Hollywood What If

Chapter 335

Harvey Weinstein was no fool. After the alliance between 20th Century Fox and Grey Pictures, the big studio decided to help Kazir win his most anticipated award.

However, Harvey was confident that Adrien Brody and Roman Polanski would win Best Actor and Best Director respectively. They had a higher chance of winning, and Harvey decided not to fight for those categories.

The Pianist was a movie about the plight of Jews in World War II. Surely the old Jewish members of the Academy would be reminded of the tragedy they suffered. They would surely vote for Roman Polanski and Adrien Brody. That was Harvey's expectation.

Where did he go wrong?

"It doesn't matter," the fat man sighed. In the end, Chicago won most of the awards and was the clear winner of the 75th Academy Awards.

It just didn't sit well with him that Kazir Grey was having a blast and living his life happily. Especially after what Kazir had done to Harvey a few years ago. Even now, Harvey kept his low profile.

"The next time they try to compete, I'll make sure Grey Pictures wins nothing."

He grinned. Even though Kazir winning the Best Director award made him bitter, other news softened his hatred.

He read the newspaper and chuckled when he saw that the news of Michael Eisner's departure from Walt Disney had already been published.

Michael Eisner took responsibility and resigned from his position as chairman of one of the largest media companies in the world.

As one of the executives, Harvey knew that Michael Eisner wasn't leaving peacefully. He cursed the executives and the shareholders for voting him out of the company.

Michael Eisner was the tyrant of Disney, but it is also true that he was the one who made Disney thrive. His decision to focus on live-action films was the right one. His decision to focus on 3D animation and to buy a stake in Pixar was also the right decision.

No one could argue with that. Unfortunately, people were tired of him. Another fact was that Michael Eisner was getting old. He was already 61 years old and had undergone heart surgery a few years ago. His age and health made him unfit to run the company.

The biggest reason why he was kicked out was the failure of John Carter, which Michael Eisner had strongly promoted as their entry into the Cinematic Universe.

"Hehe, it's ironic that this old man wants me to leave the company, but he was the one who got kicked out instead." Harvey chuckled.

After the meeting, Robert Iger was named CEO and executive chairman.

With Eisner out of Disney, the newspaper tackled the question of whether the giant studio would thrive or go under.

...

...

...

"The what?"

Kazir raised his eyebrows slightly as he listened to his assistant, Erica Mendez.

"Lionsgate, sir. They want to contact you about buying a script."

Kazir and Erica were in the process of interviewing people for the bodyguard position.

After the incident in the Maldives, Kazir felt he needed to hire at least one bodyguard for security purposes.

So far, Kazir had met two professional bodyguards who were on his top list. He was just waiting for the last three contestants to show up so he could decide which one of them would be his bodyguard.

Erica was an experienced soldier and had seen wars and skirmishes in foreign lands, so Kazir knew that hiring a bodyguard was a stretch but also important.

However, in the course of the interview, Erica received a message. Erica was the one responsible for communicating business deals to Kazir. She was also the go-between whenever anyone wanted to contact Kazir.

"Lionsgate... I think I heard it."

Kazir lied... Of course he knew Lionsgate. It was basically the 7th largest studio in Hollywood.

Lionsgate had only been founded in 1997, and it was slowly gaining a foothold in Hollywood. It acquired small studios and distributors and merged them into one.

Lionsgate distributed a lot of successful movies like Saw, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Twilight Saga, Step Up, The Expendables and John Wick...

"Ahem."

Kazir coughed as he remembered that John Wick was originally from Lionsgate.

"That studio, if I remember correctly. It's funded by Canadian banks, right?"

"Yes, sir. I have done some research on this studio before. It's originally from Canada, founded in Vancouver. But they moved their headquarters to California."

"I see..."

Lionsgate's success could rival the Big Six. Unfortunately, it was founded late and failed to compete and fight for resources in the industry. It would take the company a decade to build a worldwide film distribution company.

"So far this studio has only distributed four movies and they have not done well. The movies are Lee Boys, American Psycho, Cube and Leprechaun."

"That's to be expected."

In the first place, distributing movies was not so easy. Sometimes they even suffer losses.

"I heard that the Big Six are looking at this company. They probably want to destroy it before it gets bigger."

"It's financed by Canadian banks, so they might have trouble doing that. Anyway, why would anyone from Lionsgate want to talk to me?"

"They want to buy one or two of your scripts. They are interested in Now You See Me and The Expendables."

"..."

Kazir was not surprised. After all, those franchises were originally from Lionsgate.

"... Set up a meeting with their representative."

Now that Kazir Grey has won the Best Director award, a lot of people want to buy his scripts.

If the price was right, Kazir would have no problem selling the scripts he didn't need. Of course, he could also talk to 20th Century Fox and have them turn the scripts into projects. All Kazir wanted was a percentage of the profits...

"I understand. They seem eager to meet you. I think they want to hire you to direct a movie."

"Hm?"

"Don't tell me they want me to direct Saw?

Saw was a famous horror film franchise. The fifth highest grossing horror movie franchise.

+++++

[It's Christmas Eve, so I just want to say Happy Holidays to everyone. To the people who celebrates Christmas, Merry Christmas!]