Chapter 1181: The Brand New Avengers
Returning to Los Angeles, the first thing Eric needs to deal with is the selection of the protagonists of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In recent months, with the success of "Iron Man", plans for the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been fully launched. Among them, the most important job is to select new members of the Avengers.
Since the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe plan was moved forward by ten years, many of the role players that Eric could refer to in memory were no longer suitable.
Of course, there are also some actors who are ready-made. For example, the actor of Thor, Eric identified Brad Pitt a few years ago. After the end of "X-Files", Brad Pitt's development in the film industry was not smooth. The Firefly Group sent out an invitation, and the other party quickly agreed and signed a long-term contract for six films.
In addition, Jeremy Renner, who plays Hawkeye, has also made his debut. Jeremy was born in 1971 and is 28 years old this year. He is also considered suitable in terms of age. Under Eric's instruction, this role was also directly determined.
Others, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and even some outstanding supporting role players are still being selected.
The Firefly Group's plan for the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plan is nine films, spanning from 1999 to 2004, a total of five years.
Among them, the already launched "Iron Man" and "Spider-Man" respectively occupy two places in the nine films. Captain America, Thor and eventually The Avengers take the other three spots. The remaining two films are "Hulk".
In the previous timeline, from "The Incredible Hulk" in 2003 to "The Incredible Hulk" in 2008 can only be described as a failure. There are many reasons for this, such as not choosing the right director, random replacement of actors, protagonist Creative conflict with the director, etc.
Moreover, due to the special role setting of the Hulk, this comic character is indeed more difficult to shoot than all other superheroes. However, as one of Marvel's most popular superheroes, with Hulk's power Value, once filmed well, the Hulk can definitely achieve unexpected success.
However, in Eric's view, although the two big Hulk movies ended in failure, the themes of the two films are very consistent with the Hulk timeline, one tells the origin of the Hulk, and the other tells the story of Bruce Banner's control of the Hulk.
The new Marvel Cinematic Universe will still adopt this timeline setting, and in fact it must adopt this timeline. After the transformation of the original Hulk, he was very violent and completely irrational. Hulk in this state could not join the Avengers at all. Therefore, Bruce Banner's self-control process must be completed through a sequel.
In contrast, "Captain America" only needs to tell one origin, and "Thor" also only needs an opening chapter.
Therefore, according to the plan, excluding the "X-Men" and other series authorized by Marvel, "Hulk" will become the third Avengers to appear on the big screen after "Iron Man" and "Spider-Man". member.
In the previous Avengers series, except for Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr., other superhero characters were not particularly bright except for some passionate brotherhood.
This time, although "Iron Man" was also successful, Eric didn't want to hold up half the sky of the Marvel movie universe like Robert Downey Jr. He wanted to see several other superhero characters can perform better.
Therefore, due to the above reasons, plus the failure of the original version of "Hulk", Eric also pays special attention to this big superhero movie.
In order to allow the new version of "Hulk" to undergo a complete transformation,
Eric directly ruled out Eric Barker, Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo, who have played the Hulk.
Eric Barker's version of the Hulk didn't impress Eric at all. Edward Norton's uncontrollable personality in reality made it difficult for him to accept the settings given by Marvel honestly. It is impossible for the director to have too much right to speak, let alone use an actor like Norton who has extreme control over the script.
As for Mark Ruffalo, due to the success of the previous Avengers series, he is undoubtedly the most widely accepted Hulk player by the audience.
However, the Hulk created by this actor also has no bright spots, which can be seen from the actors' remuneration disclosed in the Avengers series. As one of Marvel's most popular superheroes, Mark Ruffalo's salary as Hulk is lower than that of Jeremy Renner who plays Hawkeye.
There is no doubt that if Mark Ruffalo is used, the Firefly Group will definitely be able to save a lot of money, but suppressing actors' money has never been Eric's fundamental purpose.
Although the Firefly system has always emphasized cost control, in the final analysis it just wants to control the obvious remuneration within a more fair and reasonable range. If the actor of Hulk can single-handedly fight a box office of 1 billion US dollars, Eric will definitely not mind paying a sky-high salary of 20 million US dollars or more. On the contrary, if the Hulk movie failed at the box office, Eric would not be willing to play the protagonist even if it was free or even paid for.
Firefly Studios.
In recent days, Eric has basically been hosting the final round of auditions for the Avengers cast.
Today's audition targets were several candidates for Bruce Banner, and Katzenberg, who happened to be free, also rushed over. Counting Joss Whedon, who has also become the core of the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, today's audition team can be described as "unprecedentedly strong".
Due to the success of "Iron Man" and the importance that the Firefly Group attaches to the Avengers, Hollywood's eligible male stars have basically expressed their interest in the roles of the Avengers series.
However, Eric is not too cold about celebrities who are too famous. He doesn't want a situation like "Invincible Hulk" where the audience sees the Hulk and their first reaction is Edward Norton instead of Bruce Banner.
Therefore, in the process of character selection, the first criterion of the main creative team is whether the actor fits the role, and the requirements for the coffee position are not too high. This also led to the fact that when entering the final round of auditions, several first-line Hollywood actors who were interested in Hulk were all dismissed. Because of this incident, the Hollywood media, which has been paying close attention to the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has been quite lively in recent days.
At dusk, when the last auditionee was sent away, Eric and the others leaned on the chairs a little tiredly.
In fact, not many actors participated in the audition today, only five people who made it to the final stage after going through layers of selection. But starting at nine o'clock in the morning, each of the five candidates auditioned for two hours, so it has been up to now.
Although Eric treats every auditioner equally, after a day of audition, everyone can still clearly feel Eric's personal tendency.
Taking a few sips of coffee from the secretary, Katzenberg, who was sitting next to Eric, didn't immediately mention today's audition, but talked about another topic: "At the reception a few days ago, I met Richard Parsons, he said that Warner Bros. might reboot the Batman franchise first."
Eric flipped through a piece of information in front of him with a relaxed expression, looked at the eye-catching name 'Christian Bale' on the name column, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, and said: "I thought it would be "Superman", now restart "Superman" Batman is not a good time."
With the great success of the opening work of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warner, which has a big gold mine of DC, will naturally not lag behind. Eric originally wanted to secretly control the rhythm of Warner's development of the DC movie universe, so he deliberately dug Nolan out for this reason.
However, due to changes in Hollywood history, Warner neither got "Lord of the Rings" nor developed "Harry Potter". Then, in order to prevent its own film business from declining, it is inevitable to develop DC in advance.
"It's really not a good time. The audience must have not forgotten the 'deep' impression that "Batman and Robin" left on them," Katzenberg gloated, "Warner wants to develop "Superman", but The production copyright of "Superman" is controlled by Jon Peters. Now that "Iron Man" is a big success, and Warner just messed up the reputation of "Batman" two years ago, Jon Peters is naturally waiting for the price. Gu, Warner didn't talk to him, so he could only turn his attention to "Batman" again."
Jon Peters was the partner who worked with Peter Guber to manage Columbia Pictures for Sony a few years ago, but before that, both Peter Guber and Jon Peters had their own production companies and were affiliated with Warner Bros. Brothers, similar in nature to Bruckheimer's production company.
In order to lure these two people back, Sony took a big advantage and paid a huge amount of breach of contract fees for them. Later, it turned out that this person who was taken advantage of was not ordinary. Of course, these are digressions.
Whether it's DC or Marvel, before the 1990s, they didn't pay much attention to the copyright of superhero movies, and there was no strict defense after more than ten years.
Therefore, during the late 1980s when it was affiliated with Warner Bros., Jon Peters' production company got the copyright of Superman's film production and has always held it in its hands.
In the 1990s, with the success of the "Batman" series produced by Warner Bros., the value of superhero copyrights was gradually reflected. However, due to a series of reasons, of course, the main one is the conflict of interests, the "Superman" series of big movies has not been able to start these years.
Due to copyright reasons, it has been unresolved. In my memory, after the live-action Superman movies of the Christopher Reeve series in the 1970s and 1980s, it was not until 2006 that the restarted "Superman Returns" was successfully released. It's been 20 years.
The outside world always talks about the "fate" of Marvel superheroes, but in fact, Clark Kent's fate is actually more rough.
Eric handed over Nolan's "Memory Fragments" project to Columbia at the end of last year. The film has now been filmed. However, because they want to take the word-of-mouth route, Columbia plans to pass the Sundance Film Festival early next year. "Memento" will be released in the subsequent Easter schedule.
In other words, even if Nolan wants to emerge, he needs to wait until next year.
Moreover, there is only one "Memento", which is far from enough for Nolan to pick up the guide to restart the "Batman" series. After all, this fledgling British director may not even be so familiar with the Hollywood production process now, and at least needs to go through one or two more films before he can get in touch with big-budget films.
Although Eric wants to replicate the success of Nolan's "Batman" series, he will not encourage the growth of seedlings.
After thinking about it for a while, Eric said to Katzenberg: "Can you think of a way to coordinate and let Warner start the "Superman" series first, even if it is other superheroes, I have other arrangements for "Batman". "
Katzenberg thought for a while, and said: "Actually, it's very simple to say, if you want to start "Superman", you just need to get Jon Peters."
Eric stroked the actor profile in front of him with his fingertips, and asked, "What is Jon Peters doing now?"
Katzenberg said, "You should know about Wild Wild West, right?"
Only then did Eric remember that Bill Michanik mentioned to him last time that Jon Peters is leading Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld to create a retro science fiction film "Wild Storm". The film completely imitates the "Men in Black" model. Eric was quite shy when he heard this incident, and then asked Bill Michanik to push the box office dud of Baige Wu's "Windtalker" to Warner Bros.
Obviously, although there was no agreement on "Superman", this did not hinder the cooperation between Jon Peters and Warner.
He smiled helplessly, because Joss Whedon and the others were present, and Eric didn't say much, but said: "Take some time to pay attention, it would be best if you can intervene, on the surface we can't interfere too much Many."
Katzenberg nodded knowingly.
The power of the Firefly system in Hollywood is already huge enough, and AOL-Time Warner obviously wants to get rid of the label of a member of the Firefly system. Therefore, both parties instinctively kept a low profile regarding the fact that Firefly Investment became the second largest shareholder of AOL-Time Warner Group again unknowingly. Even, on the surface, the two sides still give people a sense of opposition.
Of course, AOL-Time Warner really wanted to compete with the Firefly system, but the Firefly system only made some gestures on purpose. Eric never took the loose AOL-Time Warner group too seriously. .
After chatting for a few words, Katzenberg gestured to the actor profile in front of Eric and asked, "So, Christian Bale or Jim Caviezel, which one do you prefer?"
Christian Bale, needless to say, was once the leading actor in Nolan's "Batman" trilogy. Jim Caviezel, once known as John Rhys in "Person of Interest", was later nicknamed the Fourth Uncle by fans of American dramas in China.
Eric hopes that the brand-new Hulk actor will be more like a polite university professor before he transforms, rather than Mark Ruffalo's honesty or Edward Norton's evil spirit. Speaking of it, the image of Eric Barker in the first version is also very suitable, but the performance of the other party really does not leave much impression on people.
Among the last five candidates, according to some information in memory and the specific results of the audition, Eric is more satisfied with Christian Bale and Jim Caviezel.