Chinese Entertainment: Academic Director

Chapter 168 Box Office Miracle
In the United States, apart from the Football Super Bowl, the Academy Awards ceremony has always been the most watched live television program in the country, and is jokingly called the "Women's Super Bowl" by some people.

The reason for this nickname is that the female guests present on the red carpet wore all kinds of gorgeous clothes and different styles, vying with each other for beauty, always trying to outshine others.

The Oscars started at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time. At 5 o'clock, Cao Yang, Berman, Gu Changwei and others had already arrived at the guest waiting area of ​​the Kodak Theater.

This year, the length of the red carpet has returned to 500 meters.

The red carpet will be rolled out from the guest arrival area to the theater entrance, and the remaining red carpet will be rolled out from the entrance of the Kodak Theater to the theater auditorium.

Sitting in the car, Berman watched the guests outside the car walking onto the red carpet, especially the female guests, who walked very slowly. They would not walk forward again until the photographers had taken enough pictures and put down their cameras.

The host of this year's red carpet interview is Maria Menounos. She is very familiar with the interview guests. Specifically, those who are famous, newsworthy, and controversial will be interviewed more.

Seeing that some guests, mainly female guests, wasted too much time on the red carpet, Maria Menounos would naturally shout a few words and pretend to be enthusiastic about interviewing them. In fact, she would just say a few words and "drive" them into the theater.

Berman watched with great interest and did not complain about being left in the car.

Of course he would not complain. "Mean Milk" was one of the favorites to receive ten Oscar nominations this year. His red carpet walk was scheduled for a later time. As one of the producers, Behrman enjoyed this treatment.

If "Mean Milk" can win the Oscar for Best Picture with the joint efforts of Columbia and Miramax, even if Behrman cannot become a gold medal producer all at once, he can still become a first-line producer.

"You know, it's said that the low-cut diamond-studded evening gown worn by the red carpet host, Maria Menounos, was made entirely of real diamonds and was worth as much as $2500 million."

Berman looked outside the car and said to Cao Yang with a smile.

Cao Yang looked through the car window at the host named Maria Menounos, but he couldn't see clearly because she was too far away.

“Is it so valuable?”

"Yes, it was reported in the news and was discussed by many people."

Berman smiled and said: "Of course, this is also a form of publicity for the Oscars to raise public attention and gain more viewership."

Then, he said to Cao Yang: "Just like you don't want to meet people from Fox before the Oscars, it's also a strategy."

Cao Yang smiled and said nothing.

Fox, specifically not 20th Century Fox, but its subsidiary, Fox Searchlight Pictures.

This is a company founded in 1994 and started operations in 1996. It is mainly responsible for the production of non-mainstream low-cost art films, similar to the positioning of Sony Classics.

Before Cao Yang came to the United States, Berman called Cao Yang and told him that Fox Searchlight Pictures had taken a fancy to one of Cao Yang's novels and was planning to adapt it into a movie.

The name of this novel is "Juno", which tells the story of an unmarried American girl who becomes pregnant.

This novel is included in "Cao Yang's Fantasy Journey 2".

There are also five novels in total in "Cao Yang's Fantastic Journey 2", three of which are "The Hunger Games", the fourth is "Juno", and the fifth is called "The Incomparable Wonderful Pain".

Maybe not many people are familiar with "The Misery of Life", but this novel was very popular back then and topped the New York Times bestseller list for 78 consecutive weeks.

It was later adapted into a movie called The Fault in Our Stars. Cao Yang's short story was adapted from a movie and may not be as popular as it was back then, but given the content of this novel, it is still very likely to win an award if it is adapted into a movie.

But this is also relatively speaking. For other directors, winning awards may not be easy, but for a big art film director like Cao Yang, as long as the quality is not bad, it is not difficult to win awards.

In fact, Cao Yang had his own idea of ​​putting "The Incomparable Wonderful Pain" in "Cao Yang's Fantastic Journey 2".

In "Cao Yang's Fantasy Journey 2", all five novels are about teenagers. He wanted to use these five youth novels of different types to test whether he could increase the sales of this book.

As it turns out, even though they are all short stories, this book is the best-selling one among the three books Cao Yang has published.

The top 50 books in North American sales that Bellman mentioned is this one.

It seems that whether it is movies or novels, teenagers are always the largest group.

Berman speculated that Cao Yang might want to increase the copyright fee for his novel after winning the Oscar, but this is only one aspect.

In "Cao Yang's Fantastic Journey 2", whether it is "The Hunger Games" trilogy, "Juno", or "The Fault in Our Stars", after being made into movies, they are all low-budget productions and are examples of box office hits after their release.

Just like "Juno", this movie was not originally adapted from a novel, but an original script. There were no real big names in the movie, and the cost was only more than 600 million US dollars.

What about the box office?
It earned over 140 million dollars in the United States, around 90 million dollars in other countries, for a total of over 230 million dollars worldwide.

This is a real box office miracle!

The reason why Cao Yang did not contact Fox Searchlight before the Oscars was not only to get more copyright fees, but more to control the project.

For such a profitable movie, if you only sell the copyright fees, you can get a small share at most, and you won’t lose a lot of money.

The main control projects are different. With Cao Yang's current fame, it is definitely different from when he first entered Hollywood. He will never be so passive again.

Of course, although the movie box office was very high and very profitable, Cao Yang never thought about going it alone in the United States.

If it were in the country, it would be fine. He is a big director and has influence, so there would be no problem working alone.

But in Hollywood, do you want to go it alone without the seven major Hollywood film studios?
How can it be!

Even if it is filmed, it is still a question whether the movie can be released at that time.

The best way is to make money from the Americans together with the Big Seven. The Big Seven will also think you are awesome, and your status in Hollywood will definitely rise rapidly, and you will become the most respected director and producer among the Big Seven.

"Let's go, it's our turn."

The staff came over to remind them, and Cao Yang said to Bellman and Gu Changwei.

After getting out of the car, Cao Yang straightened his suit and took a deep breath.

I hope Columbia and Miramax can give it their all. If they can win one or two major awards and a few minor ones together, this Oscar journey will be a success.

Oscar, here I come!
(End of this chapter)