After taking a few mouthfuls of smoke, Barry Diller extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray, and said: "It looks like you won't change your mind . "
"Mr . Diller, I could have just made a random low cost film to complete the contract, instead of coming here to communicate with you . If I didn't care about quality, then, ten days is enough to make a movie . "
Barry Diller know that this teenager have an iron heart, and will not change his decision . Although his mind also produced the idea of making things hard for the little guy . However, Barry Diller quickly rejected the idea .
Once he did that, then the same thing that happened with Columbia will happen again, leading their cooperation to end .
The other day when he heard that Columbia President Blunt Cohen was suddenly removed from his position, he was sure that CocCola board off directors was responsible for him leaving, but since he knows they were trying to sell Columbia, he thought that was an unnecessary move .
Now he understood that they did that to remove an obstacle that can stop them from re-establishing cooperation with this young boy .
If he did something right now, to mess with the young man, then after this teenager complete the contract, the relationship between them will be destroyed, making Fox lose this gold mine .
Determining that things are irreversible, Barry Diller quickly thought of trying to get some extra benefit to compensate for the loss: "Eric, You should understand that by doing that, you're putting Fox out of the summer box office compet.i.tion .
Although your approach did not violate the contract, but that still hurt us . To placate Fox shareholders, perhaps the original contract should be modified?"
After hearing what Barry Diller said, Eric immediately refused: "Mr . Diller, the contract will definitely not be modified, I will not make any compromises when it comes to dividing the profits . I just said I don't owe Fox anything .
The reason why I'm sitting here and discussing these things with you is that I don't want the relationship between the two sides to be deadlocked . We can only discuss a win-win compensation strategy, rather than harm the interests of either party . That way our cooperation can last longer . "
"Well, I'm sure you already have plans?"
Eric nodded: "Yes, my Firefly company has just developed plans for three other films, Fox can choose one of them to be released . "
Barry Diller almost wanted to laugh, is this a compensation? if Fox wanted to release a film, as long as they announce it, stand alone studios would come running to their door steps .
Barry Diller suddenly thought of Fox TV manager that have been driven out by him a few minutes ago, a new idea come to him: "Eric, are you interested in making a TV series?"
When Eric heard the words TV series, in his mind directly emerged the image of a stubborn little girl figure who is in New York right now .
In his past life, for the ten years that "Friends" was on air, Warner was able to earn more than 4 billion dollars in profits, Eric wasn't going to let this TV show get out of his hands, although he didn't watch all the ten seasons, but he has seen the first two seasons, and by virtue of the cheat he got after his rebirth, every thing was clearly engraved in his mind .
" . . . .
. . "
The two men argued in the office for a long time, and finally, because of his ambition to grow the TV networks, Barry Diller chose the TV series, if it wasn't for the development of a TV network, Barry Diller will not leave paramount, so Eric was not surprised by his choice .
But the other side didn't easily let go of Eric, he forced him to promise to personally guide the first two episodes of the TV series .
Eric didn't think that Barry Diller was able to come up with such a forward-looking idea .
More than 10 years later, Inviting famous Hollywood directors to guide the first few episodes, has become a popular trend in America, after the strong rise of TV dramas in the 21st century, Hollywood directors have also put down their airs, and started directing TV Pilots .
In fact, Barry Diller isn't so far-sighted as Eric thought, Asking a famous Hollywood director to shoot a TV drama, Barry Diller himself would think it was a ridiculous idea . In this era, It's a bad thing for a movie director to shoot a TV drama .
TV directors has always been switching to directing films, but rarely has the reverse happened .
The reason why he asked him to guide the first two episodes, was completely because he didn't get the right to release the film, out of a vindictive mentality, he wanted to put Eric in an embarra.s.sing position .
But unexpectedly, the other side nodded in agreement after thinking about it for just a moment, in accordance with the current mentality of Hollywood directors, The news that Eric is directing a TV series, will cause the criticism of the media and the die-hard directors .
Barry Diller had no idea that his rude demand, will later cause such a great sensation, even making it a trend that big Hollywood directors will start guiding TV pilots to prove themselves .
After reaching an agreement with Fox, Eric completely put aside his concerns, and reached a cooperation agreement with Columbia soon after that .
And since the other side was so generous, Eric directly raised the production budget to $40 million, and even if in the future they add $20 million in advertising, according to Colombia's 25 percent split, if the North American box office reach $240 million, Columbia will be able to recover the cost, of course, if you count the overseas box office earnings, Maybe this figure will fall to $200 million .
Eric estimated that Columbia simply didn't intend to recover the cost, as long as the box office sales, give the investors a false vision of the future, the stock price will go up, if the stock price rises by one dollar, Columbia's market value will increase by 180 million directly .
And all that money will be paid by SONY .
In this case, Eric didn't plan on giving up "Running Out of Time" copyrights, he planed to share the copyrights between firefly and Columbia in half . After all, they paid so much money, It would be cruel not give back after taking so much .
And although the film ends with the hero dying, but as long as the film succeed, then like in his past life, they can replace the hero with another actor for a sequel .