Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1512: Hit and Run in Hollywood

Soon, the answer to why The Shawshank Redemption did not have any proper marketing guidance automatically popped up and appeared in front of Ronald.

But it came in a way that Ronald never expected. The CEO of Sony Columbia, the most expensive executive in history, the man that he had to pay a lot of money to Warner Bros. to get him...

Peter Guber has tendered his resignation from Sony's board of directors in the United States.

In order to get him, Sony, which had just acquired Columbia Pictures, staged a talent war with Warner Bros. Warner Bros. said at the time that Guber already had a long-term contract with Warner, and going to Sony would be a breach of contract.

In order to prevent the first CEO of the company after the acquisition, hired by former President Morita, from being unable to take office due to legal disputes, Sony paid a heavy price for the lawsuit between Guber and Warner.

Although the final settlement terms were not disclosed, Hollywood and Wall Street said that it was a getaway fee of hundreds of millions. The specific figures ranged from 200 million to 1 billion. Ronald heard that the more reliable figure was somewhere in the middle of the two.

How could such a CEO be fired before he had worked for five years?
The reason why it is called a dismissal is that there are widespread rumors in the industry that this time it was Guber who took the initiative. He heard that Sony was planning to fire him, so he took the initiative to resign to avoid any stain on his career.

When Sony acquired Columbia Pictures, Ronald was actually the first choice for CEO. Now Guber has been fired, but Ronald is already the chairman of the listed media group.

Sony is unlikely to acquire Ronald's company and promote him to the position of CEO. After all, it is now the era of President William, and the Japanese capital is not as relaxed as it was a few years ago when it came to acquiring large American companies.

Japan itself is also experiencing the bursting of its asset bubble and falling into painful deflation. It is also a big question whether Japanese multinational companies are still capable of acquiring a multi-billion dollar American company.

In the past three years, Mitsubishi Group spent hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire a 50% stake in the landmark Rockefeller Center in New York. However, this year, due to the poor performance of its domestic assets, they had no choice but to sell off their stake in Rockefeller Center for tens of millions of dollars.

Several wealthy people who originally intended to acquire the Empire State Building in New York and owned a large amount of real estate in Japan have also gone bankrupt due to the sharp drop in real estate prices. Now the Japanese acquisition trend has fallen into decline.

Because of this environment, Sony’s top priority now is not to acquire a new company or introduce new talent, but to find a way to deal with the various adverse effects brought about by Guber’s escape and prevent stock price fluctuations on Wall Street from affecting the stability of Sony’s global business.

Since it is impossible for Sony's Norio Ohga to acquire Ronald's company, the two companies will definitely still have a certain competitive relationship in the production and distribution of Hollywood films and television in the next few years.

But precisely because Sony Chairman Norio Ohga had no chance of hiring Ronald, the two could still chat about industry matters as friends.

Ohga is a little angry now. When he first hired Gubel, he invested more than $500 million (including the cost of settling with Warner and the cost of acquiring Gubel's company).

Then after the merger was completed, Sony still lost $200 million on Columbia Pictures every year.

"Losing $200 million every year? How is that possible? I have collaborated with Columbia and TriStar on many projects in recent years, all of which have made money, and some have even won Oscars. You must be right, isn't it a profit of $200 million?"

When Ronald heard this number, he immediately suspected that there was something wrong with his ears. He wondered if he had worn headphones for too long in the editing room, causing hearing loss.

"Ronald, you heard it right. We do lose $200 million every year. Guber has helped us win multiple Oscar nominations and trophies, as well as famous and profitable works like Sleepless in Seattle and The Silence of the Lambs, but..."

"Well, actually some of them are distributed by TriStar Pictures. Gubel actually opposed some projects, but I insisted. Plus, Medavoy of TriStar Pictures is an expert. I'm actually very optimistic about the abilities of Medavoy of TriStar Pictures..." Ronald took the opportunity to promote his friend.

"Hey, Ronald, I haven't had a true friend like you to tell me these things in the past few years. As a Japanese, I am very surprised at the complexity of Hollywood.

Guber and Peters have a lot of successful projects under their names, such as Batman and Rain Man, which are both box office and critically acclaimed. But no one told me that they were executive producers and had little to do with the success of the project.

"Hey, don't talk about you. I've been in this industry for more than ten years. For some specific projects, I have to ask many people to know who is responsible for the success. This industry is like this. Some people don't deserve the reputation, and some people only have a middle-level title, but they are the biggest contributors." Ronald realized that Ohha might have lost more money on Gubel than he thought.

"That's right. This is very different from our culture in Japan. Here, a senior executive has a fixed team under him. As long as I promote him, the team with outstanding performance can be counted under his name."

Norio Ohga is very regretful now. He should have negotiated with former President Morita and used half of the money spent on Guber to recruit Ronald. Now Sony Columbia may have become the most profitable and successful company in Hollywood.

"Ronald, you don't know that except for your projects that are profitable and have won many awards, the rest of our projects have lost a lot of money. I looked at the financial statements of the film projects. Gubel doesn't really know much about production. All he did was pile up stars and copy all the elements from successful movies. The most typical example of this approach is the Last Action Hero starring Schwarzenegger..."

"Forehead……"

Ronald thought, it's true. The final action hero, using Schwarzenegger, the action star that Cameron has collaborated with the most, to star in a movie about an action star.

It uses John McTiernan, the director of Die Hard, a film that created a new paradigm for the action genre.

They also spent a lot of money to invite all the action movie stars and influential actors who have left their names in film history in the past era to come and make cameo appearances. Even Sylvester Stallone, who is Schwarzenegger's rival, spent money to make a poster image of him starring in the Terminator, making a cameo appearance in disguise.

The final result? Not only did the production and marketing costs suffer huge losses, the sales of the videotapes were also mediocre, and the surrounding toys and dolls were not well received. It was a complete failure.

"Now when I choose someone to take over Gubel's position, I will only look for a CEO who can discover core figures like Ronald and Cameron. I have come to understand that Hollywood is no different from Kamata in Tokyo. The most important thing is people..."

"McDavoy is actually a very talented producer..."

"I understand, Ronald Sang, but corporate governance still depends on other factors."

Ohga's concerns were reasonable. Medavoy had become a laughing stock among the Jews, and his wife's abduction was a big blow to him. Moreover, he was the head of Samsung, so it was impossible for him to take a deputy position in Columbia.

Sony Columbia decided to let Guber's deputy Mark Canton take over as CEO, and then find someone from Hollywood who has an understanding of production and projects to serve as the actual head of production.

This is like the relationship between Eisner, the chairman of Disney, and Katzenberg, who is actually in charge of the production projects. One is to sort out the property rights and personnel relations of the board of directors, while the other is to charge forward.

Medavoy is unlucky and is still at TriStar Pictures, focusing mainly on small and medium-sized independent projects, which may be better for both Sony and him.

……

"Shxt! They picked Mark Canton over me."

Sure enough, not long after, Madavoy came to Ronald to complain.

"Mark Canton, that bastard, packages himself everywhere as a good man who loves his wife and family, but what's the reality? When Jon Peters was still in Columbia, he often dragged him to parties organized by Heidi Fleiss. Her escort girls dressed up as French maids for them to have sex with..."

"Hey……"

Ronald thought that Medavoy was really miserable. Maybe because he was forced to wander with his family to Hongkou, China when he was a child, he was a person who truly loved his family. But Hollywood was not a place that emphasized morality. The fate of such a hard-working person was that his wife was stolen by a rich man who made a fortune from Wall Street junk bonds.

Now he has been offered the position at Columbia Pictures by Mark Canton, a fake family-loving but really messy guy. Isn't he feeling very depressed?

But Ronald didn't have a place for him here, so after a round of consolation, he could only say something nice, "If I also had a medium-sized studio like Miramax here, specializing in newcomers and new types of films, I would definitely find you to work for me. This kind of medium-sized project film is too risky. Without an expert like you to review it, I wouldn't dare to..."

"You are a true friend, Ronald..." Medavoy was very touched. Although he knew that the other party was just comforting him with empty words, there were not many people like him in Hollywood.

However, does Ronald really have such a company and can fulfill today's promise? Madavoy still cares about the successful cooperation history with Ronald, and it would be very comfortable to work under him.

"But speaking of it, Gubel is also a decisive person, better than his friend Peters. I heard that when Peters was fired, he went to Gubel's office to cry. Before Gubel was fired, he said he would resign..."

Ronald now understands why Guber didn't care much about many things before. It turns out that he was facing the pressure of being fired.

Moreover, the distributor of Shawshank Redemption, Columbia, was facing the dismissal of its CEO, and its producer, Castle Rock, was acquired by its new owner, Turner Media. With everything in such a mess, it was not surprising that a rookie director was the one to lead the entire marketing process.

"You may not know that Guber's contract stipulates that he has a $5000 million termination compensation."

"Hi……"

Ronald was unhappy. He worked so hard to make a movie, but the box office revenue was only about 5000 million US dollars. Others did nothing and just waited to be fired, and they could also make 5000 million US dollars.

"Add another $2 million to invest in Guber's newly established independent production company and an exclusive distribution contract..."

"How many?"

"Two hundred million US dollars. Not many people in the company know about this..." Madavoy smiled. Guber came to power by flattering Akio Morita. Morita's office is still inside the Sony headquarters. This matter cannot embarrass the old president, right?

Guber left to pursue his own personal career. Sony was very satisfied with him and gave him a $200 million investment... In this way, he left without any mess and left behind a stable and peaceful situation.

"Fuck, how much money did this MotherFuxker get from Sony?" Ronald slammed his wine glass on the table. He worked hard, relied on God's blessing, and the guidance of his dream memories, and was lucky enough to become a billionaire.

Just by marketing himself, Gubel cheated Sony into earning wealth of the same order of magnitude as his own?

"This is simply, simply..." Ronald had never imagined such a path to wealth.

"It's simply highway robbery..." Medavoy helped to curse Gubel and the stupid Japanese.

"It's worse than that..." Ronald thought to himself. The metaphor of highway robbery actually refers to the blatant "robbing" of people's wealth.

What Guber did has already surpassed this level. He basically set up the game first, and then let his employer jump in and cause the employer to lose hundreds of millions. Then he made Sony lose hundreds of millions every year, and finally, in order to get rid of him, they had to pay hundreds of millions more.

"This can be said to be a case of crashing someone else's car, stealing a huge amount of property from the car, and finally escaping successfully..."

"Hit and Run..." Medavoy chuckled. This metaphor was so apt.

"Gubel leaves Sony Pictures to start own company" Los Angeles Times.

“Gubel leaves Sony”, The Washington Post.

The next day, the news spread and major newspapers began to announce the news on the headlines of their entertainment sections.

Against the backdrop of these big news, The Shawshank Redemption managed to take in nearly two million U.S. dollars at the weekend box office, making it into the top ten, still twice as much as Forrest Gump.

However, its position was soon to be lost as a new film, "Ed Wood," which was shot by Tim Burton to win awards at the end of the year after he left the Batman series and was a film of his own interest, was released. It was only tens of thousands of dollars away from "The Shawshank Redemption."

However, it will be difficult for Ed Wood to reach the top because the Palme d'Or winner Pulp Fiction will be released nationwide in America next week.