Made in Hollywood

For most people, the past is too far away and not in their plans, so it is inevitable that they will be temporarily forgotten. When someone or something touches them, this part of the memory can jump out, just like today's Duke.

X-Men and Magneto, he should have heard Ian McLean mention it before, but he didn't take it to heart until he needed to find a suitable investment object and was touched by 'Gandalf' and 'Magneto', Finally got his attention.

However, this also shows that he is only one of the countless ordinary people in the world, and his brain may not be much easier to use than others.

What does the X-Men stand for?

Then Duke asked Tina Fei to check, this is still the X-Men of 20th Century Fox, the copyright of a little spider is also firmly in the hands of Sony Columbia Pictures, and after the "Godzilla" series was interrupted , Sony Entertainment is ready to push the little spider to the big screen.

Knowing the current situation of these superheroes, Duke naturally turned his attention to their parent company, which is the nemesis of Warner Bros.'s DC Comics, now called Marvel Comics, and later changed to Marvel (renamed in Chinese) a comics company.

The company has just filed for bankruptcy protection a few years ago, and now it can only survive by selling the copyrights of its superheroes.

Since "Batman and Robin" suffered a double failure at the box office and audience reputation, the superhero movie that has never occupied the mainstream of the market once disappeared from Hollywood. After the relevant memory of Marvel was awakened, Duke knew that "X-Men" " will change all this. When "Spider-Man" is released, the Marvel heroes who are born with various defects and ordinary people's troubles will fully bloom with the advancement of special effects technology and become the mainstream of the commercial film market.

Marvel Studios. Even more than a decade later, it has become the most dynamic and profitable production company in Hollywood.

Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America...

Thinking of this, Duke suddenly realized that perhaps Scarlett Johansson was often around his mother, and he had long been accustomed to it, and even forgot Agent Natasha Normanoff.

That's the surprise right now. Marvel in the future.

After determining the purpose, Duke sent Tina Fey back to North America again, so that she would be amazed by the investigation and contact with David.

Of course, Duke didn't intend to buy Marvel, since he couldn't squeeze all the cash flow in, and Marvel's management wouldn't be foolish enough to sell himself to a director or a small movie studio.

Not to mention, behind this movie studio. Or the parent company of their nemesis.

Yes, the surprised management and shareholders have the idea of ​​selling themselves, but the sale is also divided into objects.

Duke is just contacting Marvel to see if Marvel has any idea of ​​financing or accepting foreign investment to get out of trouble.

According to the preliminary information Tina Fei found. Surprise has been on the brink of bankruptcy, and if it weren't for selling the rights to characters, it probably wouldn't be able to survive.

Like countless investment institutions large and small in North America, Duke wants to invest in surprise. Then hold a portion of the shares and wait for possible huge returns in the future.

How much did Walt Disney buy Marvel Comics? Duke can't remember. But there should be billions of dollars.

Later, Duke turned back to the post-production of "One Hundred Thousand Fires". It is luck to have the opportunity to invest in surprise, and if there is no opportunity, it cannot be forced.

After all, he is not the center of the world.

By mid-February. David and Surprise have started formal contact. Since the cold winter of the comics industry in 1995, Surprise has experienced the withdrawal of several large investment institutions. Although it did not really fall into the abyss after filing for bankruptcy protection, it made the investment market lose money. In order to gain confidence, in addition to selling the copyrights of their heroes, they can only use the various copyrights of their famous characters as collateral to exchange loans from banks.

However, the Marvel hero movie has never been successful on the big screen. It is only a paper copyright, and it is not much money mortgaged from the bank.

The surprising dilemma can be said to give the two parties a basis for investment cooperation, but the amount of investment and the resulting share changes require a process of negotiation and wrangling.

Professionals will naturally be in charge of these matters, and Duke has never relaxed the various supervision measures that should be taken. When it comes to business transactions involving large-scale interests, he will not trust anyone, even Tina Fei. .

The time is getting closer to mid-February. With the concerted efforts of Duke and Mike Dawson, the post-editing of "One Hundred Thousand Fires" was much smoother than expected. Both of their abilities have been fully honed in the past production After the initial adjustment phase, the actual progress has been much faster than planned.

On February 20th, after adding the opening and closing credits, all the production work of "One Hundred Thousand Fires" was completely completed.

Warner Bros. specially sent a team to escort the film back to Los Angeles for the next test screening and copy production. Duke will not return to North America for the time being, and a lot of preparatory work for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy has also come to an end. In the end, he needs to take care of himself.

After more than a year of long preparations and a lot of time and energy from the staff in various positions on the crew, the preliminary preparations for the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy are about to be completed.

It was a huge and complex project, and after The Lord of the Rings officially announced its establishment in Wellington, Duke and Robin Grande began the final review of the completed work.

Even just reviewing it is a heavy workload, and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy involves too many aspects.

Not to mention other things, in terms of clothing alone, it is not an easy task to design different styles of clothing and styles for each population in Middle-earth.

There will be hundreds or even thousands of characters played by real actors. They belong to nine races with different body types and cultures. Each culture has an average of 500 costumes. Astonishingly, over the past year or so, the costume designer has led more than 80 tailors, embroiderers, shoemakers and jewelers to sew beautiful and functional costumes for each character.

According to the shooting plan, many characters must have 2 batches of the same costumes, one for the actors and the other for the stand-ins with different physiques.

With just a few leads, the costumes could fill a van - 64 suits for Frodo, 50 for Aragorn, 30 for the Nazgul, 9 of the Lord of the Rings expeditions needed 150 travel bags...and theirs Substitutes, each with an average of 20 costumes!

If the director does not participate in the preparatory work, but throws it all to others, only if there is a problem with the costume, the shooting will be delayed for a long time.

When shooting a movie, wasting time is actually wasting a lot of money needlessly.

For those rumored directors who never participated in the preparatory work, waited for the deputy to complete the preparatory work, and then took it and shot it by himself, and successfully completed the super-selling director, Duke believes that there are only two possibilities, one is the presence of God, and the other is the appearance of Satan.

Even in the final review, when Duke walked into the clothing warehouse, his costume designer continued to introduce the design concept and the materials of the clothes, so that Duke, the director, could know what to do during the shooting.

When approaching more than two dozen plastic mannequins about half the height of an average person, costume designer Nigella Dixon pointed to the hobbit costumes and explained to Duke.

"The Hobbits respect nature, and these garments use a lot of natural materials such as linen. The design draws on the style of ancient Europe. The clothes are mainly in green, yellow and brown and other colors that symbolize nature."

She walked over, touched the ornaments, and added, "Duke, you said the costumes were meant to bring out the hilarious and playful side of the Hobbit personality, and I've added some quirky things like their trousers and sleeves. They're all short, the buttons are big, and the collars are asymmetrical, and I purposely sewed their pockets a little higher, so when they put their hands in their pockets, it would look funny."

Having said that, Nigella Dixon also made a similar gesture, which caused Duke and Charles Rowan to laugh.

The elf costumes to be viewed next, are a completely different style and need to show their elegance, Nigella Dixon used colors like moss green, bark brown and pale crimson , while bringing out a neutral temperament and old-fashioned texture.

I went around the warehouse for most of the time. Because there was enough communication in the previous work, Duke was basically satisfied with the design and production of most of the clothing. The clothing team did a great job.

However, when he came to the plastic mannequin representing Gandalf, Duke frowned, walked over and took off the wizard hat, which was in the European tradition of wizard hats, but a little too big.

"This is just a trial sample..." Nigella Dixon came over and said.

Duke put the hat back, and said, "Nigella, I hope Gandalf's wizard hat is a very fancy accessory, looks ancient and magical, but not too exaggerated, this design of yours is worn on wizards. It's like a big ship on the head."

After thinking for a while, Duke said, "The design is overturned, and what I need is a wizard hat that is both functional and mysterious."

Nigella? Dixon immediately recorded in his work log.

Finally, Duke sees the costumes of two of the film's most important female characters, Galadriel and Arwen Eveningstar.

According to Duke's request, their clothing should not only show a metallic brightness, but also be elegant enough to make the heroine in the film seem like an angel of Middle-earth.

Among them, the Queen's costume, Duke has seen the makeup photos of Cate Blanchett, the effect is quite good in general, and the Arwen Evening Star...

The actress who will play Arwen Evening Star has not yet been determined. Duke does not intend to use the former female model. The other party's bloated and thick figure does not fit the slender and elegant setting of the elf at all. (To be continued ~^~)