Renly and Drake left the hotel room—Harvey's room, the best hotel in Park City.
Relatively speaking, the cash-strapped Renly and Drake live in Salt Lake City, because Park City hotels are too expensive during the Sundance Film Festival, and Salt Lake City is only a thirty-minute drive away. Rather, it is more economical.
Standing outside the hotel room, Drake suddenly felt scared for a while, his legs were a little weak, and he almost fell directly to the ground. Renly couldn't help laughing at his embarrassed appearance, "Would you like to sit down and rest? "
Drake waved his hands again and again. He had been sitting for 25 minutes just now, and his butt started to ache. What he needs now is not to sit down and rest, but to confirm and try, "We really rejected Weinstein?"
Renly nodded.
"We really turned down four and a half million?"
Renly nodded again.
Drake felt that his blood sugar was a little low, and he felt dizzy for a while, and quickly reached out to support the wall, which avoided the danger of falling, "Then...then how much do we need?"
"I don't know, eight million?" Renly shrugged, and then saw Drake gasp, almost breathless, which made Renly laugh outright, "If If you regret it, we can still go back now, and I believe Harvey is very happy to renegotiate us and sign the contract."
Drake took a deep breath, and finally managed to catch his breath, "Uh, I need to digest it. Today's information is a bit heavy."
Reading at zero
How is the distribution rights of a film calculated? How should the buyout price be calculated? How did the share ratio come about
This is a very tedious calculation process, and even a real industry insider cannot explain it for a while. After simplification, a simple and rude analogy of numerical ratio can be made.
Generally speaking, the revenue of a movie can be divided into two parts, box office revenue and peripheral revenue. The latter includes video tape rental, TV broadcast, online on-demand, peripheral products, theme parks, overseas copyrights, etc. The former is the familiar movie box office.
Peripheral revenue is a special product of large film companies. It is unrealistic to make profits solely through movie box office. For companies such as Disney and Warner Bros., peripheral revenue is actually the bulk.
But the movie box office is, for others, a major source of income. After a movie gets the box office, it will be divided among the cinema, distribution and production.
For any work shown in a movie theater, the theater chain will formulate two ways to realize profits. One is to negotiate a guaranteed reserve price. For example, if the work is shown on several screens for four weeks, the production and distribution will pay the theater chain $100,000. , this is fixed, the producers and distributors earn more if they earn more, and lose out if they earn less. However, now North America basically adopts the second method, dividing.
Dividing is a very cumbersome calculation process. After careful calculation, the whole can be summed up as follows: the cinema takes 40% of the movie box office, and the remaining 60% is left to the distributor and the producer. Carve up.
Under normal circumstances, the distributor's dividend ratio fluctuates between 15 and 20 percent, while the producer takes the remaining 40 to 45 percent.
Among them, the producer's dividend also needs to be divided into two parts, one for the production company itself, and one for the directors, actors, screenwriters, producers and other crew members. Normally, the producers keep 15 to 20 percent, and the rest goes to the crew.
For example, after the release of "Crazy Love", it will get 10 million North American box office, then the theater will take 4 million, the distributor will take 1.5 million, and the producer will take 2.5 million 10,000, and the crew will share the remaining 2 million.
If it's a big studio with both distribution and production, like Warner Bros., they'll take four million; if it's an independent studio, the producer and crew are the same team, like "Love Crazy" ', then they'll take all four and a half million.
Of course, these percentages can only be said to be approximate levels, and the specific percentages will vary according to the different circumstances of each work.
Especially for the crew members, if a big name like Tom Cruise is used, the dividend ratio will naturally be higher. If you add a big director like Steven Spielberg, then only the dividends of the crew part will be It may be as high as 40%, or even 50%. As a result, the income of the other three parties must naturally be adjusted accordingly.
It can be seen from this that the producers hardly make any money, because their dividends also need to deduct publicity expenses, production costs, etc., not only do they not make money, but they even have to pay.
So within the industry, people would simply say that if a movie wants to make money at the box office for the producers, then the box office has to be three or four times the production cost for that to be possible. Relatively speaking, for producers, peripheral income is the quickest way to recover costs.
For the "Crazy Love" crew, they are the producers, that is, according to industry rules, they can share 40 to 45 percent of the box office. Although it is said that in the actual situation, the box office share of independent film crews like them may not reach such a high proportion. Generally speaking, it fluctuates violently between 25% and 45%. The detailed figures It still depends on the negotiation process.
Then, you can simply take a fuzzy middle value, 30%, and then calculate such an account. If the North American box office of "Crazy Love" is 10 million, then the crew can be divided into 3 million US dollars .
Harvey first offered a buyout price of 1.5 million, and then raised it to 4.5 million, an increase of 3 million in one breath. In fact, it is equivalent to "Crazy Love" when the box office reached 10 million. , the bonus that the crew should have received. In other words, it's about changing the soup without changing the medicine. Harvey just spit out the part that the "Crazy Love" crew deserved, but made a heartache and cut flesh, and his acting skills were really full marks.
More importantly, Harvey used the buyout price, that is to say, if the North American box office of "Crazy Love" is higher than 10 million, and the crew can't get any income, it belongs to their "percentage". Thirty" will all fall into Harvey's pocket.
But what if "Crazy Love" grossed less than 10 million in North America
Harvey also won't suffer, because he only spent "$4.5 million". Instead, he can reap 60% of the box office dividends of "Crazy Love", that is to say, as long as " "Love Crazy"'s North American box office is more than 7.5 million, he will not lose money, and even if it does not reach this number, his loss will not be much.
Suffice to say, it's almost a deal that won't fail.
Harvey is really cunning and cunning. He has the advantage firmly in his hands from beginning to end. Even in the face of Renly's sudden attack, he still does not lose control. This is the true "Godfather" style.
However, Renly didn't know any of these insider details, and his principle of judgment was simple.
Andy said two sets of numbers, one is the buyout price, 7 million; the other is the share price, 4 million plus the percentage. So how did these two sets of numbers come about
Assuming that the North American box office of "Crazy Love" is only 10 million, it means that their share should be 30%. In this case, the box office share is 3 million, plus the share of the copyright price of 4 One million, that is, seven million—just equal to the buyout price.
Just now, Harvey offered a buyout price of 4.5 million with a decisive look on his face, but Renly knew that since Harvey was willing to offer this price, it showed that Andy's judgment was accurate, "Love is crazy. "The price of the share distribution rights is indeed hovering around four million, so if Harvey wants to buy out, seven million is the most appropriate price.
Of course, the premise of all this discussion is that the North American box office of "Crazy Love" is 10 million. As for whether it can reach such a standard, this is not a question that Renly can answer. All are just hypothetical guesswork. Maybe higher, maybe lower, anything is possible. Andy is estimating, Harvey is estimating, and other issuing companies are also estimating.
What's more, Renly firmly believed that it was impossible for an old fox like Harvey to quote the top price in one breath without giving himself the slightest leeway. Harvey is a businessman, not an artist, let alone a philanthropist. He is a businessman of Chi Guoguo, a businessman whose interests are paramount. At any time, he will leave a way out for himself.
So, even if Renly's judgment on numbers wasn't that accurate, he wouldn't be taken lightly.
As for the eight million that I told Drake just now, it was just a joke.
"What should we do now?" Drake finally breathed a sigh of relief, raised his head to look at Renly, and the lingering fear in his expression made him smile.
"Wait?" Renly shrugged and gave the simplest, yet most true answer. Derek was stunned, then laughed.
For Love Crazy, their wisest course now is to wait. Because they are a seller's market, waiting for buyers to come to buy. At present, two well-known companies, Paramount Advantage and Weinstein Pictures, have come to the door. Next, with the film's reputation further fermented, There are bound to be more competitors.
All they need to do is wait for the price.
This year's Sundance seems to be missing a bit of explosiveness, not being able to reproduce the blowout of the past three years. At present, the high-profile "Another Earth" and "Double-Faced Martha" have not been able to detonate word of mouth, and the only one that can rival "Crazy in Love" is "Seeking Asylum".
The film, starring Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon and directed by Jeff Nichols, earned a score of nine out of 10 on the official press, surpassing "Crazy Love," temporarily topping the show The journal's rating is first. However, "Seeking Asylum" failed to set off a chain reaction among the audience, and the overall momentum was slightly inferior.
Sure enough, after Renly and Drake left the hotel, less than an hour later, the contact number came to the door again. It seems that Weinstein Pictures' shot has leaked, and other bigwigs have also begun to act. This time, it was Focus Films who came to the door.