[US Entertainment] Actor

Chapter 133 Saturday Night Live

Ebert is still very surprised that Lynn can be ranked among the top ten income among all agents in the United States. Just as there is always a distinction between first-tier and second-tier in the celebrity circle, there is actually a contrast in the agent circle.

Top agents have a huge income not inferior to first-line stars, such as Johnny Depp's agent Tracy Jacobs, she introduced Johnny to UTA (United Operating Agency), so her annual salary can reach Reached 8 million US dollars, ranking in the forefront among the first-line agents in Hollywood.

Brokers have two ways to make money, one is through the dividends of the brokerage company, and the other is to have enough top star resources in their hands. The latter is more important, because only top stars can bring top salaries.

In the past few years, Johnny Depp's income has been in the middle and upper reaches of Hollywood. When Tracy Jacobs was hired by UTA, he had not yet received the top salary of this agency, but with the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" After Depp was shortlisted for the Oscar Best Actor category for two consecutive years, Tracy took the top spot in UTA's agent category.

This is very similar to Lynn's development trend in Endeavor Elite Company.

After signing with Ebert, Lynn's status among the Endeavor Elite has been significantly improved. Especially in the first two years, Ebert was nominated for Oscar winner one after another, starring in "Batman Begins", "The Pentium Age", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and other films have achieved both box office and word-of-mouth success, and the film salary has also successfully entered the 2000 million US dollar mark, which makes him the highest-paid star under the Endeavor Elite Company. Lynn's income and status He received more than 90 US dollars in dividends alone last year. Although it is slightly inferior to the company's board members, but with Ebert's high income share, Lynn has become the most profitable broker of Endeavor Elite .

Agents and celebrities are interdependent. If the income of a celebrity is high, the income of an agent will rise. At the same time, it will attract major brokerage companies to poach talents. Agents can also use the rising momentum of stars to sign more potential stars. The stars retain more resources, which is a win-win process.

In fact, even if Ebert takes few jobs this year, Lynn's total income will not be affected too much, because Endeavor Elite Brokerage will definitely give more dividends and profits in order to keep him, so that they In order not to lose Ebert, the big star that everyone covets.

The time has just entered May, and the smoke of the summer vacation has already started everywhere in Hollywood.

Ebert still maintains stable contact with Leonardo. When Leonardo is filming, Ebert will also contact his assistant to report Leonardo's situation in real time. Fortunately, everything is fine.

Although there was a verbal battle with Michael Eisner not long ago, during the promotion of "Pirates of the Caribbean", all departments of Disney Pictures maintained considerable respect for Ebert, and Ebert reciprocated, As long as he can participate in the promotional activities, he will try his best to participate. Although he has decided not to participate in the third part, he still hopes that the second part he participated in will end with a perfect box office result.

In fact, although the plot of the second film is much less dynamic than the first, it is still a wonderful movie, and Johnny Depp, Ebert and Keira Knightley have all become Hollywood's first-line stars, with such a staffing and Disney's strong publicity work, the box office of the second part should be able to surpass the first one.

Most commercial blockbusters have maintained this development trend.The first part may be the most well-known and influential, but the box office of the second and third parts is often better than the first one, just like "Pirates of the Caribbean", the first "The Curse of the Black Pearl" in the publicity, The investment in public relations and theaters is far inferior to this "Dead Soul's Coffin".

This is because a film company always lacks self-confidence when developing a new commercial series. If it invests too much in various aspects of publicity, the losses will become particularly serious, just like MGM, which is currently on the verge of bankruptcy, " The huge fiasco of "Wind Talker" directly made this old film company enter the ranks of being auctioned again. Nicolas Cage's title of king of bad movies has not been taken off so far. All the accumulated good results were exhausted, and the Chinese director never got a ticket to Hollywood again.

The failure of "Wind Talker" and the tragic situation of MGM undoubtedly sounded the alarm for major film companies, and investment began to become cautious. When developing a new series, unnecessary expenditures were also removed from the investment list. clean.

Of course, when it comes to publicizing the second installment of a successful franchise, studios tend to ignore the cost, not because the studio realizes the importance of publicity, but because the wool is on the sheep and they just want to make money. Just more money.

The premiere date of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" is scheduled for June 6, and the official release date is July 24.In this year's summer file, it will face the joint attack of many super blockbusters such as "Cars", "X-Men 7", "Superman Returns", "The Da Vinci Code", "Special Agents" and other films are also major blockbusters. A masterpiece for the film company to get a share of the summer film.

In fact, the competition for summer movies in recent years is not as intense as in previous years. While securing summer movies, many film companies are also aiming at the equally wonderful Christmas movies. In 97, "Titanic", "007 Tomorrow Empire", and "Mousecatcher" jointly competed for the Christmas file. The box office record set by the former made major film companies realize the potential of the Christmas schedule, and many films also began to choose Releases during the Christmas period, especially romantic dramas, family comedy style movies.

After Warner successfully launched "Batman Begins" last year, it sent another superhero movie in its hands to the summer file. In previous years, Warner had the "Harry Potter" series to fill the Christmas file. This year Then it launched the cartoon "Happy Feet", and invited Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and others to dub it.

After the promotional work of "Pirates of the Caribbean" started, Ebert and Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley got together briefly for a few days.

The three of them are very busy with their careers now, and it is not easy to squeeze out one to two months to promote the film. Even if they reunite, they often go from one event to another, and even talk to each other when they are the busiest. I have no strength.

Johnny Depp laughs: "That's the price of fame."

In just a few weeks, Ebert ran from New York to Los Angeles, and then to San Francisco. At the busiest time, he even slept on the plane. Johnny Depp was a bit harder than him. The hot summer , when he attended most of the events, he also wore Captain Jack Sparrow's exclusive headgear and weird smoky makeup. Who made him the most popular person in the entire crew!

Ebert couldn't help feeling a little thankful that last year's "Mystery of the Shadow of Heroes" was also released in the summer, but the promoters didn't ask Ebert to wear a bat suit, otherwise Ebert would definitely go crazy!

Perhaps because the first film "White Night" was promoted by "Saturday Night Live" and became a hit, Ebert has always maintained a good cooperative relationship with "Saturday Night Live", and the first stop for his new film promotion is often This ace variety show is also finalized.

The difference from 4 years ago is that Ebert was still a musical guest at that time, and he was a guest host in the later episodes.

The regular actors of "Saturday Night Live" are also very familiar with him. Every time Ebert comes, he can bring good ratings to the show. At the end of this episode, the search volume and replay rate of "Saturday Night Live" have remained high. This trend was not obvious when Ebert starred in "The Age of Pentium", but as he became more and more obvious. The aura of future superstars, the feelings of the "Saturday Night Live" production team and regular actors are becoming more and more obvious.

This episode of "Saturday Night Live" partnered with Ebert's musical guest is the famous American female singer Alicia Keys. Since 2001, Alicia Keys has been the Billboard chart and Grace A frequent guest of the American Awards, she is quite influential among female singers born in the 80s.

Keith is one year younger than Ebert, but in the singer industry, she is much better than Ebert. She has won the Grammy, the highest award in the music industry, several times at a young age.Although Ebert debuted as a member of the "Eastern Eagle" group, his singing skills are just the opposite of his acting skills. At most, he can hum a fast-paced saliva song, although becoming a singer did not come from Ebert It's very intentional, but he still feels a little nervous when he meets a real singer.

It's as if Li Gui met Li Kui.

Backstage, Ebert simply said hello to Alicia Keys before stepping onto the stage to the beat of the music.

As soon as he played, there was thunderous applause at the scene, and Ebert had to repeatedly reach out his hand to signal the audience to be a little quieter.

"Great Saturday, great to be here again," Ebert said with a smile. "The director of 'Saturday Night Live' asked me for a long time and I didn't say yes until he promised to organize a 'Pirate' feature for me." , but then I still refused because I banned any liquids in the studio, and he was very embarrassed because he really wanted me to appear on the show in a swimsuit."

"Don't laugh and don't look at me, there's absolutely no way I'm going to say yes, to be honest, I've been suffering from water sickness since filming two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and to put it simply, even if someone is in front of me When I shed tears, I would immediately become irritable and want to hit someone. I am talking about you, the audience in the front row, why did you come to the show?"

The audience member was wiping away tears with a tissue, and when he heard this, he showed a confused look: "Why? Because I like Alicia Keys so much."