Chapter 934： Acquisition of IMAX

For more than a month, the Firefly Group management has drawn up a detailed ‘reald’ plan and a '4200’ plan advancement schedule.

The starting date of "Iron Man" is determined in March next year, and the shooting period is three months.

In the first half of the year, the filming of "Iron Man" was completed, and the preliminary preparations for "Gravity" will be ready. Eric will be able to invest in the production of Gravity in the second half of the year, from the filming to the final 3D, ima version conversion completed. A year and a half is enough.

Therefore, the time for the final completion of the two plans was determined at the end of 1999.

Moreover, not only the "gravity", but also completed the casting of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, also confirmed that it will start shooting early next year.

Because it is a trilogy of back-to-back shooting, the shooting cycle is up to one year, and after a year of post-production, the first part of the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" will also be determined at the end of 1999, "The Lord of the Rings" series The epic fantasy is obviously also suitable for the 3D and ima screens that seek visual experience, and Eric will naturally not let go.

"Gravity" plus the "The Lord of the Rings" first song, this can guarantee that 4,000 3d screens and 200 ima theaters have two heavyweight large film sources.

As for Cameron’s "Spider-Man", although the film is scheduled to be completed by the end of 1999, the Firefly Group has no expectations for Cameron to complete the film from top to bottom, Erik also I simply did not include this film in the plan, and I intend to be tossed by Cameron.

However, according to the proposed timetable, as the first superhero movie of Marvel, the schedule of "Iron Man" in the summer of 1999 can only be excluded from the list of the first 3d-ima films. The first part of the "Star Wars" and the next three MGM movie cosmic films released by Fox were also unable to catch up with the first wave of 3d-ima.

In this regard, Eric can only express regret, after all, many things can not be done overnight.

Eric returned to Los Angeles, and Kasenberg also completed the first two of the two plans to acquire Canada's ima company.

In 1994, Wall Street investor Richard Gelford was optimistic about the prospects of ima, pressed all of his own to gain control of ima company, and made every effort to promote the commercialization of ima technology.

However, due to the lack of support from Hollywood studios and several major theaters in North America, there is little progress in Richard Gelford's plan, and ima technology is still limited to screenings for science films in various museums. Eric originally let the company invest a sum of money in ima for the development of dmr technology for ordinary film conversion ima movies. Although ima saw a glimmer of light, it did not make any substantial improvement in the performance of the company. .

Before Firefly initiated the acquisition, ima could be said to be a debt-ridden company. The company’s market value on the Nasdaq market was less than $200 million, but it owed a huge debt of $150 million, including the one that the fireflies originally borrowed. 30 million US dollars.

Since Eric intends to bet on ima, the fireflies will naturally not let the dividends brought by the promotion of the future ima technology, and the company does not want to be subject to the process of ima technology promotion. Therefore, the management agrees that this should be The company bought it, but it was less than a $500 million acquisition. Eric naturally would not object.

After several years of hard work, ima company is on the verge of bankruptcy. Although Richard Gelford feels that the acquisition of the Firefly Group will bring about tremendous changes in the company, it has not caught it in its hands. .

After several weeks of negotiations, Firefly finally won the company at the cost of paying $230 million in cash and imagining $150 million in debt. Since $30 million of the $150 million in debt was from fireflies, this The actual amount of the transaction is only $350 million.

Prea Vista.

Although the expansion plan for Firefly Studios has not yet officially started, many workers on the west of Lincoln Avenue have started simple clean-up work.

After many revisions, the team of dream engineers responsible for the construction of the theme park finally came up with a satisfactory aerial corridor design.

The entire air corridor will be four kilometers in length and 20 meters in height, roughly equivalent to seven floors. In order to make the people who see the air corridor not think of buildings like reinforced concrete viaducts, the entire corridor will be built entirely of steel and glass. Although the height of 20 meters will be easily compared with many buildings in other big cities, but the height of housing is generally no more than three floors around the Praia Vista, once this corridor is built, it will undoubtedly be the most within a few tens of kilometers Wake up to the landmark building.

"The $50 million conservative cost, this will definitely be the most expensive building in the entire studio, but I think anyone who has seen the renderings will feel that this $50 million is worth the money. On the air corridor, the sea in the west, the Fox Hill in the east, the Los Angeles Airport in the south, and the city of Santa Monica in the north.

There are still some bumpy wasteland, Kasenberg and Eric walk side by side, and at the same time excited to talk about the theme park expansion plan.

Eric looked at the open land waiting for development, imagining the picture of the Firefly Studios theme park in the future, and suddenly realized that Michael Eisner would step by step to make a $1 billion budget for Disneyland Paris. To $5 billion. Eric has never been a big success, but after listening to Kasenberg's plan to expand the Firefly Studios theme park, he couldn't help but imagine the scenes that the other side portrayed.

At present, the land area is less than one-tenth of the 2000 hectares of Disneyland Paris. However, it is only an air corridor. It will cost 50 million US dollars. The whole studio will be built. The total construction will definitely not be less than 1 billion. Dollar.

Firefly Studios theme park, 'reald' and '4200' plans, just acquired ima, the plan has to completely win the Hasbro company... Although I have been thinking about slowing down the expansion of the Firefly Group, but I do not know In the sense, this company is still growing rapidly.

Feel free to kick a stone under the foot, Eric said: "Jeffrey, I have no opinion on the design of the theme of "Jurassic Park" and "Ghost Street". However, Peter Jackson is " You should have seen the set of the Lord of the Rings series design. I am very optimistic about this project. Therefore, I hope that there must be enough space here to build the theme of the "The Lord of the Rings" series."

"Of course, the design of the bottom hole of the bag, I think it is also very interesting," Kasenberger nodded. "Speaking of this, are you not going to let Miss Kidman play the Queen of the Elves, Galadriel?" You are not here during this time, we don't know how to talk to her about this."

"This, I have already talked with Nicole. You can directly sign a contract with her, and the pay will be calculated according to $3 million."

Kasenberger asked with some uncertainty: "Three 3 million?"

"Yeah," Eric nodded.

For Nicole's current coffee position, the 3 million starring "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy is indeed a bit shabby. However, her plays are almost the same as the guest appearances, and the $3 million paid is actually the highest among all actors.

Eric is chatting with Kasenberg, an assistant of Kasenberger hastily came over and said: "Mr. Williams, Mr. Kasenberg, the representative of Texas Instruments has arrived, I have already brought people They went to install the equipment."

During this time, management has been considering how to reasonably reduce the budget for implementing the two programs. A large part of the $1.6 billion budget will be the cost of updating the reald movie projection system. It happened that Texas Instruments was looking for the commercial promotion possibilities of the newly developed digital projector, and Kasenberg had arranged the demonstration.

The two listened to Kasenberg’s assistant and went to the east of the studio.

"I have already read the information. Although the resolution of the digital projector prototype developed by Texas Instruments can only reach 1280*1024, but give them two years, I think they have developed a resolution equivalent to the film projector 1920*1080. The equipment is not too difficult." The two walked back together, and Kasenberg first talked about his own opinion.

"Jeffrey, have you thought about it, if we use digital projectors, we might be resisted by the entire industry?"

Hollywood is just North America. The annual industrial chain around the film copy reaches billions of dollars and spreads to the whole world. This number will be even larger.

When Kasenberger heard Eric's question, he had some ridicule in his tone: "I can still remember what you said at the irelyer player conference at the beginning of the year."

Eric shrugged and smiled. "Okay, but I just think it's not the time to promote digital projectors."

Eric has already seen the digital projectors developed by Texas Instruments. Strictly speaking, Texas Instruments has only developed the most advanced dlp (digital light processing) technology, which can convert digital signals into projector optical signals. In memory, many digital projectors or office projectors later used Texas Instruments' dlp chips.

However, like today's digital cameras, Eric is not too optimistic about digital projectors.

Both technologies are in the early stages of development, which means that even digital cameras and digital projectors, even if they reach the corresponding resolution, are far from being comparable to film in terms of color reproduction of movie images. Film is chemically recorded in color, which reduces the color of the image even if it does not reach the level of the biological eye, but far exceeds the less mature digital technology.

For a simple example, in a dimly lit environment, the film can still record various things in a dimly sensitive environment. However, since the current digital camera has a limited recognition range for colors, when it is impossible to restore a certain color 100%, It will automatically compensate with similar peripheral colors. Therefore, the picture taken by the digital camera, the dark part is often a black one, and the film picture will be much clearer.

Therefore, Eric feels that it is more appropriate to wait for at least another decade to promote digital camera and digital projector technology. In fact, the digital movies in memory have indeed gradually become popular after ten years.

Kasenberg also apparently made a lot of preparations for his work. Listening to Eric said, he nodded slightly: "I actually have this feeling, but I always have to look at it first, knowing if I can really use the numbers. Projection equipment, we will release a movie in the future, just copy the cost, you can save millions of dollars, especially the dual-machine 3d copy and ima copy, which can save more money."

"But some money can't always be saved," Eric sighed with regret.

Speaking of it, after the implementation of the two plans, at least in the next ten years, because the film will still be used, the copying fee is absolutely an important factor restricting the conversion of many films to 3d and ima. After all, the dual-machine 3d device that Eric plans to use is equal to The cost of a film copy has doubled.

However, this actually has a benefit. The high cost of conversion can avoid the appearance of too many inferior 3D movies. This is exactly the most worrying aspect of Eric in the 3D promotion process. Eric didn't think about the 3d market that could monopolize for too long, and once the 3D movie was popularized in advance, it wouldn't be much for the film company to hold the festival for the sake of profit.

Texas Instruments clearly attaches great importance to this demonstration, and the vice president responsible for dlp technology research and development has personally rushed over.

Although Eric and Kasenberg have both know that the two plans in their hands are unlikely to use digital projection equipment for the time being, they have carefully visited the entire show. As Eric imagined, although the resolution of 1280*1024 is good, in terms of film color, the digital projection prototype developed by Texas Instruments is undoubtedly full of many improvements.

After watching the demo, I discussed some technical details with the deputy president of Texas Instruments, and the time soon came to work.

Today is November 20th, Eric did not return to the sharp corner after the work, but with Kasenberg to rush to the Chinese Grand Theatre in Hollywood. Because the first film produced by Disney Animation Studio after the digital transformation, "Monster Power Company" will hold the premiere today at the China Grand Theatre, tomorrow is the official release time.

Although it was just an animated film, Eric and Kasenberg rushed to the premiere scene. The front of the Chinese Grand Theatre was already crowded.

Disney Animation Studio is personally responsible for Kasenberg. After the summer success of "Lion King 2" and "Finding Nemo", Kasenberg is both looking forward to the film of Disney Animation Studio. Why? Many people are also in a mood to wait for what the new Disney animation studio will produce. (To be continued.)