Holding a folder in her arms, girl a looks up at her watch and greets her boss who has just finished her meeting with Pixar management.
"You still have a year, John, to work out a revised plan as soon as possible. I'll see it after the new year."
John lassett, who had just been trained, leaned slightly beside Simon and said, "I promise, Simon, I'll do it as soon as possible."
Simon's face is still cold and John lassett said, straight to a girl, asked: "next?"
"We've all arrived for the movie meeting of ghost of terror."
Simon nodded and walked out quickly. Girl a quickly followed.
Returning from the east coast, Simon has spent the last few days sorting out the film projects of Denise entertainment in the next two years. What he just discussed with Pixar team is another Pixar 3D animated film "the insect agents", which will be released at the end of next year.
Compared with "Toy Story", "Nemo" and other films, "insect agents" in Pixar Animation Series, whether it is word-of-mouth or box office, is a low one.
As for why, there are many questions.
The most important one, in Simon's view, is that the main line of the story is the love between two ants. The hero, felick, out of love for Princess Yating, rises up against the grasshopper army, and finally a lover gets married. This theme is too adult and not suitable for young and old people. In addition, this is not a real fairy tale of the prince and princess, which makes it difficult for people to have a sense of substitution. Therefore, a seemingly insignificant problem has largely caused the low ebb of "insect agents" in the Pixar Animation Series.
Let's look at the rest, toy story. The core is friendship, suitable for all ages. Undersea story, which has set a box office record, focuses on family affection, which is more suitable for young and old people. In addition, Simon, a big butterfly, has changed from 2D to 3D and still created a box office miracle. Although the story is taken from vengeance of the prince, the core is growth, which is still suitable for all ages.
The simple truth is: on the premise of ensuring the quality, the wider the audience, the higher the box office.
Simon raised this question at the beginning of the project, but the Pixar team obviously did not strictly implement it. After all, under the continuous success, anyone would inevitably be impetuous. Therefore, at the meeting just now, Simon was rarely angry and forced the Pixar team to modify it, playing down the love line between Felix and Princess Yating, focusing on friendship and sharing with her It's more pleasant and easier to sell the insect circus around.
After leaving Pixar headquarters and returning to a screening room on the third floor of the administrative district, the directors of "ghost of terror" such as Peter Jackson, actor Ben Stiller and heroine MIA Sara have all arrived. In addition, there are several new world film executives responsible for project distribution, such as Denny Morris.
I'll take a seat soon.
Simon goes to the best position in the middle of the second row and takes a note from the female assistant who sits on the left. He just glances at it and feels the faint fragrance of a strange woman on the right. He turns to see MIA Sara, the heroine of the ghost of terror, sitting beside him. When he meets Simon, she has a golden age Hong Kong actress temperament, which is very in line with the Oriental aesthetic "Mr. westrow, can I sit here?" she said
Simon just nodded slightly, his eyes fell back on the memo that introduced the general situation of ghost of terror, and quickly read the information.
The light in the projection room soon dimmed and the screen lit up.
Peter Jackson's first draft of "ghost of terror" tells the story of frank, who accidentally obtains psychic ability, colludes with ghost friends to defraud money, and finally meets the murders of evil spirits, and justice defeats evil.
In Simon's opinion, the original script was extremely bad.
Generally speaking, there is a big defect in Western ghost movies, that is, the lack of a mature mode of human fighting against ghosts, which also leads to many horror movie protagonists beating ghosts only by chance, or a lot of completely unintelligible routines, and even the influence of love, which is very far fetched.
Just like the original version of "ghost of terror", the protagonist's first victory over the evil spirit is actually based on the two machine guns that the dead Sheriff conjures up.
Bullshit.
In contrast, Oriental ghost films, especially Hong Kong films, have quite convincing and complete routines, such as glutinous rice, ink fight, spirit charm, dog blood, donkey hoof and so on.
In the wake of the movie universe created by danielis entertainment in recent years, Simon personally intervened and constantly improved a set of westernized exorcism mode, and the effect was very good. As for this "ghost of terror", Simon specially gave Jackson a Hong Kong film "Mr. zombie" at the beginning, so that the other party could watch it several times for inspiration, revise the script again, and perfect the original "ghost of terror", which is neither horror nor comedy, into a qualified commercial film.
Compared with other directors with strong personality, Peter Jackson's biggest advantage is that he is pragmatic, listens to other people's opinions and is willing to cooperate with investors to improve. At last, the script that started shooting deleted a lot of redundant story branches in the original version, and drew a lot of inspiration from Simon's Mr. zombie, which is basically another story.On the big screen.
The film begins with a farce, a castle haunted, the master invited a psychic Frank ghost.
It's enough to make people with a little intelligence feel like a liar. The hero puts on airs in the castle. Finally, he tells the suspicious owner that he's done and gets paid to leave.
As soon as the actor Ben Stiller appeared on the stage, he felt completely different from the original Michael fox. The comedian who was born on "Saturday night live" had a very bad temperament and made people laugh. In contrast, as the hero of the "back to the future" series, Michael fox is more impressed by the youth film Xiaosheng than the comedian.
The perfect casting and the matching story are just the beginning, which makes Simon more certain about the quality of the film.
The movie goes on.
Taking leave of the host's house, Frank drives away from the castle. In the car, two ghosts suddenly sneak out from the back seat and under the car. First, let the audience confirm that there are ghosts in the movie.
However, the two ghosts that people initially thought were trying to attack the evil spirits of the protagonist soon proved that they were only joking with the protagonist. They were friends of the protagonist who had psychic ability. The ghost hunt just now was also a scam of cooperation between the two sides.
Wedge here, the background is basically explained.
The hero is a psychic. He has two ghost friends and makes a living by deceptive ghost hunting. At the same time, from their conversation, the audience also learned that the so-called "haunted" castle just now was not "haunted" on their own initiative, but they did not know what the problem was.
In the process of chatting, the plot suddenly changes.
On the winding dark road at night, one person and two ghosts were busy discussing how to spend the money they just got. Suddenly another car came straight in front of him. Frank ran away in a hurry. At the last sight, he saw a dark shadow rising from the top of the car and disappearing in the direction of the castle manor they had just passed.
Then Frank's car hit a tree trunk on the side of the road.
With a thump, the title of ghost of terror and the following titles appear.
Five minutes of wedge, in addition to the story, Simon is satisfied with the special effects.
In the original version of the ghost of terror, the ghost special effects are very rough, giving people a strong sense of cheap Wumao. This time, it was produced by danielis special effects Australia, which has experienced many blockbusters. The ghost body in the lens is light, and it seems that it may disappear at any time when the wind blows, giving people a sense that this is probably the appearance of the soul after death.
In addition, the special effects company is only doing things after all. Peter Jackson can skillfully apply special effects to this extent. In Simon's opinion, he can safely hand over the Tolkien series to the other party.
Just thinking about these things, a close voice came to my ear: "Mr. westrow, I always want to thank you face to face for giving me this opportunity."
It's MIA Sara, who's at the beginning of the movie.
Simon's thoughts were interrupted, but he just raised his head slightly and motioned to the big screen.
So it was quiet.
The feature begins at a funeral. The deceased is a staff member of the town museum. Although Frank is not responsible, because of what he saw and heard that night, he still attends the funeral and meets the deceased's daughter Lucy, who is played by MIA Sara.
Love at first sight.
In order to get close to Lucy, Frank introduces his career to Lucy, and takes the initiative to disclose that her father may not have died of a heart attack, but was killed by an evil spirit.
Of course, Lucy didn't believe this nonsense, and she had a bad feeling for Frank.
When he meets the girl of true love, frank, who has never been a sideline, decides to investigate the truth of the matter. At the same time, he pursues Lucy. Two ghost friends are also on the side of him, making jokes all over the place.
At the same time, a series of strange deaths similar to Lucy's father's heart attack occurred in the small town.
When the heroine Lucy is bathing in the bathroom on the big screen, frank, who is waiting outside her window for the sake of safety, struggles to see if he should peek. Simon in the screening hall feels that his right thigh has been touched unintentionally, and Mia Sara's voice, which is a bit uneasy and obviously with a different meaning, comes again: "Mr. westrow, How was my performance? "
Simon frowned a little, turned to look at MIA Sara with a flattering face beside him, raised his hand, passed through the girl's long soft hair, grabbed a thin neck and made a little effort.
Mia Sara just instinctively resisted a little, quickly softened down, and bent down along the strength of the man.
The projection hall is a five by five pattern, because the big boss chose the second row, with two beauties sitting on the left and one on the right. Of course, there are two more positions on the edge. No one is not wise enough to go up, but they all sit in the front and back rows.
Denny Morris in the front row is not enough. Several new world film executives in the back row who were lucky enough to participate in the film watching naturally soon found that there was a "missing" person beside the big boss. However, the two executives who happened to be sitting in the third row did not dare to explore at all. On the contrary, they were on pins and needles, worried that the big boss might misunderstand them and have bad luck . Sit for a moment, still feel wrong, so quietly move the body, take the initiative to retreat to a more behind position.The story continues on the big screen.
After some blunders, Lucy finally believes in the existence of the ghost, and doubts the truth of her father's murder, and begins to launch an investigation with Frank. At the same time, because Frank can always appear around the dead, the town sheriff will arrest Frank as a suspect, and the evil spirit also finds out that Frank is pursuing himself and wants to kill the psychic.
So there is another climax of human Ghost War in the small town police station.
After the police station war, the sheriff also stood on Frank's side, and the party got closer and closer to the truth.
Frank realized that the ghost catching tricks he used to cheat people didn't work for evil spirits at all. After a discussion with his ghost friends, he learned that the ghost was afraid of the Holy Cross in the church and holy water used by the priest to baptize the newborn, so he began to prepare "professional" tools.
The story soon came to an end.
The truth is actually in the castle where Frank caught ghosts at the beginning. Barbara, the daughter of the hostess, had already died and was revived through an evil witchcraft. However, in order to maintain the state of the living dead, Barbara had to frequently incarnate in evil spirits and hunt for the souls of the living people for sacrifice in order to maintain her "life.".
This also echoes some of the details in the opening wedge.
Then there was a wonderful final battle, in which justice conquered evil and lovers got married.
At the end of the show, everyone turned to the conference room next door. During this period, girl a quietly left with MIA Sara, and everyone in the room looked as if they had never heard of her.
Simon is much more satisfied with the ghost of terror than with the previously angry "bug story". He only made some changes to the music details, and simply discussed with the new world film team about the issue of next year's Easter season, turning his attention to Peter Jackson and Ben Stiller.
Both of them are filmmakers trained by danielis entertainment.
From the original Batman director assistant to now, eight years later, now that it is certain that Peter Jackson has the ability to control the Lord of the rings series, the project can start naturally.
However, because many projects in 1997 and 1998 have been finalized, the first song of the Lord of the rings will not be released until at least 1999. Simon's initial date is the end of 1999, so Jackson has three years to make this Chinese epic series.
Of course, Simon's plan is still to shoot the trilogy back to back. Considering the huge workload, three years is not a long time.
And then Ben Stiller.
As one of the cores of the once rotten boy Gang, Stiller, with Simon's support, only participated in two projects of danielis entertainment in the second half of this year. He successively took part in Peter Jackson's "ghost of terror" and directed Kim Carey's "cable repairman" as a director.
Next, Simon plans to put the other side in to promote Atlantic City's "hangover.".
As long as next year's "hangover" is a success, even if it is not as good as it used to be, the local box office will break 100 million yuan, and the rotten boy gang will basically take shape, which will be enough to compete with most of the older generation of Hollywood comedians.
Of course, Simon doesn't plan to cooperate with the rotten boy gang for a long time. After all, the later they come, the lower the cost performance of these people will be. Although the box office of the produced films is very secure, most of the profits are shared by the main creators. The studios often just make hard money, which is totally not in line with Simon's idea.
I've talked to them. It's time to get off work.
Peter Jackson and Ben Stiller are leaving now, and Simon and Denny Morris discuss the development progress of New World Pictures' related film projects in the next two years for more than an hour.
If this year is just a buffer, from next year, danielis entertainment will make full use of its strength, and no longer leave too much room for other Hollywood studios. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of big Hollywood studios and form an almost monopolistic pattern in which danielis entertainment dominates Hollywood.