Businessmen are always good at using sweet words to make up traps, lure prey into traps, and then reap their own interests and leave. This is true in all walks of life, and Hollywood is no exception.

When Barry Meyer found Lance, his bold words easily achieved a deterrent effect. After stripping away those beautiful promises, you can see the cruel truth hidden in it - the so-called "three million" cost is actually only "two-five million" plus the evaporated 50 million.

Of course, 250 million is still the top production in Hollywood. The cost budget for the last two sequels of "Pirates of the Caribbean" is 500 million, and each one is 250 million on average. This is still a huge challenge for Lance; it is still a rare opportunity for Chaos Pictures.

But the problem is that Lance has 250 million yuan to invest in filming, but Warner Bros. would assume that Lance has 300 million yuan. They expect the box office of this work to achieve a huge profit of "300 million yuan investment", and one billion may be just the bottom line. In other words, the evaporated 50 million yuan is like a debt, requiring Lance to pay twice, or even three or four times, to repay this "debt".

The invisible pressure will further change the balance of cooperation between Chaos Pictures and Warner Bros.

"It's true." Cole immediately understood the meaning of Lance's words and shook his head helplessly. A large company like Warner Brothers would never be kind-hearted and would pay out of his own pocket to fill the loophole of "50 million". "Disney has really made a good move."

The most important part of the news revealed by Eric is not that Bright becomes the successor of "X-Men 3", nor that Bryan becomes the director's alternate to Superman restart project, but that the $50 million loophole. Even if this will not let Lance retreat and directly give up Superman restart project, it can allow "Pirates of the Caribbean" to take more initiative in the subsequent competition.

Lance gently rubbed his temples, and then heard Cole ask, "So, what are you going to do?" Lance let out a sigh of relief, "Let me think about it."

After hanging up the phone, Lance fell into deep thought.

Give up is the last choice. Lance has not considered this possibility at present. The risk is something that must be borne by shooting any work. The greater the risk, the greater the benefit. This is the eternal theorem.

However, it is certain that this has become more and more determined to Lance's refusal to film "Superman Return". Putting aside the failure of the previous life "Superman Return", Lance reads the script handed to him by Warner Bros. The whole script seems complex and fragmented, and every character in the movie seems to be bitter and revengeful. Most importantly, the character Superman is almost tailor-made according to Christopher Reeve's model.

This shows that the previous screenwriters were too conservative. Facing the classic screen image of Superman and Warner Bros.'s determination to have 300 million US dollars, everyone seemed to be ruthless, fearing that they would destroy Superman in people's minds, resulting in a disastrous defeat in the work.

In fact, adapting classic images is an eternal topic. How to weigh the classic impressions in the minds of traditional audiences, cater to the modern elements of the new generation of audiences, and the balance between innovation based on retaining classic images is an unsolvable problem.

Therefore, Lance would not go to this muddy waters. The failure of "Superman Return" is almost destined.

In fact, after talking to Ian, Lance had already made a decision deep in his heart. However, the news has further promoted Lance will plan ahead of schedule: to give up "Superman Return" and also give up "Superman: Man of Steel". Lance hopes to build a film framework for the first stage of the DC Universe, and then determine the core of the Superman story based on this framework, and finally rewrite a brand new Superman script.

If "three million" is placed in the context of the entire DC universe, the debt of 50 million will be insignificant, because the Superman restarting project will become the first step in the DC universe. Big Bang Special Bang is still the ultimate goal, but it is no longer the minimum consumption. As long as the movie does not lose too much, this can be called success.

To be intuitive, it can be understood in this way that Warner Bros. might have wanted a box office of one billion, but in the entire DC universe, even 900 million yuan and even 800 million yuan are acceptable. Because subsequent movies and peripheral effects will continue to generate more benefits.

This will relieve a lot of pressure on the entire Superman project.

However, this plan is too huge to implement. Lance is not omnipotent. At least he is blinded when facing the world of comics. Even the Marvel movies that were released in the previous life, he did not straighten out the relationship between characters and time development lines, not to mention the DC universe that was not yet able to be released before he was reborn.

Before building the DC universe, the correct preparation should be to sort out the character relationship, the cosmic timeline, the villain relationship and the main characters of the Justice League clearly. Even if you don’t have to read every comic - this work is definitely not possible with one person, but you also need to make an outline.

This work takes a lot of time to sort it out slowly, and it is best to be responsible for professionals who have in-depth research on comics. But the problem is that Lance has no time first, and is not professional enough, not to mention that "City of Sin" is still the most important job at present.

It cannot be ignored that at the same time, Warner Bros. is also investigating Brian. If Brian successfully accepts "Superman Return" according to the historical trajectory, Lance lost directing a work with an investment of $250 million, which is still a trivial matter; importantly, since Brian became the director of "Superman Return", on the one hand, Lance's plan to implement the DC Universe will inevitably require Brian's cooperation. From the revision of the script to the insertion of the character, and even the setting of the villain, it requires the same front, but Brian is definitely unwilling to be fingered by others, which will inevitably lead to more obstacles.

On the other hand, once "Superman Return" fails, it will affect the next series of plans in the DC Universe, causing the entire plan to be dragged down. More likely, Warner Bros. chooses to be conservative and wait for the results of "Superman Return" before deciding whether to promote the DC Universe plan. This also means that Lance needs to wait for at least another year, and within this year, the uncontrollability of things will be completely unpredictable.

In short, reaching a cooperation with Warner Bros. before Brian, this can save Lance countless troubles. After reaching a consensus, even if Lance does not direct the Superman project and hand over the guide to Brian, Lance will retreat to the producer position and let Chaos Pictures work with Warner Bros. work together, there will be no problem.

So things returned to the beginning: time, Lance needed time, manpower, wisdom, and knowledge.

After careful consideration, Lance decided to write down the entire framework of the DC Universe. It has no flesh and blood, just a skeleton, and recorded his creativity and ideas for building the DC Universe, and used the investment project to explain the benefits and impacts that this idea could bring, and convince Barry Mayer and the many shareholders of Warner Brothers behind him, not only 300 million, but spending 3 billion or 30 billion to build the entire comics kingdom, a kingdom that is enough to compete with Disney.

In fact, Warner Bros. has completely owned such capital. They not only owned DC Comics, but also owned the "Harry Potter" series. If they follow the development trajectory of their previous life, Warner Bros. finally chose to cooperate with Universal Studios to establish the "Harry Potter" theme park, in other words, the differentiation of interests; but if Warner Bros. seized the business opportunity, they could build the theme park with their own strength and compete with Disney.

Therefore, this is not only a cooperation in film projects, but also a cooperation at the company level. This also means that the power that Lance can contribute is very limited. Even for scripts, since he knows little about comics, Lance also needs to solicit a lot of opinions from others; and the company's cooperation project planning project needs to be left to Theo and Ian.

Standing in front of Warner Bros. Chaos Pictures is like an ant looking up at the giant. It is almost impossible for both sides to stand on an equal level to talk. The question is how much benefits Chaos Pictures can gain from it and how much role it can play in its future development.

As for the details of the script, we will wait until the cooperation case is discussed before looking for a solution - if Warner Bros. nods, with the huge resources that Warner Bros. has, writing an adapted script under the guidance of Reims is not a difficult task.

As unprecedented as ever, Lance felt that he was unable to do anything in his clone. He was not omnipotent, nor was he omnipotent, especially in the face of unfamiliar comic adaptations, Lance felt a sense of powerlessness that was difficult to overcome. Not to mention compared with Warner Bros., even compared with Diorama Pictures, Chaos Pictures is now far too small.

If Chaos Film wants to grow, it must attract more talents. Just like a trailer soundtrack company, they need to set up all departments and rely on everyone's strength to drive the company's development. From screenwriter to director, to producer, and all positions in the crew, are no exception. At the company level, a person's power is ultimately limited.

If Chaos Pictures had several other screenwriters at this time, they could divide the work and cooperate, invite professional fans who know everything about comics to build the DC universe together, and complete the Superman restart script. After having these chips, they would look for Warner Bros. to negotiate. Their confidence would be more solid and their persuasiveness would be more solid, but he only has one person now...

Screenwriter? Why can't Chaos Pictures start recruiting screenwriters and forming its own screenwriter team? Even if Chaos Pictures can't shoot, they can work with other large companies or sell scripts to other companies. More importantly, the gathering of talents is immeasurable to the development of the company! A flash of inspiration in the tired brain, Lance captured a trace of inspiration, and he sat up!

He thought of it!
Chapter completed!