Conquer America, Start with a Boxing Champion

Link left the coffee room and called Andrew Kramer to talk about "Far Cry".

He had seen this movie, and the production level was average, far inferior to the horror movies under Lionsgate.

The female protagonists and supporting actresses in swimsuits were not as good as European and American actors, and the exposure was not big enough. There were also several horror plots, which were not scary enough for American audiences who were used to seeing blood flying everywhere.

The only advantage was that this was a Chinese horror film, which was relatively novel and might arouse the interest of some audiences.

After buying the North American distribution rights, the film would first be shown in Chinatown theaters in major cities. If the box office performance was too poor, a DVD version could be released, or it could be sold to Netflix for free playback on the video website.

As long as the price of "Far Cry" was not high, Lionsgate would basically not lose money with its current channels.

He asked Andrew to lower the price to the lowest during the negotiation, no more than 500,000 US dollars. The production cost of "Far Cry" was only two or three million US dollars.

"Huh?"

Just after putting down the phone, I suddenly noticed that a piece of screening information of 'Mr. Tree' flashed on the electronic display screen in the theater in front. This movie is from China. The film producer is Jia Zhangke, a Chinese director who has been shortlisted for the main competition unit of the Cannes Film Festival twice. No other information was displayed.

Link stopped and walked into the venue to take a look. There were not many people in this venue. There were more than 100 seats, but only more than 10 people were sitting there, most of them were Chinese.

The movie had been playing for more than 20 minutes, and it was showing the clip where 'Tree' went to the hospital to treat his eyes and teased the little nurse.

The movie only had English subtitles, and there was no English or French dubbing. Foreigners needed to stare at the subtitles when watching the movie, but the subtitles were translated with many errors, and the preface and the following did not match, which made people confused.

In addition, if you pay too much attention to the subtitles, you will easily ignore the plot and will not understand it even more.

Less than 30 minutes into the movie, almost all the foreigners in the venue left, leaving only seven or eight Chinese people in the front row.

"This movie is quite good, why is no one watching it?"

"It's hard for me, a Chinese, to listen to the dialogue, let alone a group of foreigners."

"Indeed! Art films are obscure and difficult to understand, plus the language barrier, it's strange that anyone would watch it."

"Hey, there's another person over there, why is he wearing a hat to watch the movie?"

Hearing the discussion of the people in front, Link smiled lightly, watched for a few minutes, and got up to leave.

When he came to the aisle, he called Andrew and asked him to buy the North American distribution rights of "Mr. Tree".

This kind of movie has a very low production cost, and no foreign film producers will buy it. Basically, it can be bought at a bargain price. He didn't buy this movie to make money, but mainly because he liked it.

"Mr. Weinstein, the movie hasn't been finished yet, do you want to watch it again?"

"It's a rubbish movie, a waste of my time."

Just as Link put down the phone, he met Harvey coming out of the cinema opposite, accompanied by two assistants and a bald middle-aged man behind him. The middle-aged man chased Harvey, but Harvey walked out with a stern face.

"Link?"

Harvey stopped immediately when he saw him, squinting at him, his brown eye bags trembling.

"Hi, Harvey, what a coincidence!"

Link laughed.

Harvey snorted, took out a cigar, squinted his eyes and said, "I heard that your Lionsgate movies are also participating in the exhibition? Are there any movies shortlisted?"

"No!"

"Oh! I expected it. Lionsgate specializes in producing rubbish movies. It's strange that they can be shortlisted."

"It doesn't matter. My movies have high box office and specialize in producing dark horses."

Link said with a curled mouth.

Harvey's face suddenly turned black, and the fat on his face twitched a few times, and his expression became very ugly. He understood what Link was talking about. This bastard was showing off the box office performance of "Bridesmaids" in front of him.

"Humph! You won't be lucky forever. Let's wait and see."

Harvey glared at him and left with his men.

"Mr. Baker, do you have time to watch my movie?"

The middle-aged man invited enthusiastically.

Link looked at his watch. It was still early, so he walked into the cinema to take a look. It was a French pornographic movie, shot in a candid style. There was no plot and no artistic level. It was a waste of time to watch such a movie.

He watched it for four or five minutes, got up and left, and then went to another venue to watch.

He watched clips of more than 20 movies in a row for more than an hour, but did not find a familiar movie. He found that it was very difficult to find one or two good movies that had not been exposed by the media among thousands of movies.

After a movie is sent to the Cannes Film Festival, movie lovers, media reporters, and professional film critics from all over the world will enter various movie venues.

Which movie is of good quality will be discovered by the audience at the beginning of the screening, attracting more people to watch, and then reported by the media, film critics will publish relevant film reviews, word of mouth will ferment, attracting the attention of the jury, and the good ones will be selected into the main competition unit.

The entire film festival process is a process of sifting through the sand to find the gold, and the possibility of good movies being missed is extremely small.

After nine o'clock in the evening, the film festival will turn to the midnight show, and various venues will start to show some large-scale movies.

The Festival Palace also became more lively, with many movie fans holding tickets they had received in advance, queuing in the hall waiting to enter.

He was not very interested in this kind of movie, so he returned to the seaside hotel to rest early and called Eva Ka to inquire about the progress of the investigation into the box office theft by Warner Pictures.

Evaka said that when she arranged for someone to investigate, Warner Pictures discovered their actions and arranged for a marketing president to come to negotiate, persuading her and Catherine to give up doing so, and expressed willingness to compensate part of the box office.

Evaka's request was to return all the box office, otherwise she would continue to investigate and use the law to protect the company's legitimate interests.

Warner Pictures said it needed to consider it.

Evaka agreed to give them time to consider and arranged for someone to continue investigating. At present, evidence has been obtained that some theaters participated in box office fraud. With these evidences, although they may not win the lawsuit, they can also damage the image of Warner Pictures by creating public opinion.

Link asked her to be careful and bring more bodyguards when she goes out recently.

Evaka smiled and said she knew, and asked him how he was in Cannes and whether he had picked up a few beauties?

Link said no, none of the women here can compare to one tenth of her.

After a long phone call, he sat on the balcony, drank a glass of red wine, looked at the sea view of Cannes for a while and fell asleep. The next morning, after exercising, he picked up a few French newspapers in the hotel lobby and found that there were many reviews about "Midnight in Paris" in the newspapers.

In addition to praising director Allen for his continued success and his stable level of filmmaking, this movie still has a distinct Woody Allen style and can be called a sister film of "Midnight in Barcelona".

The rest of the comments were all praising Link's acting skills, praising his delicate and infectious acting style, and saying that he is a very charming and talented actor.

He was praised for his wonderful emotional scenes with Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lawrence, which raised the quality of the entire movie to a higher level.

He said that the performance level of the three of them was not inferior to the trio of Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz in "Midnight in Barcelona".

Finally, newspapers such as "Le Figaro" and "France Soir" published many of his movie stills in the entertainment section, all of which were close-ups of him in the movie.

The French Evening News commented that "everyone in Cannes last night was impressed by Link's style on the screen. He conquered this year's Cannes with his personal charm." It also said that after the movie is released, it will inevitably set off a new round of "Link fever" around the world, and fans around the world will be overwhelmed by Link's charm.

Marion Cotillard also called to praise his handsome photos. She looked at them many times and planned to cut them out and keep them in the album as a souvenir.

Link touched his cheek and remembered what director Allen said. If he was too handsome, he would be called a male vase and would be envied by the Oscar judges. He felt helpless for a while.