Chapter 216 Substitute Becomes Regular

"James, what's going on with the Black Pearl and the Dreadnought battleship now?"

"The Black Pearl has been refitted, and the Intrepid Shipyard has started production, but they said it will take at least 2 months."

The Black Pearl is the ghost ship of the hero and villain in "Pirate King", and the Dreadnought battleship is the British Royal Navy battleship in "Pirate King". Both of these battleships had to be photographed in real life, so naturally they had to be built one to one, otherwise the effect would not be achieved. Moreover, this boat was used during the filming of the first three films, so I won’t lose anything.

This ship does not require special design by their crew. The Dauntless is a direct copy of the historical British battleship "Victory". If you tell the shipyard, there will be no problem in copying it. The Black Pearl is ready for rent. It was built in Finland in 1948. It is a replica of the 17th-century antique brig "Lady Washington" and can be directly refitted.

Wu Yuchen did the math. When he returned to China, he had already asked someone to go to the shipyard to place the order, which meant that it would be delivered at least a month later. However, the impact is not that big. We can shoot the scenes without the boat first.

Yesterday, Johnny Depp showed a grotesque Captain Jack Sparrow in front of him. Wu Yuchen was actually quite satisfied, but he still proposed some areas for improvement on the spot and told him to go back and re-develop and audition again in three days. once.

Although he had decided that Depp would play this role from the beginning, Wu Yuchen would not immediately decide that it would be him. He would still have to put on a show and audition other people, to endure him and create competitive pressure for him, and then Get better conditions.

It doesn’t mean that Depp’s salary should be lowered. The main thing is that he should sign various illegal clauses in his contract, such as no drugs, no alcohol, etc. These must be agreed in advance and will be given to him later. Save a lot of trouble when shooting.

Today, Wu Yuchen is going to interview for the role of the heroine Elizabeth. Now Wu Yuchen is a veritable director. These girls of the right age all submitted their resumes to the crew of "Pirate King", but in the end only 5 people were selected for Wu Yuchen to choose.

What surprised Wu Yuchen slightly was that he didn't see the name of Keira Nutley, the original actor, on the list at all. He didn't make any move at all. He first looked at the five selected people before talking.

To be honest, among these 5 people, there are many famous actresses.

Drew Barrymore in 1975, Wu Yuchen frowned when he saw it. She is Spielberg's goddaughter. She became a popular child star after starring in "ET" at the age of 6, and then became a notorious delinquent girl after puberty. She became popular again in the past two years.

Wu Yuchen immediately gave her a cross in his heart. First of all, she did not have the temperament of a classical beauty. She was able to advance to this final round, firstly because of her fame, and secondly because of her relationship with Spielberg.

Kristen Dunst was the heroine in "Spider-Man" later. She was also a super child star. She started filming commercials at the age of 3. She worked with many big Hollywood stars such as Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise. Have cooperated. She can wear ancient costumes, but her temperament doesn't fit it, and she's more of a soft type.

Anne Hathaway. When she walked in, Wu Yuchen couldn't help but his eyes lit up. This girl has a pretty body, long breasts and thighs, and glowing white skin. She is really a beauty that fits his aesthetics. It's a pity that Anne Hathaway's own temperament is sweet, and he would not let an actress with a different temperament be the heroine if his head is hot.

Speaking of which, Anne Hathaway is also the least famous and has the least qualifications among the five people who came forward this time. The script for "The Princess Diaries" that will make her famous in the future has already been cut by him. I wonder if this girl can still become popular. Woolen cloth?

The fourth person to come in was Winona Ryder, the popular literary goddess in Hollywood. The temperament can be salty or sweet, fresh, gentle or rebellious, and is recognized by the United States as having a charming classical temperament. Her innocent appearance reveals a bit of disobedience and stubbornness, and her acting skills are much better than those of the previous ones. In terms of image and acting skills, she is really suitable.

However, Wu Yuchen also dumped her right away. Not to mention that she was 28 years old. She and Depp were old lovers. They were in love because of "Edward Scissorhands". Don't let the two of them get together when the time comes. What happened?

And this goddess has an unknown quirk, kleptomania. In 2001, Winona Ryder was caught red-handed stealing $5,500 in clothing from a Beverly Fifth Avenue department store.

Winona didn't steal things because she had no money. How much did this little thing cost?

Hollywood stars, in this circle, sometimes face huge pressure, and many of them have some quirks, and Winona is a kleptomaniac who uses this special way to seek excitement and release the pressure in her heart. Since this incident broke out, Winona's image and reputation among the public have been ruined, and her acting career has plummeted.

Wu Yuchen didn't want to find a heroine by himself. When the movie was being released, such a scandal was exposed.

And this fifth one seems to be quite suitable. Natalie Portman, who debuted as a little girl in "The Killer Isn't Too Cold", has a stubborn temperament, and her costume styling is no problem. She played the queen in "Star Wars Episode 1" last year .

But Wu Yuchen asked a question: "Ms. Portman, I heard that "Star Wars Episode II" is also in preparation. How can you ensure that our scenes will not conflict?"

Natalie Portman thought for a moment and said, "I will try my best to coordinate my schedule with Mr. Lucas."

Wu Yuchen smiled and shook his head: "I want an actress who is wholehearted and can always follow the team."

Natalie Portman left disappointed. Although Wu Yuchen and the 140 million investment "Pirate King" are very tempting, it is impossible for her to give up "Star Wars Prequel" for this. Not to mention the contract signed with the Star Wars crew, the influence of both parties is incomparable.

Star Wars is the favorite of people here in the United States, but what about pirate themes? That is a box-office poisonous subject, full of risks and unknowns. Even if Wu Yuchen, who has won consecutive battles, is to direct, it cannot significantly change the outside world's views.

After finishing interviewing these five actresses, Wu Yuchen rubbed his eyebrows, and then asked James next to him: "Why is there not a single British rose in the final list? Elizabeth is a classic British beauty."

"Wu, those famous British roses are not very suitable. Catherine Zeta-Jones is 30 years old and is pregnant."

This is the actress who starred in "The Mask of Zorro" and "The Trap". She is now married to Douglas, an old actor who is 25 years older than her.

"Kate Winslet is now somewhat resistant to large-scale commercial productions, and her current figure is hard to describe..."

The heroine of "Titanic", her shredded flesh turns into a human shield, and her fat and warm figure management has always been a problem.

"Rachel Weisz is already the heroine of the 'Mummy' series, and to be our heroine again will make the audience feel confused."

"Kate Beckinsale filming Pearl Harbor..."

Wu Yuchen frowned when he heard "Pearl Harbor". This is the biggest production made by his current enemy Disney this year, and it is said to be an epic blockbuster to rival "Titanic". He is also his enemy in next year's "Pirate King"!

Wu Yuchen waved his hand directly. He didn't want to bother any more and asked directly:

"The actress who was Natalie Portman's stunt double in "Star Wars Episode 1", come here to me."

James thought for a moment and said, "Are you talking about the actress who plays Sabei? I'll contact you right away."

When he came back a moment later, he said hesitantly: "Wu, I have contacted her agent and she will arrive tomorrow. But are you sure you want to find this girl? She is only 15 years old."

Wu Yuchen couldn't help but slap his forehead when he heard this. He was so confused that he ignored the factor of age. He also wondered why Keira Knightley didn't get in for the interview, and now he discovered that she might not have even signed up, because when the crew was recruiting, they were looking for actresses over 16 years old.

Wu Yuchen quickly took over the remaining pile of submitted resumes and looked through them one by one. If the guaranteed option of Keira Knightley was gone, then he would have to quickly find a new heroine candidate!

…

Keira Knightley has dreamed of being an actress since she was a child, and she also overcame dyslexia for this. The opportunity to change her destiny as an actor was not due to the good conditions of her family, but because she looked similar to Natalie Portman. , after putting on makeup, even their mothers couldn’t tell who was who, so 12-year-old Keira was able to join the big production of "Star Wars Episode I" as the heroine's stand-in, and gained a lot of attention.

But she doesn't like Natalie Portman. It's very simple. No one wants to be someone else's stand-in. When fans come to her calling Natalie Portman's name and ask for autographs and photos, God knows what she has in mind. How unhappy!

Today, when she received a call from her agent, Keira was extremely excited. The great director Wu Yuchen took the initiative to call her, so she directly bought a ticket for the day and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Los Angeles in 12 hours.

But Kayla didn’t expect that the scene after she saw Wu Yuchen would be like this:

"Kayla, how tall are you?"

"Mr. Director, 168, height with bare feet!"

Just for this question, Wu Yuchen made an OK gesture: "Go and sign the contract."

"What?" Keira was confused and didn't respond.

"I said you got the role of Elizabeth, go and sign the contract, the salary is 200,000, and you will be with the whole process. Can you do it?"

Kayla opened her mouth in shock: "I got the role?! But, I haven't done anything yet..."

However, Kayla's agent responded quickly enough. She pulled Kayla and bowed repeatedly to thank Wu Yuchen: "Thank you Director Wu for your appreciation. Don't worry, Kayla can meet all the requirements. She is a very hard-working girl!"

After a while, Kayla walked out of the room and felt like she was in a dream. She dragged her agent and kept shouting "Oh my God!" "God!" and the like.

In the room, Wu Yuchen also breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, this girl has developed early. She has already grown up at the age of 15, and her height is the same as when she acted in her previous life. As for her figure, Keira Knightley is already an airport, and given 15 more years she will still be right.

(Keira, 15)

Keira is the best to play. The risks and uncertainties of the heroine are much smaller. Let this girl join the group as soon as possible and learn the etiquette of aristocratic ladies from the teacher. Like Hugh Jackman, he has already practiced fencing for a long time for the fighting scenes in the movie.

…

A few days later, when Depp came over to perform again, Wu Yuchen couldn't help but ask:

"Hey Johnny, your teeth..."

Depp opened his mouth directly and pointed to the four shining gold teeth in his mouth:

"That's right, I just went to the dentist to get them inserted. One is 14K gold, one is 18K gold, one is 22K gold, and one is platinum. Isn't it cool?"

Wu Yuchen has a lot of good impressions of Depp's move. It seems that this guy is really interested in the role of Captain Jack Sparrow, and now he is almost in the mood.

In the office, Depp's agent looked at the contract in his hand, which showed a salary of US$8 million. He is very satisfied with this figure. This is the highest salary Depp has received so far. Depp's previous highest salary was only 5 million.

The reason why Wu Yuchen is willing to pay more is naturally because the filming cycle of "Pirate King" is relatively long this time, which may last as long as half a year.

The agent looked at the illegal clauses in the contract again and couldn't help but said to Wu Yuchen: "Director Wu, Johnny has already stayed away from these things!"

Wu Yuchen did not speak. The producer James next to him said: "We are a 140 million large-scale production, and we must reduce risks to a minimum. With all due respect, Depp's criminal record, we must list these terms."

As a bohemian and unruly young man, it was commonplace for Depp to take drugs. The turning point occurred in 1993 when River Phoenix, the brightest actor of the younger generation, Leonardo DiCaprio’s idol and Depp’s good friend , died of drug addiction in Depp's private bar.

This had a great impact on several people in their small circle, such as Depp, Keanu Reeves and others, and it was rumored that Depp began to quit.

However, because he has such a disgraceful past, he must be careful when using it, and there must be certain violations of the contract.

Depp's agent didn't say anything anymore, and then asked: "What is the limit on alcoholism? What if Depp needs to drink to get in shape during the filming of the movie?"

Wu Yuchen smiled and said: "The right to interpret is mine. When he needs to drink, I will let go of the ban. Don't worry, this is a 140 million big production. I will not deliberately target any actor. No one will argue with me." The future is difficult.”

The agent nodded: "Depp will sign the contract and join the team tomorrow. Director Wu, you will make a better work than "The Sixth Sense", right?"

Wu Yuchen said with a smile: ""Pirate King" will be the best pirate series movie!"

The three protagonists, Depp, Keira and Uncle Wolf, all entered the training camp, which mainly focused on practicing swordsmanship. Keira also had an etiquette class for noble ladies, which didn't take long, two weeks.

Wu Yuchen, on the other hand, is busy with the preparation work of the crew every day. For example, he has to constantly talk to the props team about the various things he will use in filming, and he has to keep talking to the special effects team of Industrial Light and Magic about which scenes he will use special effects. , what effect is achieved. These require a lot of preparation work and must be explained in advance.

For this reason, he even declined to attend the premiere of "Gladiator", the big production just released by DreamWorks. However, he had also heard that the premiere of "Gladiator" was very successful. Film critics and the media gave it high praise, and the response from the audience was also very good. Wu Yuchen naturally knew that "Gladiator" would be a movie with both box office and word-of-mouth success, and he also called Spielberg and related personnel to congratulate him.

However, there were some things that no matter how busy he was, he still had to find time to run around.

417 Fifth Avenue, New York, Marvel Comics Headquarters.

A silver-haired but energetic old man was accompanying Wu Yuchen and introducing him to the heroes hanging on the wall. It was none other than Stan Lee, the father of Marvel.

"I first came up with the idea of ​​creating Spider-Man when I saw a fly lying on the wall, so I thought to myself: How cool would it be if I could create a hero that could crawl! At that moment, I thought of a lot of names, like Fly Man, Mosquito Man, etc., but my colleagues said they would all be killed by spiders. And then, Peter Parker was born!”

Wu Yuchen listened with great interest, but he was cursing in his heart: "What a pity, the copyright of Little Spider has been sold by Marvel two years ago. This is Marvel's fattest piece of meat!"

After Stan Lee finished speaking, he suddenly stopped, and then asked Wu Yuchen: "Wu, will you buy Marvel?"

Ever since a business team came to Marvel to start business negotiations a month ago, the entire company knew that someone was interested in Marvel, and later it was reported that the person who wanted to acquire Marvel was the current front-line person in Hollywood. Great director Wu Yuchen!

This immediately stirred up the minds of people within Marvel. Ever since the box office success of their Marvel superhero movie adaptation "Blade" in 1998, Marvel has started thinking about adapting its superheroes into movies. It's a pity that Marvel's strength is so bad. They were bankrupted by various financial methods of their previous boss, and they also owed a lot of debt. They had no money to make movies, so they had to sell their superheroes everywhere. Maintain the company's operations.

And now, if the great director Wu Yuchen can become the new boss, then their Marvel film and television path will definitely usher in leaps and bounds. Not to mention anything else, if Wu Yuchen is willing to direct it himself, then funding will not be a problem at all. Banks are willing to provide loans for them to shoot!

Therefore, many people within Marvel are actually full of expectations for this acquisition. Stan Lee's current question raises the sentiments of many people within Marvel.

Wu Yuchen smiled: "I also hope to see these Marvel superheroes appear on the big screen, but the decision is not mine at the moment."

He wanted to buy it, but he had to be willing to sell it. His attitude is that he hopes that Marvel will also cooperate with his actions. Marvel does not completely obey its own bosses. Their board of directors kicked out the previous boss.

Looking at Wu Yuchen's back walking upstairs, Stan Lee sighed. He still remembered that a few years ago, he also accompanied Michael Jackson to visit. He also wanted to buy Marvel and play Spider-Man himself, but unfortunately nothing happened in the end. He hoped there would be a different result this time!

In the office, a middle-aged Jew wearing a suit smiled and said to Wu Yuchen:

"Wu, come and try some authentic Blue Mountain coffee~"

"Thank you, Ike, it tastes great, just like the feeling Marvel gave me~"

Ike Perlmutter, now the largest shareholder of Marvel, was moved when he heard this, and then smiled at Wu Yuchen and asked: "Wu, are you also a fan of Marvel?"

Wu Yuchen stirred the coffee in his hand and smiled: "I can't talk about fans. It's just that I saw Marvel comics when I was bored during the filming, which made me a little interested."

"Are you interested in Marvel's superhero movie adaptations?"

Then he continued: "If you are willing to make a superhero movie for Marvel, I can give you 5% of Marvel shares for free, how about it?

Wu Yuchen took a look at the middle-aged Jew in front of him. He was quite smart, but it was a pity that 5% of the shares were far from satisfying his appetite!

Now that Director Wu is paid 20 million for a movie, how much is this 5% of Marvel shares worth?

Wu Yuchen shook his head when he heard this: "Mr. Ike, I'm sorry to tell you that I have no plans to make a superhero movie within five years. Moreover, my favorite is Spider-Man, but it's a pity that I heard that it has been sold by you." ”

Ike Perlmutter sighed after hearing this. It seemed that the other party would not work for him. 5% of the shares was already the biggest temptation he could give. Any more would feel like a loss.

Regarding the Spider-Man mentioned by Justin Wu, he shrugged and said: "There is no way, Marvel has to survive."

Last year, Marvel had no choice but to approach various studios to sell its own superheroes. In the end, only Sony was interested. At that time, Marvel proposed to package the rights to a series of characters such as Thor, Ant-Man, Spider-Man and Iron Man and sell them to Sony Pictures for $25 million.

But in the end, Sony was only interested in Spider-Man and purchased "Spider-Man" for US$7 million. It didn't want anything else. I really don't know whether to say this was the most correct decision Sony made or the one it regrets the most.

This may seem ridiculous more than ten years later. Everyone is used to the global box office of Marvel heroes frequently exceeding US$500 million and exceeding US$1 billion. However, nowadays, these copyrights are really not popular at all.

Conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that superhero movies only work if they involve big-name stars. The box-office success of movies is not due to superheroes, but to big-name stars. And except for super popular heroes like Spider-Man, other heroes really have no value.

Wu Yuchen said with a smile: "Ike, 120 million yuan to acquire your equity is a very fair price. You have made 20 million yuan in just one year since you bought the shares. It is a very cost-effective deal."