Li Mu originally wanted to give away profits to both Lucas and the theaters, but Lucas had a keen sense of smell and after realizing Li Mu's true intentions, he immediately made a decision: He would not take any of Li Mu's profits and give them all to the theaters. .
Lucas' inner monologue is: Don't you look down on this little money? Although I like it, I have to show that I don't like it as much as you do.
If both copyright holders and distributors are willing to give up profits, then the only targets for them to give up profits are theater chains.
Theater chains are different from copyright holders and distributors. Copyright and distribution care not only about the box office, but also reputation, influence, brand awareness and corporate image, but theater chains only care about the box office.
If it were a theater chain that was completely neutral and not subject to any interference from distributors, its operating routine would always be one: assign the most films to the most profitable films.
In North America, the share ratio between distributors and theaters is not fixed, and a stepped account sharing method is adopted. Generally speaking, the distributor has the highest share ratio at the box office in the first week. Subsequently, as the release timeline extends, the distributor has the highest share ratio. The share ratio of movie theaters continues to decrease, while the share ratio of theater chains continues to increase.
The reason why such a bill-sharing model is created is to increase the willingness of theaters to arrange films after the movie has been released for a period of time, the popularity has dropped, and the attendance rate has dropped. From this, we can also see the business awareness of the theaters. All seat resources are What they want, fixedly, is maximum seat utilization, the same as the airlines.
If publishers and copyright owners are willing to transfer part of their proportion to theaters, it will be a huge motivation for theaters, which will allow them to spontaneously contribute more film arrangement resources.
Lucas's decision made Li Mu very satisfied. The fact that he has such awareness proves that this person is a smart person and is very good at getting his own way. Cooperating with such a person is more beneficial than those who only know how to fight for themselves. It is much more comfortable to work with people.
Taking into account the future release of "Flying Tigers" and other subsequent works, and considering that North America will still be the world's largest box office market in the next decade or so, Li Mu needs to find more powerful partners in North America.
Spielberg and DreamWorks are now my partners in production, and in terms of distribution and theaters, I still need to expand other powerful partners.
Lucas is a good friend of Spielberg. The fact that he was able to fly all the way from the United States for this cooperation proves his determination and attitude in doing things, and he gave up the 10% share he gave him without blinking an eye. , which proves that this person's thinking mode is very suitable for him, so he has become his best partner in the field of North American film distribution in the future.
After the decision, Li Mu said to Lucas: "I can sign a copyright sublicensing agreement with you today. How long do you think it will take for us to get this movie released in the United States?"
Lucas said: "After signing the contract, if the film source does not have English subtitles, then we have to quickly arrange for the production team to produce it. This is faster and can be done in a few days. If there are English subtitles, I will directly need to send the copy to The American Film Association makes ratings. At the same time, I will contact the heads of major theater chains to watch the movie, and then discuss with them privately the specific conditions for arranging the film. After the ratings come out, we will set a release date, and then start publicity. Once the date arrives , it will be officially released, and if the whole process is normal, it will take about two months.”
"Two months?" Li Mu frowned slightly and said, "It's a bit too long. Can it be faster?"
Lucas said: "Mr. Li, in fact, under normal circumstances, the time from the introduction to the release of a movie will usually be more than two months. The more the film has greater expectations for commercial value, the more time should be reserved for the promotion period. When it comes out, the publicity cycle is usually about two months, or even longer.”
Li Mu said: "Our movie has already been warmed up in advance, and there are many netizens on the Internet volunteering to promote it. It already has a relatively good audience base. In this case, there is no need to extend the promotion cycle to two Month has passed, and when you start submitting your film ratings, I will start online promotion, and you will also start preparing for offline promotion. We will try to compress the promotion cycle to 7-10 days, and then you will think about accelerating other aspects. Let’s see if we can reduce all timelines to about 20 days starting from today.”
"20 days..." Lucas hesitated, frowned and pondered for a long time before saying: "Mr. Li, if all aspects are speeded up, 20 days should not be a big problem, but this will test the publicity work."
Li Mu nodded and said with a smile: "Since we already have a strong mass base, there is no need to worry about the development of publicity work. You have offline publicity channels, and I have online publicity channels, including YY, including YY Network, including "Plants vs. Zombies Online", our information delivery ability is beyond doubt, but if we extend the publicity front too long, if the players of "Plants vs. Zombies Online" lose the element of Chinese Zombies Without curiosity and freshness, it will be much more troublesome if you try to drag them to the cinema. So we might as well strike while the iron is hot and promote the release of this movie as quickly as possible to ensure that most users have not lost their curiosity. "
Lucas has never done such a movie release before. Competition in Hollywood is fierce. Even movies with top-notch star casts have to start pre-promotion long in advance, and are constantly bombarded with various offline ads and TV ads to deepen their success. The audience's impression of this movie is that there has never been a movie that was released immediately after being promoted for 7-10 days.
But if you think about it carefully, what Li Mu said makes sense. After all, the popularity of games has a time limit. There are countless big stars who can be popular for ten to twenty years or even longer.
But there are very few games that can be popular for more than ten years, so we must seize this rare window of time and ensure that this movie is put on the big screen before the audience's curiosity disappears!
Immediately, Lucas immediately agreed and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Li, I will definitely find a way to speed up the process and have "Mr. Zombie" released in North America as soon as possible!"
Li Mu nodded: "There are still many excellent zombie films in the Hong Kong film industry, and the copyrights are all in my hands. If "Mr. Zombie" becomes popular, we will immediately release one or two more zombie films, and then wait for the summer vacation. Choose one zombie movie to hit the summer box office, and release all the remaining zombie movies on DVD."
"good!"
…
In just one or two days, all the zombie-themed movies that Makino Pictures has on hand have already generated nearly 100 million yuan in domestic copyright fees. The copyright for a single movie worth tens of thousands of yuan is very cheap, but there are indeed many domestic TV stations. Satellite TV There are more than 2,000 local, county and city TV stations, and the number of channels is even greater. Right now is when zombie movies are very popular. If it were normal, they would have broadcast pirated DVDs on TV, but because This time, the copyrights for all the zombie films were owned by Makino Image, so everyone began to respect the copyright and asked Makino Image for authorization before broadcasting.
There are more than 2,000 TV stations, half of which have proposed to buy the screening rights from Makino Video. Most of them have bought the broadcasting rights of more than one movie. Nearly a hundred have bought the TV drama rights alone. Almost any TV station has purchased them. During the time period, among the TV stations that can be searched by the TV, there must be at least one that is playing a zombie-themed movie or TV series.
Although the phenomenon of swarming is not healthy, fortunately, the audience is now taking advantage of it. The enthusiasm for genre films has been rekindled, and zombie films of various types can almost never be tired of watching.
By casually authorizing a batch of copyrights, it earned tens of millions of yuan in net profits. Makino Imaging's move made film and television companies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and three places jealous.
No matter how many companies work hard to make several or even a dozen movies throughout the year, they may not be able to earn so much money. Hong Kong film and television companies cannot produce a few movies with a box office of over 10 million throughout the year, but Li Mu relies on buying low and selling high. , in just a few days, we have already earned a net profit that other companies may not be able to earn in several years, which indeed makes our peers envious and jealous.
Li Mu didn't know that he had a witty nickname in the Hong Kong film industry, "Zombie Taoist Priest"...
The reason why Li Mu is said to be the zombie Taoist is because this guy has wiped out all the zombie movies in Hong Kong. All movies with zombies in them were killed by Li Mu. He is the contemporary "zombie Taoist" who specializes in killing zombies. The "Taoist" of zombie movies.
After many Hong Kong film companies discovered that they had been cheated by Li Mu, they not only felt aggrieved, but also came up with the idea of making zombie movies again, because in their view, this is the second spring of zombie movies. This is a good time to seize the opportunity to make money.
Soon, many gossips spread in the Hong Kong film circle. At least six film companies are currently preparing to invest in zombie-themed movies, and the projects have been approved and are in the script writing stage.
There is a routine that Hong Kong movies have not been able to escape for decades, which is that everyone rushes to make money and make it bad. Not only zombie movies, but also gangster movies and gambling movies are all popular, and millions of people keep up. These people just want to make quick money. They don’t need a good script, a good director or actors, so the rate of bad movies is so high that the audience avoids them. In the end, they can only accelerate the life of a series until it dies.
So now that zombie movies are suddenly enjoying a second spring, it’s not surprising that they want to make more zombie movies to follow the trend and make money.
Among the companies that have launched zombie movie projects one after another, the most fucked up one is Uniasia.
Uniasia feels that they have suffered a lot, because they believe that Makino Imaging has defrauded them of all the copyrights of their zombie films, including "Mr. Zombie", and has simply stolen all their hens that can lay golden eggs. If Makino Imaging It's just an ordinary film and television company. They will definitely tear up the agreement and then use various methods to deny authorization. They may even use many shady means to achieve their goals.
It's a pity that Makino's image is like a steel plate. With their little fists and feet, they can't kick it at all, so they can only bite the bullet and prepare to launch a "Mr. Zombie 2003". The script is omitted, and they just find new actors. "Mr. Zombie" will be remade again. The remake will use a better production team. In terms of visual effects, it will be much better than the old version. The only problem lies in the cast. Uniasia is preparing to find A-list stars to film this remake. .
After Li Mu learned the news, he didn't take it to heart. Anyone can make zombie movies. After all, he doesn't own the patent for zombie movies. His real purpose is to send zombie movies abroad. If zombie movies become popular overseas, this will Not only is it a victory for Chinese-language films, it is also a victory for the export of Chinese culture!
(End of chapter)