Chapter 362 Rebellious Sophie (Subscribe to support!)
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After learning that the millions of dollars in liquidated damages were just a tiny amount of money to Xu Kai, Emma Gustaf no longer dared to threaten Sophie March with the liquidated damages.
——Emma Gustave could only play the emotional card with Sophie March, and slander Xu Kai, saying that Chinese people like Xu Kai eat everything, cats, snakes, insects, etc., saying that Chinese people like Xu Kai don’t like to express their feelings, don’t understand romance, are wooden, saying that Chinese people like Xu Kai speak loudly, don’t know manners, are not gentlemanly at all, etc.
What Emma Gustave never expected was that the more she criticized Xu Kai, the more Sophie March, who already knew Xu Kai very well and knew that what she said was completely wrong, became more rebellious. She then got closer and closer to Xu Kai and got to know him better and better.
The more she got to know Xu Kai, the more Sophie March was attracted to him...
In early November, "Detective Chinatown 2" was completed as scheduled.
Xu Kai did not return to China for this reason. Instead, he completed the post-production of "Detective Chinatown 2" in the United States, and then asked Tie Liang to bring people to protect Chen Ruoxi, who brought the master tape back to China to host the release of "Detective Chinatown 2".
Xu Kai continued to stay in the United States to film "Rush Hour", "The Grandmaster 4" and "Lovers' First Kiss", as well as hosting "Farewell My Concubine" and participating in the selection of major film awards.
The fact that "Farewell My Concubine" did not win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in the previous life was actually a misunderstanding: Chen Kaige later asked the Oscar judges why "Farewell My Concubine" was not selected?
The Oscar judges said that they didn't think the movie was bad, but there was a lack of communication - they thought that "Farewell My Concubine" had already won the Palme d'Or and the Golden Globe, and they hadn't met Chen Kaige's people or promotional activities for the film, so they thought "Farewell My Concubine" no longer needed the Oscar.
In this life, Xu Kai fully learned from Chen Kaige's experience and lessons, so he actively strived for various major awards.
In order to avoid losing the award due to his own operational errors, Xu Kai asked Chen Ruoxi to hire the team that helped Zhang to run for film awards to help "Farewell My Concubine" run for film awards.
The films Zhang has made in recent years have won numerous film awards at home and abroad, and have been nominated for Oscars three times and Golden Globe Awards five times. The team that helps Zhang run for film awards is definitely the most professional and experienced.
As for whether the team that helped Zhang to participate in the film awards would come to help him, Xu Kai was not worried at all.
First of all, with the help of Zhao Laogen, the conflict between Xu Kai and Zhang had been resolved long ago.
The key point is that Zhang's condition has been deteriorating in recent years. It is impossible for the team that helps Zhang to participate in film awards to just stick to Zhang and be unwilling to accept the commission from Xu Kai, a wealthy and generous sponsor.
Facts also prove that Chen Ruoxi quickly arranged for a team to help Zhang participate in film awards. After they received the advance payment, they immediately started to help "Farewell My Concubine" to participate in various major film awards and carry out related publicity...
One day, Xu Kai had just finished filming "Rush Hour" when Brett Ratner came to Xu Kai again to watch a striptease. He also said that there was a very hot dancer tonight and maybe there would be a beautiful encounter.
Xu Kai could see that Brett Ratner had a special liking for striptease. He actually went to watch it at least twice a week.
Brett Ratner has made appointments with Xu Kai several times. Xu Kai has nothing else to do today, so he decides to go with Brett Ratner.
When they arrived at the strip bar, Xu Kai and Brett Ratner sat at the bar, drinking, watching striptease, and chatting about some interesting things in Hollywood.
Xu Kai didn't expect that the hot dancer Brett Ratner mentioned was actually a black girl.
Although Xu Kai is very philanthropic, he has no interest in black people at all.
So after taking a few casual glances, Xu Kai stopped watching the black dancer's performance.
Seeing that Xu Kai was not interested in the black dancer, Brett Ratner said to Xu Kai, "Black people are very passionate in bed. You should really give it a try."
Xu Kai shook his head and changed the subject directly: "Brett, I want to buy a film company. Do you have any good recommendations?"
Brett Ratner asked, "Why do you want to buy a film company? Don't you want to work with New Line?"
"No, but I think it's too inconvenient to make a movie in Hollywood without a film company of my own." Xu Kaikou said with a hint of disbelief.
actually--
The reason why Xu Kai wanted to buy a film company in Hollywood was mainly because the North American movie box office market was the largest movie box office market in the world. He planned to make more money from this market, so he needed a local film company.
After listening to Xu Kai's explanation, Brett Ratner said, "Kai, you are such a lucky guy. I just happened to know that Artisan is for sale, but this film company is very expensive. If you want to buy it, you may have to pay a lot of money."
"Craftsman? How is it?" Xu Kai asked.
Brett Ratner replied: "Artisan is a relatively small film company that specializes in distributing independent films..."
After listening to Brett Ratner's introduction, Xu Kai learned that Artisan Films is more of a film distribution company than a film production company - it has participated in the distribution of many films, but has not actually produced many films. Even if it does produce, it mostly participates in the production, and rarely produces its own films. It cannot be compared with the eight major Hollywood film studios at all.
Xu Kai couldn't understand why such a small film company was sold at such a high price.
It was not until Xu Kai heard from Brett Ratner that although Artisan Films was small, it held the copyrights to Marvel superhero characters such as Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Deadpool, Iron Fist, Ant-Man, Punisher, Man-Thing, Morbius, etc. that he understood why Artisan Films was sold at such a high price.
Yes.
This world also has Marvel superheroes.
However, the development history of Marvel superhero movies in the two worlds is somewhat different.
The predecessor of Marvel in this life was also a pulp fiction publisher. In the 1940s, it emerged with "Captain America" and became a huge success, helping Marvel enter the mainstream competitive market.
Later, Marvel created a large number of Marvel superhero IPs, as well as the Avengers, which was composed of many Marvel superhero IPs.
By the 1990s, Marvel seemed a little too eager for quick success and ended up in heavy debt.
Now here comes the point. At that time, Marvel began to sell off the adaptation rights of its superhero characters for money. A large number of Marvel superhero characters, such as the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, etc., were sold in this way.
Despite selling so many of its own products, Marvel still could not escape the fate of bankruptcy.
A few years later, Marvel filed for bankruptcy.
Not long after, Marvel reorganized and began to recover the copyrights of the Marvel superhero characters that had been sold previously. After a series of financial operations, it rebuilt Marvel Entertainment and started Marvel Studios.
However, copyright cannot be taken back just because you want to.
All studios: I bought my son with my own ability, why should I return him? In this way, although Marvel still has a large number of Marvel superhero characters, the popular characters are not in Marvel's hands.
Artisan Films made a lot of money by releasing many profitable movies, and it happened to be the right time, so in the process of Marvel selling its son, it grabbed the copyright of Marvel superhero characters such as Captain America, Black Panther, Black Widow, Deadpool, Iron Fist, Ant-Man, Punisher, Man-Thing, and the vampire Morbius, and it was a permanent copyright, making it the biggest winner at the time.
After Artisan Films acquired the copyright to these Marvel superhero characters, it had intended to do great things.
So, a few years ago, Artisan Films spent a huge amount of money to make "The Punisher".
But the result was that the film was so bad that Artisan Films lost all its money.
After "The Punisher", Artisan Films also intended to make movies about Iron Fist and Black Widow. However, when they saw that similar female superhero movies such as "Aeon Flux" with similar themes failed to recoup their costs, they gave up and shelved the plan.
In the past two years, Artisan Films has not been able to produce or distribute good films, which has led the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
So the boss of Artisan Films wanted to sell Artisan Films as a whole.
Brett Ratner also told Xu Kai that none of the current Marvel superhero movies are particularly profitable, so a number of Hollywood film companies do not pay much attention to the copyright of Marvel superheroes.
In addition, Brett Ratner also told Xu Kai that Marvel seemed to have come to his senses recently and wanted to make a Marvel superhero movie of its own.
However, Marvel has not yet decided which Marvel superhero movie to make, and among the Marvel superheroes to be selected is Captain America from Craftsman Films, the iconic superhero of America and an indispensable superhero in the Avengers.
After listening to Brett Ratner's introduction, Xu Kai immediately started to think: "Since the Marvel Universe has not yet opened, I have more opportunities."
Therefore, Xu Kai carefully inquired with Brett Ratner about the copyright of Marvel superhero characters, and learned that currently:
Universal Pictures holds the rights to the Hulk and She-Hulk - Universal also made a Hulk movie, which ended up losing a lot of money;
Sony Pictures owns the copyrights to Ghost Rider and Spider-Man. The latter is arguably Marvel's most popular hero character and has made a lot of money for Sony Pictures. It is one of Sony Pictures' trump cards.
The copyright to all mutants belongs to Fox Film Corporation - unlike other terms, the X-Men was sold more thoroughly. Fox permanently owns the copyright to all X-Men characters, and completely owns the word "mutant", and can expand any X-Men comic character, including the villains.
Fox Film Corporation is indeed working hard to develop the X-Men. From 2000 to 2006, it released three "X-Men" films, which received very good responses and gave people new hope for the film and television adaptation of Marvel superheroes.
In addition to the X-Men, Marvel heroes and villains such as Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and Galactus are also owned by Fox Film Corporation.
In addition, New Line Cinema, the company that Xu Kai is currently working with, also owns the copyrights to two Marvel superheroes, Iron Man and Blade.
In fact, New Line Cinema has already filmed "Blade", but unfortunately the response was not good and New Line Cinema did not make any money.
In short, although Marvel still has a large number of copyrights of Marvel superheroes, the popular Marvel superheroes have been divided up by various film companies, and many Marvel superheroes have been made into movies before, but except for a few Marvel superheroes such as "Spider-Man" and "X-Men", most other Marvel superhero movies lose money or do not make money, so that at this stage, no one pays much attention to the copyright of Marvel superheroes.
It was in this context that the wealthy Xu Kai bought the Yijiang Film Company in its entirety.
Not only that, Xu Kai also bought the copyrights of Hulk and She-Hulk from Universal Pictures at a high price. Later, Xu Kai negotiated with New Line Cinema to buy the copyright of Iron Man.
As soon as Xu Kai bought the copyright of Iron Man, Marvel approached New Line Cinema to discuss co-producing the "Iron Man" movie with New Line Cinema.
In fact, at this stage, many people don’t take Iron Man too seriously.
However, there is no way to solve this problem! After all, whether it is the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, or characters such as Captain America, Hulk, and Spider-Man, they are actually much more popular than Iron Man at this time.
But why did Marvel still choose "Iron Man" as its main force in its last stand? The answer is that it is a helpless move!
Marvel now has no "strong soldiers and good generals"! At this stage, although Marvel still has a lot of copyrights of superhero characters, there are no top superhero characters with strong popularity.
For Marvel at this time, choosing the protagonist of its first movie must be done with extreme caution.
At the same time, Marvel also has to consider the cost-effectiveness.
Marvel's top executives thought about it for a long time and felt that Iron Man was the most suitable film.
This is not only because Iron Man is not very popular and the copyright will definitely not be too expensive, but also because filming "Iron Man" has the greatest chance of success.
——Iron Man himself has more "science fiction" elements than other heroes in Marvel's hands. It can even be said that "Iron Man" is a "fast food type" character. Unlike other characters, it takes 2-3 movie plots to cultivate him.
In other words, the market feedback effect brought by Iron Man itself is the fastest!
Simply put, although both are superheroes, if Marvel chose to use Captain America as the protagonist of the first movie, the feedback it would receive from fans and the market would actually be much lower.
After all, the "stimulation" effect that the character of Iron Man can show is generally immediate, and can completely detonate the appeal of the character of Iron Man within a very short plot.
Therefore, the use of "Iron Man" is actually Marvel's way of getting greater box office feedback as quickly as possible. It will either be a hit or a flop, unlike Captain America, which requires "feeding" of the plot to spark the interest of fans.
Using a plot-development character as their starting point, Marvel at this time has no time and no financial support, and simply cannot afford it...
That's why Marvel wanted to co-produce "Iron Man" with New Line Cinema.
But what Marvel never expected was that the copyright of "Iron Man" was actually snatched away by the wealthy Xu Kai.
Upon hearing the news, Marvel Studios President and Producer Kevin Feige and Marvel's Iron Man director Jon Favreau rushed to ask to see Xu Kai...
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(End of this chapter)
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