Chapter Six Hundred and Fortieth

While "Men in Black" garnered $76 million at the box office in the first week, the black super cop in the film also caused a trend of imitation in the whole society as in the previous life. In the following period, the popularity of black clothes and sunglasses decreased. Like Ma's windbreaker and toothpicks after the release of "The True Color of Heroes" on the other side of the ocean, although the release time was in the hot summer, it was still difficult to stop the enthusiasm of fans to appear on the street in black clothes and sunglasses. Since then, the media has A proprietary term of 'black super-masking' has also gradually become popular.

At the same time, the film also caused a new round of alien discussions in the media because of its ubiquitous alienation of people and events in reality. And first and foremost, the most popular object of discussion was undoubtedly occupied by Eric, the 'Pandora star'. After all, Eric started from scratch as an ordinary high school student and became a media tycoon with a net worth of tens of billions of dollars in just six years. This miraculous life experience is unique in the entire human history.

Countless media then began to dig out the factors that fit Eric's "characteristics" of aliens with great interest, and even Eric's more playful personality became an "alien" in the gossip tabloids in an attempt to carry out racial invasion. There is even a request to the White House to investigate the identity of Eric's 'alien', and there is no shortage of people who make a fuss about Eric's wealth at this time and ask the federal government to really charge Eric' Alien Immigration Administration Tax'. Naturally, these requests will not receive any response.

After the development of the matter, even the always serious "New York Times" couldn't help but join in the fun by publishing commentary articles on important pages: "Eric Williams satisifies gossip lovers from all over the universe with a kind of crazy self-mockery with a high level of skill. ."

A famous film critic in the Washington Post, which Buffett owns, also joked with a line in the film: "I'd pay $4 if I could see Eric Williams get beat up."

What's even more interesting is that after the "Men in Black" peripheral products began to be sold, the most popular ones were not those cool weapon models, nor the various alien figures, but Eric only had less than 30. The pair of sky blue tentacles on the head in the second shot, in addition to a large number of fans buying it for collection or wearing it to attend parties, may be holding the idea of ​​hoping that the child is as good as Eric. Even some parents like to buy a pair of sky blue tentacles as a gift for their children.

However, after the box office explosion of "Men in Black", a series of questions about the sequel also followed.

Although Sony-Columbia Pictures has made a name for itself in the past two years through the release of several films with Firefly, it has been under the poor management of Peter Cooper. The company is still losing money year after year. The original "Mrs & Mrs. Smith" and "Broken Arrow" from Firefly did not cause much turmoil in the division of interests, but the success of "Men in Black" obviously surpassed that of "Mrs. Smith" and "Broken Arrow". And the sequel is undoubtedly more lucrative.

As a result, the division of interests between Columbia and Firefly has attracted the attention of Sony.

Because the film copyright of "Men in Black" was originally owned by Columbia Pictures, but after working with Firefly. Colombia not only lost most of the profits that should have been enjoyed by itself, but also lost 60% of the copyright. Most importantly, according to the original agreement, if the development of the sequel was delayed for a long time for some reason, Columbia even lost the remaining 40% of the copyright. will be lost.

If the development of the sequel goes well, it's okay. Since it chose to sign the contract at the beginning, Sony can only continue to cooperate with Firefly while holding its nose. But after the success of "Men in Black", the film director, the two leading actors, producers and even the original comics companies of "Men in Black" jumped out one after another in an attempt to share enough benefits in the sequel.

Facing this circumstances. Firefly will definitely not compromise. If we can't agree on the distribution of benefits, it's a big deal for everyone to waste. Even if we file a lawsuit, Firefly is not afraid. Anyway, the film company under Firefly is not short of popular movie projects. The list of Firefly’s main schedule films is even three years later, but Columbia Pictures can’t afford it. After Sony bought this company, not only did they find that there was no It can earn a dime of profit, and it has not played a role in promoting its own videotape format. With the advent of the DVD era. If Columbia continues to lose money, the film company will definitely look more and more useless.

And, Sony has come to realize that something is not right, though. The Japanese did not immediately turn their backs on Firefly, but Sony executives kept putting pressure on Peter Cooper, trying to get Peter Cooper to win the company's due interests for Colombia.

Peter Cooper himself also had a premonition that he would not be sitting in this seat for a long time. Of course, he also knew how rotten Columbia had become. After the cooperation with Firefly was terminated, it was impossible to continue to stay in this seat.

but. Because in the second half of the year, there are still two blockbusters "Jumanji" and "Mission Impossible" to be released. Although Peter Cooper himself has made enough profit in recent years, he still hopes to be able to release the two films at the end of the year. According to the award contract signed at the beginning, with the success of these two films, he got the last huge dividend before leaving Colombia.

So, in just a few days, Peter Cooper was almost entangled with several high-level executives of Firefly, and even found Eric, who has been enjoying himself in the Victoria's Secret show studio recently.

Looking at the busy crowd around, especially the slender fitting models, Peter Cooper, who was standing beside a workbench, did not forget to chatter to Eric: "Eric, do you think this is good? We can sign a subsidiary agreement, including the director of "Men in Black" and the two leading actors, and only after the sequel's profit reaches a certain level, can we get dividends. We can completely raise this standard. In this case, if the sequel Once again a great success, even if more benefits are distributed to those main creators, we are still guaranteed to make a profit.”

Eric continued to show off an angel outfit with the designer, ignoring Peter Cooper at all, and said, "Peter, you should know how much Hollywood's salary has risen now. Sony has a lot of money, so I don't mind this, but We natives of Hollywood have to look a little further, right?" (To be continued.)

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