I'm in Hollywood

Chapter 137 - Producer Part 3

Chapter 137 - Producer Part 3

       After a few days with the crew of 《The others》 in England, Jeffrey went back to Los Angeles, then a few days after that, he flew to New York to meet the crew of 《Scent of a Woman》. As for the rest of the Firefly staff, most of them basically followed Eric, only the security men and the employees responsible for processing the daily affairs of the building and the clerks responsible for sending and receiving Mail stayed in the company headquarters. If you ignore the scary earnings from the movies, you will find that the company is no different than the other small independent film companies in Los Angeles.

Although filming 《Running Out of Time》 was a very tedious and complicated process, he didn't encounter too many problems when filming, but it was hard keeping up with the filming schedule.

It was expected that he will be able to officially finish filming around May 15th, so Columbia decided to start a small-scale publicity early, to create some hype for the film and to spread the message.

Since the start of the negotiations with the wealthy Sony consortium, Columbia's market value has jumped up to $3.5 billion.

seeing Columbia stock price rise day by day, the Japanese were going crazy, they weren't expecting this huge acquisition was going to cost them this much money.

The final contract between Sony and Columbia was gonna be signed in September, and even if they succeed in signing the purchase contract, it will take them at least one year to complete handover the company.

As a result, this summer box office results is the last chance time Columbia can push up the stock price.

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Warner had two big productions to be released, namely 《Batman》 and 《Lethal Weapon 2》, but because 《Running Out of Time》 was scheduled to be released on the 7th of July. Warner who initially also prepared to release 《Lethal Weapon 2》 at the start of July, choose to postpone the film release until the end of the year.

In 1987 the first 《Lethal Weapon》 film made more than $60 million at the box office, and because the first film sold well, the cost of the second film has doubled, so to recover the cost, the film had to earn at least $100 million at the box office. Under this pressure, Warner executives didn't want to compete against Eric, Tom Cruise, and Tom Hanks the three superstars, so they took the initiative to delayed 《Lethal Weapon 2》 until the end of the year.

So Columbia became the only film gaint to have two blockbuster films released in this summer file, the second film is 《Ghostbusters 2》, a film that has a huge fan base that was looking forward to seeing the long-awaited sequel. 《Ghostbusters》 was first released in the year 1984, five years in the past, the reason why Columbia suddenly decided to release the film is that they wanted to boost their stock price.

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In late April, Jeffrey finished his tour, and come back to Los Angles, this was the first time they meet each other in close to a month. The first thing they did after greeting each other and some small talk, is going to the conference room to update each other on what happened on their end.

"Eric, do you need to hire a few more people?"

When Jeffrey asked the question, Eric was reading the files brought by Jeffrey, that explains the production progress of 《Scent of a Woman》 and 《The Others》, so without lifting his head, Eric answered: "No, after the completion of 《Scent of a Woman》 and 《The Others》. I'll ask Jonathan and Martin to recommend some of the crew members working with them now to join the fireflies."

"Well, then, what about the TV series, The one you named ...... 《Friends》 was it, the time is getting tight, and Fox executives have been contacting nonstop for the last week. They want to know when you will provide the script, they are even willing to help with the preliminary preparations."

Eric laughed, He had already made it clear to Barry Diller before, that 《friends》 will only be produced by the Fireflies, but FOX still didn't give up on the chance to get a piece of the pie.

That's understandable, After all, this is a sitcom, the production cost is very small, and if you can co-own the copyright with the Fireflies, and the Tv show become successful, then FOX can have a bargaining chip against Eric, and even if the Tv show fails. Then they will only lose a few million dollars.

"Reject their offer, you see, they come looking for you instead of me, because they know I will refuse."

Jeffrey hesitated for a moment, then said: "Eric, you ... you really should think about it."

Eric finally raised his head, and said: "Hmm?"

"You!...... you are independent in everything you do, you won't allow others to partner with you in your films, and you also don't want to allow others to partner with you in this TV series, this won't work in Hollywood. Nowadays, even a lot of small budget movies will have a lot of investors sharing the risk and profits, this is one of the orthodox rules of Hollywood, even the big six movie studios do it. Although the competition between them is fierce, they always cross-share projects between them, so why are you so against it."