Chapter 015

CAA's first packaging model was to promote TV programs.

In the 1970s, the newly established CAA was not only suppressed by its old owner wma, but also had very few artists. In order to find jobs for customers as soon as possible and avoid the collapse of the newly established small company, CAA president Michael owitz and other talents have found a new way to gather all the suitable artists through excellent scripts, and then sell them to major TV stations as a whole.

This packaging mode, which broke the tradition of selecting actors first and then customizing scripts for them, was unexpectedly successful, and then gradually developed into film production.

In 1982, CAA's film packaging project "my fair lady" sold well at the box office, and achieved the second best result in the North American box office (the first one was "alien et"), which completely made the packaging mechanism the core operation mode of CAA.

With the development and growth of CAA, there are more and more top stars, and the agency is becoming more and more powerful in Hollywood. It not only demands higher and higher film remuneration for its stars, but also takes the form of commission from the overall project budget, bypassing the legal restrictions of Hollywood prohibiting brokerage companies from entering the production field, further pushing up the production cost of film and television programs.

As a result, Hollywood's major film and television production companies began to fear the project operation mode of constantly dividing up their original power and interests.

As an old brokerage company established nearly 100 years ago, wma realized the threat of CAA, a new operation mode. However, due to the company's deep-rooted conservatism, as well as the lack of collaboration mechanism of internal brokers, wma did not follow up in time.

It was not until the death of two core executives in the first half of the year and the internal turmoil of the company caused a large number of top stars to leave that wma woke up.

Then, Simon's butterfly effect, driven by Jonathan Friedman, coincidentally became the first packaging project launched by wma to Hollywood studios.

Although a large number of top stars have left in recent months, in fact, the overall scale of wma still far exceeds that of CAA.

As the fastest growing Hollywood talent agency in recent years, CAA still has more than 50 agents and only 600 clients. In contrast, wma, with more than 180 agents, has more than 3000 artists.

The packaging mechanism of CAA has already made studios feel threatened. If Hollywood's largest talent agency also turns to this project operation mode, it is not hard to imagine that major film companies will become more and more passive in film and television production in the future.

Because of this concern, although the butterfly effect has won the favor of many studio executives, a week later, it was supposed to be the time for the film company to reply, but the directors of several major studios did not give a clear reply.

In the twinkling of an eye, it was mid July.

Paramount headquarters in Downtown Hollywood, on Tuesday afternoon.

Due to the great success of the two films "top gun" and "genius of skipping classes" released in this summer's release, paramount president Sidney Ganis seems to be in high spirits recently, because the company has completely swept away the haze of executives such as Barry Diller, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey carsenberg who left in succession in the past two years.

Impacted by the frequent turnover of the company's top executives, Paramount's best film "witness" last year only made $68 million at the box office. Many media are laughing at Martin Davis, the chairman of paramount's parent company Gulf West, for his stupid act of forcing Barry Diller and other top executives away, and predicting that Paramount will never recover.

Now, Paramount's vitality is recovering, and the grumpy Martin Davis is no longer staring at the top management like driving a mule recently. We will have a much better life in the future.

He warmly welcomed the visiting Jonathan Friedman into the office. Sidney Ganis and other secretaries brought coffee to them and exchanged greetings before entering the theme: "Joe, to be fair, paramount really wants the play butterfly effect. However, it's hard for us to accept the overall plan of wma."

This is not the first film company Jonathan Friedman visited today. He just went to Warner studios this morning. Hearing Sidney Ganis and ED Morley, the president of Warner pictures, say something similar, Jonathan Friedman has decided 100% that several major Hollywood film companies have absolutely linked the butterfly effect in advance.

However, on the surface, Jonathan Friedman still said quietly: "West Germany, you should see that this is a very good project, wma has also come up with the best creative team we can provide."

"No, I don't think so," said Sidney Ganis, shaking his head. "Like Brian De Palma, he has messed up two big productions that have invested more than 10 million in a row. It's hard for paramount to trust him to direct this film."

Jonathan Friedman retorted: "West Germany, Bryan's recent two films are not good enough at the box office, but they are not a mess. What's more, the responsibility for the film's box office failure is not entirely on him. Just like "black street lucky star" at the beginning of the year, MGM not only arranged the film in the unpopular April schedule, but also only gave more than 300 screens. Even so, the movie still got $8.5 million at the box office, which is enough to prove Bryan's strength. What's more, "Butterfly Effect" happens to be Bryan's best movie genreSidney Ganis sipped his coffee cup, shrugged and said, "well, even so, the $2 million offered by wma for directors is too high. Paramount can only pay $1 million at most. And the screenwriter... "

So Sidney Ganis put down his coffee cup, got up, took a document from his desk, sat back on the couch in the reception area, handed it to Jonathan and said, "Simon westero, right? This is obviously a newcomer without any qualifications. Therefore, we can't accept the price of $200000 for scripts, which is too high, up to $100000, and it's two scripts. $80000 for the butterfly effect and $20000 for Well, this is the option deposit for "death is coming.". Ah, it took a lot of effort to find out the script from the writers' Union. In fact, there is a script, but the quality is too poor to be regarded as a story at all. As for "death is coming", although there is only an outline, the idea is really good. In addition, these are all one-time buyout prices. Simon westero is not a member of the union, and paramount does not need to share the rights of video and television broadcasting according to the basic agreement of the union. "

Jonathan Friedman was quietly looking through the papers in his hand, but he could feel in his heart the obvious malice in Sidney Ganis's conditions.

However, when Sidney Ganis's voice dropped, Jonathan Friedman still asked reluctantly, "so, Sidney, what about the hero? What do you think of Matthew?"

Sidney Ganis, with an inexplicable smile on his face, nodded almost without hesitation and said: "we are willing to continue to cooperate with Matthew because the box office of" the genius of skipping classes "is so good. Five million dollars is a bit high, but Matthew is worth it

After listening to Sidney Ganis, Jonathan Friedman finally decided that paramount was obviously aiming at himself, the founder of wma's first packaging project, and even wanted to use this small technique to make the whole project yellow.

After all, Brian De Palma and Simon westero are both artists in his hands, and their combined pay is less than half that of Matthew Broderick. Paramount is haggling over the salaries of the two of them, but resolutely agreed to Matthew's offer of up to $5 million, which is obviously trying to stir up internal discord within wma.