Tokyo Literary Godfather

Martin Jorg only feels that fate is really elusive.

Because of an encounter in a taxi, I met a man from Asia, and suddenly I embarked on the road of entrepreneurship.

In fact, it is not that Kei Fujiwara pushed him to start a company. It can only be said that he did intend to resign, but he had not yet decided what to do after resigning, and Kei Fujiwara's words gave him some inspiration.

Maybe starting your own website is really feasible?

After returning home, he found out the man's identity. Kei Fujiwara was indeed a very famous filmmaker. He had his own company in Tokyo and had sufficient funds. He was not a liar.

After thinking for two days, Martin Jorg called Kei Fujiwara and wanted to chat with him, and was then invited to the DreamWorks company.

While waiting for Kei Fujiwara, I also met several popular movie stars.

Because in the parallel world, the success of "Get Out" was largely due to the early fame of Jordan Peele. The attention and eyeballs he earned with "Black Brothers" made many people pay attention to this in advance. works.

Jim obviously does not have such a reputation, so Kei Fujiwara decided to increase the capital investment in "Get Out" from 5 million to 10 million, improve the visual effects, and invite well-known movie stars to join.

After an in-depth chat with Kei Fujiwara, Martin Jorge learned that Kei Fujiwara actually didn’t say those words on a whim when he was riding in the same car with him that day. He had already planned to set up an online company. Video rental company.

Martin realized that the video rental business is also a part of the film industry, and this company called DreamWorks wants to become a super-large trust in the film and television industry that covers all industries.

The new company needs technicians like Martin.

Yet Martin expressed pessimism.

"Mr. Fujiwara, if you need me to build a website for you and manage data, I can indeed do it. But... online video rental business, this is difficult to achieve. It's not that it's not technically possible, but it's the transportation Can’t reach it.”

As he spoke, Martin Jorg took out three videotapes. It was obvious that two of the videotapes were obviously damaged.

"I did an experiment at home. It is difficult to transport video tapes without damage. Video tapes are too fragile. This aspect of the rental business cannot be done at all. The cost of damage is too high."

Martin Jorge said, then sighed and said in a somewhat disappointed voice: "It's impossible even if you think about it. If the online rental business was feasible, Mastercard would have done it long ago."

Mastercard is an offline video rental company, with tens of thousands of stores across the United States, and almost all Americans have rented videos from them. There are almost no rivals in this field.

"Video tapes are indeed easily damaged, but DVDs do not have such problems. Shipping costs are also low."

Fujiwara Kei seemed to have answered correctly.

DVD is a new technology that only appeared in 1998, only a year or two ago, but the majority of people still use audio tapes.

"As for DVDs, the price is still on the high side...most viewers are still more accustomed to using audio tapes."

"You mean, DVD is a useless invention? It can't replace video tapes at all?" Kei Fujiwara asked.

"No, that's not what I meant..."

"DVD was only officially released in the United States in 1998. It is natural that the price was high at the beginning. Just like mobile phones and computers, the price will get lower and lower." Kei Fujiwara said, "Moreover, for customers, they are renting and It’s not a purchase, so there’s no difference in cost. As long as it’s not intentionally damaged, we won’t have a big cost burden.”

"Are you sure that DVD discs are less damaged than video tapes? Have you done any experiments?"

"You can do it. I hope it will increase your confidence."

Fujiwara Kei smiled.

Looking at the smile on Kei Fujiwara's face, Martin seemed to know that there was no need to do such an experiment.

"Okay... let's do it, I'll invest two million." Martin said.

Two months later, an online video rental company called Netflix was officially established in Scotts Valley, California.

In fact, Kei Fujiwara is not optimistic about the online video rental business.

Whether online or offline, the business model of video rental will be swept into the garbage heap of the times in a dozen years.

Once the Internet matures, things like discs will be eliminated. They replaced video tapes because of their advantages of being thin, light and not easily damaged, but they were also eliminated for the same reasons.

Kei Fujiwara established such a website to establish his own membership system and prepare for the transformation into a streaming media platform ten years later. He also doesn't expect the site to come to fruition in the near future.

Otherwise, building an online website just for renting discs is different from cutting a high-tech chip into an arrow shape, tying it to a stick and throwing it as a javelin?

…

After another two months, the production of "Escape" was officially completed and began to enter the promotion stage.

Unlike "Saw", which had almost no publicity, this time the film has attracted market attention and trust, and with famous stars joining the cast, it has received sufficient publicity funds.

However, there were many movies released at the same time, and unfortunately, there was also a horror movie with a pretentious theme in the same month as "Get Out."

Competition with the same theme has formed.

What is even more alarming is that the director of the rival film is a very famous horror film director, whose reputation is a level higher than Jim's, and the original work seems to be more famous as well.

The company responsible for distributing this movie is still Century Fox. With the lessons learned from the last time, Century Fox does not dare to treat this movie perfunctorily this time. Their internal executives have done some reflection after "Saw". If this movie When it was released, the distribution company was able to realize its box office potential. If it invested only half a million US dollars in promotional expenses, the US box office of this movie should reach 80 million US dollars.

But it's too late to say that now.

One more thing, the global box office of "Chainsaw" (outside North America) is as high as 40 million, which is almost equal to the local box office. The total box office is as high as 100 million US dollars.

Because of this, Century Fox has spared no effort in promoting the film this time, and the publicity and distribution expenses have almost caught up with the production expenses.

The investment in the rival movie "Midnight Scream" was equally huge.

The two films also cast hostile glances at each other.

However, Jim deliberately avoided talking about the other party at first, because Colin Jackson, the director of "Midnight Scream", is considered a relatively well-established director in the industry, and Jim did not dare to take the initiative to make mistakes.

However, the other party did not take him seriously. At the movie conference, when someone asked Colin what horror films he thought were better, he named several movies. When asked whether "Saw", which was broadcast half a year ago, can be considered a masterpiece of horror films, Colin seemed a little dismissive.

"Dear, I think the word "masterpiece" is a high-level word. It should not be equated with "pass", otherwise the word will lose its original meaning."

The female reporter smiled and said: "You mean, the movie "Saw" cannot be called outstanding, right? But this movie is very popular with the audience. It was one of Mastercard's most rented movies in the first half of the year."

"Oh, the rental performance of porn movies is also excellent, which doesn't mean anything." Colin shrugged.

There was a small amount of laughter at the scene.

Colin continued: "This is a relatively perfunctory work. Of course, it is qualified because of its low cost and high income. It is indeed admirable commercially. But this is also the problem. You are outside When eating, are you willing to spend the same money but eat food made with cheaper ingredients?”

"The screenwriter and producer of this movie has recently released a new work, which seems to be released at the same time as your movie. Would you be interested in going to the cinema to watch it?"

"Oh, I wouldn't be interested, but then again, just look at Jim's face. That face is scary enough."

There was another round of laughter.