Chapter 232

A private airport south of Chicago.

After danielis Entertainment's Falcon business plane landed, Robert egger and Ella doechman enthusiastically took a couple off the plane. The company is helping John Hughes shoot uncle buck here, and specially sent a car to pick them up.

After the couple left, egger and doechman boarded the plane again, and the Falcon continued to fly east after taking off.

In the cabin, when the plane entered a stable state, Ella doichman took out a thick list of Oscar judges from her briefcase, opened it, found a name, and made a few remarks at the back.

Today is January 23, Monday.

The previous weekend, doechman not only talked about the right to adapt six stage plays, but also hosted a reception for three consecutive days from Friday aimed at prize public relations.

The husband and wife who just got off the plane were the judges of the Academy Award for photography. At the reception on Saturday, they said that they would return to Chicago today. Ella doechman was very happy to invite them to take the company's private plane.

This kind of small favor doesn't cost much, but it can leave a deep impression on the couple.

This year's Oscar nomination has not yet been announced, but Denise Entertainment's public relations offensive has already begun.

Robert rem is busy expanding danilisi Entertainment's overseas distribution channels. Gaomen film's business nature determines that it has to rely on major film awards to survive. Simon handed over the award public relations task of several films of the company last year to doechman.

In order to fight for the failure of sex, lies and video, Ella doechman realized that her original strategy of purchasing single films as much as possible for distribution would not be so smooth. While adjusting the plan, the public relations achievements of this award season became the key to whether he could get Simon's approval during his one-year probation period.

On her last trip to the UK and this business trip to New York, Ella doechman never forgot to visit the award related contacts accumulated over the years after her work. At the same time, she also worked with the professional public relations company and award marketing team employed by the remote control company, so she spared no effort to work together.

The Golden Globe Awards, as the wind vane of the Oscars, will be held on Saturday, and the corresponding public relations work has been completed. His next focus is the Oscars.

In a word, with the current popularity of rain man, under normal circumstances, this film is destined to be a big winner in the award season.

However, Simon didn't want the rain man's director Barry Levinson and actor Dustin Hoffman to win the award, but he wanted to ensure the best film, and at the same time, he wanted the death poetry society to win the best director award, which was the biggest difficulty of this pr.

Both egger and doechmann agree with Simon's collaborative mechanism and practice it. Therefore, they get along very well. Two of the three-day weekend cocktail parties are held at egger's house.

They talked about their work all the way. More than two hours later, the Falcon business plane landed again. This time, it was still not Los Angeles, but Salt Lake City, Utah.

The 5th Sundance Film Festival opened on Friday. Although knowing that any film the company sees now may be contested by other studios, doechman still plans to see if there are outstanding films or cutting-edge filmmakers in the festival.

Moreover, there should be no lack of Oscar judges who can contact with each other face to face.

Simon's explanation to doichman is to go step by step.

More than 3000 Academy Awards judges, one by one to win over, one by one to build public relations, one by one to establish contact, will one day be able to fully understand.

In the original time and space, the reason why the Weinstein brothers were invincible at the Oscars was not that the two brothers had to put a lot of energy into PR for everyone every year, but the most important thing was the deep-rooted strong contacts and deep influence accumulated over the years.

Falcon business plane finally arrived at Los Angeles Santa Monica airport around 11:30.

Edgar sends two of his entourage staff to Burbank and goes to Denise entertainment headquarters. Amy's assistant Vanessa is waiting for him.

After a brief greeting, Vanessa said, "please come with me, Mr. egger. Ms. Pascal is attending a meeting. She said you can go directly to the meeting room when you come here."

Edgar was a little confused, so he followed Vanessa to a small conference room in the office building of the company.

Pushing the door in, Nancy, who was in front of the slide screen, saw egger, stopped explaining for a while and said, "good morning, Bob."

"Good morning," said egger, nodding to Nancy, shaking hands with Amy as she got up, sitting down next to her and saying, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Nancy. Please continue."

Vanessa handed a copy of the information to egger, and Nancy continued: "two years ago, blockbuster won the game rental lawsuit with Nintendo, gaining the right to sell and rent the game cassette. After the development of Ninja Turtle is completed, we can also use blockbuster's channels for distribution, and we can take the initiative in the local channels and marketing in North America. "

Edgar listened to Nancy's introduction and quickly looked over the information Vanessa had handed over.Originally, this is a Nintendo FC game platform "Ninja Turtle" video game development program. Seeing this, egger couldn't help thinking of the collapse of Atari a few years ago.

Yadali was originally a Warner Brothers' game console and software development company. In 1977, yadali launched the yadali 2600 game console, which quickly swept the United States. At its peak, it even reached the popularity of one yadali game console for every three American families.

However, after the success of the yadali 2600, Warner began to extract profits from this game platform crazily, allowing all kinds of game manufacturers to develop a large number of inferior games without restraint. Countless inferior games flooded the market and continued to consume the patience of users.

Finally, in 1982, Warner spent six weeks to develop and complete the "alien et" video game, which became the fuse of a collapse.

Users who continue to be devastated by all kinds of inferior games originally thought that the reputation of "alien et" and the games produced by Warner's official brand must have quality assurance. As a result, the quality of "alien et" is so low that it makes people angry, and even there are many low-level bugs that will not appear in the most inferior games.

As a result, Warner sold only 1.5 million of the 4 million cassettes prepared for ET, and the rest were sent to the dump for direct destruction.

But it's not the most serious.

After that incident, users gave up on Atari completely.

In the following years, the sales volume of yadali's game console and software showed a precipitous decline. In the early 1980s, the market size of the game exceeded 3 billion US dollars. In the coldest period of 1985, it even shrunk to 100 million US dollars.

Some analysts believe it will take at least 20 years for the North American video game market to recover.

However, after the short "ice age" of the market, Nintendo, which has learned the lessons from the collapse of Atari, gradually filled the gap in the North American market left by the collapse of Atari through a series of restrictive measures such as royalty system to strictly control the quality of the game.

In recent years, the North American video game market has begun to recover. Of course, this field has unfortunately become the world of Japanese enterprises.

Nancy in front of the stage finished the introduction, discussed with Amy, and asked egger's opinion modestly.

With a total budget of only $2 million in hand, Edgar made a full 28 page plan. After thinking about it, Edgar asked, "Nancy, it costs $200000 to buy the development right of Ninja tortoise video game, but you only plan to make this game with a budget of $500000. Can you guarantee the quality?"

Of the total budget of 2 million US dollars, 200000 US dollars will be used to purchase the development right of Ninja Turtle's video game, 500000 US dollars will be used for production, 300000 US dollars will be used to maintain the company's daily operation, and the last one million US dollars will be used for production and marketing after the completion of game development.

Nancy nodded her head seriously and said: "the main expenditure of video game development is labor, because the first time it involves the field of video game development, I only plan to set up a studio with about 10 people in the early stage, and the budget of 500000 US dollars is enough."

Edgar then asked: "Marvel's superheroes like Spiderman and magic four are also very suitable for adaptation into games, and they are more famous than Ninja tortoise. Why choose Ninja tortoise?"

Nancy shook her head and said, "I tried to talk to Simon and he said no."

"Eh?" said egger

Nancy has some helplessness: "Simon seems to like Marvel very much, and he doesn't give me any room to discuss. I also talked to him about Lord of the rings, which was also rejected, and Lola Run, which he has sold. Just as it happens, the company recently approved the "Ninja Turtle" live action movie. After my research, I found that its role setting is very suitable for adaptation into a horizontal version of the fighting game in the breakthrough mode. After contacting with mirage studio, they haven't sold the game development right of Ninja Turtle, so I bought it. "

Egger is not familiar with the field of video games. Since Nancy has considered all the problems she can think of in a short time, she has not rashly put forward any opinions.

We chatted a few more, it was already noon, so we rushed to the nearby restaurant for dinner.

As soon as she finished her shareholding in blockbuster recently, Nancy quickly came up with another plan, which once again put a lot of pressure on Amy.

In fact, Amy has thought about getting involved in the development of video games, but she has no time to promote it.

Now, Nancy has come up with this plan, and the established game studio will also be attached to the consumer goods department, rather than the departments directly under such companies as Denise special effects and Pixar Animation. If it's successful, Nancy will certainly take the most credit. Even if it fails, the loss of $2 million doesn't matter to Denise entertainment today.

Therefore, at lunch time, although she tried not to show herself, Amy was inevitably closer to Edgar.

Edgar, with a gentle personality, is far less energetic and aggressive than Nancy.

Obviously, Amy couldn't know what Simon expected of egger.

Nancy's consumer goods division is far from comparable in revenue to television. Moreover, the consumer goods department is located in Los Angeles, which is destined to be under the control of the parent company all the time. However, egger, who is far away from the east coast and is in charge of the television department alone, is a "feudal official".I chatted and exchanged greetings for a while. Although I was having dinner, I soon talked about my work.

Danielis Entertainment's TV series are mainly produced on the west coast. With the advent of TV spring, egger is going to fly to Los Angeles every week. This time, in addition to the preparation of several TV dramas, there are more important things.

"Tom had a detailed talk about who will be a millionaire when he invited me to lunch yesterday. He said that if we were not willing to make concessions, ABC would have to cut the number of episodes in the second season and adjust the screening time," said egger, noting Nancy's puzzled eyes and explaining, "ABC chairman, Tom Murphy."

Nancy nodded and did not answer.

Amy asked, "what are the conditions?"

"The offer for each issue is halved, and ABC has to participate in the revenue sharing of in show advertising placement," egger said

Amy frowned and said, "Simon won't agree with that."

Nancy looked around and couldn't help asking Edgar, "Bob, what's our profit on who's going to be a millionaire?"

As the head of the consumer goods department, Nancy is very clear about the peripheral product revenue data of who will be a millionaire. However, the company's annual financial audit is not over, and she does not know the total revenue of the phenomenal reality show.

In the face of Nancy's inquiry, Edgar did not hide it, saying: "according to last year's financial data, about 180 million dollars. If you calculate the whole first quarter, it's about 250 million dollars. "

Nancy's eyes widened and her lips widened.

She thought she might have heard it wrong, or that egger had explained it wrong, so she asked, "total revenue?"

Egger shook his head: "net profit."

Nancy always felt that she would not be surprised by anything, but she couldn't help taking a deep breath this time.

Slowly exhaled a big breath, she still did not believe, staring at egger, said: "250 million dollars, how is this possible?"

It's satisfying for a man's vanity to surprise a beautiful woman. With a smile on her face, egger patiently explained: "compared with the TV series with only 13 or 26 episodes per season," who will be a millionaire "has 69 episodes in one season, and the transaction price of each episode is $2 million. According to the settlement rules we negotiated with ABC, ABC has already paid US $83 million for the first quarter after the winter break, including $30 million for the additional 15 issues before the quarter, only this part of the revenue has reached $110 million. In addition, the total revenue from in-house advertising placement is $56 million, and the revenue from syndicate distribution and overseas licensing is about $27 million. "

Nancy listened attentively and quickly gave out the final statistics: "the total revenue is $196 million and the net profit is $180 million, which is really reasonable. God, no wonder our little boss is so extravagant, but Denise entertainment has always been in good financial condition. It's so profitable. "

Moreover, with further thinking, Nancy immediately found the problem.

As far as she knows, NBC is in the best operating condition among the four major TV networks.

The fiscal year cycle of the four major TV networks is basically calculated from the last quarter of each year.

According to the public financial data of Ge, affected by last year's writers strike, NBC TV network's total revenue in the fiscal year 1987-1988 was US $3.3 billion, but its net profit scale was only US $310 million, down sharply from US $380 million in the previous year, with a profit margin of less than 10%.

After careful consideration, "who's going to be a millionaire" can bring a net profit of $250 million to danielis entertainment, but there's no problem.

The network operates seven days a week, and the total number of prime time programs is about 20 to 30.

However, just like the films produced by Hollywood film company every year, a small part of these TV programs will definitely make profits or losses, and most of them will basically break even. Combined with the huge basic operating expenses of a national TV network, it is very rare for NBC to make $310 million a year.

Look at who's going to be a millionaire. It's an hour long show with the most golden three-day eight o'clock show of seven days a week. Because of the phenomenal ratings data, its advertising revenue is quite the same as the most profitable box office blockbuster of the studio every year.

Compared with ABC's comprehensive investment in running a national TV network, as the producer, danilisi entertainment only needs to bear the total production cost of only about 20 million US dollars and a small amount of marketing expenses in the early stage.

All in all, the revenue scale of "who will be a millionaire" is only about 10% of the total revenue of the TV network, but like a big low-cost and high box office movie, the profit margin of this program is more than 90%.

As a result, danilisi entertainment naturally makes money and makes soft money by occupying the best resources and taking the richest profits without sharing the huge operating expenses and loss project costs of ABC TV network.Thinking of this, Nancy immediately asked egger, "Bob, how much can ABC make on this project?"

Edgar thought about it and said, "if you only count this show, it's about $80 million."

When Nancy hears the words, she looks around Amy and egger and makes a strange face.

Amy and egger were speechless.

Denise entertainment made 250 million yuan. As the owner of the platform, ABC, which should be in a strong position, has only 80 million US dollars of profit margin, less than one third of Denise entertainment. Everyone has to change their face.

Tom Murphy was able to patiently negotiate with Denise entertainment mainly because ABC can't do without who will be a millionaire.

Although the average rating of a single show is firmly suppressed by survivor, who will be a millionaire has three issues a week compared with survivor, which has 13 issues a season.

With the super high rating data of who will be a millionaire, ABC, which was only better than the emerging fox in the four major TV networks, has been showing a slightly anti super attitude towards the first place NBC TV series since last autumn.

In such a good situation, ABC absolutely dare not rashly abandon "who will become a millionaire".

But at the same time, if daenerys entertainment is not willing to compromise and the distribution of interests is seriously unbalanced, as long as ABC management has a little foresight, the TV network will certainly get rid of the dependence on who will be a millionaire at all costs.

After a moment's silence, Amy finally said, "it's up to Simon to decide for himself. Bob, talk to ABC again, and then write a report to Melbourne."

Egger nodded. It's a big deal, and it's the only thing right now.