Chapter 1080 Full Force

Los Angeles, Daenerys Studios.

The girl a held a folder in her arms, raised her wrist, looked at her watch, and greeted her boss who had just concluded a meeting with Pixar's management.

"You still have a year, John, put together a revised plan as soon as possible, I will see it after the new year."

John Lasseter, who had just been trained, followed Simon slightly and said, "I promise, Simon, I will do it as soon as possible."

Simon's expression remained indifferent after talking to John Lasseter, then walked straight to Girl A and asked, "Next?"

"Everyone has arrived at the filming party of "Ghost of Horror"."

Simon nodded and walked out quickly, Lady A hurriedly followed.

Returning from the East Coast, Simon has been mainly combing Daenerys Entertainment's film projects for the next two years in the past few days. What he just discussed with the Pixar team is another Pixar 3D animated film "Agent Insect", which will be released at the end of next year. team".

Compared with films such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo", "The Bugs" is one of the lower ones in terms of word of mouth and box office in the Pixar animation series.

As for why, there are many questions.

One of the most important, in Simon's opinion, is that the main line of the story tends to be the love of two ants. The 'male protagonist' Felix rises up against the grasshopper army out of his love for Princess Yating, and finally a lover gets married. The theme seems too adult, not suitable for all ages. In addition, this is not a real-life fairy tale of princes and princesses, so it is difficult for people to feel a sense of substitution. Therefore, a seemingly inconspicuous problem has largely caused the slump of "Bug Troopers" in the Pixar animation series.

Look at other things, "Toy Story", the core is friendship, suitable for all ages. "Finding Nemo", which set a box office record, focuses on family affection, which is more suitable for all ages. There is also "The Lion King", which has still created a box office miracle from 2D to 3D under the interference of the big butterfly, Simon. Although the story is taken from "The Prince's Revenge", the core is growth, and it is still suitable for all ages.

It's a simple truth: on the premise of ensuring quality, the wider the audience's age group, the higher the box office will be.

Simon raised this question when the project started, but the Pixar team obviously did not strictly implement it. After all, under the continuous success, everyone is inevitably impetuous. Therefore, at the meeting just now, Simon rarely got angry and forced the Pixar team to do this. Make changes to downplay the love line between Felix and Princess Yating, focus it on friendship, and add more lovable and easier-to-sell insect circus scenes.

Leaving the Pixar headquarters and returning to a screening room in the third-floor administrative area, the main creators such as director Peter Jackson, actor Ben Stiller and heroine Mia Sara have arrived, as well as Dan Ni Morris and several other senior executives of New World Pictures who were in charge of the project's distribution.

Everyone simply greeted and sat down quickly.

Simon walked to the position with the best view in the middle of the second row, took a memo from the female assistant seated on the left, just took a few glances, and felt the faint scent of a strange woman on the right, turned his head to look, " Mia Sara, the heroine of Horror Ghosts, sat down beside him and saw Simon look over. This beautiful woman with a golden age Hong Kong actress temperament very much in line with oriental aesthetics looked slightly apprehensive: "Mr. Westeros , may I sit here?"

Simon just nodded slightly, his eyes fell back on the memo introducing the general situation of "Ghost of Terror" in front of him, and he quickly read the information.

The lights in the projection room quickly dimmed and the screen came on.

The first draft of Peter Jackson's "Ghost of Horror" tells the story of Frank, who accidentally acquired psychic ability, and his ghost friends colluding to cheat money, but met the murder of evil spirits, and finally justice defeated evil.

The original script, in Simon's opinion, was terrible.

Speaking of which, Western ghost movies usually have a big flaw, which is the lack of a mature model for humans to fight ghosts. Routines, and even the influence of love, are very far-fetched.

Just like the original "Ghost of Horror" script, the protagonist's first victory over the evil spirit turned out to be two machine guns transformed by the dead sheriff.

Bullshit.

In comparison, oriental ghost films, especially Hong Kong films, have quite convincing complete routines, such as glutinous rice, ink bucket, magic talisman, dog blood, donkey hoof and so on.

In the ghost movie universe created by Daenerys Entertainment in recent years, Simon has personally intervened to continuously improve a set of Westernized ghost exorcism models, and the effect is very good. As for this "Ghost of Horror", Simon threw a Hong Kong movie "Mr. Zombie" to Jackson at the beginning, and asked the other party to watch it several times to find inspiration to re-revise the script and rewrite the original "Terrorist" movie, which is neither scary nor comedy. Ghost" perfected into a qualified commercial film.

Compared with other directors with strong personalities, one of the biggest advantages of Peter Jackson is that he is pragmatic, listens to other people's opinions and is willing to cooperate with investors to improve. A lot of inspiration was drawn from Mr. Zombie provided by Simon, which is basically another story.

on the big screen.

The film begins with a farce, a castle is haunted, and the host invited the psychic Frank to hunt the ghosts.

The male protagonist, who was enough to make even a little IQ think like a liar, played around in the castle, and finally told the suspicious owner that he was done, and he got paid and left.

As soon as the actor Ben Stiller appeared, he felt completely different from the original Michael Fox, the "Saturday"

The comedy star who was born in "Night Live" has a very bad temperament in his appearance, which makes people laugh. In comparison, Michael Fox, the leading actor in the "Back to the Future" series, is more of a youth film than a comedian.

The perfect casting and the matching story are just the beginning, which makes Simon more certain about the quality of the film.

The movie continues.

After saying goodbye to the owner, Frank drove away from the castle. Inside the car, two ghosts suddenly appeared from the back seat and the bottom of the car. First, let the audience confirm that there are really ghosts in the film.

However, at first sight, people thought they were the two ghosts who were trying to attack the protagonist's evil ghost. It soon turned out that they were only joking with the protagonist. They were friends of the protagonist with psychic abilities. The ghost-hunting drama just now was also a cooperation between the two parties. scam.

The wedge is here, and the background is basically explained.

The male protagonist is a psychic, has two ghost friends, and makes a living by deceiving ghosts. At the same time, from their conversation, the audience also learned that the so-called haunting of the castle just now was not their own initiative, but they did not know what the problem was.

During the chatting while driving, the plot took a sudden turn.

On the twisty and dark road at night, one person and two ghosts were discussing how to spend the sum of money they had just obtained. Suddenly another car rushed straight towards him. Frank hurriedly avoided it. At the last sight, he saw a black shadow from the roof of the oncoming car. They swept up and disappeared in the direction of the castle manor they had just come over.

Immediately, Frank's car also hit a tree trunk on the side of the road.

The picture went dark with a bang, and the title of "Ghost of Horror" and the subsequent title appeared.

The five-minute wedge, in addition to the story, also satisfied Simon with the special effects.

In the original version of "Ghost of Horror", the special effects of ghosts are very rough, giving people a strong sense of cheapness, but this time it was produced by Daenerys Special Effects Australia, which has experienced many blockbusters. The shape is pale, and it seems that it may disappear at any time when the wind blows, giving people the appearance of a soul after death.

In addition, the special effects company is only doing things after all, and Peter Jackson can skillfully apply special effects to this level, in Simon's view, he can already give the Tolkien series to the other party with confidence.

Just thinking about these things, a close voice came from my ear: "Mr. Westeros, I always wanted to thank you in person for giving me this opportunity."

But it was Mia Sara who was taking advantage of the opening of the film.

Simon's thoughts were interrupted, he just hummed and raised his head slightly to signal to the big screen.

So be quiet.

The feature film begins at a funeral. The deceased is a clerk of the town museum. Although Frank is not responsible, because of what he saw and heard that night, he still attended the funeral and met the deceased's daughter, Lucy, who was Mi. Played by Ya Sara.

love at first sight.

In order to get close to Lucy, Frank introduces his profession to Lucy, and offers to reveal that her father may not have died of a heart attack, but by an evil spirit.

Of course Lucy didn't believe this nonsense, and she felt bad for Frank because of it.

After meeting the girl he really loves, Frank, who has always had no side business, decides to investigate the truth of the matter, and at the same time pursues Lucy. The two ghost friends are also on the side of the staff, and they are full of jokes for a while.

Meanwhile, bizarre deaths akin to Lucy's father's heart attack occur one after another in the town.

When the heroine Lucy was taking a shower on the big screen and Frank, who was guarding her window for safety reasons, was struggling to decide whether to peek, Simon in the screening room felt that his right thigh was touched unintentionally. , Mia Sara's voice with a little uneasiness and a different meaning came again: "Mr. Westeros, how is my acting?"

Simon frowned slightly, turned his head to look at Mia Sara who was beside him with a flattering face, raised his hand and stretched out, through the girl's long smooth hair, grabbed a slender neck, and exerted a little force.

Mia Sara just resisted a little instinctively, and quickly softened, and leaned over following the man's strength.

The screening hall is in a five-by-five format, because the boss chose the second row, and there were two beautiful women sitting on the left and the right. Of course, no one moved up in the two extra positions on the edge, but both Sit a few rows back and forth.

Danny Morris in the front row was fine, and the executives of New World Pictures in the back row who were fortunate enough to participate in this movie together naturally quickly discovered that there was suddenly a 'less' person beside the big boss, but they just happened to be sitting. The two executives in the third row, not only did not dare to have the slightest intention to explore, on the contrary, they were sitting on pins and needles, worrying that the big boss would misunderstand them for peeking and be unlucky. Sitting upright for a while, still felt inappropriate, so he quietly moved his body and voluntarily retreated to a further back position.

The story on the big screen continues.

After some misunderstandings, Lucy finally believes in the existence of ghosts, and suspects the truth of her father's murder, and starts an investigation with Frank. At the same time, because Frank can always appear around the dead, the town sheriff arrested Frank as a suspect, and the evil spirit also found that Frank was chasing him and wanted to kill the psychic.

So there was another climax of the film's human-ghost battle in the small town's police station.

After the battle at the police station, the sheriff also sided with Frank, and the group got closer and closer to the truth.

Frank realized that the ghost-catching tricks he used to deceive people at first did not work for evil spirits. After discussing with his ghost friends, he learned that the ghosts were afraid of the holy cross in the church and the priest used for newborn babies. Holy water for baptism and other items, so start

Prepare 'professional' tools.

The story soon comes to an end.

The truth is actually in the castle where Frank hunted the ghost at the beginning. The hostess's daughter, Barbara, had already died and was resurrected through a kind of evil witchcraft. However, in order to maintain the state of the living dead, Barbara had to frequently incarnate as evil spirits to hunt the souls of living people for sacrifice, in order to maintain her 'life'.

This also echoes some of the details in the opening wedge.

Immediately followed by a wonderful final battle, justice triumphed over evil, and lovers were married.

At the end of the screening, everyone turned to the next conference room. During this period, Lady A quietly took Mia Sara away, and everyone present looked as if they had never heard of it.

Compared with "The Bugs and Bugs", which had lost his temper before, Simon was much more satisfied with "Ghost of Horror", but only made some revisions to the details of the soundtrack, and briefly discussed with the New World Pictures team about next year's Easter period. When it comes to distribution, it turns its attention to Peter Jackson and Ben Stiller.

Both are filmmakers that Daenerys Entertainment focuses on training.

Eight years from the original "Batman: War Hour" assistant director to now, now that Peter Jackson has the ability to control the "Lord of the Rings" series, the project can naturally start.

However, because many projects in 1997 and 1998 have been finalized, the first "Lord of the Rings" movie will not be released until at least 1999, and Simon's initial set date is the end of 1999, so Jackson has three years to make this Middle-earth. Epic series.

Of course, Simon's plan is still to shoot the trilogy back-to-back. Considering the huge amount of work required, three years is not a long time.

And then there's Ben Stiller.

As one of the cores of the Bad Boys Gang, Stiller, under the support of Simon, only participated in two projects of Daenerys Entertainment in the second half of this year. The director directed Jim Carrey's "Cable TV Repairman."

Next, Simon also intends to cast the other party in "The Hangover" in order to promote Atlantic City.

As long as "The Hangover" can be successful next year, even if it is not as good as it used to be, the local box office will break 100 million, and the Bad Boys will basically take shape, enough to compete with most of the comedy stars of the older generation of Hollywood.

Of course, Simon does not intend to cooperate with the Bad Boy Gang for too long. After all, the more later, the lower the cost performance of this group of people. Although the box office of the film produced is very secure, most of the revenue is divided up by the main creator and the producer. The factory often just earns hard-earned money, which is completely inconsistent with Simon's philosophy.

After talking to the two, it was already off-duty time.

Peter Jackson and Ben Stiller left, and Simon and Danny Morris discussed the development progress of New World Pictures' related film projects for the next two years for more than an hour.

If this year is just a buffer, starting from next year, Daenerys Entertainment will make full efforts and no longer leave too much room for other Hollywood studios. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of major Hollywood studios and form Dany Liz Entertainment dominates the near-monopoly pattern of Hollywood.