Chapter 240: The Big Winner

? In the huge conference room of the Embassy Pictures, there were nearly twenty people sitting, and everyone was staring at the whiteboard in front of it, on which was written the name of the Oscar's best foreign language film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

These people come from various television stations across the United States, both cable stations and wireless stations.

The only purpose of coming to Embassy Pictures is to win the North American TV premiere rights of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

"The reserve price for the premiere rights is US$3 million." Garcia-Rodriguez, who presided over the bidding meeting, said: "Each bid must not be less than US$100,000."

"$4 million!" The first person to speak was the person from ABC TV station.

A middle-aged woman representing MTV immediately shouted, "$4.5 million!"

The person next to NBC directly increased the price: "6 million dollars!"

The conference room fell silent for a while, and even Garcia-Rodriguez did not expect that the first broadcast copyright of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" doubled the reserve price after only three rounds of price increases!

Garcia's eyes once again swept over the tags or other nameplates on the chests of these people. ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX, the four major television networks in the United States are all here, HBO, MTV, AMC, C, PBS and other medium-sized TV stations or large cable TV stations Taiwan, and none of them were absent.

For a film, instead of negotiating with each other, many TV stations bid for it. Where has the embassy film company held such a grand event before?

Since Ronan completed the acquisition, Embassy Pictures has really undergone earth-shaking changes.

In the past, the films released by the embassy film company asked to come to the TV station to buy them, but now? Not only the TV station took the initiative to contact, but also willing to participate in the bidding meeting.

TV premiere copyright bidding meeting, is this something that ordinary companies can do? Only a film with both box office and word of mouth can be held in order to hold a bidding meeting.

"Six million dollars!" Garcia asked loudly, "Is there any price increase?"

At the bidding meeting held by DreamWorks for "Gladiator" yesterday, the North American premiere rights were sold for 10 million US dollars.

Only Oscar's best picture statuette can't do this, and the North American box office of "Gladiator" is as high as more than 180 million US dollars.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is not bad either, the best foreign language film statuette, with a North American box office of nearly 160 million US dollars.

A middle-aged man representing Fox TV slowly raised his hand,

Shouted: "$6.5 million!"

HBO is rich and powerful, and directly increases the price: "8 million dollars!"

The conference room was completely silent. After Garcia made several routine inquiries, HBO succeeded in bidding for $8 million.

The rights to the first round of TV broadcasts in North America alone were sold at a high price of US$8 million. Garcia can imagine that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which has double glory at the box office and awards, will inevitably earn huge offline income.

People from Fox TV followed the staff of the embassy film industry to go through the relevant procedures, and people from other TV stations dispersed one after another.

Ronan quickly got the news in the office, and the high price of $8 million was indeed cause for celebration.

Just the first round of TV broadcast rights is enough to recoup the funds for the acquisition of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

After the first round of TV broadcasts, there are also home entertainment channels such as DVDs and videotapes. In this regard, Embassy Pictures has a distribution network and has cooperated with companies such as Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

However, Wal-Mart and Blockbuster's channel commissions, Ronan intends to let people have a good talk with them.

The industry's channel commission ratio is generally 20% of sales, and see if it can be lowered a little bit.

Plus, Ronan has commissioned a super deluxe DVD set of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Not the $39.9 plus extras, but a DVD set containing a statuette of the best foreign language film and a scaled-down Qingming sword, which costs as much as $599.

This one is for audiophiles.

There are many movie enthusiasts like this in North America, and many even broke their fortunes to buy limited edition luxury peripherals of "Star Wars".

The Oscars are over, but the Oscar effect is still affecting the whole of North America.

The most notable one is the film market. The best film "Gladiator" was dragged out of the library and flogged in theaters for the second round of screenings.

Originally, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" had already entered the end of the screening period. With the acquisition of Oscars for the best foreign language film and other statuettes, and the fraudulent corpse before death, the number of screening theaters expanded from less than 200 to nearly 600, and then lasted for a week. It took a long time to push the film's North American box office to more than 160 million US dollars.

When the film was released, the North American box office had accumulated a total of 161.2 million U.S. dollars.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has raised the North American box office record of foreign language films to a height that is difficult for latecomers to match.

Ronan remembered very clearly that even in his last memory, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was still the top-grossing foreign language film in North America.

Foreign-language films such as "Amelie", "Run Lola", "The Overheard" and other foreign-language films are weaker than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" when it comes to revenue.

To be precise, except for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", there is no foreign language film that can exceed 100 million box office in the North American market.

The vast majority of foreign language films have only hit the street in the North American market. Others count as much as can be harvested.

As the distributor, Embassy Pictures Films received a total of $75.4 million in box office revenue from theaters.

Since it is a copyright buyout, there is no need to make any settlement with Li An and Xu Ligong's Zongheng International.

From copyright buyout to various promotions to theatrical distribution, Embassy Pictures invested a total of 18.2 million US dollars in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

Today, the investment has paid off handsomely.

Not counting the company's shares and other income, Ronan received a total of 2.26 million US dollars in rewards as a buyer of the copyright of the embassy film industry.

As the president of Embassy Pictures, Ronan is also a member of the company, so he naturally enjoys various bonus incentives from Embassy Pictures.

2000 passed, and the new fiscal year began. In the past year, Ronan's income and rewards from various positions alone were as high as 14.5 million US dollars.

Although he fully holds Relativity Entertainment, Ronan has always been very clear about the separation of the company and the individual.

Ronan has a large amount of money in his hands and originally wanted to invest in the stock market, but the stock market has been falling all the way since the crash in March last year, and there is no sign of stopping until now.

Like a layman, Ronan also deduced that the stock market crashed this time, and it is estimated that it will be linked with September, and then continue to fall.

It has already entered 2001, and September is not far away. Ronan intends to wait.

In contrast, the affected real estate market seemed to be stabilizing. The real estate agent also contacted Ronan twice. It seemed that there were several suitable houses in his hand, and the owners were deteriorating. Under the big economic situation, it is impossible to support the kind that needs to be cashed out with fixed assets.

In many states in the United States, such as New York or Los Angeles, if there are too many luxury properties, once there is a problem with the funds in hand, the property tax can drag people to death.

The evil Laomei's tax claims that the skin will be scraped off after death.

Just thinking about taxes makes you vomit blood.

Ronan has made an appointment with the real estate agent and will spend the weekend looking at the house.

At the same time, various Oscar-related statistics were released, and Ronan and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" left a lot of records for this Oscar.

This year's Oscars ceremony is the one that has attracted the most attention from the Asian American community in 73 years, with more than 8 million viewers of the Asian American community.

At the same time, it was also the time when Chinese entertainers were invited to attend the event the most.

Since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" received many nominations, not only the most Chinese representatives sat in the nomination seats waiting to receive the award, but also various delegations from the East and Chinese audiences who tried their best to enter the venue in order to witness the historical footage.

It is very obvious that Chinese and Asians have driven the Oscar market.

Of course, the winner is not only Hollywood, but also businesses.

According to statistics, during this year's Oscar period, the total revenue of businesses from the sale and rental of vehicles, fashion, jewelry and accessories exceeded US$75 million, which is also the best profit in the past years.

There are so many celebrities, audiences and fans, and all kinds of looks are piled up with real money.

There is also ABC Television, as a broadcaster, they have more than 50 million US dollars in advertising revenue.

The Oscar Awards Ceremony, the value of all events in the United States, can basically be ranked in the top three every year, and most of the time it is ranked second.

There is no need to think about the first place. In the previous ten years and the next ten years, the Oscar Awards Ceremony has no possibility of surpassing.

After all, the "American Spring Festival Gala", which always ranks first, is not in vain.

The influence and commercial value of the Super Bowl in North America are too great.

Counting the North American market alone, even the World Cup finals in football are far behind.

One more thing, Ronan, as a member of the Producers Union and as a producer of several successful films, submitted an application to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, waiting for an official invitation from the Academy, in order to be ready to join the Academy and be able to become a number of Oscars in the coming year a member of the jury.

The Film Academy adopts an invitation system for accepting new members. There are three ways: get an Oscar nomination; support from the Council.

It is then voted on by a committee of members, and those who receive a majority of the votes are invited to join.

For producers, it is not difficult to join the academy. The basic invitation condition is that they need to produce more than two films alone before they can be considered.

With Ronan's conditions, it is not a problem at all to get an invitation and vote at the end of this year.

Moreover, members of the Academy, that is, Oscar judges, are life-long and have no tenure.

This is also one of the reasons why the average age of the Oscar judges is getting older. If you enter, you don’t have to go out. Old men can catch a lot of them.

In particular, many old men are in a state of retirement. They have not participated in the shooting of any movies in the past few decades, and their cognition of movies is far behind the times.

Then, a lot of nostalgic films won the Oscars.

For those who specialize in studying the Oscars, the age of the judges is an exploitable factor.

The awards season is completely over, and Ronan heard the news that Universal Pictures is in contact with Ang Lee.