Hollywood Director 1992

During the negotiation process, FOX Television's entertainment channel was the first to report the news.

It claimed that, according to insiders, Link and Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Dustin Hoffman, and others were gambling with movie ticket sales.

They were betting on which movie would have better box office results: Tom Cruise's new movie "The Firm" or Link's new movie "Final Destination."

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It is said that the stakes are as high as hundreds of millions of dollars.

After the news was exposed, the entire Hollywood was shaken, and several major casinos in the United States also set up similar betting projects, and many people were discussing who had a higher chance of winning.

The supporters of Tom Cruise and Link are evenly matched.

The reason is that Tom Cruise is famous, the new movie trailer is also good, and the overall quality of the movie looks very good, so the box office of this movie will not be too bad.

Those who support Link believe that Link's first two films had extremely high box office results, creating the highest revenue ratio record in film history, and the third film should not be bad either.

Originally, this was a bet between Link and Robert Downey Jr., but in the media, it became a bet between Link and Tom Cruise.

CAA's purpose in doing so is that Tom Cruise is famous and has many fans in the United States. After the movie is released, the fans will definitely fully support him and use movie tickets to support Tom Cruise's victory. At the same time, people who support Tom Cruise know about the bet and will no longer support Link's movie.

This is a very unfavorable situation for Link.

When Link was chatting with Jerome Preston, Aaron Kouch, and others at the Bald Eagle Club, several people also believed that he should not gamble with people from CAA.

CAA is a giant in the agency industry. CAA President Michael Ovitz was selected by The Hollywood Reporter as the 'Most Powerful Person in Hollywood in 1992' and has close ties with senior executives of the seven major American media groups.

After "Final Destination" is released, as long as CAA contacts all the media to prohibit the promotion of "Final Destination", the movie will lack exposure, and the box office will be greatly affected.

Secondly, CAA has many stars under its umbrella. After "The Firm" is released, as long as CAA arranges for the stars to actively stand up and help promote the movie, it is possible for this movie to get a few million or even tens of millions more in box office.

Finally, several people reminded Link to be careful of CAA rigging the box office of "The Firm", inflating the movie, and turning tens of millions of box office into hundreds of millions, two to three hundred million dollars.

This kind of thing is not uncommon in the North American film market.

The seven major Hollywood film companies have close cooperation with theaters, and some of the shareholders behind the theaters are also shareholders of the seven major film companies, and they all come from Wall Street.

Under the operation of Wall Street capital, theaters will use various means to increase the box office of movies.

For example, transferring the box office of other movies released at the same time to "The Firm", or increasing the film's screening rate, increasing the number of screenings, or holding movie promotion events to increase the film's attendance rate, etc.

Helping movies operate the box office also comes at a price, but as long as they win the game and get the $72 million bet, CAA can also make a lot of money.

In the end, only Link will suffer the loss.

"Link, I originally thought you just liked beautiful women, but now how can you even get addicted to gambling? This is very bad."

Jerome Preston shook his head.

"Don't talk nonsense. I just wanted to bet ten million to teach Robert Downey Jr. a lesson. I didn't expect them to come up with tens of millions to bet. Since they want to bet, I can't go back on my word, so I accepted it."

"Seventy million? Are you confident you can win?"

"Yes, I have confidence in my movie."

Link said.

Several people shook their heads and raised their glasses to persuade him to think it over. He is still young and relatively wealthy. Losing once and suffering a little loss, just treat it as buying a lesson so he won't be fooled in the future.

Link smiled and accepted the kindness of several people.

Through communicating with several people, Link also understood that it would not be easy to win this bet, and the risk of failure was not small.

He found Jon Gordon and others to discuss, asking the publicity department to contact the media in advance and sign a film promotion agreement with the media to increase the amount of compensation, preventing the media from being lobbied by CAA and refusing to promote the film after "Final Destination" is released.

To this end, the publicity budget can be increased.

Those media also want to make money, and it is impossible to turn down business that is offered to them.

At the same time, Link called Joe Feller, the head of the distribution department, and asked him to hire some people to keep an eye on the box office of several major box office cities after "The Firm" was released to see if there were any abnormalities, and if so, try to find evidence.

After thinking about it, he withdrew the order.

In the betting agreement signed by both parties, there is a clause that after the 15-week box office data is released, if one party's box office data wins, the arbitrator will automatically determine that the winning party wins the bet.

There are no additional conditions, and there is no mention of how to deal with it when there is a dispute over the box office data.

The purpose is to prevent one party from reneging after losing the bet.

Link asked Joe Feller to try to expand the number of theaters showing "Final Destination", with a minimum of 2,000.

No mistake, first release on the entire network!

He believes that the number of theaters showing "The Firm" will not be less than 2,000.

After arranging these tasks, on July 16, "The Firm" was released in 2,425 theaters in North America, 21 more than the premiere of "Jurassic Park".

The premiere box office was 32.74 million US dollars, ending the seven-week winning streak of "Jurassic Park" in one fell swoop and topping the weekly box office chart.

"The Firm" tells the story of a righteous new lawyer who joins a law firm and discovers that the firm is helping the Mafia launder money. Anyone who is unwilling to collude with the law firm will die mysteriously. When the protagonist prepares to launch an investigation, it attracts the pursuit of the Mafia forces.

Faced with the threats from the law firm, the Mafia-related enterprise, and the Department of Justice, the protagonist decides to declare war on the Mafia-related enterprise.

This is a typical Hollywood-style爽剧.

The handsome and righteous protagonist, the beautiful and upright wife, the united and loving brothers and friends VS. The money-grubbing law firm, the bloody and dirty capital, the incompetent judicial personnel, etc.

After hard work, the protagonist group finally leads the righteous and kind side to defeat the ugly, evil, and dirty side.

Overall, this movie is not bad. It is an old-school Hollywood elite crime thriller.

However, the movie also has many problems. For example, too much of the original work has been cut, and a lot of content has been compressed into a two-and-a-half-hour movie, resulting in an incomplete narrative. For a suspenseful thriller, it lacks real suspense and is not thrilling enough.

It can be completely regarded as a modern workplace/romance movie.

After "The Firm" was released, many media pointed out the problems with the movie.

The Austin Chronicle wrote, 'The film may be more of a modern morality tale than a thriller, and the three screenwriters John Grisham, Robert Towne and David Rabe are still not perfect in terms of narrative, and compared to director Sydney Pollack's other films, it is a mediocre work.'

TV Guide commented, 'For some viewers, the film is a thriller, but as a thriller, it is far from exciting enough.'

Although Guess Pictures arranged for some media to report negative news about the film, the effect was not significant.

After "The Firm" was released, CAA and the film distributor Paramount Pictures arranged for more large media outlets to report positive news about the film.