Chapter 934 Acquisition of IMAX

For more than a month, the management of Firefly Group has drawn up a detailed 'reald' plan and a timetable for the advancement of the '4200' plan. burning book library

The launch date of "Iron Man" is set in March next year, and the shooting cycle is three months.

In the first half of the year, the filming of "Iron Man" will be completed, and the preliminary preparations for "Gravity" will also be ready. Eric can invest in the production of "Gravity" in the second half of the year, from the start of filming to the final 3D and ima version. , a year and a half is enough.

Therefore, the time for the final completion of the two plans was determined at the end of 1999.

Moreover, not only "Gravity", but also the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which has been cast, is also determined to start shooting early next year.

Because the trilogy was filmed back-to-back, the shooting cycle was as long as one year, and after another year of post-production, the schedule of the first "The Lord of the Rings" in the trilogy will also be determined at the end of 1999. The "Lord of the Rings" series is like this Eric's epic fantasy masterpiece is obviously also suitable for 3D and ima screens that pursue visual experience, and Eric will naturally not let it go.

"Gravity" plus the first film of "The Lord of the Rings" can guarantee that 4,000 3D screens and 200 ima theaters will have two heavyweight blockbusters by then.

As for Cameron's "Spider-Man", although according to the plan, this film will also be completed by the end of 1999, but the Firefly Group from top to bottom has no expectations for Cameron to complete the film as planned, and Eric also Just didn't put this movie in the plan, and planned to let Cameron toss.

However, according to the planned timetable, as Marvel's first superhero movie, "Iron Man", whose schedule is determined to be in the summer of 1999, can only be excluded from the list of the first batch of 3d-ima movies. Fox is responsible for the distribution of the first "Star Wars" and the next three MGM movie universe blockbusters, also unable to catch up with the first wave of 3d-ima trend.

In this regard, Eric can only express regret, after all, many things cannot be done overnight.

Eric returned to Los Angeles, and Katzenberg has completed the first of two plans to acquire ima in Canada.

In 1994, Wall Street investor Richard Gelfford, because he was optimistic about the prospects of ima, overwhelmed his entire net worth to obtain a controlling stake in ima company, and made every effort to promote the commercialization of ima technology in theaters.

However, due to the lack of support from Hollywood studios and several major theater chains in North America, Richard Gelfford's plan has hardly made any progress, and ima technology is still limited to various museums for the screening of scientific and educational films. Eric asked the company to invest a sum of money in ima for the research and development of dmr technology for converting ordinary movies into ima movies. Although ima company saw a glimmer of light, it did not substantially improve the company's performance. .

Before Firefly launched the acquisition, ima can be said to be heavily in debt. The entire company's market value on the Nasdaq market was less than $200 million, but it owed a huge debt of $150 million, including the original loan from Firefly. $30 million.

Since Eric intends to bet on ima, Firefly will naturally not hand over the dividends brought by the promotion of ima technology in the future. At the same time, the company does not want to be controlled by others in the process of promoting ima technology. Therefore, the management agrees that this company should be The company bought it, but it was less than $500 million, and Eric would naturally not object.

After several years of hard work, the ima company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Although Richard Geulford felt that the acquisition of the Firefly Group would bring earth-shaking changes to the company, he did not hold it tightly. .

After several weeks of negotiations, Firefly finally won the company at the cost of paying $230 million in cash and taking on ima's $150 million in debt, since $30 million of the $150 million in debt was originally from Firefly.

The actual total value of the deal is only $350 million.

Playa Vista.

While plans for the Firefly Studios expansion have yet to officially begin, workers on the site west of Lincoln Avenue have already started a simple cleanup.

After many revisions, the dream engineer team responsible for the construction of the theme park finally came up with a satisfactory air corridor design.

The entire air corridor will be four kilometers long and 20 meters high, which is roughly equivalent to a seven-story building. The entire corridor will be constructed entirely of steel and glass, so that people who see the air corridor do not think of buildings such as reinforced concrete viaducts. Although the height of 20 meters will be easily compared by many buildings in other metropolises, but in the vicinity of Playa Vista, where the height of housing generally does not exceed three stories, once this corridor is completed, it will undoubtedly be the longest corridor within a radius of dozens of kilometers. A striking landmark.

"At a conservative $50 million, this would definitely be the most expensive building in the entire studio, but I think anyone who has seen the renderings will find the $50 million worth it. Going up this air corridor, the sea to the west, Fox Mountain to the east, Los Angeles Airport to the south, and Santa Monica to the north, you will have a complete view."

On the still rough wasteland, Katzenberg walked side by side with Eric, and at the same time excitedly talked about the expansion plan of the theme park.

Eric looked at the surrounding open land waiting to be developed, and imagined that it would be built into a Firefly Studios theme park in the future. He suddenly understood why Michael Eisner would make Disneyland Paris with a budget of $1 billion step by step. to $5 billion. Eric has never been a very happy person, but listening to Katzenberg talking about the expansion plan of the Firefly Studios theme park, he couldn't help but want to build the scene depicted by the other party.

At present, the area of ​​this land is less than one-tenth of the 2,000 hectares of Disneyland Paris. However, just one air corridor will cost 50 million US dollars. After the entire studio is built, the total cost will definitely not be less than 1 billion. Dollar.

Firefly Studios theme park, 'reald' and '4200' plans, ima that has just been acquired, and Hasbro, which is planned to be completely taken over... Although I have been thinking about slowing down the pace of Firefly Group's expansion, I don't know why In my opinion, the company is still growing rapidly.

Kicking a pebble away at random, Eric said: "Jeffrey, I have no opinion on the design of the attractions for the themes of "Jurassic Park" and "Elderly Street". However, Peter Jackson for " You should have seen the set design of the Lord of the Rings series, I am very optimistic about this project, so I hope there must be enough space here to build the theme of the Lord of the Rings series.”

"Of course, the design of the bag-end-hole is also very interesting to me," Katzenberg nodded and said, "Speaking of this, didn't you intend for Miss Kidman to play the elf queen Galadriel? We don't know how to talk to her about this while you're away."

"Well, I've already discussed it with Nicole. You can just ask someone to sign a film contract with her, and the remuneration will be calculated at $3 million."

Katzenberg asked uncertainly, "Three 3 million?"

"Yeah," Eric nodded.

For Nicole's current coffee position, 3 million starred in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is indeed a bit shabby. However, her role in the role was similar to that of a cameo, and her salary of $3 million was actually the highest among all actors.

Eric was chatting with Katzenberg when one of Katzenberg's assistants hurried over and said, "Mr. Williams, Mr. Katzenberg, the representative of Deyi has arrived, and I have already sent someone to bring They went to install the equipment."

During this time, management has been considering how to reasonably reduce the budget for the implementation of the two programs. A large part of the $1.6 billion budget will be the cost of updating the reald movie projection system. Coincidentally, Texas Instruments was looking for commercial possibilities for its just-developed digital projector, and Katzenberg arranged the demo.

After hearing what Katzenberg's assistant said, the two walked towards the studio to the east together.

"I have already read the information, although the resolution of the digital projector prototype developed by Texas Instruments can only reach 1280*1024, but given them two years, I think they have developed a resolution equivalent to the 1920*1080 film projector. The equipment is not too difficult." The two walked back together, and Katzenberg first spoke of his views.

"Jeffrey, have you ever thought that if we use digital projectors, we might be boycotted by the entire industry?"

Hollywood is just North America, and the industry chain around movie copying reaches billions of dollars every year. It spreads all over the world, and this number will be even greater.

Katzenberg heard Eric's question, but there was some ridicule in his tone: "I still remember those words you said at the irelyer player conference at the beginning of the year."

Eric shrugged and smiled: "Okay, but I just don't think it's the time to promote digital projectors."

Eric has seen the information on the digital projector developed by Texas Instruments. Strictly speaking, Texas Instruments has only developed the most core dlp (digital light processing) technology, which can convert digital signals into projector light signals. In my memory, many later digital projectors or office projectors used dlp chips from Texas Instruments.

However, like today's digital cameras, Eric is not too optimistic about digital projectors.

Both technologies are in the early stage of development, which means that even if the digital camera or the digital projector achieves the corresponding resolution, it is definitely far from comparable to the film in terms of color reproduction of the film image. Film uses a chemical method to record color. Even if the color reduction degree of this method cannot reach the level of biological eyeballs, it is far more than the immature digital technology.

To give a simple example, in a relatively dim lighting environment, the film can still record various things in a dim environment very sensitively, but due to the limited range of color recognition of current digital cameras, when a certain color cannot be 100% restored, It will automatically make up for it with similar peripheral colors. Therefore, the dark part of the picture shot by the digital camera is often a dark piece, but the film picture will be much clearer.

Therefore, Eric feels that it is more appropriate to wait at least another ten years to promote the technology of digital cameras and digital projectors. In fact, digital movies in memory did gradually become popular ten years later.

Katzenberg obviously did a lot of homework. Hearing Eric say this, he nodded slightly and said, "I actually feel the same way, but, in general, you must know that if we can really use digital projection equipment, we will In the future, if you release a movie, you can save millions of dollars just from the cost of the copy, especially the double-camera 3D copy and the ima copy, which can save even more money.”

"But some money can't be saved," Eric sighed regretfully.

Speaking of which, after the implementation of the two plans, at least in the next ten years, since film will still be used, the cost of copying will definitely be an important factor restricting the conversion of many films into 3D and ima. A film copy costs twice as much.

However, this actually has an advantage. The high conversion cost can avoid the appearance of too many inferior 3D movies. This is exactly what Eric is most worried about in the process of 3D promotion. Eric never thought of being able to monopolize the 3D market for too long, and once 3D movies are popularized in advance, there are not many movie companies that can keep their integrity for the sake of profit.

Texas Instruments obviously took this demonstration very seriously, and the vice president in charge of dlp technology research and development came over in person.

Although Eric and Katzenberg knew in their hearts that the two projects in their hands were unlikely to use digital projection equipment for the time being, they still watched the entire demonstration seriously. As Eric imagined, although the resolution of 1280*1024 is not bad, in terms of film color, the digital projection prototype developed by Texas Instruments is undoubtedly full of too much room for improvement.

After watching the demo, I discussed some technical details with the vice president of Texas Instruments, and it was time to get off work soon.

Today is November 20th, and Eric did not return to Jiaojiao Manor after get off work, but rushed to the Chinese Theater in Hollywood with Katzenberg. Because the first film "Monsters, Inc." produced by Disney's animation studio after the digital transformation will have its premiere today at the China Grand Theater, and tomorrow will be the official release time.

Although it was only an animated movie, when Eric and Katzenberg arrived at the premiere together, there were already crowds in front of the Chinese Grand Theater.

Katzenberg is in charge of the Disney Animation Studio himself. After the success of the summer “The Lion King 2” and “Finding Nemo”, Katzenberg is looking forward to this movie from Disney Animation Studio. For apprehension. Many people are also waiting with mixed feelings about what kind of results the brand-new Disney animation studio will produce. (To be continued.)