Chapter 244 This beautiful knife is easy to earn.
"Brother Zhang, I'm going to see someone." Fang Minghua said hello, left the room and came to the conference room. What surprised Fang Minghua was that it was not just Spielberg and his assistant, but also Two more people.
Spielberg was having a heated conversation with one of the middle-aged men with short hair.
Seeing Fang Minghua come in, the short-haired middle-aged man stood up immediately. Mr. Spielberg smiled and introduced Fang Minghua:
"Mr. Fang, this is a member of Lucasfilm Mr. John Lasseter, head of Industrial Light & Magic.”
"Hello, Mr. Fang." John took the initiative to shake hands.
“Hello.”
Fang Minghua was a little surprised.
The name of Industrial Light & Magic sounds a little strange to domestic movie fans, but it actually has a more familiar name: Pixar Animation Studios, but the name was changed after the company sold it to Steve Jobs.
"Toy Story", "Finding Nemo", many movies with the name "Wall-E" are produced by this company. Including this "Wall-E"!
Sure enough, John came here for the novel "Wall-E" and said he wanted to buy the rights to adapt it and make it into an animated film.
"Mr. Spielberg, you are here early. You can talk to Mr. Fang first, and I will go out for a walk." John stood up like a gentleman and left with his assistant.
"Mr. Spielberg, I'm sorry for the long wait." Fang Minghua apologized.
Spielberg didn't say much and went straight to the point: "Mr. Fang, I just explained my purpose of coming, what do you think?"
Fang Minghua also answered simply and neatly: I Agreed, but I would like to know the specific details of your copyright purchase. ”
"OK!" Spielberg snapped his fingers, and his assistant immediately took out a stack of information from the briefcase he was carrying and handed it to Fang Minghua.
"This is a draft contract, please take a look at it."
It is a standard contract.
The content is very long, Fang Minghua read it carefully, the key point is that Spielberg will purchase the rights to adapt the novel "Catastrophe of the Sun", including movies and TV. and certain ancillary rights, including, but not limited to, rights to remakes, sequels, television series, and merchandising and bundling.
To be honest, Fang Minghua didn’t plan to write a sequel, so he didn’t say anything about the latter.
The royalties were purchased for US$300,000.
The price is still relatively high. Before Fang Minghua came to this era, he had read some articles on the Internet about the United States purchasing the rights to adapt novels.
Two methods are generally used. One is to pay a fixed one-time fee, as Spielberg did.
The other thing is to tie the quoted movie budget together. According to convention, the purchase price will be about 2.5% of the final movie budget.
In the United States, many directors, writers and agents like the latter approach - the more you invest in the budget, the more I will earn.
But for Fang Minghua, this method is troublesome.
After Spielberg got the novel, he found someone to adapt the script and raised funds. As for filming in the Year of the Monkey and the Moon of the Horse.
Fang Minghua will leave the United States and return to China in three months. It will be inconvenient to contact and negotiate later, and it will be even more troublesome if there are disagreements during the execution of the contract.
I guess Spielberg also thought of this, so he adopted a one-time payment method.
300,000 US dollars, then the movie budget is about 20 million US dollars.
Very sincere for the price.
After all, this was in the mid-1980s, unlike later blockbusters with budgets in the hundreds of millions.
Just
Why don’t you give me a portion of the movie’s profits? !
The United States is different from China. When purchasing film and television adaptation rights, you generally have to pay a certain percentage of the film's profits to the author. This is a common practice!
This price is generally 5-10% of the total net profit after the movie is released.
Holy shit
I don’t understand bullying. No wonder they paid a relatively high one-time adaptation fee.
Thankfully I have seen it!
Fang Minghua read the contract, smiled and said: "Mr. Spielberg, some of the practices in your contract are not in line with your American practices, right?" "Where?" Spielberg pretended not to listen. Understand: "Mr. Fang, the price of 300,000 US dollars for the adaptation of a novel is very high even in the United States, not to mention in China. This shows that I am very sincere!"
"300,000 is not low, but you are still missing some, right? Where did 10% of the total net profit of the movie go?"
Spielberg blushed after hearing this. , defended: "But this is not in line with your Chinese practices."
"But now in the United States."
Fang Minghua stood up after speaking, and his tone became a little cold.
"Mr. Spielberg, although I also want to reach this agreement with you, because I think you can do a good job, but the prerequisite is that you are sincere! If not, I'm sorry. Goodbye!" After saying this, Fang Minghua turned around and left.
After hearing this, Spielberg glared at his assistant.
It was your bad idea!
The bully is from China and doesn’t understand anything.
I’ll settle the score with you when I go back!
He hurriedly said to Fang Minghua's back:
"Mr. Fang, please wait a moment. First of all, I apologize. Due to my personal negligence, I forgot this.
How much do you want?"
After hearing this, Fang Minghua turned around and said.
“10%!”
"NO, 5%"
After some bargaining between the two, 7% of the film's total net profit was finally paid to Fang Minghua.
"Mr. Spielberg, I still need to find a lawyer to help me look at this contract. I will give you an answer tomorrow at the latest." Fang Minghua put forward his own opinion again.
This guy has dug a hole for himself. What if there is another hole in the contract?
Spielberg had no choice but to agree.
After talking to Spielberg, Fang Minghua then talked to John.
Industrial Light and Magic was full of sincerity and directly offered a one-time purchase of the adaptation rights for US$280,000, and also gave away 8% of the total net profit.
Of course, the contract still needs to be reviewed by a lawyer.
There are not many others in the United States, but there are many lawyers and thieves. Under Lisa's enthusiastic guidance, Fang Minghua quickly found a well-known lawyer in the city.
Robert, the lawyer, graduated from the University of Iowa Law School and looked gentle.
After careful review by the other party, they believed that there was nothing wrong with this contract.
"Congratulations, Mr. Minghua, you will be the youngest millionaire I have ever met." The other party did not forget to compliment.
Really?
I guess it’s not a compliment. The two contracts have already earned 580,000 yuan. In the future, the net profit of the two films will not be divided into 420,000 yuan, right?
So in addition to paying the lawyer's fee of US$100, Fang Minghua also tipped the other party an additional US$10.
Of course, I didn’t forget to treat Miss Lisa, who was helping me, to dinner - spaghetti.
Since there was no problem, Fang Minghua didn’t want to delay Spielberg and John, so he signed the contract with the other party that night, and US$580,000 was directly transferred into Fang Minghua’s newly opened account.
Of course, according to US law, Fang Minghua has to pay 25% personal tax.
Hmm. I just came to the United States, received an award, and made two businesses. It feels good.
How about striking while the iron is hot and writing some science fiction or something.
This beautiful knife is easy to earn.
(End of this chapter)