Chapter 538 Cooperation

After receiving the child, apart from a few hours of boxing training every day, the rest of the time is spent at home taking care of the child.

With her sister and brother around, little Margarita has more fun, running around behind Alexander and Cynthia every day.

Sometimes little Annie, Selena and Tiffany would come to play, and the villa on the hillside became a paradise for children of all ages, and they could play from morning to night every day.

"World War Z" was released for four weeks, and the North American box office reached 200 million US dollars, and the global box office exceeded 500 million.

"Now You See Me", which was released to the end of its release, had a North American box office of 120 million, and the global box office officially exceeded 350 million.

In addition to the large amount of product placement income in the movie, Lionsgate's profit on this movie exceeded 150 million US dollars.

Also this week, another high-quality comedy movie "The Hot Cop" was released by Lionsgate.

The movie was directed by Paul Feig, the director of "Bridesmaids", and tells the story of female agent Sarah and the hot-tempered female police officer Shannon teaming up to hunt down a Russian drug cartel.

The two leading actresses are Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.

Sandra Bullock is an Oscar winner and a top actress in the industry, while Melissa is an actress who became famous for "Bridesmaids". In the first half of the year, "Identity Thief" starring her made 160 million US dollars at the North American box office. She also became famous for this movie.

Both of them have a high box office appeal in the North American film market.

Originally, this movie was scheduled to be released in March, but when it was screened internally, everyone gave it a good review, so the distribution department postponed the release of the film to the summer season to strive for better box office results.

The box office data of "The Hot Cop" is also worthy of the special arrangement of the distribution department.

It earned 39.11 million US dollars in 3,181 theaters in the first three days of its premiere.

On the 15th day of its release, the North American box office exceeded 100 million, becoming the fifth movie of Lionsgate that has broken the 100 million North American box office this year.

Compared with the 807 movies released publicly in North America last year, only 26 movies had a North American box office of more than 100 million, and the situation this year is probably similar.

Among the films released by Lionsgate in the first half of the year alone, 5 of them have grossed over 100 million yuan at the North American box office.

Considering that Lionsgate still has eight films that have not yet been released, including "The Hunger Games 2", "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "Insidious 2", "Complete Movie" magazine predicts that Lionsgate will have about 7-8 films that have grossed over 100 million yuan at the North American box office this year.

If the prediction of "Complete Movie" is accurate, the number of Lionsgate's films that have grossed over 100 million yuan at the North American box office this year will almost account for 1/3 to 1/4 of last year's.

From this point of view, Lionsgate's total box office this year is likely to continue to rank in the top five or even the top three in the industry.

For this reason, the top executives of the six major film companies are under great pressure and frequently hold internal meetings to discuss how to improve the box office performance of their films and prevent Lionsgate from taking advantage of them?

The result of the discussion is that there is no way.

Among the seven or eight hundred films publicly screened in North America each year, less than one-fifth can make a profit. Even if the six major film companies increase their film production, there is no guarantee that the films will make money. Perhaps they have invested in too many films and lost more money.

Since there is no way to improve the box office performance of movies, we can only find ways to restrict and suppress Lionsgate's movies. Unfortunately, Lionsgate has independent distribution and publicity channels, as well as Netflix, an online video publishing platform, and does not need to rely on the channels of the Big Six.

This also makes it impossible for the Big Six to grasp Lionsgate's lifeline.

Just as Warner Pictures was preparing to join forces with Weinstein Pictures and Legendary Pictures to restrict Lionsgate, the news came that Paramount Pictures was preparing to cooperate with Lionsgate.

Paramount Pictures recently signed a 5-year cooperation agreement with Lionsgate.

The agreement stipulates that the two parties will jointly invest and produce 20 film and television works in the next five years. The premise of this cooperation is that Paramount Pictures will pay Lionsgate up to 1 billion US dollars in production expenses in stages.

Lionsgate has strong production capabilities and accurate control of the film market trend, while Paramount Pictures, backed by Viacom Media Group, has extremely strong publicity and distribution capabilities worldwide.

The two sides will surely achieve very good results in the box office.

After the news was reported by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post and other media, it caused heated discussions in the film industry.

In the past three years, Lionsgate has performed strongly in the film market. With an annual production investment of 500 million to 600 million US dollars, it dared to compete with the "Big Six" film studios. Miraculously, it won last year, ranking third in the industry in total box office, and it is very likely to continue to rank among the top five this year.

Paramount Pictures has performed generally in recent years, and its annual total box office often ranks fifth or sixth, and rarely enters the top three.

If this situation continues, Paramount Pictures is likely to fall behind in the "Big Seven".

In this case, Paramount Pictures' choice to cooperate with Lionsgate is very "risky".

For the Big Six film studios, Lionsgate is definitely an unwelcome role. The best way to deal with this role is to restrict the development of Lionsgate to prevent it from continuing to grow and eat up the box office share that originally belonged to the Big Six.

However, Paramount chose to cooperate with Lionsgate. If the cooperation is successful, Paramount may surpass the other five in the future and achieve a better ranking among the "Big Six".

If the cooperation between the two parties fails, Paramount Pictures is likely to be unable to recover in the future and be left far behind by other major film companies.

The Hollywood Reporter said that Paramount Pictures' bet on Lionsgate was an "amazing decision". No matter how the two sides cooperate, the competition in the film industry will become more intense in the next few years, and even some large film companies will go bankrupt. The source of all this is the "rise of Lionsgate", or more precisely, it started with Link's acquisition of Lionsgate.

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"Haha, Link, congratulations on your cooperation with Paramount. It will be more convenient for us to cooperate in making movies in the future."

At the 500 million box office celebration party for "World War Z", David Ellison smiled while holding a glass.

Link nodded. This cooperation was first proposed by Brad Gray, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures. David Ellison, who worked in the production department of Paramount Pictures, also tried his best to match them. Later, this proposal was supported by Sumner Redstone, chairman of the parent company Viacom.

After several rounds of negotiations, the two sides signed a cooperation agreement and temporarily became allies.

This proposal is more beneficial to Lionsgate.

First, with an extra 1 billion in project funds, Lionsgate can make more movies in the future.

Secondly, with the support of Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate's publicity and distribution capabilities will be strengthened, and the box office performance of movies will be better.

Also, after reaching a cooperation, Lionsgate can also give priority to investing in Paramount's movies, just like "World War Z" and other movies with box office potential. As long as Lionsgate is optimistic, it can participate in the investment first and will not be excluded.

More importantly, after cooperating with Paramount Pictures, it can also break the tacit understanding between the "Big Six" film companies, so that they cannot join forces to deal with Lionsgate.

These benefits are also the reason why Link agreed to cooperate.

"Are there any good projects recently? I mean big projects with investments of over 100 million. I like big projects."

David Ellison asked.

"Lionsgate currently has few blockbusters. In addition to "The Hunger Games 3", there is also "The Expendables 3" in the tentatively scheduled movies. Are you interested?"

Link thought for a while and said.

"I've seen the promotion of "The Expendables 3". Will you be the protagonist in this one?"

"Yes, definitely the protagonist."

"Okay, I'll follow."

David Ellison said without hesitation.

"You want to follow before you even read the script?"

"Haha, of course. So far, the movies you starred in have never lost money. I don't believe this one will lose money. Even if it loses money, I'll accept it."

David Ellison squinted and smiled.

Link shook his head. He didn't dare to guarantee that "The Expendables 3" would not lose money, because the script was completely new, an unprecedented movie, and he couldn't be sure whether it would lose money after it was filmed.

In order to reduce the risk, he didn't mind bringing in more film companies to co-produce.

"Hi, Link, David."

Brad Pitt, the male lead of "World War Z", came over with his wife Angelina Jolie.

Pitt's Plan B is also an investor in this movie. This is the second cooperation between Lionsgate and Plan B after "Moneyball". Both cooperations are considered successful.

This time Brad Pitt found him and proposed a new cooperation project, which is a movie adapted from a documentary novel.

It tells the story of several investment geniuses on Wall Street who saw through the illusion of the subprime mortgage crisis in advance during the global financial crisis in 2008, and made huge profits by shorting subprime mortgage CDS, becoming one of the few investment tycoons who made a lot of profits in the financial disaster.

After listening to the script idea, Link wanted to make a similar movie "The Big Short", which has an unknown box office and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. It should be good.

When Brad Pitt asked if he was interested, Link said he would recommend this project to the production department, and the specific cooperation would depend on the project plan.

"Link, I heard that you are a stay-at-home dad now. Do you like children very much?"

Angelina Jolie, with long curly brown chestnut hair and a red dress, stood beside Brad Pitt and looked at him with a smile.

This woman is beautiful and sexy. When she looks at people, her eyes seem to be emitting electricity, always giving people a feeling of "she wants to sleep with me".

Link didn't know if it was an illusion, and didn't want to delve into it. He smiled and said, "Yes, Eva and Taylor are very busy, but I'm relatively free. I'm currently taking care of the children at home most of the time."

"Haha, that's interesting. You're such a big star, but you're actually taking care of the children at home every day. Brad, you should learn from Link."

Angelina Jolie patted Brad Pitt's shoulder.

"Yes, being a nanny is a very interesting experience. When I finish my work, I'm also going to take care of the children at home."

Brad Pitt shrugged and smiled.

"Link, I have a very good project in my hand. It's about a fairy tale similar to "Sleeping Beauty". There are witches and cute little princesses. It's very interesting. Are you interested in reading the script?"

Angelina Jolie smiled.

"It sounds good. I'd love to see the script you mentioned."

"Okay, we'll contact you later."

Angelina Jolie pursed her red lips and raised her champagne glass to clink with him.

After chatting for a few words, Jolie and Pitt left hand in hand.

Other leading actors, directors, producers of World War Z, and Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey and Vice Chairman Rob Moore also came to greet him.

Originally, Link was going to show up and leave, but he was so popular that he spent more than an hour dealing with the reception.