"Please help me contact these people at a time. I want to discuss with them the purchase of the video copyrights of these movies." Ronald called his secretary, Miss Chen, and asked her to give "Streets of Rage" respectively.

The producer of the three films "Night of the Comet" and "Break Dance" called.

"Okay, leave it to me. Ronald, you still have the video rights for a few movies. Do you want to contact us as well?" Ms. Chen is of Chinese descent. After graduating from college, she officially joined Daydream and contributed to the company.

Do some secretarial work.

"Several other films, including the Dragon King series, Top Gun, including my first directorial work, the fast-paced Richmond High, were all produced by the seven major film companies, and the box office was very high. Negotiations were very difficult. I

I will let the agent talk to me first. You only need to call these three film producers who are produced by small producers..."

"boom!"

Before Ronald finished speaking, the office door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a suit and holding a leather briefcase rushed in.

"No. 1, Ronald, is still No. 1. Dirty Dancing's soundtrack album sales are still No. 1 in the charts in the new week."

Jimmy Lehner, the manager in charge of Ronald's record business, just came back from New York on Monday. He excitedly ran to Ronald's office at Daydream Pictures, took his hand out of his briefcase, and took out

A copy was left on Ronald's desk.

"Our single beat Michael Jackson? Impossible, right?" Ronald was very surprised. He stood up from behind the desk, picked up the piece of paper and read it.

"Dirty Dancing" has two original singles, one is the theme song "Time of My Life", a duet between Bill Medley, lead singer of the Righteous Brothers, and female singer Jennifer Warnes, who just

The list was dominated by MJ's new song.

It is unlikely that a song like the one from MJ's new album that takes the number one spot and gets stuck at number two will become a hit and become the number one song.

Could it be that Patrick Schwytz composed and sang the song "He's Like the Wind"? But with Schwytz's mediocre voice, it's impossible to overpower MJ.

Ronald looked for a long time on the paper with a confused look on the singles chart, pop chart, and even the dance music list. He couldn't find the title of the two songs of "Dirty Dancing" on any single list.

The top spot appears.

"It's not the singles chart, it's the album sales chart." Jimmy Lehner looked at Ronald's confused eyes and understood that the other party had misunderstood, and immediately pointed to the middle list for Ronald.

"Oh, it's my fault." Ronald looked at the list Jimmy Lehner pointed to. Here is America's weekly record sales list. "Dirty Dancing" sales ranked second to MJ's new album.

In front of "Bad", ranked first.

"The statistics of this list are not necessarily accurate. They are based on reports from major record companies and sampling statistics from the retail market." Jimmy Lehner seemed to feel that he was too excited and told Ronald about the list.

origin.

"It's not important. Our sales will soon break through the double platinum mark, 2 million?" Ronald shook the piece of paper, and there were sales statistics at the bottom.

"I'm only first or second. In short, this sales figure has exceeded my best expectations many times." Ronald patted Jimmy Lehner and asked Miss Chen to make him a cup of the best coffee.

.

"Originally, this matter was about to be toasted with champagne, but I'm still jet-lagged, so let's celebrate with this cup of top-notch Indonesian coffee given to me by my agent."

"Cheers", Jimmy Lehner also smiled and clinked coffee cups with Ronald. He transformed from a song copyright broker to Ronald's head of record business, and his first album achieved such great success.

, is a good sign.

"If the sales are great and I remain at the top of the year, can I attend the Grammy Awards?" Ronald took a sip of coffee and looked at the copy again, wondering if there was any

I am so happy to have the opportunity to win a Grammy Award and have it at home alongside the Oscars.

"I have to be honest with you, Ronald. The sales volume is the sales volume. The awards mainly depend on the commercial performance and artistic achievements of the single."

"I remember the Grammy awards for Album of the Year, right?" Ronald touched his nose.

"There are only two original songs in our original album, and the rest are remastered old songs..."

"Okay, okay", Ronald raised his hands, indicating that he had begun to have unrealistic fantasies again.

"As long as the sales can bring us enough cash flow, I can start investing in next year's movies."

"That's not a big problem. RCA collects money from albums just like us. They also don't have to pay more royalties to artists."

Ronald nodded happily. The movie box office and the sales of video tapes were relatively slow, but the income from records, which was not very optimistic at first, became Daydream's largest cash income in 1987.

…

"Mr. Coleman..."

The first person Ronald went to negotiate the rights to the video tape was Tom Coleman, the president of Atlantic Productions, the producer of his science fiction film "Night of the Comet."

"To be honest, I don't recommend that you re-release the videotape of this movie." Tom Coleman knew Ronald's purpose, but he gave a more sincere suggestion.

Atlantic Productions, since making big money releasing Ronaldo's "Night of the Comet," has been making money on a small budget. Only about one movie produced and released every year can make as much money as winning the lottery.

, others are struggling to reach the break-even line.

In 1985, they filmed and released Michael J. Fox's "18", a story about members of a teenage basketball team who suddenly find themselves transformed into werewolves and kill everyone.

Although in the light of "Back to the Future", this movie did not become the top five of the year, but with a production cost of more than 1 million, it achieved a commercial success of 80 million at the box office, allowing Atlantic to survive to this day, and can still shoot every year

A dozen movies.

This year they also have the sequel to The Wolf to be released. In addition, Ronald also heard that their distribution department is preparing to distribute "The Good Wife" in America, which won the Best Actress Award at the Tokyo Film Festival.

Atlantic is considered a relatively healthy one among the small Hollywood companies, and its shareholders have made a fortune from dividends.

"Why do you say that?" Ronald was a little strange, wondering if the other party was unwilling to sell the copyright of the video tape to him.

"That's right, Ronald. We released the video tape of the film in 1985, the year after Night of the Comet came out. There were three versions in total, VHS, Betamax, and analog disc CED, and in the end we just barely broke even.

Just two years have passed since you were about to re-release the videotape...

I know that you are now a successful commercial film director, and it is very understandable that you want to get the video rights of your past works back. However, this film does not seem to be suitable for video distribution, and our selling price will not be lowered.

Business is business." Finally, Tom Coleman added a favorite saying of American businessmen.

"You are right, business is business, but I still want to take all the movies I have directed under my own name. These movies are like my children..."

"Okay, since you insist, I will ask our distribution manager to negotiate with your people and try to give you a preferential price."

Tom Coleman felt a little disdainful of upstart directors like Ronald. These people always think about business issues from the perspective of artists. After making a few good movies and having some money, they started spending it arbitrarily.

Forget it, I have seen too many directors in this industry who are up and down like this. One or two years ago, they were making big productions from the seven major studios. After one or two years, they have been reduced to the point where they have no movies. There are so many directors.

, some of them were so proud that they could go back and make low-budget exploitation films and start over, but some were just too embarrassed to save their dignity, and quite a few of them fell into ruin.

"I will remember your care for me." Ronald stood up and shook hands with Tom Coleman to say goodbye.

In his heart, he also despised such fools who guarded the Jinshan Mountain and didn't know how to mine it.

In the video tape market, only the VHS format is suitable for movies. Both Betamax and analog disc CED can only record for one hour. In this era when movies are generally 90 minutes to two hours long, you have to get up to change the video tape halfway through.

, it really makes people lose their spirits.

The funniest thing is that Sony's Beta format is actually not incapable of recording for more than 2 hours, but their engineers want to protect the clarity of the video tape and are unwilling to record movies at a lower definition, which is what it is now.

, to buy a movie video tape, I also need two video tapes.

On the other hand, the average game length of the NFL, the most popular professional sport in America, is about 4 hours. However, the Beta format video tape, which can use lower quality recording, has a total length of only 3 hours.

Hour.

VHS tapes, which also use low-quality recording, can record up to 9 hours of TV programs.

I really don’t know what these Sony engineers are thinking. When watching movies at home, the TV sets in most American homes are no larger than 21 inches. No matter how high the quality is, it can’t be seen? And many people record football games because they were recorded that day.

If something happens, I will automatically record it and wait to see it tomorrow.

I don’t know who came up with this crazy operation of having to change a video tape when recording the most critical moment in the fourth quarter.

The VHS camp, which is also from Japan, has a much deeper understanding of the American market. Now more and more movies are beginning to use the VHS format as the main distribution method. The larger the volume, the lower the unit price can be.

Coupled with the difference in the number of boxes, the current cost of movie VHS tapes is almost half that of Sony's Beta system. This paves the way for the price of movie tapes to drop from US$90 to US$40.

As long as Ronald abandons the expensive but low-selling Beta video tapes and CED disc format, and only releases VHS video tapes, he can earn appropriate profits through the surge in sales brought about by low prices.

No matter how you calculate it, you still have something to earn.

The two of them told each other that the other was a fool, initialed a cooperation agreement, and Ronald bought back the copyright to the video tape. Within the next ten years, he could release the video tape of his own movie.

Tom Coleman of The Atlantic received a transfer fee, and the share of the video tapes in the next ten years has nothing to do with him. Regardless of whether Ronald earns or stays with him, he can get a stable copyright transfer fee.

…

"Break Dance is Cannon's most profitable movie so far. We couldn't possibly sell the video rights to Ronald at such a cheap price."

The current head of the cannon is Minahan's younger brother, Yoram Gobulos. He looked at Ronald's proposal that Minahan brought and frowned as he rejected Ronald's image.

"How could you do this? Back then, the two of us were living on the streets of New York and almost ran out of money to go back to Israel. If Ronald hadn't filmed the movie "Break Dance" that brought us back to life, and then raised funds to acquire Taoguo and

The British cinema circuit, all the limelight at Cannes, is impossible."

Minahan's neck was squeezed even more thickly. He held his neck and slapped the table at his cousin. The cheap plywood desk made a loud bang when he slapped it, as if it was about to fall apart.

"Minahan, our current cash flow is very problematic. You agree that there are too many green-light projects. We shot more than 40 movies last year. Even 'Superman 4', which needs the most investment, has no projects because of these redundant projects.

We got enough late-stage funding and failed. What we need now is more money and fewer boutique projects.”

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Yoram adjusted his glasses. The last big production that Minahan was responsible for, Superman 4, also did not have enough money to invest in post-production special effects.

It was a shameful failure. The flying scenes of Superman were not as good as those in the first Superman movie ten years ago. Due to lack of funds, the flying scenes of Superman and the villain Atom looked like people made of paper. They were fake at first glance.

Because of this public failure, Minahan was stripped of the project production rights by EMI, the joint venture partner of China. He used to be the follower behind Minahan, but now he got EMI's job because of his excellent negotiation skills.
To be continued...