The faint morning light projected into the master bedroom of Liberty City, and Eric woke up first, his palm gently stroking the smooth skin of the girl in his arms, but he was thinking of "Iron Man".
In the script, after Tony Stark and "Vanity Fair" reporter Christine ONS, not only do they take the initiative to avoid the next morning, but also feel embarrassed when they meet again. This kind of reaction is definitely not like a fashion magazine's annual cover. The playboy who slept with the girls all over.
Well, it has to be changed.
Staring at the ceiling and pondering the details of the script revision for a while, Eric couldn't help laughing silently.
Well, then come by yourself.
The average rhythm of one movie every two years, and the schedule is really well arranged.
No longer entangled with this problem, Eric felt the girl leaning on his chest's originally flat breathing became rapid. When he looked down, the girl's eyes were still closed tightly, as if she didn't plan to wake up.
Eric smiled, and his palms began to slide.
Jennifer Love Hewitt, who was about to continue pretending to be asleep, suddenly trembled slightly, clamped her legs, and looked up with a blushing face: "Eric, you are so bad."
Eric hugged Jennifer on his body, feeling the closeness of a soft and tender body, and said: "Girls say that, usually they want men to be worse."
Jennifer Love Hewitt pressed Eric's hand that was still making trouble, and said dissatisfiedly: "Why don't you bully Sarah, she must be pretending to be asleep too?"
Eric turned his head and looked at the girl on the other side who was pretending to be asleep. He smiled and rolled over and pressed Jennifer under him, saying, "No hurry, it's still early, neither of you can escape."
After breakfast and seeing off the two girls, Eric called Joss Whedon directly and asked him to cancel the next casting audition for the leading actor in "Iron Man".
At ten o'clock in the morning, Eric rushed to Firefly Studios. Brigitte Fonda, who was confirmed to be the actor of Pepper, also rushed over after receiving the notice. He was surprised to hear that Eric planned to play Tony Stark himself. His jaw nearly dropped.
It must be ugly to see a beautiful woman with a dropped chin, so Eric reached out and picked Bridget Fonda's chin, told her to shut up, and said with a smile: "Let's go, let's go to the audition first, can we make it?" Not sure yet."
Bridget Fonda was very dissatisfied with Eric's actions just now, but the surprise in his heart could not be calmed down for a while, so he followed everyone into an audition room honestly.
After a busy morning, Eric and Brigitte Fonda performed most of the Tony Stark and Pepper scenes in "Iron Man".
In the end, Firefly executives including Katzenberg and Frank Wells, who were notified to come to catch up with the excitement, agreed that Tony Stark was tailor-made for Eric. During the audition process, as a professional actor, Bridget Fonda sometimes couldn't even keep up with Eric's performance rhythm.
After lunch, everyone gathered in the meeting room again. Eric, who was sitting at the top, looked at the crowd and said, "In this case, let's discuss what to do next?"
Frank Wells and others have returned to work, but Katzenberg did not leave, saying: "Eric, I think, in order to ensure the success of "Iron Man", next, you should lower your own as much as possible." Exposure rate, so as to avoid the influence of your inherent identity on the screen image as much as possible.”
"That's no problem," Eric nodded, he didn't like appearing in the spotlight, it would be great to be a 'black hand' behind the scenes: "Then, about my role as Tony Stark, let's wait until next year before the filming starts. .”
Everyone nodded unanimously in agreement. It is now August 23, and the North American summer season has come to an end. But at the same time, the most popular live-action blockbuster "Casino Royale" has entered its ninth week of release.
Although this week, the expected box office of "Casino Royale" is less than 4 million US dollars, and the film has entered the final stage in North America, but after eight weeks of screenings, the cumulative North American box office of "Casino Royale" has reached 300 million More than 63 million U.S. dollars, which is almost the same as the total box office data of 370 million U.S. dollars speculated by most box office agencies.
At the same time, the overseas box office of "Casino Royale" has exceeded 470 million, and the global box office has reached 830 million US dollars. With the arrival of the second phase of "Casino Royale" intensive overseas release in September, it will only take time for the global box office to break through 1 billion US dollars Question, it can be said that "Casino Royale" has almost 100% locked in the 1997 box office champion.
Influenced by "Casino Royale", even though Eric has never liked publicity, his presence in the hearts of the public has been extremely strong recently. In this case, it is naturally not suitable to immediately announce that he will play Tony Stark.
The habitual low-key life of most Hollywood stars is not without reason.
If the media exposure is too frequent, it may be difficult for the audience to have a sense of identity with the characters when they see them on the big screen.
Discussed the media operation surrounding Eric's participation in "Iron Man", and naturally the issue of salary cannot be escaped.
Although Pierce Brosnan made a fuss about the remuneration of the 007 sequel, in the entire project team of "Casino Royale", the one who got the most remuneration was actually Eric himself.
His salary contract is a basic salary of 8 million US dollars plus 10% of the global box office share, although this time the box office share is not calculated according to the actual global box office figure, but the studio share that MGM obtains from the global box office. 10% of the total, but based on the fact that "Casino Royale" is now going straight to 1 billion worldwide, Eric's final remuneration will not be less than 50 million US dollars.
Of course, in Hollywood, perhaps no one thinks that Eric shouldn't be paid so much. Strictly speaking, Eric actually lowered his salary standard on his own initiative. After all, if it is other Hollywood directors who make a movie with a global box office of 1 billion US dollars, they will definitely not stop without taking 100 or 200 million US dollars from it.
Now, Eric is going to change his identity to play Tony Stark. If it is true, the salary is really difficult to calculate.
Regardless of whether it is MGM or Firefly, although the control is firmly in Eric's hands, the equity does not entirely belong to Eric alone. The distribution is clear, otherwise it will inevitably encounter some unnecessary troubles in the future.
Eric naturally wouldn't waste too much time on this issue, but signed a newcomer contract according to the salary plan drawn up in advance by Marvel Pictures, and took a symbolic $500,000. As for the future, Eric has also set the upper limit of his salary at 20 million US dollars, which is the highest salary set by the Marvel system for its actors, and Eric will naturally not take the initiative to break this limit.
At the end of the day's meeting, when Eric and Katzenberg were having dinner, he handed him another document that he took time to write today.
Katzenberg looked at the list in his hand and said, "Garfield, Scooby-doo, Teddy Bear, um, and Japanese horror movies, Eric, what do these mean?"
"Copyright," Eric took a sip of the red wine, and said, "I sorted it out in the past few days. You ask the copyright department to buy the copyright of the three animated toy images of Garfield, Scooby-Doo and Teddy Bear as soon as possible. I'm going to make a live-action mixed-mode movie, just like the original Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but this time we're going in 3D. I thought about it when I was watching "Magic Man". Although horror films for teenagers have become popular in recent years, there will always be a market for films that can truly bring fear to people. In this regard, Japanese-style horror films are actually very good. So, you Recently, I sent someone to Japan to collect some scripts of Japanese-style horror films, and I will see if anyone is interested.”
In fact, this document was what Eric thought of one after another when he was with Sarah and Jennifer last night.
Speaking of which, the two girls not only have many similarities in height, appearance, and temperament, but even their star journeys in the original time and space are very similar.
In addition to a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" that brought Sarah Michelle Gellar greater fame, both girls starred in a string of teen horror films in the late nineties, too, and into the new millennium, One of the two starred in "Scooby-Doo", the other starred in "Garfield", and then participated in several Japanese-style horror films. And none of these are very good movies at the box office.
Both "Scooby-Doo" and "Garfield" are already very classic cartoons, while "Teddy Bear" is completely Eric's bad taste on the spur of the moment, planning to ruin his childhood in advance.
As for Japanese-style horror films, the most classic Japanese-style horror films in my memory, such as "Midnight Ring" and "The Grudge", have not yet appeared, so Eric simply asked Katzenberg to take The way of casting a wide net is to go to Japan to search for scripts of horror movies, and it is easy to find a few classics.
After listening to Eric's explanation, Katzenberg recalled that when Drew searched everywhere for script copyrights and even caused all the Hollywood film companies to snatch them up, those script copyrights back then have almost become Hollywood box office hits and other movies.
Carefully collecting the receipts in his hand, Katzenberg still asked unsatisfactorily: "Eric, these should not be considered mainstream film genres, do you, uh, have a list similar to the one that Drew collected copyrights back then? ?”
Eric couldn't help but rolled his eyes, and said with a smile: "Jeffrey, my energy is also limited, and it's impossible to focus on these things all day long. And, do the math, what we have stored in our hands now Copyright projects, not to mention the Marvel series that have been developed for decades, there are also "Transformers", "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" that will be published soon. I dare say that among them Any one is almost enough to feed a film company for ten or eight years."
Katzenberg grinned and said: "Of course, but the more good projects, the better. Well, you just gave me, I will get in touch with the copyright owner as soon as possible, the three Which one do you plan to make first? I personally participated in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" back then. This type of movie requires a long time of preparation."
Eric only has some general impressions of "Scooby-doo" and "Garfield", but he has actually seen "Teddy Bear". However, he has a little experience, and it is this type of film. They are all relatively poor, because after watching the first part, it is easy for the audience to feel new about things.
"Then "Teddy Bear"." After thinking about it, Eric smiled and said to Katzenberg: "You buy the copyright first, and I will come up with a rough plan then."
Leaving Pointe Manor, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt felt for the next few days that maybe the night with Eric was just a dream.
At least, the exciting feeling is still very good, Eric Williams even made breakfast for them himself.
Naturally, they want to get something from Eric, but it's usually impossible to say this kind of thing too bluntly. They have also heard that many girls in Hollywood still get nothing after sleeping with directors or producers, and they want to try their best to persuade themselves to calm down and treat it as a dream.
However, on the third day, they still got good news. They were notified by their agent that the two heroines of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" fell on them.
Thinking of what Eric said that the two of them are not suitable to appear in a movie, the two girls naturally felt that this matter must be the result of Eric's intervention, but then, the two girls felt an inexplicable feeling in their hearts. lost. Perhaps, after getting these two roles, Eric will definitely not have any contact with them in the future.
It's still a deal.
But this time, the two girls guessed wrong.
In the following days, Eric devoted himself to the supporting role audition of "Iron Man", but he forgot about it unconsciously. He actually thought about giving Jennifer and Sarah the two heroine positions of "Garfield" and "Scooby-doo" again in the future, but this is only from the perspective that the two of them are really suitable for these films.
Although Hollywood has never lacked the creators of the crew to make certain transactions with the characters in their hands, Eric has never had this kind of thought. After all, this kind of self-control is necessary for a movie to be successful. If a movie is cast inappropriately, it will cost millions of dollars. People with a little sense in Hollywood understand this truth. No woman deserves that much money. (To be continued.)