Chapter 619： "Deadly Magic" Casting

After the project "No Country for Old Men" was almost completed, Lehmann also started other work.

First, "Pan's Labyrinth" entered post-production, and Lyman visited the editing progress of Top and Alfonso in the past, and then the casting of "Deadly Magic".

Christian Bale and Michael Caine, the two original "Mysteries of the Shadow", and the British rookie actor Rebecca Hall are all confirmed actors, but for the rest, Nolan still in tangled.

In other words, after the success of "Mystery of the Shadow", Nolan's weight in Hollywood also began to increase. For example, in this casting, many movie stars are willing to participate in the audition, and there are many first-line movie stars.

But the budget of the project is there, too expensive to afford, too cheap to have no appeal, and too low status to form a dual-protagonist lineup with Bell.

Of course, Nolan's careful thinking is very simple for Lyman, and he directly recommended the original Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson.

In fact, after starring in Wolverine, Hugh Jackman was almost bound by this role. No matter what he played, the audience would feel that he would make a play, and it always felt bad. The "X-Men" series also performed flavorful films, because in Nolan's films, the characters always have to serve the camera, which is easy to be ignored by the audience and not so influential.

In other words, the success of the character is based on the success of the movie itself. It is like a screw, it will be small and inconspicuous, but in fact, Hugh Jackman is topical enough, and because I am deeply restricted by the narrow play path , If you want to make a breakthrough, the remuneration for non-X-Men works will usually be reduced by a large part-the sequel actors leave the sequel, and the remuneration will basically be reduced.

Also, it's Scarlett Johansson.

She is now at a low ebb in her career. Last year's "Escape from the Clone Island" was a big failure (the production cost was 122 million, North America 35.81 million, overseas 124 million, and the box office alone lost at least 70 million to 80 million, even if the offline can still recover a little bit. Blood, and it also made Spielberg unable to hold on at the time) - Warner's publicity fee is also very high.

This Michael Bay's ambitious film that wants to have a good reputation and a double box office not only accelerated the acquisition process of DreamWorks, but also directly hindered the various careers of the starring actors in it.

Therefore, these two actors who have both strength and publicity value to join "Deadly Magic" are actually very cost-effective.

Of course, Nolan, who was reminded, also quickly thought of this. Don’t forget, this budget-conscious person is not much lower than his directing talent. Soon, after hosting another round of auditions, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett- Johnson joined the cast for $6 million and $2.2 million, respectively.

Here's the thing. In the "Spartan" project, Director Zha is still busy experimenting with Scott on new visual effects and the actors haven't trained any muscles, and it's far from the time to start filming.

The next day, Lehman went to the company, Johnson came over, Lehman flipped through the list, crossed out a few scripts that were not optimistic, and went to the conference room again to let the copyright collectors hold another round of meetings.

After greetings from the boss, the chairman, Lehman, and Mr. Rust, several people took their seats one after another.

Lehman said, "It's been so many days, let's focus on reporting on the work."

Johnson and Lyman are the most familiar, so he was the first to answer, "The copyright of The Da Vinci Code is in Colombia's hands, including the copyrights of several novels by Dan Brown have been taken away, I will ask Well, Colombia already has a well-developed development plan and does not intend to involve outsiders.”

"In addition, another script you liked, "Legend of Doom", had the intention to be produced as early as the 1990s, but the budget at that time was too high and the special effects technology was immature, so it was delayed. Now, the copyright falls to In the hands of Akiva Goldsman, we worked with him on "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" before. After we found it, he said that we could talk. By the way, he has now set up a grass path production company, and it is estimated that he will not be satisfied with simply selling the script. If you really want to win it, you need to share a lot of profits.”

Lehmann frowned, but still said: "Legend of Doomsday can't be missed. Let's continue talking with him. This script reminds me of "Ride to New York"."

"Did it follow the follow-up story?"

As early as after "New York Row", Lyman said that there would be a sequel plan, so Johnson asked this question.

Lehman said helplessly: "The Walking Dead is a TV sequel, but it doesn't really have much to do with the story. The second film I want to shoot is about zombies forming corpses to break through New York. The script of "Legend of Doom" is actually very suitable for the third film. The Ministry, that is, the whole world has been overrun by zombies, and human beings are almost wiped out.”

Johnson was taken aback.

He didn't expect Lehmann to have such a plan for the movie. Step by step, he would form three works describing zombies. With mutual cooperation and momentum, how big the box office market would be?

At least not worse than the first three Harry Potter series.

Johnson said bluntly: "Well, I will do my best to negotiate with Akiva Goldsman, and I must get the copyright of the script. He lacks funds, and such a big scene cannot be filmed by him alone. "

Lyman laughed dumbly. Johnson didn't pay much attention to the script. After hearing about the trilogy plus a spinoff plan for a TV series, his eyes lit up.

Originally, he still wanted to create his own story of the third ending, but he couldn't compare to the ready-made one-after the film "Legend of Doom" was made, the title of the film was "I Am Legend", which is the one who survives the apocalypse with one person and one dog... ...

There are ready-made similar scripts, so if you can get them, of course you have to get them.

"If you can't get the copyright of the adaptation, it's okay to cooperate in development, but to give up part of the profit, you must have the follow-up offline market development." Lehmann thought for a while and reminded.

Johnson nodded.

Afterwards, a member of the screenwriting department stood up and said, "I rummaged through the company's backlog of scripts and found a few topics that might be good."

"What is it?"

"Uh, a little niche work that might be able to win awards."

Lehmann didn't expect that there was a middle-aged person in literature and art hidden in the screenwriting department.

"Can you tell me in detail?" Lehmann asked curiously.

"I brought the script, boss, do you want to see it?"

Ryman waved his hand, "You can summarize first."

The middle-aged white man named Runier-Guise joined the company last year. It was because of the expansion of the company's management during that time. He followed Rodriguez Perlman to enter at the same time, and the screenwriting business was fairly skilled.

But he himself is a practitioner who likes to study avant-garde film works.

Runier stood up straight, with a serious expression, "One of them is about an unplanned pregnancy of an underage girl. Diablo Coty always tells such a sharp subject very restrained, neither criticizing nor advocating. , even bordering on understatement, but the thought inside is moving; the second is a story about beauty pageants."

"It may sound a little rude, but it's actually a play about family relationships..."

"It sounds like a lot of risk." Liam on the side retorted: "These two scripts have not been invested in for so long. Everyone must think it is very risky."

Runier-Guise didn't deny anything.

The scripts that were thrown into the script library and piled up If anyone was very optimistic, they would have been cast.

"I'll take a look first." Layman was interested.

Take a look at the name of the script "Juno", "Little Miss Beauty".

Well, the former Lehman is very impressed, but I don't know that this work was not filmed at all at first. The latter opened it and read it for a while, and Lehman also understood which movie it was - "Little Miss Sunshine", it is indeed a A heartwarming piece about family affection.

Lehman picked up two scripts and said: "If a film company wants to survive, commercial works are essential, but as directors, we must be able and not forget the feelings of filmmakers. Business and art must be grasped with both hands. Be tough. These two projects, Runier, you are responsible for negotiating the adaptation.”

Runier-Guise is very excited. He feels that he has met a boss who can agree with his philosophy, and he is very happy to take the task.

In addition, the remaining staff also offered several options, but Lehmann did not refuse.

Because everyone's choices are very careful, and all of a sudden, there are 13 scripts with slight potential in the company. Of course, most of them have not been verified on the big screen.

Only three projects were highlighted by Lehmann...

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