Among the countless film companies in Hong Kong today, only two types of people exist.
One type is those who do not own the rights to zombie films, but realize that zombie films may have a second life, so they are looking for the rights to zombie films;
The other type is those who originally owned the copyright to the zombie film, but it was bought out by Makino Imaging some time ago.
They are feeling annoyed at the moment. It turns out that Makino Image has been prepared for a long time. They may have known that the elements of Chinese zombies would be popular when they were developing the new version of "Plants vs. Zombies Online", so they bought all the copyrights of zombie movies in their hands. gone.
The most depressing thing for such people is that the prices given by Makino Imaging can really only be regarded as cabbage prices. This is not because Makino Imaging intends to deceive people, but the quotations given by these film and television companies themselves...
In their view, these zombie movies are already worthless garbage. If someone is willing to buy them, they will make money no matter how much they pay, so the price they quoted is really not high.
Moreover, the bad thing is that they deliberately adopted the method of selling in packages.
Makino Image originally didn’t want those shoddy bad movies. Because zombie movies were so popular in the beginning, there were indeed too many bad movies. Even Lin Zhengying himself has made many bad movies of this type. However, these The film and television company finally waited for a buyer, so they put forward what they thought were harsh requirements.
For example, Media Asia, Makino Pictures wanted to buy the copyright of their "Mr. Zombie" series, and what they wanted was the theatrical broadcast rights, TV broadcast rights and audio-visual product distribution rights in all countries and regions except Hong Kong. I want to ask for a "high price" of 500,000 yuan. After all, this movie is almost 20 years old, and in the last ten years, it has not even made 50,000 yuan in revenue, so 500,000 yuan is indeed a high price, but it is true. Because there were too many zombie films on hand that could not create value, Uniasia simply offered a package price of RMB 800,000 to sell all the copyrights of its more than 30 zombie films to Makino Imaging, so Makino Imaging took all the photos. .
Now look at it, this price is really a huge loss, and my grandma’s family is losing money!
Those who wanted to buy the rights to zombie movies had their phone numbers ringing, but they couldn't find a zombie movie that hadn't sold the rights yet. The answers they got made them vomit blood. Without exception, all of these zombie movies were filmed by Makino. The elephant was bought, and the price was ridiculously cheap!
Hong Kong films were still very influential in Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s. At that time, distributors in Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea often purchased Hong Kong copyrights, or even snapped up Hong Kong film copyrights. However, in recent years, Hong Kong films have declined. is so powerful that these distributors rarely set their sights on Hong Kong. However, the new version of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has created a sensation. These people also smelled business opportunities and approached Hong Kong film companies to purchase the film rights. It turned out that the Hong Kong film and television company that had the copyright for the zombie film only left the copyright for the mainland of Hong Kong. Except for Hong Kong, all the copyrights went into the hands of Makino Imaging...
Not only the movie copyrights, but also the copyrights of zombie TV series such as Zombie Master have been scooped up by Makino Pictures...
"It's amazing! It's really amazing!" Countless bosses of Hong Kong film companies are angrily scolding Makino Imaging for its malicious behavior of sweeping away goods. In their eyes, Makino Imaging's behavior is like knowing about the plague in advance. Want to be popular, so buy all the drugs are equally hateful.
However, in Li Mu's eyes, this is what businessmen should do. When you find a business opportunity, you must seize it. If you know in advance that a stock will definitely rise and will not encounter any risks or accidents, then what can you do? The most correct thing to do is to invest all the money you can raise or borrow. Either spend every penny or buy up a lot of stocks. This is the most correct thing to do. What's more, he doesn't He doesn't really want to make a little profit by speculating on copyrights. What he wants is to keep all the copyrights in his own hands, and then do the licensing and exporting himself.
Let countless guerrillas fight on their own, and it is likely that they will not be able to form a joint force, and may even cause internal friction and interference with each other. It is better to simply bring all the armed forces together to form a group army, and then aim in one direction and strike hard!
Based on this idea, and also based on overseas people’s curiosity and attention to Chinese zombies, a local Chinese culture, Li Mu asked Makino Imaging to announce a blockbuster news in the global film and television industry: At present, all Hong Kong zombie films are "outside Hong Kong" The copyrights of "Country and Region" are all in the hands of Makino Imaging, and among them there are more than ten leading works that have very good box office and audience reputation. These leading works can all be copyrighted.
At the same time, Makino Video also announced that, except for Hong Kong, all non-Hong Kong countries and regions are not allowed to use these films for commercial purposes. Otherwise, Makino Video will defend its rights to the end.
As soon as this news was announced, Makino Imaging immediately received cooperation intentions from distributors from all over the world. What is even more interesting is that mainland TV stations went crazy and broadcast a large number of zombie movies. This lasted for less than 48 hours and was completely After Makino Video released the news, no TV station dared to broadcast these zombie works.
Those TV stations that had just started serializing zombie TV series could only stop broadcasting them immediately and replace them with other TV series.
In this era, it is difficult for satellite TV stations to completely respect copyright when broadcasting movies. Most of the movies broadcast on TV do not have the copyright of the broadcasters, that is, the TV stations. However, due to the imperfection of the law and the market The chaos in the Hong Kong film industry and Hollywood cannot be solved by mainland TV stations.
However, these TV stations dare to ignore the copyright issues in the Hong Kong film industry and Hollywood, but they absolutely dare not ignore Makino Technology.
Everyone knows what kind of person Li Mu is. His influence on a global scale is so great that it makes people in the media doubt their lives. If the copyrights of these movies and TV series are in the hands of his company, no TV station will dare to touch his rights. Bad luck, so everyone stopped the infringement with a tacit understanding, and then started to buy the screening rights from Makino Video.
Just from the quotes from major TV stations, you can see how cost-effective this deal is.
Xiangnan Satellite TV wants the rights to broadcast classic films such as the "Mr. Zombie" series, the "Happy Ghost" series, and "One Eyebrow Taoist", "Ghost Fighting Ghost", and "Scary", and the price given is 500,000 yuan. One film is broadcast three times. If it can be broadcast exclusively, the price can be doubled five times.
Because of Li Mu's influence, zombie movies are the only field in China that strictly abide by copyright regulations. Usually, exclusive broadcasts are likely to be infringed by other TV stations, but this time it is impossible. Whoever Makino Imaging authorizes will be able to broadcast exclusively. .
The person in charge of Makino Imaging originally hoped to take this opportunity to discuss the price and try to earn tens of millions or even more from these TV stations across the country, but a phone call from Li Mu set a big tone for this batch of copyrights. .
Li Mu requested: The core purpose of external licensing of this batch of copyrights should not be to make money, but to have communication and influence as the core purpose. Therefore, for TV stations in mainland China, Taiwan, and Macau, exclusive licensing must not be done for the purpose of making money, but for the purpose of making money. To do non-exclusive licensing and reduce the price of copyright use, Li Muding’s price is 50,000 yuan for one-time broadcast rights for first-tier works, 30,000 yuan for second-tier works, 10,000 yuan for third-tier works, and 50 yuan for the second time and above. %.
In other words, if any TV station, whether it is a satellite TV station or a local city or county TV station, wants to broadcast "Mr. Zombie", then they only need to pay a copyright fee of 50,000 yuan to broadcast it once on their own TV station. If you want to play it a second time, you have to pay an additional 25,000 yuan.
This price is indeed ridiculously low for TV stations. The low threshold also indicates that more TV stations can broadcast zombie-themed movies more times. This is very good for enhancing this special popular wave. promotion effect.
As for TV series, one only costs 200,000 yuan, which is so cheap that even TV stations can’t even imagine it.
Compared with the domestic market, Li Mu pays more attention to the foreign market.
This in itself is a cultural export, and publishers around the world need to be responsible for the specific implementation. Therefore, Li Mu’s request is that all works must not be released at once. This will not only distract attention, but may also cause overreaction. Now that all the copyrights for zombie movies are in my hands, I can go the high-quality route and try out the best one "Mr. Zombie" first. If this one gets a good response, I can follow it up with the second one. department.
For a movie made 18 years ago, the possibility of making big gains at the overseas box office may not sound very great at first glance, but given the current situation, there is still a lot of room for maneuver.
First of all, for the Western film industry, it is not the summer season or the Christmas season. The box office is relatively quiet, and theater resources are not so popular and are relatively abundant;
Secondly, the new version of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" has made Chinese zombies popular, and most overseas players like this new element;
Again, Li Mu ordered people to use zombie movie materials on the overseas Internet to popularize Chinese zombie culture with other netizens. He also used the navy to explore and guide netizens’ interests, and found that many netizens are quite interested in this Chinese zombie element. , many people left messages in the comments, mentioning that they hope to have the opportunity to watch such a movie;
So, overall, everyone is already interested in this type of movie, and there is already a potential market space. Moreover, through such online popularization, everyone knows that these are older movies that focus on nostalgia and foreign culture. , exotic scenes, so they should be mentally prepared for the picture quality, and the requirements will not be as high as those of new movies in the 21st century. Based on these points, it seems that there is a prospect for zombie movies to go overseas, and they have achieved certain success overseas. The box office performance should not be a big problem!
(End of chapter)