Chapter 775 TV Drama Spring File
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Compared with the lively Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood in January, Eric is most concerned about the Sundance Film Festival, which has been booming in recent years.
David Fincher's debut film, The Seven Deadly Sins, made its first public appearance at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the film's promotional efforts ahead of its Easter release.
Brad Pitt is still continuing the role of Agent Mueller in the "X-Files". The actor selected by the crew is Matthew McConaughey, who has begun to emerge in recent years. Eric doesn't like this guy too much. The actor always felt that his face was too frivolous, but this image happened to fit the youthful and irritable character of David Smith, the hero of "Seven Deadly Sins", so it was finally determined. Except for Matthew McKenna and Diane Kruger, who was shoved into the cast by Eric, the other two supporting actors, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, have not changed.
Compared with those murderous films that hack and slash all the way to the end and even make the audience feel aesthetically fatigued, the exquisite and shocking crime plot setting of "Seven Deadly Sins" has pushed the theme of this film to an unprecedented height. The three male characters, either impetuous or calm or crazy, also impressed the media and film critics, and the film immediately aroused strong reactions after its launch at the Sundance Film Festival.
“…Most serial crime movies end up with a Sherlock Holmes character who solves everything. The Seven Deadly Sins, where criminals show themselves up and go on to do crazy things, is definitely subversive. , the film's resolution is staggering, always in the gloomy city where it rains, also giving it a gothic dark religious vibe, which implicitly echoes the religious theme of the 'Seven Deadly Sins'."
"…Compared to the messy and mediocre Alien 3, The Seven Deadly Sins is definitely a reinvented work from director David Fincher."
"…Kevin Spacey's incisive performance in his brief appearance of turning a genius, indifferent and crazy ****** into a murderous maniac makes people reminiscent of Anthony in Silence of the Lambs. · Hopkins' performance. Matthew McConaughey and Morgan Morgan Freeman also contributed very good performances. In addition, although many people are not satisfied with the frequent smearing of Victoria's Secret supermodels into Hollywood, but Diane Kruger's performance this time has also reached the pass line, and we can't ask too much from this group of beautiful babies with delicate faces and devilish bodies, can we?"
Although there is no lack of criticism for any film, the praise received by "Seven Deadly Sins" far outweighed the few negative comments in the media, and the topic of the film quickly spread from Christmas to the whole of North America.
Although the Sundance Film Festival aims to support independent films, after years of development, in order to survive better, it has also begun to compromise with several major Hollywood filmmakers.
Among the 17 best-nominated feature films for the Jury Prize, more than one-third of the films from the Big Seven or their subsidiaries,
"Seven Deadly Sins" was nominated without any suspense, and under the operation of the new line, it successfully won the Jury Prize, which made a good start for the promotion of the film.
As January passed, the holiday atmosphere gradually disappeared, people's life began to become formal, and the film market also fell into the deserted period of spring. Hollywood's total weekly box office fell from the highest of 170 million US dollars in the new year to about 60 million. Correspondingly, in February, the spring season of TV dramas began to arrive.
"Seven Deadly Sins" started with the opening of the Sundance Film Festival, and started the April Easter schedule with another action movie "Red Zone" by New Line. At the same time, the ABC TV network, AE TV network, AE TV network, Disney Channel, ESPN and other major TV stations have also begun to launch new spring programs one after another.
Among them, ESPN, which has just signed a $9 billion broadcast rights contract with the National Football League, is the Lifetime TV station under the AE TV network, which specializes in urban elite fashion women.
Before the winter break last year, the two reality shows "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway", which had a huge response on Lifetime TV, both achieved more than 6 million viewership data in their final episodes, "America's Next Top Model". The final viewership of the first season of "The Contest" reached 6.8 million, and the viewership rate was close to 4.0. Compared with most cable channels, this result was simply breathtaking.
With the phenomenon-level viewing trend brought by the two reality shows, Lifetime TV subscribers have soared, from 3,000 in early 1995 to more than 76 million at present. The inevitable price increase of Lifetime TV in the new annual broadcast rights contract has also begun to prepare.
According to industry expectations, Lifetime TV will be able to increase the average subscription fee to more than 25 cents in the negotiation of the new contract, as long as the programs launched by Lifetime TV in the spring can reach the average level of last fall.
With this alone, Lifetime TV will receive more than $200 million in annual subscription revenue from cable operators, which alone exceeds the industry's overall valuation of Lifetime TV at less than $150 million a year ago, and With the popularity of Lifetime shows, the TV station's advertising revenue and the syndicated distribution of hit shows and DVD sales will bring more revenue than pure subscription revenue. Wall Street media industry analysts have even estimated Lifetime TV. The value rose to $1.1 billion.
Although Lifetime viewers don't pay too much attention to the industry data that means too much, their interest in the gathering of Lifetime's two biggest reality TV shows has not diminished.
Although the second season of "America's Next Top Model" will be broadcast until the beginning of March, the TV station's new drama "Wanted City" will also have to wait until the end of February.
But with the arrival of New York Fashion Week, according to the original rules, the first season of "Project Runway" did not completely end, but put the final in New York Fashion Week.
After the winter break, after a series of eliminations, the three remaining contestants will also present their final works in the much-anticipated Bryant Park in Manhattan.
In order to gather more attention, before the broadcast of the final finals, "Project Runway" specially made two special episodes, which were broadcast two weeks before and after New York Fashion Week, because all the popular reality show contestants in the episodes were at the same time. The comeback, although there is no previous competition link, more just a review of last year's program and interviews with players, but the two special programs still achieved more than 500 viewership ratings, which once again showed the media and the industry "Tianqiao" Proud of the strong popularity.
Although Linda invited Eric to appear as a special guest on the finale of Project Runway, Eric had to rush back to Los Angeles after the AOL IPO.
The preliminary budget of "007 Casino Royale" has been released, and the film's worldwide scenes and auditions for some important supporting roles have been launched at the same time, all of which are inseparable from Eric's participation.
At the same time, Firefly, MGM and Fox have also started negotiations on the establishment of a paid cable station.
In the original time and space, HBO almost monopolized 90% of the market share of the premium cable TV stations, and the annual profit was close to 2 billion US dollars at the highest point. This kind of profit scale can be squeezed into the world's top 500 companies even after more than ten years. in the middle. Although other major media companies have tried many times to catch up with HBO's market position, because HBO has formed a market monopoly in various regions early on, coupled with its own excellent operation methods, the market position has always been stable.
In my memory, 20th Century Fox even launched a tender offer to the entire Time Warner Group in order to get an HBO, but of course it failed.
However, at this time, the entire U.S. cable TV market, after a long period of brewing since the 1980s, is just at the beginning of its outbreak. Although HBO is already small and large, it is far less dazzling than it was later. Opportunity to come from behind.
In the early morning of the new week, Eric specially rushed to Playa Vista to have breakfast with Katzenberg in the cafe in the studio, and by the way, discuss the progress of the work in the recent period.
"We have roughly picked a few targets, and the most suitable one is a premium cable station under China Telecom, which currently has about 1.5 million users and mainly broadcasts old movies in the early stages. Although the user base is relatively low, However, with a user base of 40 million remote communication users, as long as enough high-quality video resources can be provided, the growth of subscribers will be very rapid."
Katzenberg reported on the progress of the paid cable station, took a sip of coffee, and continued: "However, telecommunications are not willing to let go of this TV station. They want to keep 20% of the shares. I think if If we finally decide to acquire this TV station, we should be able to reduce the shareholding ratio of telecommunications to 10%, after all, without our content support, this paid cable station of telecommunications cannot be enlarged."
Telecom, Comcast, and Time Warner are the three giants of traditional cable TV operators in this era. In addition, there are more small and medium-sized cable TV operators and emerging satellite TV operators in North America. Even News Corp. All have cable television operations, but the scope of operations is mainly concentrated in Europe and Australia.
In the early 1980s, due to anti-monopoly considerations, these cable TV operators were not allowed to own TV stations, but as media controls became more open, this restriction was gradually broken. After Barry Diller left Fox, the QVC TV shopping channel was run by Telecom and Comcast.
After the new century, the largest cable TV operator in the United States has changed from telecommunications to Comcast. Eric is not quite sure why, but he can roughly guess that telecommunications is either after the burst of the Internet wave. , like many high-tech companies went bankrupt, or it was merged. If it was the latter, the merger should obviously be Comcast.
"Try to strive for it. It's best to press it to 10%. At the same time, we should also strive for more resources in advance for remote communication," Eric said after thinking for a while.
He never thought about monopolizing the TV station from the beginning, maintaining a stake in the operator, and allowing the other party to provide more resources and convenience for the expansion of the TV station. In addition, Katzenberg suggested that Fox be excluded as a partner. In addition, Eric did not take this advice. If it's just North America, of course it's not necessary to bring Fox along, after all, Firefly and MGM have been able to provide enough programming for the TV station.
But in the longer run, the international media channel resources in the hands of News Corporation can help this premium cable station go overseas more easily, just like the Disney Channel in the hands of Firefly, because of the good relationship between Firefly and Fox, in the first two years Carrying the channel resources of Sky Media, it has successfully entered the TV market in Europe and Australia.
At the end of last year, with the popularity of "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway", Firefly has also begun to cooperate with News Corporation on turning Lifetime TV to overseas markets. News Corporation's TV station in Australia has also purchased Under the "Supermodel Contest" Australian version of the production copyright. ,
Even ignoring the relationship between Eric and Elizabeth and pulling Fox into this cooperation will definitely do more good than harm.
After discussing the issue of the paid cable station, the two slowly finished breakfast before Eric handed Katzenberg a prepared document and said, "This is some information about IMAX that I asked Kelly to collect recently. And 3D film and television technology materials, you can take it back and look at it, and you can also make a few copies for Frank and the others."
Katzenberg was a little unfamiliar with the concept of IMAX, but he knew about 3D technology. He took the materials and put them in his hand, and said, "Eric, are you going to make a 3D movie?"
Eric shook his head and said: "I don't have this plan yet, you should look at the information first. According to Firefly's future production strategy, we will take a high-quality production line. Most of these films pay more attention to visual experience. , you can imagine that if we can popularize 3D movie technology into these movies, we can not only improve the competitiveness of the movie itself, but also increase movie ticket prices to a certain extent on the basis of 2D. In recent years, although movie audiences have The scale has been growing, and the world film market is also expanding. But there will always be a day of saturation. At that time, 3D film technology may become a very important entry point for us to maintain continuous performance growth. Oh, the same is true for IMax technology , I don't know if there is an IMAX screen in Los Angeles, you can look for it and experience it first."
Katzenberg listened carefully, nodded solemnly, and said: "I will read the information as soon as possible, and then let the strategic planning department come up with an evaluation." (To be continued.)
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