For more than a month, the management of Firefly Group has drawn up a detailed 'RealD' plan and a timetable for the advancement of the '4200' plan.
The launch date of "Iron Man" is confirmed in March next year, and the shooting period is three months.
The filming of "Iron Man" will be completed in the first half of the year, and the preliminary preparations for "Gravity" will also be ready. Eric will be able to devote himself to the production of "Gravity" in the second half of the year, from the start of filming to the completion of the final 3D and IMAX version conversion , a year and a half is enough.
Therefore, the time for the final completion of the two plans was determined at the end of 1999.
Moreover, not only "Gravity", but also the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which has completed casting, will also be confirmed to start filming early next year.
Since the trilogy was shot back to back, the filming cycle lasted for one year, and after another year of post-production, the schedule of the first part of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" will also be determined at the end of 1999. The "Lord of the Rings" series Such an epic fantasy masterpiece is obviously also suitable for 3D and IMAX screens that pursue visual experience, and Eric will naturally not let it go.
"Gravity" plus the first part of "Lord of the Rings" will ensure that 4,000 3D screens and 200 IMAX theaters will have two heavyweight blockbuster film sources.
As for the "Spider-Man" that Cameron is in charge of, although according to the plan, this film will also be completed by the end of 1999, but the Firefly Group does not have any expectations for Cameron to complete the film as planned. Just didn't include this movie in the plan, and planned to let Cameron toss.
However, according to the proposed timetable, as Marvel's first superhero movie, "Iron Man", which is scheduled for the summer of 1999, can only be excluded from the list of the first batch of 3D-IMAX movies. The first part of "Star Wars Prequel" released by Fox and MGM's next three agent movie universe blockbusters also failed to catch up with the first wave of 3D-IMAX.
In this regard, Eric can only express regret. After all, many things cannot be done overnight.
Eric returned to Los Angeles, and Katzenberg had also completed the first of the two plans-the wholly-owned acquisition of the Canadian IMAX company.
In 1994, because he was optimistic about the prospects of IMAX, Wall Street investor Richard Gelford invested all his wealth to obtain a controlling stake in IMAX Corporation, and made every effort to promote the commercialization of IMAX technology in theaters.
However, due to the lack of support from Hollywood film companies and several major theaters in North America, Richard Gelford's plan has hardly made any progress, and IMAX technology is still limited to the screening of scientific and educational films in various museums. Eric asked the company to invest a sum of money in IMAX for the research and development of DMR technology for converting ordinary films into IMAX films. Although IMAX saw a glimmer of hope, it did not substantially improve the company's performance. .
Before Firefly initiated the acquisition, IMAX was heavily indebted. The market value of the entire company on the Nasdaq market was less than 200 million U.S. dollars, but it owed a huge debt of 150 million U.S. dollars, which also included the original loan from Firefly. $30 million.
Since Eric intends to bet on IMAX, Firefly will naturally not hand over the dividends brought by the promotion of IMAX technology in the future. At the same time, the company does not want to be controlled by others in the process of promoting IMAX technology. The purchase of the company was an acquisition of less than 500 million US dollars, so Eric would naturally not object.
After several years of hard work, IMAX was on the verge of bankruptcy. Although Richard Geldford felt that the acquisition of Firefly Group would bring about earth-shaking changes to the company, he did not hold it firmly in his hands. .
After weeks of negotiations, Firefly finally won the company by paying $230 million in cash and assuming IMAX’s $150 million in debt. Since $30 million of the $150 million in debt came from Firefly, this The actual total amount of the deal was only $350 million.
Playa Vista.
Although the expansion plan of Firefly Studios has not yet officially started, many workers have already started simple cleaning work on the land west of Lincoln Avenue.
After many revisions, the dream engineer team responsible for the construction of the theme park finally came up with a satisfactory design drawing of the air corridor.
The entire air corridor will be four kilometers in length and 20 meters in height, roughly equivalent to a seven-story building. In order to make people who see the air corridor not think of buildings like reinforced concrete viaducts, the entire corridor will be constructed entirely of steel and glass. Although the height of 20 meters can be easily compared with many buildings in other metropolises, in the vicinity of Playa Vista, where the height of housing generally does not exceed three floors, once this corridor is completed, it will undoubtedly be the tallest corridor within a radius of tens of kilometers. A striking landmark.
"With a conservative price of 50 million US dollars, this will definitely be the most expensive building in the entire studio, but I think anyone who has seen the renderings will feel that the 50 million US dollars is worth the money. Going up this air corridor, you can have a panoramic view of the sea in the west, Fox Mountain in the east, Los Angeles Airport in the south, and Santa Monica in the north.”
On the still somewhat uneven wasteland, Katzenberg and Eric walked side by side, and at the same time talked about the expansion plan of the theme park with some excitement.
Eric looked at the empty land waiting to be developed around him, imagining how it would be built into a Firefly Studios theme park in the future, and suddenly he understood why Michael Eisner would make Paris Disneyland with a budget of 1 billion dollars step by step. to 5 billion. Eric has never been a person who is very successful, but listening to Katzenberg's talk about the expansion plan of the Firefly Studios theme park, he couldn't help but want to truly build the scene he described.
The current area of this land is less than one-tenth of the 2,000 hectares of Disneyland Paris. However, just an air corridor will cost 50 million U.S. dollars. After the entire movie theater is built, the total construction will definitely not be less than 1 billion Dollar.
Firefly Studios Theme Park, 'RealD' and '4200' plans, IMAX just acquired, and Hasbro, which is planned to be completely acquired... Although I have been thinking about slowing down the expansion of Firefly Group, but unconsciously However, the company is still growing rapidly.
Randomly kicking a stone under his feet, Eric said: "Jeffrey, I don't have any opinions on the design of attractions with the themes of "Jurassic Park" and "Emma Street". You should have seen the set design of the Lord of the Rings series, I am very optimistic about this project, so I hope that there must be enough space here to build the theme of the Lord of the Rings series.”
"Of course, I also find the design of the Bag End very interesting," Katzenberg nodded, and said, "Speaking of which, didn't you plan to let Miss Kidman play the role of the elf queen Galadriel? We don't know how to talk to her about this while you're away."
"Ah, I've already discussed this with Nicole. You can just ask someone to sign the film contract with her. The salary is calculated at 3 million US dollars."
Katzenberg asked with some uncertainty: "3 million for the third part?"
"Yeah," Eric nodded.
For Nicole's current coffee position, 3 million starred in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is indeed a bit shabby. However, her roles are almost the same as guest appearances, and her salary of 3 million US dollars is actually the highest among all actors.
Eric was chatting with Katzenberg when one of Katzenberg's assistants hurried over and said, "Mr. Williams, Mr. Katzenberg, the representatives from Texas Instruments have arrived. They went to install the equipment."
During this time, the management has been considering how to reasonably reduce the budget for implementing the two plans. A large part of the $1.6 billion budget will be the cost of updating RealD's movie projection system. As it happened, Texas Instruments was exploring commercial possibilities for a newly developed digital projector, and Katzenberg arranged for the demonstration.
Hearing what Katzenberg's assistant said, the two walked towards the east studio together.
"I have read the information. Although the resolution of the digital projector prototype developed by Texas Instruments can only reach 1280*1024, given them two years, I think they have developed a resolution equivalent to the 1920*1080 resolution of the film projector. The equipment is not too difficult."
The two walked back together, and Katzenberg first talked about his views.
"Jeffrey, did it ever occur to you that if we went with digital projectors, maybe the industry would boycott it?"
Hollywood is only in North America, and the industry chain around film copies reaches billions of dollars every year. If it spreads to the whole world, this number will be even larger.
Katzenberg heard Eric's question, but his tone was a little teasing: "I still remember what you said at the Fireflyer player conference at the beginning of the year."
Eric shrugged and said with a smile: "Okay, but I just don't think now is the time to promote digital projectors."
Eric has seen the information on the digital projector developed by Texas Instruments. Strictly speaking, Texas Instruments has only developed the core DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology, which can convert digital signals into optical signals for projectors. In my memory, many digital projectors or office projectors later used DLP chips from Texas Instruments.
However, like the current digital cameras, Eric is not too optimistic about digital projectors.
Both technologies are in the early stages of development, which means that whether it is a digital camera or a digital projector, even if it reaches the corresponding resolution, it is definitely far from being comparable to film in terms of color reproduction of movie images. Film uses a chemical method to record color. Even if the degree of image color restoration by this method does not reach the level of biological eyeballs, it far exceeds that of immature digital technology.
To give a simple example, in a relatively dim light environment, film can still record various things very sensitively in a dim environment, but due to the limited range of color recognition of current digital cameras, when a certain color cannot be restored 100%, It will automatically compensate with similar surrounding colors. Therefore, the dark part of the picture taken by the digital camera is often a dark piece, but the film picture will be much clearer.
Therefore, Eric felt that it would be more appropriate to wait at least another ten years to promote digital camera and digital projector technology. In fact, digital movies in memory did gradually become popular ten years later.
Katzenberg obviously did a lot of homework. Hearing what Eric said, he nodded slightly and said, "I actually feel the same way, but I always have to look at it first. You know, if you can really use numbers For projection equipment, we will release a movie in the future, and we can save millions of dollars just for copying costs, especially for dual-camera 3D copying and IMAX copying, which can save even more money.”
"But some money can't be saved," Eric sighed with some regret.
Speaking of which, after the implementation of the two plans, at least in the next ten years, since film will still be used, the cost of copying is definitely an important factor restricting the conversion of many films to 3D and IMAX. The cost of film copies has doubled.
However, this actually has an advantage. The high cost of conversion can avoid the appearance of too many low-quality 3D movies. This is exactly what Eric is most worried about during the 3D promotion process. Eric didn't expect to be able to monopolize the 3D market for too long, and once 3D movies are popularized in advance, there are not many film companies that can keep their integrity for the sake of profit.
Texas Instruments obviously attached great importance to this demonstration, and the vice president in charge of DLP technology research and development rushed over in person.
Although Eric and Katzenberg knew in their hearts that the two plans in their hands were unlikely to use digital projection equipment for the time being, they still watched the whole demonstration seriously. As Eric imagined, although the resolution of 1280*1024 is considered good, but in terms of film color, the digital projection prototype developed by Texas Instruments is undoubtedly full of room for improvement.
After watching the demonstration, I discussed some technical details with the vice president of Texas Instruments, and it was time to get off work soon.
Today is November 20th, approaching Thanksgiving, Eric did not go back to Angle Manor after get off work, but rushed to the Chinese Theater in Hollywood with Katzenberg. Because of the digital transformation, the first film "Monsters, Inc" produced by Disney Animation Studios will hold its premiere ceremony at the China Grand Theater today, and tomorrow will be the official release time.
Although it was only an animated film, when Eric and Katzenberg rushed to the premiere together, there were already crowds of people in front of the China Grand Theater.
Katzenberg is personally in charge of Disney Animation Studios. After the success of "The Lion King 2" and "Finding Nemo" in the summer, Katzenberg is looking forward to this film from Disney Animation Studios. For anxiety. Many people are also waiting with mixed feelings for what kind of results the new Disney Animation Studio will produce. (To be continued.)