office failure of "Dragon Killing", suddenly jumped out. According to Richard Gere's interview, he blamed caa for the failure of "Dragon Killing" He even threatened to claim damages from CAA. Of course, this kind of thing is impossible to succeed. Lianmei just needs to find a scapegoat for the failure of tens of millions of dollars in investment. The caa on the cusp of the storm was just right, and then there was another battle of words.
At the same time, amidst this trend, several other Hollywood agencies waved their hoes tacitly. In just one week, caa had more than 20 second- and third-tier actors leave. If it caused any harm to CAA, what happened next caused a wave of turmoil within CAA.
The reason is that Tom Cruise suddenly announced his departure from CAA!
Who is Tom Cruise
The most popular idol star in Hollywood, since his debut, he has almost never missed many films. The big films he starred in have made huge profits for the film company at a very small cost. 86's "Top Gun", with At a cost of more than 10 million US dollars, it won a global box office of 350 million US dollars. And the most recent "Rain Man" won a number of Oscar nominations while getting a high box office. In the list of the most powerful people in Hollywood selected by "Premiere" magazine, Tom Cruise as an actor , among a group of film company executives, great directors, and gold medal producers at a very high level.
The departure of such super A-class superstars caused waves in the industry without any surprise. The departure of Tom Cruise actually has a lot to do with this turmoil.
Because of this storm of demonizing CAA, after the media expressed sympathy for Richard Gere, some people turned their attention to the negotiation of the two leading actors in Eric's new film. Soon, with the help of the media and the cooperation of caring people, the remuneration conditions proposed by caa for the two were exposed.
"$6 million salary plus 20% profit sharing, this robbery-like asking price can only be thought of by a confident 'big company' like CAA, it is obvious that CAA wants to let Eric Williams again It seems that after experiencing "The Wind and Moon", Mr. Michael Ovitz still has the ridiculous idea of "blocking" Eric Williams. He wants to pass this unrealistic The asking price, disturbed the cooperation between Eric Williams and Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks. Not long ago, as Mr. Richard Gere said, caa has begun to treat actors as pawns in its hands Manipulative words are not aimless."
In fact, during this period of time, CAA has been constantly backing down in the negotiations on the salary of Cruise and Hanks. Before the release of "Dragon Killing Array", the share ratio required by CAA had dropped to 12%. When the media exposed CAA's initial quotation, the share ratio required by the other party dropped to 10%.
Although after the initial conditions were exposed, caa immediately clarified that the current quotations of the two superstars are not that high, but the media seized on this matter and repeatedly made a fuss, and some analysts also expressed their opinions in newspapers, It is said that if the CAA sharing model becomes popular, it will further increase the production cost of the film company and at the same time greatly reduce the profit margin, making it more difficult to achieve profitability. Under such circumstances, it will definitely affect the enthusiasm of Hollywood film companies to make films, and deal a fatal blow to the rapidly recovering film industry in the United States.
Some media even began to call on the federal government to investigate CAA's behavior of disrupting the film market. Under the influence of some forces, when a member of the California State Assembly was interviewed by the media, he made specious remarks that he might investigate CAA's remuneration quotation and suspected monopoly behavior, although the member quickly He denied his own statement, but it still put a lot of pressure on caa.
What the industry giants in the United States are most afraid of is not the tax bureau, but the anti-monopoly investigation. Leaving aside the cases of other industries, it is just Hollywood, because the 'Paramount Act' that year caused the Hollywood film industry to remain silent for many years.
However, Michael Ovitz, who has already thrown off the negotiations between Sony and Columbia, and returned to CAA to preside over the overall situation, personally conducted an interview with Cruise and Hanks respectively in order to stabilize the situation, hoping that the two can abandon the previous agreement this time Profit sharing plan, only take one piece of pure remuneration, to help caa through this crisis.
Hanks is still easy to talk about, because he didn’t get a profit share at all before, not even a high salary of 5 million yuan. Hanks only got 2 million US dollars in "Future Leap" with a box office of over 100 million Moreover, he also valued this cooperation with Eric, so he agreed.
However, Tom Cruise expressed the hope that he could think about it. As a result, the next day, the result of Liang Tang's consideration was to bring his agent, Ms. Paula Wagner, to announce his separation from CAA, and then reconnect with the Firefly started salary negotiations.
Cruise has always been a very ambitious person, coupled with the public opinion turmoil this time, it really made Cruise feel like he was being manipulated by CAA like a pawn. This feeling is extremely unacceptable for a superstar who is full of energy, strong desire for control and very capable.
In addition, because of the success of "Rain Man", he saw another way, which is to cooperate with those film companies in the form of profit sharing as an individual, which can bring him more benefits and at the same time overcome Ruth also wanted more control over the production of the film.
If he wants to obtain these without being constrained by the brokerage company, getting rid of CAA and going solo is the first step for Cruise. But Cruise breaking away from CAA at this juncture is tantamount to stabbing the opponent in the back.