Hollywood (我就是好莱坞) Part I

CHAPTER 68 - PIXAR; THE UGLY DUCKLING

Eric checked his memories on Pixar a world-renowned leader of 3D animation, and producer of the Toy Story franchise.

But before 1995, Disney 2D animation movies were still dominating the animated film market, and no one was optimistic about the future of 3D animation. It was to the point that Jobs himself started to lack confidence in it.

Before Toy Story was released, he had tried to sell this unfortunate ugly duckling at all cost, and had even contacted his good ol' rival Microsoft to this purpose.

During the meeting with the Microsoft executives and in order to curry favor with their CTO at the time, Nathan Myhrvold, Jobs had even went so far as to deliberately place on his desk, a laptop running Windows.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's offer was not to Jobs' liking, and without anyway to extricate himself from the muddy swamp he had gotten himself into, he was left with no other choice but to bite the bullet and bid his time.

That was rewarding, since once Toy Story was released, its North American box office grossed 192 million $, and its global box office reached an astounding 373 million $, while the general production cost had only amounted to 30 million $.

After that, Pixar's market value shot through the roof, reaching 7.4 billion $ when it was acquired by Disney in 2006.

Time-wise, Steve Jobs should be in the middle of his 'sinking ship' project[1]. Eric immediately thought about buying Pixar, but soon shook his head.

Although right now Jobs only demanded 50 million $ for it, even if the price was halved, Eric had no way to pay.

He didn't have enough money yet, Home Alone had been screening for so long, but he still hadn't received his final dividend.

He reckoned that he would have to wait until Home Alone's final grossing was out to get his share. In his past life, it wasn't uncommon for directors or actors to go straight to court to get theirs.

It's millions of dollars we're talking about, with the annual interest percentage, even if it sat still in the bank, it would grow impressively. So even if they had a clear agreement, Columbia would certainly find a way to drag it all out.

Eric shuddered at the thought of what they could do. Once Home Alone was at the end of its screening period, they could choose to add a few more screens all over the country, making sure the movie kept running for a little longer, and Eric would only be able to helplessly look on.

Thanks to their fallout over the gambling agreement, the possibilities of cooperation with Columbia in the short future where near nil. Scratch that, it was probably 100% nil. With Columbia using petty and devious tricks to try to get ahead, he didn't even want to bother with them, especially with Blount Cohen still at the helm.

After much deliberation, Eric felt he should prioritize Pretty Woman right now. If history didn't change too much, then Toy Story's release wouldn't happen until six years from now anyways, and he'd surely have enough to buy Pixar by then.

.....

Before Pretty Woman's shooting had started, the preparatory work had been conducted perfectly, so Jeffrey didn't need to be here all the time, they could just use other producers in his stead.

Eric and the man had talked it o
ut for about an hour, and Jeffrey had hurriedly flown to New York to discuss advertising issues with NBC.

Advertising segments' sales for the Super Bowl had started six months ago, and NBC had already sold 80% of them. Jeffrey had to fight for the remaining 20%, and a lot of time had pa.s.sed since, which meant the prices had risen.