"Five million salary? Are you crazy? Or were you too high last night?"
The agent thought Leonardo must be crazy.
As early as 2000, his net worth has almost touched the threshold of the 20 million dollar club. Coupled with the recent rise in the box office of "Cat and Mouse", the single-day box office surpassed "Lord of the Rings 2", and even attracted a large number of female fans. The fanatical pursuit of Leonardo and other phenomena are helping Leonardo continue to increase his net worth.
If "Cat and Mouse" is given another month to ferment, and if its global box office can reach a scale of five to six billion US dollars, then Leonardo's net worth will inevitably continue to have greater breakthroughs.
The salary of more than 20 million US dollars sounds terrible, and even one movie is enough to make several so-called "big productions" in China at this time. However, for Hollywood, it is completely within the acceptable range, as long as the actors have different abilities. If his strength is worth the price, then he will definitely be able to get such a high salary return.
Hollywood movies have always been generous, with high budgets, high actor salaries, and high production costs. But behind this generous budget, there are also big profits, such as high box office and high copyright income.
Some movies cost 100 million U.S. dollars and have a global box office of 300 to 500 million U.S. dollars. The DVD release can earn tens of millions of dollars, and the copyright derivatives such as novels, animations, and peripheral products can sell for tens of millions of dollars or even higher. So In this very mature business system, Leonardo's salary of 20 million US dollars can be said to be almost waterless.
With a salary of US$20 million, it is normal for an actor to reduce his salary if he meets a well-known director or a script he likes, but there is a limit to the reduction. For example, under normal circumstances, if Leonardo continues to star in Spielberg For a movie, it is relatively normal for the salary to be reduced to 15 million. A favor of 5 million US dollars is already very honorable.
However, I never expected that Leonardo seemed to have been kicked in the head and would lower the salary to five million US dollars as soon as he opened his mouth? Leonardo has never been worth this much in history, okay? You took over the filming of "Titanic" for US$2.5 million. Immediately after "Titanic" became a global hit, your net worth jumped to more than US$10 million. Now you tell me that you want to reduce your salary yourself. To five million? What's going on
Leonardo explained: "Jason, you have to know that this movie is not just directed by Spielberg. This movie is invested by Li Mu, with an investment amount of 100 million US dollars, and the script story is about an American army during World War II. The story is about an old man named Chennault who led a group of American civilian pilots to voluntarily go to China to fight side by side with the Chinese Air Force against the Japanese invasion."
"Li Mu?!" When the agent heard the name, his voice instantly rose an octave.
"Is that Li Mu, the Chinese Internet tycoon? The Li Mu who pushed "Cat and Mouse" to the top of the box office with just one push?"
"Nonsense, who else could there be besides him?" Leonardo said seriously: "Li Mu's willingness to invest so much money to make this movie shows how much he attaches importance to it. Anyone who knows Li Mu knows that he is People have a very strong sense of nationalism, so he will definitely do his best to maximize the influence of this movie, which depicts China and the United States fighting side by side against Japan."
Having said this, Leonardo added: "You know, his resources are really too strong. There are so many media tycoons in Hollywood, but their ability to deliver information around the world is much worse than Li Mu." , Li Mu’s YY may not be as authoritative as Time Magazine or the Los Angeles Times, but it is precisely the most influential to ordinary people.”
"Oh God..." The agent sighed on the other end of the phone and said, "Forgive me Leo, if I had known that it was a movie invested by Li Mu, I would never have said such rude words to you!"
After saying that, the agent exclaimed: "Oh my God! This opportunity is really rare. If you can establish a good cooperative relationship with Li Mu, it will definitely promote your future development. At this time, we really need Showing enough sincerity, the remuneration of five million US dollars should be very sincere. Although the loss is a bit large, I believe the future rewards will be higher!"
Seeing that his agent had fully agreed with his decision, Leonardo immediately said resolutely: "OK, then you can help me communicate with Spielberg immediately, give him a formal offer, and then prepare to go through the formal contract process. Also, ask about the approximate shooting schedule of this movie. From now on, we will not accept any movies with conflicting schedules!"
"OK! I'll do it now!"
Leonardo said: "Go ahead and let me know the results when the time comes. I have to quickly Google to find out who Chennault is..."
"I would have forgotten it if you didn't tell me. I just heard you mention this name, and I wanted to Google it quickly..."
…
Tom Hanks, who was also in Los Angeles, also received a call from Spielberg. At this moment, he was sitting in front of the computer, carefully searching for Chennault-related information on Google, and reading carefully line by line. With.
He had already read the script sent by Spielberg and was immediately deeply attracted by the story and characters in the script. After reading the script, he had decided to accept Spielberg's invitation to participate in the "Flying" film. "Tiger Squad", and played the leading actor Chennault in the play. Then he hurriedly began to search for relevant information on Google to gain a deeper understanding of Chennault's deeds.
Tom Hanks is very different from the young Leonardo. Although Leonardo is also a first-line actor with extraordinary acting skills, he is still young and has relatively low qualifications. He is more of an idol, while Tom Hanks is more of an idol. Chris is one of the actors with the best acting skills and character creation in the entire American film industry, so he is extremely responsible for every movie he makes.
Chennault is indeed not well-known in the United States, but if his story is delved into, it is really a very great deed, and this deed of voluntarily helping other countries resist the invaders is very good in terms of level, realm, and depth.
According to Tom Hanks, the reason why "Saving Private Ryan" can become a classic is that on the one hand, the script is deep enough, on the other hand, the actors' performances are very good, and the most important aspect is the visual presentation of the film. The technique is very clever, and at least half of the success of the entire film is due to Spielberg.
And this "Flying Tigers" itself is directed by Spielberg, and even written by Spielberg himself, so Tom Hanks believes that even if this movie is only in the preparation period, it already has 50% of the The probability of success, and if I play the male lead, without being arrogant, I can definitely successfully portray this character. As for Leonardo, although he is young, I have just collaborated with him once, and I can see that It turns out that he is very capable and is improving very quickly. If the two continue to work together, they will at least bring a 20% success rate to the movie.
When it comes to the story itself, Tom Hanks believes that "The Flying Tigers" and "Saving Private Ryan" can be said to be equally matched. Both are based on real history and can well show war. Cruelty, the brilliance of humanity, and the reflection on war, from this point of view, can at least increase the success rate of the movie by 20%.
Calculating this, this movie basically has a 90% success rate.
In addition, Tom Hanks is also carefully measuring Li Mu's resources and influence.
The counterattack of "Cat and Mouse" at the box office has made the entire Hollywood see the extraordinary potential of YY, a world-class Internet product, in the promotion of YY. "Cat and Mouse" can have such a breakthrough just by getting one push from YY. "Tiger Squad" is released, how many times will Li Mu give it a chance to push it
Coupled with the investment of 100 million US dollars, such a huge financial scale is another strong guarantee for this movie. Calculated in this way, it is almost impossible for this movie to fail.
Moreover, Tom Hanks also attaches great importance to his first cooperation with Li Mu.
In his opinion, the young man Li Mu is not only a powerful financial backer, but also has the potential to become the invisible "god" of hundreds of millions of Internet users in the online world.
He has the absolute power to subtly influence these hundreds of millions of Internet users in the next few years, not only guiding them what they do on the Internet, but also guiding them what they eat, do, play, and learn after leaving the Internet. , what to buy, what to see!
The potential of this energy is so powerful. Tom Hanks believes that it will not take long for Li Mu to become one of the people with the strongest business energy in the world, so being able to establish a good relationship with him in advance will be beneficial to his future. It must be a huge help.
Spielberg soon received a definite answer from Leonardo and Tom Hanks, and received a formal offer from their agent. What he couldn't believe was that Leonardo's agent The official offer was only a mere five million U.S. dollars in salary. There were no additional requirements, no dividends, and no guarantees. It was just a deal of five million U.S. dollars;
Tom Hanks's offer also stunned him, because Tom Hanks had already reached the level of 20 million in salary in the last century, and he even asked for a certain percentage of the box office share when he participated in a movie. However, The price he quoted to himself this time was only a mere three million US dollars! It’s two million less than Leonardo’s salary, and most importantly, he doesn’t want any box office split!
Spielberg has been in Hollywood for so many years. He is both a top-tier director and a first-class film businessman. He knows that the offer given by these two people is absolutely a fantasy in Hollywood. No one in Hollywood has such a big deal. Face made the two of them voluntarily lower their pay to such an exaggerated level that even they themselves were incapable of doing so.
However, the price quoted by the two people is here.
This made Spielberg sigh and sigh, Li Mu's face is really not of ordinary value...
(End of chapter)