China Entertainment King of Science Fiction

Chapter 143 Sky-high Copyright

When "Signal" won a box office of 95 million again on October 3, and the cumulative box office of 315 million in three and a half days of release, Maoyan Movie directly increased the box office of "Signal" from 600 million to 1 billion.

The outbreak of the National Day holiday is relatively short. Although it is a 7-day holiday, the box office market will gradually decline from the 3rd. Once the holiday is over, the market will immediately dive. Therefore, the box office forecast of 1 billion is already optimistic that "Signal" has a good reputation and a relatively flat box office trend.

With the explosion of Chinese movie box office, several major Hollywood publishers who were extremely interested in the copyright of "Signal" once again sent negotiators to arrive in the capital on a trans-ocean flight.

Because there is no branch or representative office in China, they have to endure this very troublesome communication model.

As for waiting for DreamWorks to come to you, this is a very difficult thing to achieve.

Chen Jingxing is now planning to start prices based on domestic box office results. He will not take the initiative to contact Hollywood Film Company in a short period of time.

Although these Hollywood publishers have vaguely reached some py agreements or tacit understandings for DreamWorks behind the scenes, they dare not bet whether someone would sneak into a copyright transaction agreement with DreamWorks, so they can't wait.

This negotiation not only included Chen Jingxing, Xu Wenshen and Yang Dairong, Fantasy Network and United Cinemas as producers, but Chen Jingxing's reliance on the price of the price in the negotiations did play a big role in the domestic box office.

Although everyone knows that the Chinese film market is already the second largest box office in the world, "Signal" predicts that the box office will reach 1 billion yuan, but these Hollywood publishers are still surprised.

According to the exchange rate at this time, 1 billion yuan is at least equivalent to 160 million US dollars, and such a box office result is quite high in North America.

There are also Latin movies. Because the Latin ethnic group in the United States accounts for a high proportion, most Latin movies enter the North American market through joint distribution or split distribution.

Even if value-added tax and corporate income tax are excluded, there are still RMB 110 million.

But even so, the risk is huge. Although "Signal" looks good in their opinion and is not inferior to "Fatal Identity" from the perspective of movies, it is really difficult for North American audiences to appreciate foreign movies, especially non-English movies. After all, "Hero" was a great success, but "Ten-Ambushes" made a trick on Sony. They still remember this lesson very clearly. Chinese movies were the most popular foreign movies in the North American market at that time, and they had a good time.

"Signal"'s box office sharing income in China is pure profit.

In order to share the risks, Lionsgate and Colombia started to buy the copyright together.

The requirement for blocking DreamWorks to issue shares is definitely led by Lionsgate and Colombia. Jointly purchasing the copyright of a foreign film is not common in Hollywood. Negotiators from the two companies can make an idea within one day, and 80% of them have negotiated it early.

It can be said that closely behind the copyright sale, "Signal"'s investment has not only recovered, but also earned double the profits.

Of course, this price is indeed quite exaggerated, so it was not a separate publisher who bought out, but a joint buyout between Columbia and Lionsgate Pictures.

After resolving the copyright transaction, DreamWorks Fantasy Network and United Theater Network began to launch plans for overseas releases without stopping. The distribution rights obtained by Guoying are only limited to domestic, so this time the overseas release is led by producers such as DreamWorks.

DreamWorks is of course the biggest beneficiary, and Fantasy Network and United Cinemas have also benefited a lot.

However, at this point, Chen Jingxing can basically be sure that the two companies have reached a consensus behind the scenes to deal with DreamWorks.

Not to mention the distribution cost, but after all, there is still DVD distribution income. Although DVD revenue has shrunk by most of the time under the impact of streaming media, it is no longer as prosperous as it was in the past - Chinese blockbusters such as "Hero" sold DVD copyrights separately back then. At that time, DVD copyrights were equivalent to current online copyrights.

The news was immediately revealed to the media by the publicity and distribution team, which triggered another wave of discussion on topics.

It can be said that the amount of this copyright transaction has set a record, exceeding the "Hero" and Cheng Long's "Flying Dragon Rebirth", and has become the highest transaction price for foreign films North America copyrights.

So considering the income from other channels, as long as the North American box office of "Signal" can reach $50 million, it can make some money.

"Signal" is a foreign film for North America after all, and it is definitely the lowest level to negotiate a settlement agreement with theaters, so the copyright price of 25 million US dollars is at least $60 million to recover the cost.

With the release experience of "Fatal Identity" and its good box office results, the overseas release of "Signal" will be much smoother.

Not to mention Chen Jingxing, he was a little unhappy with the two buyers, but the other people at DreamWorks and the two shareholders and co-producers of Fantasy and World Cinemas were very satisfied with the copyright transaction.

In fact, this so-called record is actually somewhat humid. For example, European movies, especially British movies, enter the North American market through direct distribution or joint distribution. However, there are actually no local film companies in the UK. It can only be said to be the British branch of the Hollywood factory. Although it is a foreign film in name, it is actually a family.

Therefore, the buyout of North American copyright of commercial movies basically refers to Asian movies, and to be more accurate, East Asian movies.

At the exchange rate of 25 million US dollars at this time of 6.14, it would be RMB 150 million.

After some verbal battle, the North American copyright of "Signal" was finally sold for US$25 million, excluding the online copyright.

Even Penguin Video Network and Tianrun Pictures, which were not involved in the production of "Signal", were very excited because they participated in the production of "Source Code". In their opinion, today of "Signal" is their tomorrow.

Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries have set release dates. Of course, except for a few countries and regions that are directly issued, most countries cooperate with local publishers to jointly issue them.

Compared with "Fatal Identity", in the overseas release of "Signal", the producers mainly based in DreamWorks have obtained more initiative and have begun to establish their own distribution network and distribution relationship.

The so-called distribution network or ability is used when used, and if not, it will be useless. The global distribution capabilities of Hollywood manufacturers are also developed one by one. Chen Jingxing believes that DreamWorks can have real overseas distribution capabilities if they come to do this one or two more times.

In order to stimulate box office considerations, and at the suggestion of local publishers in many countries, DreamWorks decided to send a creative team to Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia to accompany the film promotion.

(End of this chapter)