Chapter 559 Negotiations on Box Office Profits
The more meetings he held, the more Lu Yanhe discovered that he knew nothing about company management.
I don’t understand many of the operating principles, and I also realize how difficult it is to coordinate this matter.
When a sum of money is invested in a place, when is it expected to come out, how much will it come out, and where are the places waiting for the money to be used? If the money waiting in the early stage is lost, or not that much comes out, is there a backup plan? ?
Lu Yanhe used to often hear the word "capital chain broken" and didn't understand why, but now he slowly understands it after listening to what they said.
It’s not that you really have no money, but you are stuck in a certain project and can’t get out, waiting for money to be used elsewhere. If you don’t have money, you can’t wait indefinitely. Then, many things will fall apart. .
Linghe's profits have been pretty good in recent years.
However, the early accumulation is far from enough for the scale and goals we want to achieve next.
Unless Lu Yanhe used his own money to make up for it - Chen Ziyan reminded him from the beginning that he couldn't do this.
This is not entrepreneurship. Once you need to use your own money to run a company, it means that the company is not in a healthy operating state.
Moreover, how much food can be eaten with the size of the stomach.
After repairing this end, if there is a problem with the other end, should I repair it? How much is the amount of supplement?
Inevitably, financing comes up.
After all, this is the fastest way to make money.
However, the reason why Lu Yanhe and Chen Ziyan have not chosen financing is that they want to firmly control the company, and because they need to sell some shares now to pay back the money. The value is too low and will not match the value of the company in the future. The disparity is too great.
I would rather the company develop at a slower pace and carry out primitive accumulation by myself.
After all, this is not an industry that is about speed or who is one step ahead.
As long as the content projects they make are good, the company will not be eliminated.
Finally, Linghe was sure of one thing.
First, reduce the investment amount in "Raise the Red Lantern". The producer of "Raise the Red Lantern" is director Wang Zhong's company, and there is no shortage of investment in this movie. It's just that because of Lu Yanhe's relationship, the investment share of this movie was given to Lu Yanhe first - but this movie It is not a box office hit. After its release, it will not be able to achieve big profits just by relying on the box office for a while.
In this way, part of the funds can be transferred first to increase investment in "Legend of Sword and Fairy". For this drama, Linghe is the copyright holder and one of the producers. The drama was filmed this year and will take almost a year to post, and it may not be broadcast until the second half of next year. But before that, Northern Lights’ investment funds will be transferred, and various incomes such as advertising sponsorships will also be paid first.
But this has put forward relatively high requirements for "Householding". If "Householding" cannot be broadcast in the second half of the year, "Householding" cannot come back, and "Legend of Sword and Fairy" will have to absorb external investment. ——
Then Linghe will make less. At this stage, Lu Yanhe's "Legend of Sword and Fairy" is a project that will be 100% profitable and a big hit - no matter how popular the movie is in the early stage, it still needs to collect money from the box office, but TV series don't need to, Northern Lights pays the bill, even if the final movie The show is really good, Linghe has already received the money, and the only loss is the Northern Lights - and even the Northern Lights may not lose money. After all, the early advertising revenue may have earned back the initial investment.
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Lu Yanhe heard what happened and said to Chen Ziyan: "No, Sister Ziyan, these are too complicated for me. I will not participate in the discussion process from now on, and it consumes my energy. I have to talk to everyone during the day." It’s so tiring to rehearse, film, and coordinate the promotional activities of the two crews. I’ll just let you know what the company is going to do after you discuss it.”
Chen Ziyan also felt that Lu Yanhe had been spending too much money recently.
She said: "You should not participate in the discussion during the filming of "Friends". When you finish filming the show, which is almost finished, you still have to join in. You have to understand these things and what direction the company should go in. , you can say less about how to arrange it, But you have to listen more. Apart from anything else, if you act in the future and play roles in the workplace, these are the experiences of life for you. You don’t always have to look at the world from an actor’s perspective, Linghe Company. It’s another perspective for you to understand the world.”
Chen Ziyan's words could always scratch Lu Yanhe's itch in the most critical places.
Lu Yanhe's current work and life are indeed very smooth. He rarely encounters any problems or such troublesome situations.
If he continues to be self-proclaimed, his role in life will really be that of an artist.
Lu Yanhe nodded, accepted Chen Ziyan's statement, and said yes.
-
One week after "The Mist" was released in North America, the North American box office exceeded 60 million.
D19 Company arranged for several major actors to appear on several popular TV shows in the United States to promote "The Mist".
They actually wanted to call Lu Yanhe back to cooperate with the publicity, but Lu Yanhe had no choice but to refuse this time.
The filming of "Friends" is still in full swing, and the rehearsals for the Spring Festival Gala have also begun. There is no time to go to the United States to promote "The Mist".
They only paid him a small amount of money, and now that the box office performance is so good, they didn't say they would give him a bonus - in Chen Ziyan's words, there was no sincerity in asking him to continue to cooperate with the promotion, and they never mentioned the remuneration, as if it was an actor's voluntary labor.
Although "The Mist" had a good box office, it was also of great benefit to Lu Yanhe. But this does not constitute a reason for D19 to use Lu Yanhe's labor for free.
As a result, the next weekend, "The Mist" still got more than 20 million box office, and the movie officially exceeded 80 million US dollars. With the overseas box office revenue, the global total box office of "The Mist" reached 130 million US dollars.
D19 sent a congratulatory message -
According to this trend, it is a foregone conclusion that "The Mist" will exceed 100 million in North American box office.
With such a good box office performance in theaters, the prices of other copyrights have risen accordingly.
"The Mist" is about to become one of the Hollywood movies with the highest return on investment this year.
At this time, many viewers and fans of "The Mist" suddenly gathered on Twitter and appealed to D19, hoping to shoot a sequel to "The Mist". They wanted to see the return of the Asian ghost played by Lu Yanhe.
In Europe and the United States, such petitions often appear - hoping that a certain drama can continue to have a sequel, or liking a certain character very much, hoping to develop a derivative film for this character. This is not uncommon.
In the United States, developing sequels is a normal thing, whether it is a movie or a TV series. It is rare for a box office hit to not develop a sequel.
It can be said that the "sequel industry" in the United States is also very mature and complete.
In fact, the box office of "The Mist" is so good that D19 will definitely develop a sequel for this movie. It's just that D19 has some ideas about whether to let Lu Yanhe return.
With Lu Yanhe's performance and popularity in this movie, plus the media critics' praise for him, the pay for the sequel will definitely not be low. D19 has not yet started negotiations with Lu Yanhe for the sequel, because they have not decided what kind of salary to give him.
Lu Yanhe is really popular in the United States now.
Among the actors in "The Mist", the attention received by the other actors combined is not as high as Lu Yanhe.
One of the important reasons why D19 is unwilling to pay Lu Yanhe a high salary is that they believe that Lu Yanhe can become the biggest beneficiary of "The Mist" because their early publicity strategy has provided Lu Yanhe with a lot of topic.
Now, Lu Yanhe has become famous in the United States with "The Mist", and they have also contributed to it.
However, they said this to themselves, and if they really use this point to suppress Lu Yanhe's salary, not to mention that Lu Yanhe will definitely not agree, it will even become a joke in the industry if it is spread out.
Of course, there is another important reason why D19 has not started negotiations with Lu Yanhe. They sent another script to Lu Yanhe before, which was also a horror thriller script, but Lu Yanhe declined it.
In that script, Lu Yanhe was even the first protagonist, and his perspective ran through the whole story from the beginning to the end, but Lu Yanhe's agent said that Lu Yanhe had just starred in a horror film and wanted to star in other types of films next.
This is out of the question.
Would Lu Yanhe be willing to return to the sequel to "The Mist"?
Without showing a little sincerity, how likely is it that Lu Yanhe will return?
This is the problem they need to face.
After being in contact with Lu Yanhe for so long, if they didn't know enough about Lu Yanhe at the beginning, or their understanding was still at the stage of arrogantly thinking that Asian actors were eager to receive invitations from Hollywood, they would not think so now.
Lu Yanhe's popularity and topicality are not just limited to Asia.
For Hollywood stars, Lu Yanhe's popularity and influence in Europe and Asia are even beyond the reach of many of them.
Just look at the overseas box office of the movie "The Mist" and you will know -
According to the current overseas media reviews and social media popularity of "The Mist", most of the media, film critics and those who comment on the movie on the Internet are focused on Lu Yanhe. This is an indisputable fact.
According to the data feedback from the box office survey agency, especially in Asia, the audience who went to the cinema to watch this movie for Lu Yanhe actually accounted for about 30%.
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This day.
After Lu Yanhe, Li Zhibai and Yan Liang finished a rehearsal for the Spring Festival Gala, they went to the stage to watch the playback of their own performance.
The director team is still very satisfied with the new song that the three of them collaborated on.
Youthful and energetic, in line with their age, is also what the audience expects most from their trio.
This song itself is very mainstream, and "Let the whole world speak Chinese" is a very popular cultural orientation in the past two years. They incorporated RAP into this song and added traditional Chinese elements such as tongue twisters, making it refreshing and pleasant to listen to while being mainstream.
In addition, Lu Yanhe has been a hot topic all over the world recently. The performance by him, Li Zhibai and Yan Liang together is a perfect performance.
The director team was very polite to the three of them.
On the contrary, some photographers, lighting team and other technical department personnel were not very friendly to them.
Lu Yanhe was a little surprised. Later, he learned that because Lu Yanhe and Yan Liang were too busy during this period, they did not participate in several rehearsals in the past. According to the rehearsal standards of the Spring Festival Gala, it actually affected their work.
For activities of this scale, any small problem may have a great negative impact on their careers. A performance stage is not only the business of the performing artists, but also the business of many staff behind the scenes of this program.
And here, no matter how big an artist you are, you are just a label on this stage and a tool to complete a certain job. Nothing can better describe their work attitude than the eight words "not seeking merit but seeking no mistakes". As long as it can be completed smoothly and without problems, it is already a great achievement.
Of course, there is another very important reason.
Those who can participate in the Spring Festival Gala program group basically have a background behind them, and it is normal for them to be indifferent to big stars like you - you are a star, and I am not inferior to you.
After the rehearsal, Lu Yanhe went to eat with Li Zhibai and Yan Liang.
"I saw some media saying that D19 is going to make a sequel to The Mist. Is that true?" Li Zhibai asked.
"Is it true?"
"Right? Don't you know they're going to make a sequel?" Li Zhibai asked.
Lu Yanhe nodded and said, "They probably communicated this intention with me, but we haven't had a formal chat, and they haven't formally invited me to return for the sequel."
Li Zhibai: "Fuck, they won't change someone else to play the role, will they?"
"Normally not." Yan Liang was still calmer and more rational than Li Zhibai. From common sense, sequels wouldn't be operated like this. The reason why a sequel is a sequel is to replicate the success of the first one, or even to go a step further. How could they give up the box office selling point of the first one?
Lu Yanhe said: "Sister Zi Yan guessed that D19 has not yet decided what contract terms to give me."
Li Zhibai: "Then do you plan to act?"
"It depends on what direction they plan to develop the sequel. If there is a good idea and a good story, it would be good to act in the sequel." Lu Yanhe said, "At least there is a role known to the public in Europe and the United States."
Like "Late Spring" and "Road to Glory", although they won awards at international film festivals, most of the public have not seen them.
The commercial purpose of Lu Yanhe's performance in "The Mist" is to increase his own popularity and expand his influence in Europe and the United States.
He has never been shy about this.
"In fact, probably because "The Mist" has a good box office performance, a foreign horror film also came to me." Yan Liang suddenly said.
Li Zhibai said, "Is it also from Hollywood?"
"No, it's a script given by a British film company." Yan Liang said, "But I read the script, it's just a very ordinary horror story, not much different from the ones we've seen."
"Then you don't plan to take it?"
"Zhou Pingan hopes I will take it." Yan Liang said, looking at Lu Yanhe, and also spoke frankly, "Zhou Pingan thinks that Yanhe is popular in Hollywood, and there will definitely be a lot of scripts and roles looking for him. He can't take so many by himself. I can get some help from Yanhe, so, the same horror movie, the same Asian actors, let Europe and the United States know that there is a Chinese actor like me who is about your age, and many opportunities will come to me."
Lu Yanhe flipped his head. He rolled his eyes and said, "Zhou Ping'an is a pervert. You don't need to rub me. Friends and The Gold Rush have already attracted the attention of many European and American film and television companies."
Yan Liang: "But I think what he said makes sense, so I'm thinking about it."
Li Zhibai asked, "Are you the protagonist of the horror movie that asked you to play?"
"Yes." Yan Liang smiled, "But my role is a mysterious ghost catcher from the East, not a ghost."
"It sounds very exciting."
"Actually, it's a police and gangster movie with a bit of horror and thriller. You can understand it as the police catching criminals." Yan Liang said, "It feels like this script is completely a police and gangster movie model."
"Hahaha." Li Zhibai laughed.
Lu Yanhe: "What about the director? If the director is good, even if the story is old wine in a new bottle, it can still be filmed well."
"Don't mention it, even this director's previous works are mediocre." Yan Liang said, "If it were better, I wouldn't hesitate so much. I'm not the kind of actor who has to accept a script that is particularly good. I'm not at that level yet. Besides, this movie is probably not going to be released in theaters, but directly on streaming media."
"Huh?"
"That being said, it hasn't been decided yet." Yan Liang said, "This is another point of hesitation for me, because streaming movies may take two or three months of hard work, and there will be no splash in the last week. I haven't seen any movie on streaming media that has caused a lot of discussion, and the influence is also average."
Lu Yanhe: "This is indeed the case."
Li Zhibai: "If you don't want to accept it, will Zhou Ping'an force you to accept it?"
"I shouldn't do it now." Yan Liang said frankly, "The reason why I hesitate is not that he insists on me accepting it, but that I'm afraid of missing an opportunity."
"The dramas you are taking on now are mainly TV series. However, given the current entertainment industry ecosystem, if you want to go further, you either have to make a more popular drama or go to the film industry." Li Zhibai said, "Movie actors are more advanced than TV actors - although we don't think so, this industry believes so."
Yan Liang: "Yes."
He sighed quietly.
Lu Yanhe said: "It's okay. I think since you are hesitating, it means that this project still impresses you. I think you can give it a try. Failure will not affect you at all. When I took on "The Mist", I was actually nervous. After all, horror movies are said to be low-level, rough and simple, but later I also felt that the worst case scenario is that the box office performance is not good, and I can afford to fail. You are the same. You have two series, "The Gold Rush" and "Friends", in your hands, so you don't have to worry about failure in the next few years."
Li Zhibai also nodded.
"Zhou Ping'an, although he is not a good person, has a good eye for choosing dramas. He said that this drama is worth your filming, so there must be something worth filming."
Yan Liang squinted at Li Zhibai.
"Are you telling me what I said to you before?"
Li Zhibai: "You said it yourself, learn from others' strengths and make up for your own weaknesses. Since Zhou Ping'an is so good at choosing scripts, you can trust his judgment."
Lu Yanhe shook his head in disbelief and sighed: "I never thought that I would hear Li Zhibai say such things one day."
Yan Liang also said: "Who wouldn't? Unbelievable."
Li Zhibai: "...you two are enough."
-
The average ratings of "Friends" have been above 3% since the two episodes in which Li Zhibai made a guest appearance, especially as students began to have winter vacation, the ratings have remained high.
This is even more true for online broadcasts.
Both Yuehu TV and Northern Lights Video are very satisfied with the performance of this drama.
Not to mention Maxine.
When The Mist grossed over 100 million in North America and 170 million worldwide, Maxine spent a high price to snatch the streaming rights of The Mist from several streaming competitors, and D19 finally made up its mind and expressed its willingness to pay Lu Yanhe 6 million dollars for the sequel.
Because during the negotiation process of D1, they felt that they were more interested in Lu Yanhe than in The Mist.
The salary of 6 million dollars is not a little higher than the 1 million dollars for Lu Yanhe's first film. Converted into RMB, it is more than 40 million RMB.
Lu Yanhe has never received this amount of salary for acting in domestic movies.
D19 thinks that it is generous enough.
But Chen Ziyan is not satisfied, not because of this number, but because Lu Yanhe cannot enjoy the box office dividend.
However, from the perspective of the market, Lu Yanhe, an actor who has just come to Hollywood to make a movie, has not yet reached the stage where he can negotiate box office dividends even if the box office performance of his first work is so good.
There are very few such operations in the industry.
Chen Ziyan's attitude was very clear.
"The development of the sequel is not based on how popular the movie "The Mist" is. In fact, we all know that the sequel can be developed because everyone likes the role of the Asian ghost played by Yan He too much." Chen Ziyan said, "This sequel must be developed around Yan He's role, and the selling point is also this role, Yan He. In other words, without Yan He, this sequel does not exist. In this case, I think Yan He deserves to enjoy the box office dividends. This is what Yan He deserves."
D19, the person in charge of negotiating with Chen Ziyan, had a very ugly face.
Because he thought that six million US dollars was already high enough, Chen Ziyan was still not satisfied, which was greedy.
Chen Ziyan didn't care whether his face was ugly or not, nor did she care whether he was angry or not.
She just expressed her thoughts, and let D19 go to the meeting to discuss the next thing. (End of this chapter)