Chapter 303 MGM Launches Continuous Projects
The preparations for "The Curse of the Black Pearl" are already on track. Once the production methods of the special effects are determined, Director Cameron will start shooting on location.
However, MGM is a Hollywood giant, and if it wants to run, it can't rely on "The Curse of the Black Pearl" alone. Even if the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy is filmed together, it can't support the entire MGM company.
Therefore, Liu Hongmin asked for MGM's information and prepared to make a few more films.
After learning about MGM's film library, Liu Hongmin was a little disappointed. MGM has produced many classic movies, but none of them are series. MGM is famous for only one series, and that is the 007 series.
However, the 007 series is adapted from a novel, and there are still disputes over copyright.
Liu Hongmin ruled out the 007 series and started looking at projects from other companies. However, Liu Hongmin got inspiration from 007 and was ready to start a new spy war movie series.
The first thing he thought of was Tom Cruise's "Mission Impossible" series. The first to sixth movies were all in his mind. It took Liu Hongmin a few days to finish the script for the first movie.
The director chosen was Wu Baige, who became famous in Hollywood after the great success of "Face/Off". Last year, he shot another violent aesthetic movie "Broken Arrow", which grossed 70 million US dollars at the box office with a low cost, making him even more popular in Hollywood.
Andrew also admired Wu Baige, so he decisively agreed with Liu Hongmin's idea. He personally invited Wu Baige, and then personally invited Tom Cruise to join.
Tom Cruise is the soul of the Mission Impossible series, and as a top Hollywood actor, he has strong box office attributes.
The second film was Toy Story, produced by Pixar Animation Company under Steve Jobs, which Liu Hongmin promised Steve Jobs to invest in. Liu Hongmin would not break his promise, but simply changed his personal investment to MGM investment.
The production cycle of an animated film is very long, especially "Toy Story", which is a 3D animated film, which takes at least two to three years.
Liu Hongmin directly mobilized a group of people from animation companies in Beijing to help Pixar Animation, learning and following the production. Jobs did not refuse. He had monitored Liu Hongmin's financial resources and became a major shareholder of MGM in a few months, and took a lot of shares in Apple. When he returned to Apple, Liu Hongmin would be one of his strong supporters. If his funding gap was large at that time, he might choose to sell Pixar Animation to Liu Hongmin.
Apple was his lifelong pursuit, and Pixar was just his temporary refuge compared to Apple. Therefore, Pixar was not for sale, especially when he was determined to acquire Apple.
MGM invested 3 million in Toy Story, but the project did not attract much attention. After all, it was the first step in D animation, and it was still unknown whether it would be successful!
The third project was "The Ship". MGM spent $100 million to obtain the film and television adaptation rights from Liu Hongmin and prepared to shoot a Hollywood version. The investment in "The Ship" was not very large. Even though Hollywood pay was expensive, it only required an investment of less than million US dollars.
This is an attempt to make a small investment for a big gain, which is Liu Hongmin's proposal. If it succeeds, then MGM will turn its attention to these low-cost productions. Even if one of the ten investments succeeds, it will bring profits to MGM. Even if it fails at the box office, it can make up for it in the stock market.
The fourth project is "The Bodyguard", which is a project of Warner Bros. The investment in this project is not very large. MGM only invested 10 million US dollars in order to win over Warner Bros. However, Liu Hongmin does not know much about this film. He only knows that many of the ideas and inspirations of "Bodyguard from Beijing" shot by Jet Li were borrowed from this "Bodyguard".
The fifth project is "Lethal Weapon 3", which is also a project of Warner Bros. and MGM also invested million US dollars.
Liu Hongmin also hasn't seen this movie, but he has seen Lethal Weapon 4, which was Jet Li's first movie in Hollywood. However, if they were able to film a fourth movie, then the third one must have made money.
Moreover, Liu Hongmin wanted to push Jet Li into Hollywood ahead of time. With the protection of MGM, the future Hollywood superstar would have a better future than the original history. If Jet Li did well, Liu Hongmin would also gain more benefits.
Based on these two investments, MGM and Warner Bros. have a basis for cooperation. However, as a condition for investing in these two films, MGM gave a portion of its investment in The Curse of the Black Pearl to Warner Bros. It was not much, but not a small amount, $20 million, the same as MGM's investment in Warner Bros.
The reason why Warner Bros. wants to invest in "The Curse of the Black Pearl" is because of the reputation of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy and the strength of director Cameron. As long as "The Curse of the Black Pearl" is successful, then the subsequent "Dead Man's Chest" and "On Strange Tides" will not be too bad.
The two giants have temporarily formed an investment alliance, and if either side has a project in which they want to share risks, they will approach each other.
MGM has invested nearly $200 million in these six projects. According to Andrew, they need to take a break and at least wait until a movie is released before deciding on the next project.
However, Warner Bros. does have quite a few projects, and Andrew has invested more than 20 million US dollars in them. This is the benefit of Liu Hongmin. In recent years, Warner Bros. has had many high-quality projects. In order to get these high-quality projects, it is necessary to invest in some money-losing projects. Otherwise, if Warner sees that the projects invested by MGM are profitable, I am afraid they will not bring MGM to play. Not only that, they may even set a trap for MGM and take all the projects that MGM is interested in.
Andrew was well aware of these tactics, and he attached great importance to every project. He asked company employees to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of these projects, and then held a special meeting to discuss them, deliberately praising several projects to the level of "Lethal Weapon 3".
In just two or three months, MGM launched five projects with investments of tens of millions of dollars, which triggered a wave of good news in the stock market and slightly raised MGM's stock price.
Liu Hongmin couldn't help but laugh when he saw that the money he invested had increased by more than 200 million US dollars.
The stock market is still a fast way to make money! It has only been a short time and I have made so much profit.
(End of this chapter)
