I’m in Hollywood - Chapter 1216

[Chapter 1181 The brand new Avengers]

Back in Los Angeles, the first thing Eric had to deal with was the selection of the MCU protagonists.

In recent months, with the success of “Iron Man”, the Marvel Cinematic Universe project has been fully launched.

Among them, the most important job is to select the new Avengers members.

With the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe planned a decade ahead, many of the cosplayers Eric could refer to in his memory were no longer appropriate.

Of course, there are also some actors that are ready-made.

For example, the Thor actor, Eric identified Brad Pitt a few years ago.

After the “X-Files” ended, Brad Pitt’s development in the film industry was not smooth. The Firefly Group sent an invitation, and the other party quickly agreed and signed a long-term contract for six films.

In addition, eagle eye actor Jeremy Renner has also made his debut. Jeremy was born in 1971 and is 28 years old this year, so his age is also appropriate.

Under Eric’s advice, this role was directly determined.

Others, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow, and even some of the more outstanding supporting roles, are still being selected.

The Firefly Group’s plan for the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is nine films, with a time span from 1999 to 2004, a total of five years.

Among them, the already launched “Iron Man” and “Spider-Man” occupy two of the nine films respectively.

Captain America, Thor and the eventual Avengers take up the other three spots.

The remaining two films are The Hulk.

In the past time line, from “Hulk” in 2003 to “The Incredible Hulk” in 2008 can only be described as failure. There are many reasons for this. There are many reasons for not choosing the right director, the random replacement of actors, and the protagonist. Creative conflict with the director, etc.

Moreover, due to the special character setting of the Hulk, this comic character is indeed more difficult to shoot than all other superheroes, but, as one of Marvel’s most popular superheroes, with Hulk’s force that is enough to destroy the world Value, once filmed, the Hulk will definitely be able to achieve unexpected success.

However, in Eric’s view, although the two Hulk movies have ended in failure, the themes of the two films are very consistent with the Hulk timeline, one about the origin of the Hulk, and the other about Bruce. Banner’s control of the Hulk.

The new Marvel Cinematic Universe will still use this timeline setting, in fact, it must be adopted.

After the original Hulk was transformed, it was very violent and completely irrational. Hulk in this state could not join the Avengers at all.

So, Bruce Banner’s self-control process must be completed with a sequel.

In contrast, “Captain America” only needs to tell one origin, and “Thor” also only needs one opening.

Therefore, according to the plan, not counting the series such as “X-Men” that Marvel has authorized, “Hulk” will become the third Avengers to appear on the big screen after “Iron Man” and “Spider-Man” member.

In the previous Avengers series, except for the Iron Man played by Robert Downey Jr., other superhero characters did not have a particularly eye-catching place except for some radiant brotherhood.

This time, although “Iron Man” was also successful, Eric didn’t want to hold up half the sky of the Marvel Cinematic Universe like Robert Downey Jr., he wanted to see several other superhero characters can have better performance.

Therefore, due to the above reasons, coupled with the failure of the original version of “Hulk”, Eric also paid special attention to this superhero movie.

In order to make the new version of “Hulk” undergo a complete transformation,

Eric has directly ruled out Eric Barker, Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo who have played the Hulk.

Eric Buck’s version of the Hulk didn’t impress Eric at all. Edward Norton’s uncontrollable character in reality made it difficult for him to honestly accept the settings given by Marvel. The Marvel Cinematic Universe even It is impossible for the director to have too much say, let alone use an actor like Norton who has extreme control over the script.

As for Mark Ruffalo, he is undoubtedly the most widely accepted Hulk actor due to the success of the Avengers series.

However, the Hulk created by the actor also has no bright spots, which can be seen from the actor’s salary revealed by the Avengers series.

As one of Marvel’s most popular superheroes, Mark Ruffalo’s salary to play the Hulk is lower than that of Jeremy Renner who played Hawkeye.

There is no doubt that if Mark Ruffalo is used, the Firefly Group will definitely be able to save a lot of money, but it has never been Eric’s fundamental purpose to suppress the actor’s salary.

Although the Firefly system has always emphasized cost control, in the final analysis it just wants to control the obvious remuneration within a more fair and reasonable category.

If the actor of Hulk can make $1 billion at the box office by himself, Eric will definitely not mind paying $20 million or more.

On the contrary, if the Hulk movie fails at the box office, even if the protagonist is free or even reposted, Eric will not be willing.

Firefly Studios.

In recent days, Eric has mostly been hosting the final round of auditions for the Avengers cast himself.

Today’s audition targets are several candidates for Bruce Banner, and Katzenberg, who happened to be free, also rushed over.

Counting Joss Whedon, who has also become the creative core of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, today’s audition team can be described as ‘unprecedented’.

Due to the success of “Iron Man” and the sense that Firefly Group attaches importance to the Avengers, Hollywood’s eligible male stars have basically expressed interest in the Avengers series characters.

However, Eric is not too fond of celebrities with too much fame.

He doesn’t want a situation like in The Incredible Hulk where the audience sees the Hulk and their first reaction is Edward Norton instead of Bruce Banner.

Therefore, in the role selection process, the first criterion of the main creative team is whether the actor fits the role, and the requirements for the coffee position are not too high.

This also led to the final round of auditions, several Hollywood first-line male stars who were interested in Hulk were all washed down.

Because of this, the Hollywood media, which has been closely following the trends of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has been quite lively in recent days.

At sunset, when the last auditioner was sent away, Eric and the others leaned on their chairs tiredly.

There are actually not many actors participating in the audition today, only five people who made it to the last level after going through layers of selection.

But starting at 9:00 a.m., each of the five candidates has had an audition of two hours, so it’s been until now.

Although Eric treats every audition equally, after a day of audition, everyone can clearly feel Eric’s personal tendencies.

He took a few sips of the coffee brought by his secretary, but Katzenberg, who was sitting beside Eric, didn’t immediately mention today’s audition, but instead talked about another topic: “I met him at the reception a few days ago. Richard Parsons, he said that Warner Bros. might restart the Batman franchise first.”

Eric flipped through a document in front of him with a relaxed expression, looked at the eye-catching ‘Christian Bale’ name on the name column, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, said: “I thought it would be “Superman”, now restart “Superman” Batman is not a good time.”

With the great success of the opening work of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warner, which has the big gold mine of DC, will naturally not fall behind.

Eric originally wanted to secretly control the rhythm of Warner’s development of the DC movie universe, so he deliberately dug out Nolan.

However, due to changes in Hollywood history, Warners neither got “The Lord of the Rings” nor developed “Harry Potter”.

Then, in order to keep its own film business from declining, it is also doomed to develop dc in advance.

“It’s really not a good time, and the audience certainly hasn’t forgotten the ‘deep’ impression that “Batman and Robin” left them,” Katzenberg gloated a little, saying: “Warner wants to develop “Superman”, but it’s just that The production copyright of “Superman” is controlled by Jon Peters. Now that “Iron Man” is a great success, and Warner has just screwed up the reputation of “Batman” two years ago, Jon Peters is naturally waiting for the price. Gu, Warners did not negotiate with him, and could only refocus on “Batman”.”

Jon Peters was the partner who managed Columbia Pictures for Sony with Peter Cooper a few years ago, but before that, Peter Cooper and Jon Peters both had their own production companies and were affiliated with Warner Bros. Brothers, the nature is similar to Bruckheimer’s production company.

In order to dig these two people, Sony also took a big advantage and paid a huge breach of contract fee for them.

Later, the results naturally proved that this swindler was not a big one. Of course, these are all digressions.

Whether it was dc or Marvel, before the 1990s, the movie copyright of superheroes was not so important, and there was no strict defense after more than ten years.

So during the late 1980s under Warner Bros., Jon Peters’ production company acquired the rights to Superman’s film, which it has held.

In the 1990s, with the great success of the “Batman” series produced by Warner Bros., the value of superhero copyright was gradually reflected.

However, due to a series of reasons, of course, mainly due to entanglements of interests, the “Superman” series of big movies has not been able to start these years.

Due to copyright reasons, it has not been resolved. In my memory, after the live-action version of the Christopher Reeve series of Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s, the reboot of “Superman Returns” was not released until 2006. It’s been 20 years.

The outside world is always talking about the ‘bad fate’ of Marvel superheroes, but in fact, Clark Kent’s fate is actually more bumpy.

Eric handed over Nolan’s “Memento” project to Columbia at the end of last year, and the film has now been completed. However, because of the desire to take the word-of-mouth route, Columbia plans to pass the Sundance Film Festival early next year. “Memento” will be released on the following Easter schedule.

That is to say, even if Nolan wants to emerge, he will have to wait until next year.

Moreover, only one “Memento” is far from enough for Nolan to pick up the guide to restart the “Batman” series.

After all, the fledgling British director may not even be so familiar with the Hollywood production process now, and at least he needs to go through one or two more films before he can get in touch with big-budget movies.

Although Eric wants to replicate the success of Nolan’s “Batman” series, he won’t help it.

After thinking for a while, Eric said to Katzenberg: “Can you find a way to coordinate, let Warner start the “Superman” series first, even if it is other superheroes, I have other arrangements for “Batman”. ”

Katzenberg thought for a while and said, “Actually, it’s very simple to say. If you want to start “Superman”, you just need to get Jon Peters.”

Eric’s fingertips rubbed the actor’s information in front of him and asked, “What is Jon Peters doing now?”

Katzenberg said, “You should know about that “Raiders”, right?”

Eric just remembered that last time Bill Michanick had mentioned to him that Jon Peters was leading Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld to create a retro sci-fi film “The Stormtroopers”. The film completely imitates the model of “Men in Black”.

Eric was quite stunned when he heard this, and then asked Bill Michanick to push the box office dud of White Dove Wu’s “Wind Whisperer” to Warner Bros.

Obviously, although there was no agreement on “Superman”, this did not prevent the cooperation between Jon Peters and Warner.

He smiled helplessly, because Joss Whedon was present, Eric didn’t say much, just said: “You take the time to pay attention, it’s best if you can intervene, on the surface we can’t interfere too much there. Many.”

Katzenberg nodded knowingly.

The Firefly system is already powerful enough in Hollywood, and UU reading www.sonicmtl.com AOL-Time Warner obviously wants to get rid of the label of a member of the Firefly system.

So both sides instinctively kept a low profile on Firefly’s unwittingly once again becoming the second-largest shareholder in AOL-Time Warner.

Even on the surface, the two sides still give people a sense of opposition.

Of course, AOL-Time Warner really wanted to compete with the Firefly system, but the Firefly system just deliberately made some gestures. Eric never took the scattered AOL-Time Warner Group too seriously. .

After chatting for a while, Katzenberg gestured to the cast information in front of Eric and asked, “So, Christian Bale, Jim Caviezel, which do you prefer?”

Christian Bale, needless to say, once was the hero of Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy.

Jim Caviezel, once more well-known role as John Rees in “Person Tracking”, was later nicknamed the fourth uncle by domestic American TV fans.

Eric hopes that the new Hulk actor will be more like a gentle university professor before he transforms, rather than Mark Ruffalo’s honesty or Edward Norton’s evil spirit.

Speaking of which, the image of Eric Barker in the first version was also very suitable, but the performance of the other party really did not leave any impression.

Among the last five candidates, according to some information in memory and the specific effect of the audition, Eric was more satisfied with Christian Bale and Jim Caviezel.

[End of this Chapter]