In fact, during the negotiations, 20th Century Fox even revealed the idea of simply giving the whole project to Jia Yapeng for investment, because in their view, the Titanic was an absolutely loss-making deal. Only a movie with a box office of more than 400 million USD could possibly break even.
But how was that possible? A movie about a shipwreck and a love story. That was impossible.
So during the negotiations, 20th Century Fox tried their best to persuade Boss Jia to simply contract the whole project, but Boss Jia refused.
The reason was very simple, Boss Jia's entertainment company in the United States simply couldn't afford to shoot such a huge movie, and Daqian Entertainment didn't have any distribution channels in the United States. If this was really handed over to Daqian Entertainment, then the 135 million USD would really be wasted.
So Boss Jia still forced 20th Century Fox to stay on the ship, and threw the entire production and preparation work to them. That was the right path.
However, Boss Jia wouldn't always be kind and generous, because the United States branch of Daqian Entertainment wouldn't be idle. Everyone in the company would be involved in the preparation and shooting process of this huge movie.
As long as the whole movie was finished, Daqian Entertainment would evolve into a complete movie company, and then they would have the ability to independently prepare a movie.
In addition to the cooperation of the Titanic, the cooperation of the first Pokemon movie was also discussed.
From this point onwards, the path of Pokemon movies and the Pokemon movies in history had undergone earth-shattering changes.
The Pokemon movie in history was actually just a simple 2D animated movie. At most, the quality was better than the TV version. Then, it was released at the rate of one movie per year. Until 2020, there were already 23 theatrical animated movies.
But such theatrical animations didn't have much meaning for Pokemon, and they didn't have much promotion value, and the box office only maintained a break-even level.
Simply put, this was just a theatrical movie to satisfy the fans' feelings, and it couldn't cause any real waves in the movie market, which was what Boss Jia didn't want to see.
This kind of movie version really didn't have much meaning.
Since 20th Century Fox took the initiative to buy the movie rights to Pokemon, Boss Jia decided to go all out.
The negotiations between the two sides around the Titanic lasted for a total of one day.
However, the negotiations surrounding the Pokemon movie lasted for three days.
Fox's intention was to buy the rights to the movie version of Pokemon and let Fox make a movie. Boss Jia would then earn some royalties. It was that simple.
However, Boss Jia wasn't going to let that happen. Pokemon was still a newborn baby. Every IP had to be carefully maintained. Fox was just a movie studio. If Boss Jia didn't have the right to watch this movie, who knew what these guys would do.
Therefore, Boss Jia requested that the movie version of Pokemon be shot in the same way as the Titanic. Boss Jia would own 60% of the shares, and 20th Century Fox would own 40% of the shares.
20th Century Fox expressed strong opposition to this. Like Boss Jia, they didn't agree to transfer the control of the movie to others. After all, Boss Jia lost. After all, 20th Century Fox was a professional, and Boss Jia wasn't.
Both sides agreed that Boss Jia would invest 20 million USD, and 20th Century Fox would invest 15 million USD. Fox would then own 51% of the movie shares, and Boss Jia would own 49% of the shares.
However, Boss Jia had the control of the script. This was the bottom line that Boss Jia insisted on. In a situation where other rights were not in his control, the control of the script must be in the hands of Boss Jia. Otherwise, this movie would become the next Detective Pikachu.
There was also the most important point, which was the production of the movie.
Originally, 20th Century Fox wanted to make an ordinary 2D animated movie, but it was rejected by Boss Jia. Boss Jia wanted to give the movie to Pixar Studio, and let Pixar Studio make it into a 3D animated movie.
20th Century Fox had doubts about this, but Boss Jia strongly insisted, and 20th Century Fox agreed. However, when they gave the job to Pixar Studio, Pixar Studio rejected it.
Pixar Studio was producing "Toy Story", which was the first animated feature film in the history of Pixar Studio. In addition, they had a contract with Disney for two animated feature films, so they rejected 20th Century Fox's request.
Boss Jia didn't expect to be rejected by Pixar Studio. 20th Century Fox took the opportunity to suggest that they might as well make a 2D animated movie. This way, they could save more than half of the cost.
However, how could Boss Jia admit defeat just like that? In the future, animated movies would be produced in 3D. He couldn't lose at the starting line.
Therefore, after a night of thinking, Boss Jia made a shocking decision. That was to open a branch company in the United States, Daqian Puzzle Studio and Daqian Entertainment. Dynasty Animation would also set up a Dynasty Studio in the United States, specializing in the design and production of 3D animated movies. Then, Dynasty Studio would be responsible for the production of the Pokemon movie.
20th Century Fox was completely shocked by Boss Jia's idea. They were so scared that they almost gave up on the Pokemon movie. It was fine if a Chinese animation studio drew a 2D animation movie, but now, they wanted to make a 3D animation movie. How was this possible?
However, Boss Jia wouldn't give up on Fox just like that. After a difficult negotiation, Boss Jia and Fox finally reached an agreement.
The Pokemon animated movie would be handled by Dynasty Studio in the United States. However, Boss Jia promised that after the Pokemon movie was released, 20th Century Fox would have priority over the profits. Only when Fox got back all the 15 million USD investment would the rest of the profits be given to Dynasty.
To put it simply, if the Pokemon movie made 20 million USD in profits in the future, 15 million USD would be given to Fox first. Boss Jia would get the rest of the 5 million USD, and Boss Jia would lose 15 million USD.
It was an unfair agreement. As the price for accepting this agreement, 20th Century Fox had to help Dynasty Studio recruit 3D animation talents in the United States.
The so-called recruitment was to poach people from Pixar Animation Studio. After all, Pixar was the only professional 3D animation studio in the United States. Where else could they poach people from if they didn't poach from Pixar?!
At the moment, the working conditions in Pixar were quite bad. As Pixar had not made any profits so far, all the employees in the studio were basically working hard. Their monthly salary was only about 2,000 USD, which was similar to that of an ordinary worker.
Boss Jia directly offered three times the salary. He used 6,000 USD a month to poach people from Pixar Animation Studio and 300,000 USD a year to poach the technical director of Pixar Animation Studio. Anyway, under the temptation of Boss Jia's money, most of the professionals in Pixar Animation Studio were poached. When Boss Jia realized what was going on, almost one-third of Pixar's staff had been poached.
At the same time, Dynasty also transferred 100 young talents from China to the United States to join Dynasty Studio in the United States. They would work as assistants for the professionals and learn advanced 3D animation production techniques. From there, Dynasty began to train their own special effects team.
After all, a bird in the hand was better than a flock of birds in the forest.
On the other hand, Mr. Joe was so angry that he scolded Dynasty when Pixar was poached that he almost went to court. However, there was nothing to sue, so the matter was left unsettled in the end.
This also directly caused Pixar's Toy Story to go into a state of paralysis. It took more than half a year for Pixar's studio to return to normal, and Toy Story, which was originally scheduled to be released in 1995, was delayed to 1996.
However, this also caused Mr. Joe to hate Boss Jia deeply. One of them was the child of destiny while the other was the child of time travel. The two of them would have a lot to fight in the future.
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