*Chapter 193: Alan Horn's Sincerity*

"Hey, Sarah, Isla~"

Wayne had his arms around both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Isla Fisher, giving each a kiss on the cheek, completely unconcerned about the stares from the rest of the crew.

After all, his preferences and style were well-known throughout Hollywood, if not widely accepted.

Given his current status and influence in Hollywood, no one thought anything was wrong. In fact, they considered it par for the course since Hollywood operates by its own set of rules.

But when others saw Liv Tyler and a group of other beautiful women also gathering around him, it was hard for them not to feel a surge of envy.

The two Asian female supporting roles that were still open had been given, after careful consideration and understanding, to Han Ga-in and Son Ye-jin.

As for Jun Ji-hyun, she was cast as the 'ex-girlfriend' in Wanted.

So even without counting Sarah Michelle Gellar and Isla Fisher as the female leads, there were still seven women connected to Wayne on set.

Such brazen behavior, even by Hollywood standards, was rare.

Typically, actors—even major stars like Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Cruise—don't have this much power.

In order to protect their fame and status, they avoid such situations and try to maintain a good public image.

But Wayne had no such concerns.

This is the difference between capital and an actor.

It's worth noting that entertainment industries worldwide like to categorize themselves as director-centric, producer-centric, or writer-centric.

But when you look beyond these labels, at its core, every entertainment industry is capital-centric.

With money and resources, one can do whatever they want in the entertainment world.

"Alright, I need to go get my makeup and change."

It wasn't until Wayne closed the door to his private dressing room, prepared specifically for him, that his ears finally found some peace.

Meanwhile, at a Hotel for Dogs screening, the representatives from various distribution companies were all greeting each other with polite but insincere smiles.

The atmosphere seemed friendly, but beneath the surface, there was intense competition and rivalry.

Since The Notebook had its global preview on May 20, it only took three days for the film to be released ahead of schedule.

In just five days, including both preview and general release, it had already grossed $112 million in North America and $159 million internationally, bringing its total worldwide box office to $271 million.

Based on these numbers, the final box office could easily surpass $500 million, and it might even approach $700 or $800 million.

If it achieves that, The Notebook will undoubtedly become the second-highest-grossing romantic film in global box office history, only behind Titanic.

This success would elevate Wayne and Hemera Pictures to new heights, surpassing major studios like DreamWorks and Silver Pictures, and becoming a powerhouse just below the Big Seven studios.

In terms of production influence, Hemera Pictures was already on par with the Big Seven.

In this context, every film produced by Hemera Pictures had become a highly coveted prize.

For major distribution companies like Harvey's, DreamWorks, and Lionsgate, which exist just below the Big Seven, films like The Bourne Identity, The Notebook, Resident Evil 1 & 2, and the upcoming Wanted were out of their reach.

With budgets often exceeding $100 million, they simply couldn't afford to compete.

Even for Taken, they might not have the strength to contend. Their best shot was with something like Hotel for Dogs—a smaller budget film that didn’t star Wayne himself.

And even these smaller-budget productions had strong potential for profit. Previous examples like Gifted and Mean Girls had proven that.

Despite Harvey offering a high percentage of profits for Mean Girls, he still managed to earn over $26 million from the box office alone.

Fans obsessed with the 'Mean Girls squad' drove high sales the moment the DVD was released.

Conservatively, the profits from this alone amounted to at least $50 million.

And what was Harvey’s actual investment?

Just $25 million! He made an incredible profit!

If it weren’t for the fact that the bulk of the revenue went to Disney, Harvey would be laughing in his sleep!

Additionally, the Warner Brothers' film The Dark Side, which is currently in theaters, was also performing well.

As of now, after five days of preview and three days of general release, it had grossed $57.27 million in North America and $45.6 million internationally.

While it couldn't compare to The Notebook or The Bourne Identity, and even lagged behind Mean Girls, it had still surpassed the performance of Gifted at the same stage.

For a suspense film, these were great results.

After all, Gifted grossed $143.2 million worldwide, and Warner Brothers had only paid $49 million for the rights to the film.

From box office returns alone, Warner Brothers expected to make around $30–40 million in profit.

On top of that, suspense films generally perform well in DVD sales, so Warner Brothers projected a total profit of around $80 million from the film.

That kind of return would make even the Big Seven envious.

So when it came to the sale of Hotel for Dogs, the Big Seven studios were just as eager.

And this time, it was different from Mean Girls or The Notebook...

The massive success of The Notebook had exhausted the goodwill Sony had built up over two previous efforts to curry favor—one through concert tickets and another by signing a supplemental agreement to buy out Production I.G. for Hemera Pictures.

Similarly, Harvey had also failed in his attempts twice, so now everyone was competing on equal terms.

This shift caused other distributors like Paramount, MGM, and DreamWorks, who hadn't yet managed to cozy up to Wayne, to reconsider their strategies.

What they didn’t know, however, was that someone had already quietly found a way to win Wayne over.

That person was Alan Horn, who had just recently taken over as the new president of Warner Bros. from Terry Semel, who had left to become president of Yahoo.

Horn was a capable and highly risk-tolerant executive.

At that time, most major production companies preferred to cast a wide net with their investments to increase their odds of making a profit. But Horn wasn’t like that.

He firmly believed in his own judgment and the vision of his team, opting to reduce the number of investments and concentrate all resources on the few projects he believed in.

And his track record proved him right.

The Harry Potter series, the Ocean's Eleven series, the Batman trilogy, as well as films like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I Am Legend, and Inception—all these projects had Alan Horn’s firm backing.

During his ten years as CEO, Warner Bros. may have produced fewer films than the other big studios, but the level of investment per film and their returns were among the best in the business.

Every year, Warner Bros. often had two or three films in the top ten highest-grossing films worldwide.

At this time, Horn had only recently taken over as CEO, and he needed results to solidify his position.

So, when he couldn’t find a direct way to ingratiate himself with Wayne, he chose a more indirect approach—through Leonardo DiCaprio, who had a good relationship with Wayne.

In fact, Adriana Lima and two other stars had been brought to Wayne’s attention through Horn, using the influence of Time Warner, which stood behind him.

Of course, Wayne could have done this on his own, especially given Hearst Group’s much larger influence in the fashion world compared to Time Warner.

But Alan Horn offered something Wayne simply couldn’t refuse—an offer to sell key characters from DC Comics, including Batman, the Joker, Superman, Catwoman, Penguin, Two-Face, and Harley Quinn, to Wayne’s company for a nearly symbolic price of $10 million.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely a gift.

First, every DC film Hemera Pictures produced in the future would have to offer its distribution rights to Warner Bros. at a discounted rate of 5%.

For example, with The Notebook and The Bourne Identity, this would save Warner Bros. tens of millions of dollars in distribution rights on every DC film.

In addition to the revenue generated by the films, Warner Bros. wouldn’t be losing out in the end.

After all, due to the overproduction of Superman and Batman films in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the characters had been worn out, and Warner didn’t have any immediate plans to reboot the franchises.

Even if they did, it wasn’t certain they would make money.

So, selling the rights to Wayne, who had yet to experience a flop, in exchange for film distribution rights was a win-win situation.

Although buying the distribution rights would cost more than producing the films themselves, the likelihood of the films being successful was much higher.

While Horn liked placing big bets, he wasn’t about to pass up a guaranteed return like this.

Moreover, Warner Bros. would also have the first option to buy one film from Hemera Pictures, provided its production cost didn’t exceed $40 million.

With Hotel for Dogs and Taken both coming in at $20 million and $35 million, respectively, Warner had plenty of options.

If Horn wanted, the distribution rights for Hotel for Dogs would be his for the taking.

This would conservatively bring in tens of millions in profit.

But as a seasoned CEO, his acting skills were equally impressive. Even though he was confident in the outcome, he gave no indication to anyone else.

As the lights dimmed, the film screening began.

With around 60 or 70 people packed into the screening room, it quickly fell silent.

With millions of dollars at stake, everyone watched the film intently.

After the screening ended, however, many couldn’t help but show conflicted expressions.

It wasn’t that the film was bad. In fact, even with Wayne’s discerning eye from the future, he thought the film was better than the original, let alone the critics of this time.

The issue was that Hotel for Dogs was a family film primarily aimed at children, and the perfect release window—Children’s Day—was just six days away, on June 1st.

Today was May 25th, leaving them only five days for marketing, even if they bought the distribution rights immediately.

But given Wayne and Hemera Pictures' reputation, as well as their influence, five days would be enough to make it work, though it would be tight.

There was never any consideration of not buying the rights.

After all, who would turn down money?

And if they didn’t buy it, Hemera Pictures would simply release it themselves.

While the distributors appeared friendly on the surface, they were all trying to prevent Wayne and Hemera Pictures from entering the distribution business.

So, both from a profit standpoint and the need to suppress a potential competitor, they had to secure the film’s distribution rights.

After the screening, the representatives hurriedly left after a few polite words.

The acquisition experts, especially, rushed back to their offices without even stopping for lunch to compile their evaluation reports and discuss their offers.

At 5 PM, as Wayne wrapped up filming for the day, Hannah handed him a list of the first-round offers Mia had put together.

"Wow, these are pretty high," Wayne remarked, looking over the offers with some surprise.

Perhaps knowing the competition would be intense and time was limited, all the offers in the first round were quite generous.

Unsurprisingly, Disney, always the dominant player in children's films, had offered the highest upfront amount—$80 million.

This meant that without factoring in marketing costs, the film would need to gross at least $160 million at the box office just to break even.

Given current expectations, though, Hotel for Dogs was likely to surpass that mark.

With additional revenue from DVD sales, Disney was almost guaranteed to turn a profit—it was just a matter of how much.

If Hotel for Dogs performed like Mean Girls and hit $300 million, Disney could see profits in the hundreds of millions.

However, Wayne just smiled and shook his head, dismissing Disney’s offer first.

After all, as the future king of Hollywood, Disney was always his primary target.

Next, Wayne looked at the other top offers, with Sony offering $78 million and Universal coming in at $79 million.

Warner Bros.’ offer was $75 million—not the highest, but not bad for a first-round bid.

Among those offering a cash-plus-percentage deal, DreamWorks topped the list this time, rather than Harvey.

DreamWorks, which had agreements with Disney and other giants for its own films, needed to buy films from other production companies to maintain and expand its distribution pipeline.

It seemed that DreamWorks still harbored ambitions of becoming the next major player.

They offered $28 million in cash, plus an additional $4.05 million for every $10 million in box office earnings over $60 million.

This just barely edged out Harvey’s offer of $26 million in cash and $3.98 million for every $10 million over $60 million.

(End of Chapter)