Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1482 Spearlock Producer

"Schindler's List is back in the top three at the box office. It has been in theaters for fifteen weeks..."

The Oscars have a strong box office-boosting effect on winning films, especially those that win Best Picture or Best Director.

This year, Spielberg, a well-known director who has long been successful in the eyes of ordinary audiences, won the Oscar for the first time. Many audiences are curious about why Spielberg didn't win the award before? Why did this year's movie suddenly win two awards?
Many newspapers and TV media have given some reasons, such as Oscar judges don't like science fiction films, Spielberg is too young, he didn't win the award before because he had to make way for older directors, Spielberg had bad luck before, etc...

But moviegoers simply cannot understand this. They only know that ET the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, which they have seen before, were both great. This year's award-winning Schindler's List, which Spielberg won, is expected to be many times better than the previous two.

Therefore, because Schindler's List, a movie about Jews being rescued by a German in a concentration camp, was too heavy, or because the black-and-white movie was too boring, the audience who did not go to the cinema to watch it had a desire to buy a ticket.

The Oscars praised this movie so much, so there must be something very artistically brilliant about it. I didn't see it before, so I missed out. When I brag to my friends in the future, if I only saw Jurassic Park, I won't have much to talk about. If I haven't seen Schindler's List, I will be disliked for not being able to keep up with the conversation.

A large number of audiences went to the cinema to buy tickets. Schindler's List's screening schedule increased for two consecutive weeks, with a total of more than 500 theaters showing it. The weekend box office also rose from a seemingly irreversible decline of 2.8 million to 4.3 million, and then to 5.7 million. It directly surpassed the just-released "The First Lady's Bodyguard", a film co-starring Nicolas Cage and Shirley MacLaine, which tells the story of a Secret Service bodyguard protecting the late president's widow, the First Lady Tess.

This story was even ridiculed by Whoopi Goldberg at the Oscars, who said the movie should be called Guarding Nancy instead of Guarding Tess, alluding to the fact that former First Lady Nancy was difficult to serve and former President Ronald Sr. was in poor health.

If this joke had come from the host Billy Crystal a few years ago, it wouldn't have mattered much, but when it comes from a black female comedian, some conservative white people are always dissatisfied.

Ronald heard that ABC received a lot of protests from viewers this year, saying that the joke was not funny at all and that Whoopi Goldberg was not suitable to host a ceremony like the Oscars.

It is not right to say that they are completely unreasonable and only discriminate against black women. Whoopi Goldberg also started out as a stand-up comedian. Because of her personal identity, her jokes contain many jokes about discrimination against black people and women.

This kind of funny way cannot be changed in a week. Whoopi Goldberg did continue her previous sharp performance at the awards ceremony, which made many people who were ridiculed feel dissatisfied.

This also made Whoopi Goldberg dissatisfied. She publicly stated on her TV talk show that if these viewers could not tolerate this level of ridicule, they could imagine how much discrimination a black woman like her (who was not very good-looking) would suffer in her daily life.

This war of words did not follow the usual Hollywood rule of bad news being better than no news. This is because many of the audiences of this movie are those who agree with Ronald Sr.'s ideas, and many of these people are adult white men.

Seeing that the producers did not come out to refute this statement, they also felt that the people who made this movie probably had no respect for Nancy. So they simply did not go to the cinema and let themselves spend money to get unhappy.

In short, the Oscars had a positive and negative impact on the box office of the two films. Schindler's List, which was released in its fifteenth week, surpassed The First Lady's Bodyguard, which was released in its first week, and has become the focus of heated discussion in Hollywood recently.

Of course, Ronald's "Philadelphia Story" also received support from the Oscars. In the fourteenth week of its release, the box office rebounded from just over one million at the weekend to just over two million.

The situation of "Philadelphia Story" is similar to that of Schindler's List. Many people who had concerns about the subject matter, after seeing the Oscar's recognition of Tom Hanks' acting skills, plus Hanks' previous Sleepless in Seattle was loved by many romantic love movie audiences, everyone wanted to go to the cinema to buy tickets for the best actor.

However, compared to the strong rebound of Schindler's List, Philadelphia Story is much worse. After the rebound, it only ranked eighth, which is not the same as when it was first released and beat Schindler's List.

Compared to the Jewish population of only 5.5 million in the United States, the box office trend clearly shows that it is not just the Jewish population that went to see Schindler's List. Many people are interested in that period of history and the story of a German like Schindler who goes against stereotypes.

In comparison, Philadelphia Story's box office response among general audiences was significantly worse, and after the copying problem of Schindler's List was resolved, it was suppressed at the box office.

Speaking of Spielberg, after he won two Oscars, there has been no news of any new projects he has been preparing. According to information Richard learned, Spielberg seems to be content, spending all day with his family, and no longer has the same passion for film art as before.

This is also a very normal phenomenon. Spielberg is different from other directors who won the Oscar first and then achieved success in Hollywood. He has already won almost all the honors, and the only thing missing is the recognition of the Oscar for Best Director.

There is precedent for such people to slack off on their careers temporarily. I guess he will wait until Spielberg has another exciting subject before he will devote himself to production. Making two films a year is really exhausting for him.

"Is this the interview draft for you? Will it be sent to the Hollywood Reporter and other media outlets later?..."

Richard noticed a document on the table, and after asking Ronald, he picked it up and looked through it.

In the game-adapted movie "Mortal Kombat" produced by Ronald, Spielberg made a cameo appearance as a director and appeared on the screen with Ronald as a guest producer, playing two characters who were powerless to do anything about the big star Johnny Cage.

Not many people paid attention to this cameo. Apart from the knowing smiles of the moviegoers, it did not cause any waves.

But after Spielberg won two Academy Awards, his movements began to attract the attention of some interested people in Hollywood.

Ronald's DDH Media is still a local media group. It has cinema chains in New York, Massachusetts, and slightly south of North Carolina. His TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers are confined to New York. The layout of other places can be ignored.

Such local media groups are not yet rivals of the same level as national media groups, such as those in the eyes of Redstone and Australian Rupert.

But Spielberg has a national influence and his personal wealth is higher than Ronald's.

If the two of them work together and DDH merges with Spielberg's Amblin, the influence could potentially rise to a national level.

Imagine a media group that has cinema chains in New York on the East Coast and Los Angeles on the West Coast, as well as TV stations in both cities and in the Great Lakes city clusters such as Chicago in the middle of the country. All it needs is a national cable TV network to be able to compete with the established media groups.

Therefore, this cameo was also regarded as a means of testing the waters by those people, and they asked a commentator to write an article in The Hollywood Reporter, the most important media in the film and television industry, pointing out the possible cooperation between the two famous Hollywood directors and producers.

Ronald would certainly not admit this speculation. If Spielberg had any ideas, he would collaborate with David Geffen, or even earlier, Katzenberg, and he would not work with a non-Jewish person.

You can't be suspected of stealing sausages without even touching the grease...

"No, this cameo was a temporary coincidence. Steven had just finished filming Schindler's List at that time. As you know, this movie is a masterpiece that ranks very high in the history of Hollywood movies. Filming such a movie will seriously consume the energy and effort of the creator.

I saw Steven's situation at the time and invited him to come and see the filming of Mortal Kombat. You know, he is a person who loves video games, and I also like them, so we used this visit as an opportunity to relax.

Yes, this is a coincidence. Steven was very generous and was willing to make a cameo appearance in such a game-adapted movie. The only requirement was that I also make a cameo appearance. As you can see, I begged Johnny Cage much harder than he did, hahahaha…

Who of us has better acting skills? That depends on the audience's judgment. Haha, is this a movie that will be liked by the Oscar judges? Yes, I can't afford Steven to be an actor. God knows how much he will be paid?

After this interview was published in The Hollywood Reporter, it was also reprinted in the Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and some national newspapers such as the New York Times, and the entertainment sections of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Although they were all buried deep, those who were skeptical of Ronald and Spielberg soon saw Ronald's answer to them.

Although some people still had doubts, after Spielberg confirmed Ronald's statement in front of reporters, everyone put the matter aside.

Spielberg did not invest in this film, nor did he work with Ronald. Several powerful Jewish people in Hollywood were unable to get Spielberg to help them with any of his projects.

There is no project and no cooperation. If you insist that Ronald and he have plans to cooperate, it is too far-fetched.

And after some investigation, everyone found out a project that Spielberg was actually involved in.

That is "The Flintstones," which Universal Pictures is using to compete with Disney's The Lion King this summer. It is a remake of the 1960 TV animated series "The Flintstones." Everyone originally thought it was a Universal-led film, but unexpectedly Spielberg was deeply involved in the film.

In order to get deeper into what Spielberg was trying to do, we hired someone to carefully analyze all the new projects that were scheduled to be released in the past year and those that had been filed with Universal and Warner Bros. but had not yet started filming.

This analysis reveals that Spielberg was deeply involved in the movie "The Flintstones".

He led the film's development from the beginning and had a significant influence on the all-important casting.

For example, the actor was originally cast as John Candy, but later he had to be replaced by John Goodman because Candy had to film his own movie. (Unfortunately, John Candy died of a heart attack on the set of the movie in Mexico.)

Goodman originally refused to watch the original cartoon from the 1960s and wanted to change the voice of the protagonist, the primitive man Fred, but Spielberg strictly ordered him to learn the way of speaking from the original cartoon.

In addition, the director and all the main roles were all chosen by Spielberg, and people began to believe that Spielberg just wanted to shift the focus of his career from director to producer, rather than establish a national media group like Ronald.

The funniest thing is, according to some insiders who have seen the preview of "The Croods", Spielberg was also listed as the producer in the subtitles at the beginning of the movie, but he made a little joke and changed his name to Steven Spielrock to fit the style of this caveman movie.

……

"In memory of Mr. Frank Wells, President of Disney..."

Ronald borrowed a copy of "The Lion King" at home and screened it for his family and friends.

The movie is very popular now, and it is being screened in small areas in various places... It seems that they want to maintain the popularity in this way, which corresponds to the marketing formula of Crazy Croods. The latter has learned Disney's method and started to cooperate with McDonald's, buying a children's meal and giving away a random Croods toy.

Now Ronald's son Roger Jr. and Demi Moore's daughters all started clamoring to collect a set of The Croods, at least to collect the set of Fred and his wife Wilma, and the mother-in-law played by Elizabeth Taylor.

Ronald, who had no choice but to invite them, his driver Little Bud's family, and the employees of Daydream Company to bring their children to watch a show of The Lion King together, in order to "bribe" the children to watch some good art and stop clamoring for those cheap plastic toys.

The Lion King is also very interesting. On the surface, it is a cartoon about animals on the African grasslands, but in fact, it is an adaptation of Shakespeare's classic "Hamlet". It is also a story about an uncle usurping the throne and a prince's revenge.

Of course, in order to suit the children's preferences, the story was finally changed to a happy ending with Simba returning to the kingdom.

Such a classic story is indeed very attractive to children. Surprisingly, no one made any noise while watching the movie. Instead, they were so moved that their eyes were filled with tears, and they applauded Simba's bravery.

But after they finished watching it, they started making a fuss again. They said they didn't want to give them the Croods toys, but they had to get a set of The Lion King dolls.

When Ronald heard that they didn't want the plastic toys that came with children's meals, he happily announced that he would give a set to all the children present...

"Ronnie, little Roger still likes you very much today... It's so rare that you have such a happy day playing with him." Diane smiled and used a camera and a video camera to record the scene of Ronald playing with the child.

She filmed a lot of clips and finally said, "Are you still going to New York? Is the basketball game more important than playing with your kids?"

"Hey, I'll go to two home games and then come back. The team has just been acquired, and the fans need to see their new boss' support for the team. I won't watch it after that, and let Doug go, he is a Knicks fan..."

The NBA playoffs are about to start, and Ronald wants to take this opportunity to go to New York, where a mother and daughter want him to accompany them...

"Then you must come back early. Little Roger and I are waiting for you here..."

"Okay, I'm doing this for Roger's future assets. You know Dolan really wants to buy back my shares, and he even said something about me not going to the home games..."