Li Mu had originally intended to give Li Mu and the cinema chain some of the profits, but Lucas had a keen sense of smell. After realizing Li Mu's real intention, he immediately made a decision: Li Mu's concession, he would not take a single cent, and would give it all to the cinema chain.
Deep in Lucas's heart, he was saying, "You don't like this little bit of money, do you? Although I do like it, I have to act like I don't like it either. "
If both the copyright and the distributor were willing to give up their profits, then the only target left was the cinema chain.
The cinema chain was different from the copyright and distributor. The copyright and distributor did not only care about the box office, but also the reputation, influence, brand awareness, and corporate image. The cinema chain, on the other hand, only cared about the box office.
If it was a completely neutral cinema chain, and it was not interfered with by any distributor, there would always be only one way to operate: give the most screenings to the most profitable film.
In North America, the distribution ratio between the distributor and the cinema chain was not fixed. Generally speaking, the distributor's share of the box office in the first week was the highest. Then, as the release time elapsed, the distributor's share would continue to decrease, and the cinema chain's share would continue to increase.
The reason why they came up with such a revenue sharing model was to increase the theater chain's willingness to schedule the movie after the movie had been released for a period of time and its popularity had dropped. From this, one could see the theater chain's management awareness. All the seats were fixed, and what they wanted was to maximize the use of the seats. This was the same as the airline companies.
If the distributor and copyright were willing to give up part of their share to the cinema chain, it would be a huge motivation for the cinema chain, which would make them spontaneously contribute more screenings.
Lucas's decision made Li Mu very satisfied. The fact that he had such awareness proved that he was a smart person, and he knew how to cater to his interests. Working with such a person was much more comfortable than working with those who only knew how to fight for their own interests.
Considering the release of Flying Tigers in the future, as well as more subsequent works, and considering that North America would still be the world's largest box office market for the next decade or so, Li Mu needed to find more powerful partners in North America.
Spielberg and DreamWorks were now his production partners, and in terms of distribution and cinema chain, he still needed to find other powerful partners.
Lucas was a good friend of Spielberg. The fact that he had flown all the way from America for this cooperation proved his determination and attitude. Moreover, he had given up the 10% share that Lu Zhou had given him without hesitation, which proved that this person's way of thinking was very much to Lu Zhou's liking. Therefore, he was the best partner in the future in the North American film distribution field.
After making the decision, Li Mu said to Lucas, "I can sign the copyright licensing agreement with you today. How long do you think it will take for us to get the film released in the US?"
Lucas said, "After signing the contract, if the source does not have English subtitles, then we have to quickly arrange for the production team to produce it. This is relatively fast, and can be done in a few days. If there are English subtitles, I need to send a copy directly to the American Film Guild for rating. At the same time, I will contact the people in charge of the major cinema chains to watch the film, and then discuss the specific conditions of the screening with them in private. After the rating comes out, we will set a release date, and then start the promotion. Once the date comes, the official release will take about two months."
"Two months?" Li Mu frowned slightly and said, "That's a bit too long. Can it be faster?"
Lucas said, "Li Zong, in fact, under normal circumstances, a movie will take more than two months to be released. The more expectations there are for the film's commercial value, the more time it needs to set aside for the promotion period. The promotion period is usually about two months, or even longer."
Li Mu said, "Our movie has already been promoted in advance by the game, and there are many netizens who are volunteering to promote it online. We already have a relatively good audience base. In this case, there is no need to stretch the promotion period to two months. When you start submitting the rating of the film, I will start the online promotion, and you will also start preparing for the offline promotion. We will try to reduce the promotion period to seven to ten days. Then, think of a way to speed up the other parts and see if you can reduce the time axis to about 20 days from today."
"20 days …" Lucas was a bit hesitant. He frowned and thought about it for a while before saying, "Li Zong, if we speed up the other parts, 20 days shouldn't be a problem, but that will really test the promotion work."
Li Mu nodded and smiled. "Since we already have a strong audience base, we don't have to worry about the promotion work. You have the offline promotion channels, and I have the online promotion channels. This includes YY, YY website, and even Plants vs Zombies Online. Our ability to deliver information is unquestionable, but if we stretch the promotion too far, and the players of Plants vs Zombies Online lose interest in Hua Xia's zombies, it will be a lot more troublesome to pull them to the cinema. So why don't we strike the iron while it's hot, and get the movie released as soon as possible, to ensure that the majority of the players haven't lost interest in it."
Lucas had never distributed a movie like this before. The competition in Hollywood was fierce. Even a movie with a cast of top stars would have to start pre-promotion a long time in advance. All kinds of offline advertisements and TV advertisements were constantly bombarded to repeatedly deepen the audience's impression of the movie. There had never been a movie that was released immediately after seven to ten days of promotion.
But after thinking about it carefully, what Li Mu said made sense. After all, the popularity of a game had a limited time, and there were countless superstars that were popular for ten to twenty years, or even longer.
But games that were popular for more than ten years were few and far between, so they had to take advantage of this rare window of time to make sure that the movie was released before the audience's curiosity died down!
Lucas immediately agreed, "Don't worry, Li Zong, I'll definitely find a way to speed things up, and get Mr. Zombie released in North America as soon as possible!"
Li Mu nodded. "There are still a lot of excellent zombie movies in the Hong Kong film industry, and I have the rights to all of them. If Mr. Zombie becomes popular, we'll immediately release one or two zombie movies. Then, when summer comes, we'll pick a zombie movie to boost the summer box office, and release the rest of the zombie movies on DVD."
"Okay!"
…
In just a day or two, all of the zombie movies that Makino Image had in their hands had earned nearly a hundred million yuan in domestic copyright fees. Although the copyright for a single movie was very cheap, there were a lot of TV stations in the country. There were more than two thousand satellite TV stations and local county and city TV stations, and even more channels. This was the time when zombie movies were very popular. If it was any other time, they would have already taken out pirated DVDs and broadcast them on TV. But because all of the zombie movies' rights were in Makino Image's hands, everyone started to respect the copyright and asked for authorization from Makino Image before broadcasting them.
More than two thousand TV stations, half of which had requested to buy the broadcasting rights from Makino Image. Most of them had bought the broadcasting rights for more than one movie, and nearly a hundred TV stations had bought the rights for TV series alone. Almost no matter the time of day, there would be at least one zombie movie or TV series on any TV station that could be found on TV.
Although this phenomenon was not very healthy, the audience was enjoying it very much. Their passion for genre movies had been reignited, and they could never get tired of watching all kinds of zombie movies.
Just by casually licensing a batch of copyrights, they had earned a net profit of tens of millions of yuan. This move by Makino Image made the film companies on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong jealous.
Many companies worked hard to shoot several or even dozens of movies in a year, but they might not be able to earn so much money. Hong Kong film companies could not produce many movies with a box office of more than ten million yuan in a year, but Li Mu relied on buying low and selling high. In just a few days, he had earned a net profit that other companies might not even be able to earn in a few years. This indeed made his peers envious and jealous.
Li Mu did not know that he had gained a humorous nickname in the Hong Kong film industry, Zombie Taoist Priest …
The reason why Li Mu was called Zombie Taoist Priest was because he had captured all of Hong Kong's zombie movies in one fell swoop. As long as there were zombies in the movies, Li Mu killed them all. He was the "Zombie Taoist Priest" of the current generation, the "Taoist Priest" who specialized in zombie movies.
After many Hong Kong film companies found out that they had been cheated by Li Mu, other than feeling indignant, they also had the idea of shooting zombie movies again. In their opinion, this was the second spring for zombie movies, and it was a good time to seize the opportunity to make money.
Soon, many rumors spread in the Hong Kong film industry. At present, at least six film companies were preparing to invest in zombie movies, and they had already established the project and were in the script writing stage.
For decades, the Hong Kong film industry had not been able to escape a pattern, and that was that everyone would rush to make a zombie movie to make money. Not only zombie movies, but gangster movies and gambling movies were also popular, and millions of people followed. These people only wanted to make quick money, and they did not need good scripts, good directors, and good actors. Therefore, the rate of bad movies was so high that the audience could not wait to avoid them, and in the end, they could only accelerate the lifespan of a series and overdraft it until it died.
Therefore, when they saw that zombie movies suddenly had a second spring, it was expected that they would desperately want to shoot more zombie movies to make money.
Among these companies that had started to make zombie movies, Huanya was the most screwed up one.
Huanya felt that they had been deeply victimized, because they thought that Makino Image had cheated them of the rights to all of their zombie movies, including Mr. Zombie. It was as if they had stolen all the hens that laid golden eggs. If Makino Image was just an ordinary film company, they would definitely tear up the agreement, and then use all kinds of methods to deny the license. They might even use all kinds of underhanded methods to achieve their goal.
Unfortunately, Makino Image was like a steel plate. With their punches and kicks, there was no way they could kick it. Therefore, they could only grit their teeth and prepare to make Mr. Zombie 2003. They didn't even need to write a script, they just needed to find new actors and remake Mr. Zombie with a better production team. In terms of visual effects, it would be much better than the old version. The only problem was the cast. Huanya was preparing to find A-list celebrities to film this remake.
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