Legendary Hollywood Director

In the second week of April, after the recording and broadcast of Oprah's Talk Show, Paramount Pictures and Happ TV both released relevant news feeds. Under the baptism of this popularity, the box office was originally returned. Three Silly Troubles in Bollywood, which had a slight decline in the growth rate, exerted its strength in the middle, and won 8.8456 million US dollars in three days over the weekend, and finally defended this week's weekly box office ranking champion with a score of 12.2342 million US dollars.

At this time, the film has been screened in 1,320 theaters in North America, and the market performance of Three Silly Bollywood after nearly a month is so amazing that Hart's War, which premiered this week, Not to be ashamed.

In the third week, with other new works entering the theater one after another, Three Silly Trouble in Bollywood only received 5.3212 million US dollars in a single week, and the number of weekly box office champions ended in three weeks, ranking ninth.

According to the downward trend of the box office percentage, the potential of Three Fools in Bollywood in North America is almost exhausted, and Paramount Pictures has gradually begun to reduce the number of theaters it shows.

The media's attention to Lehmann also began to cool down, and his unwillingness to cooperate was also an important reason.

For example, Vanity Fair magazine wanted to invite him to shoot a set of photos, use it as a cover and double as a small interview, but was refused by Lehmann.

He would rather stay in the hotel to watch old movies, copy the shooting techniques, or think about new movie ideas, rather than taking pictures.

First, he didn't want to devote his energy to such indifferent things; secondly, taking pictures and giving interviews didn't give him any impetus to his career.

The latter is one of the most important factors.

He is a director, not an actor and star. He does not need to rely on his face to eat, nor does he need a spotlight to enhance the potential value of his image.

Magazine interviews, celebrity parties... You can't indulge in these.

What he needs is to maintain his professionalism and maintain progress, instead of getting lost in the temptation brought by success, until he finally wakes up when he is down.

That's silly.

So Lehman happily rejected Vanity Fair's request and rejected a lot of party invitations. He knows that the success of a movie isn't determined by how many celebrity parties you've been to or how many magazine covers you've been on, but by the movie itself.

By the time the film was finally drawn, Three Silly Bullywood grossed $97.26 million at the North American box office.

In this place alone, the dividend that Lehman can receive from it is likely to reach $2.95 million.

And with the release of the film, under the strong request of Europa Pictures, the production, investment, distribution, theater chain and other aspects of Three Silly Bollywood are all ready to divide up their own cakes.

According to the relevant regulations on the North American side, if a film is shown for a long time, in about a month, the theater party will pay the first share to the distributor, and the subsequent share will also change with the agreement and the length of the release. , but most of the films can be made within a week of the next release, and the distributor can get all the box office shares.

However, when the money is in the hands of the distributor, it is unknown when he will pay it to the producer and other beneficiaries.

Especially for those independent filmmakers, it is not called procrastination for a distributor to delay for a year and a half. Even for the six major Hollywood filmmakers with excellent reputation, there are endless incidents of default and delayed payment, which have been brought to the Delaware Commercial Equity Court. The cases are countless.

In other words, never overestimate the ethics of Hollywood studios.

This is why Lehmann must first find Europa Films to find out, just like Paramount Pictures, when faced with such a film company with great strength in France, they will never pay for these tens of millions U.S. dollars lose big because of small.

At the end of April,

An accounting firm entrusted by Lehman also participated in the whole process of splitting accounts, and started close economic and business contacts with Paramount Pictures and Europa Pictures, checking the large and small accounting documents and the box office data in various places. calculate.

This kind of thing is completely out of Lehmann's hands, and his presence will have no effect except to cause trouble. Although the professional accountants of PricewaterhouseCoopers charge a lot, their business capabilities and the company's reputation are still worth entrusting.

Besides, he also invited a law firm to supervise the Mann studio on behalf of Lehmann throughout the process.

Double insurance is not too much.

After all, there are so many interests involved, so be more careful, it is always right.

Paramount Pictures and the theater chain have signed the most conventional sub-account. After the theater chain has deducted fixed expenses, it will share with the distributor according to different proportions in different periods of release, and after deducting miscellaneous payments such as taxes and fees. , Paramount Pictures got a little over $52 million.

Europa Pictures has no right to use this part of the money first. As a real channel distributor, Paramount can first extract 31.2 million US dollars.

Fortunately, those expenses such as public relations and copying films did not need to be recalculated, and the remaining $20.8 million was successfully delivered to Europa Pictures.

Looking at it this way, Paramount Pictures only spent about 12 million in cost to get a return of 19.2 million US dollars.

Distribution companies have extensive publicity channels and strong distribution capabilities. It is not without reason that they can stand at the top of the industry. It is really eye-catching to make money so easily.

After the money arrived in Europa Pictures' account, they began to divide the cake according to the director agreement signed with Lehmann.

Remuneration plus dividends, plus an additional red envelope bonus, Lehmann received $3.4 million.

But this aspect of the North American market did not end like this, because he still has to pay federal personal income tax, California personal income tax to the tax bureau...

There are too many taxes in the United States. Ordinary people can’t figure it out at all, let alone how to handle it according to the regulations. Therefore, under the arrangement of the hired accounting firm, I finally figured out that this money will probably only be $2.95 million ended up in hand.

After the U.S. split accounts have been processed, there are still more than 30 million box office receipts accumulated overseas that have not yet been counted.

Up to now, the French mainland has also been drawn, because of the problem of the capacity gap of the market itself, Three Silly Bollywood has only received a box office result of more than 40 million euros.

The global box office has accumulated more than 170 million.

Also, these are only part of the revenue generated by the film, and the peripheral operations of Three Silly Bollywood are equally valuable.

The first is the copyright of television broadcasts and videotapes, because the distributors are born with the right to take a 50% cut.

Europa Pictures completely dominated the entire negotiation process.

After several rounds of tug-of-war bidding, the French video rights of Three idiots in Bollywood were sold for 7 million, and the TV rights also gained 5 million, from which Europa Pictures took priority and took 6 million.

The revenue sharing has reached this point, and Lehmann also commissioned an accounting firm to ask Europa Films to settle the remaining part of the account, which belongs to the director, as soon as possible.

And the time limit is to see the payment within a month.

It's not that Lehman is anxious about his own part of the income, but that he doesn't quite believe in the integrity of Europa Pictures.

Oh no, he doesn't believe in the ethics of any studio.

His Mann studio is just an empty shell, unable to play a strong supervisory role on Europa Pictures, nor does he have any effective financial monitoring measures, and Europa Pictures, as a distributor, falsely reported earnings, offset Tax offsets and many other means are only unexpected, and there is nothing they can't do.

Especially the operation of video tapes and film peripheral copyrights, which are long-term revenue, can be manipulated more and more secretly.

Yes, France has various express laws to protect the benefits of all parties, but even in North America, where regulation is stricter, Hollywood giants dare to swindle the funds of the vampires on Wall Street, let alone Europa Pictures. It is the part that first touches film revenue in overseas markets all over the world.

Today is not an era when information is more circulated in the future. It is a fool's errand to want to supervise. Rather than pinning their hopes on the company ethics of Europa Pictures, it is better to determine their own part of the income as soon as possible, and then deliver. As for less or less, it doesn't matter, as long as you get the part of the income that you have already seen.

In this way, Lehmann's income as a director is clear, with a balance of 8.84 million at the box office (plus the North American and overseas parts and tax deductions) and 7.6 million under various copyright proceeds, totaling 16.44 million US dollars.

The remaining long-term benefits depend on how Europa Pictures is willing to give it. Anyway, he got this batch of money first.

Among them, as a personal remuneration, he crossed out 2.44 million (the money with bonus red envelopes).

The remaining $14 million was deposited into Mann Studio's accounts.

Public is public, private is private, and the boundaries cannot be confused. Even Ryan, who manages part-time films on the set, has his own related remuneration settled to him, which is not included in the studio's account. .

Although they are friends, they still sit in a clear line between public and private.

When doing business, public accounts involve individuals, which is the most important thing.

After getting this huge sum of money, his life has not changed much, and he still lives in the original apartment.

Oh, by the way, he's back in North America now, and the last time he went back, it was just to reconcile with Europa Pictures.

In addition, Ryan changed a car to facilitate everyone's travel.

Well, it was a Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicle, which was much larger and more comfortable than his original car.

When the time came to early May, Paramount Pictures sent an invitation as promised, inviting Lehman and other main creative teams to participate in one of their cocktail parties.

They also came for this.