Chapter 159: Let Me Think
Chapter 159: Let Me Think
“Eric, look and see if my guesses are right?” In the study, Drew, curled up in a large office chair and scribbling away, carried over a notebook filled with advertisement names and moved close to Eric.
Eric’s gaze left the monitor. He turned his head, glanced at it, and immediately shook his head. “Nope. Why are you writing this stuff anyway? Don’t tell me you want to join the lottery too?”
“Why can’t I? That’s ten thousand dollars,” Drew said as she pulled back the notebook. She pressed the fountain pen against her chin and thought for a while before lowering her head and revising it again. “What about this time?”
“Mmm, still not right,” Eric said after another glance. Helplessly, he rummaged through the pile of documents on the desk in front of him, found several printed sheets, and handed them to the girl. “Take these and stop bothering me.”
“I don’t want them. I want to guess them all with my own ability,” Drew replied. She glanced at the papers and immediately refused. At the same time, her two little legs scraped against the floor as she dragged the swivel chair farther away, as though getting too close to those papers would contaminate her integrity.
Eric shrugged and shifted his attention back to the text on the monitor, typing on the keyboard as he said, “Then could you at least stop asking me, the insider? That doesn’t count as your own ability either.”
“Of course it counts. You’re part of my personal ability too,” Drew said. After changing things several more times, Eric finally could not help directly pointing out her biggest mistake. “Hey, television series footage doesn’t count as product placement. Replace it with the Canon camera.”
“Wah, how could you do that? I still wanted to guess a few more times!” The girl pouted and angrily smacked Eric once before reluctantly correcting the mistake she had never discovered. She had always believed the Friends footage should count as one of the product placements. In fact, many people had reached the same conclusion.
Because Friends was also part of the promotional campaign, many movie fans naturally regarded Friends as one of the product placements, just like Drew did. Columbia did not make any clear statement about it either and simply allowed the public to keep guessing.
After only calming down for a short while, a soft little body climbed onto Eric again. The friction of two plump soft mounds against his back, along with the faint fragrance from the girl’s body, immediately made Eric’s thoughts wander.
“Drew, stop fooling around. If you’re not sitting in the office chair anymore, give it to me. Sitting on this stool is pretty uncomfortable,” Eric said as he shook his shoulders, trying to get rid of the girl.
But Drew clung to his neck like glue. “Eric, I just thought of another great money-making idea.”
“Why have you suddenly become interested in making money again lately?” Eric asked as he grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her down.
“I’m jealous,” Drew said openly. She followed the force of Eric’s hand away from his back, then turned and sat on his lap instead.
“Uh, what’s there to be jealous of?” Eric gently wrapped an arm around the girl’s slender waist and comforted her. He understood that the girl had been stimulated by the revenue shares from his two films, Home Alone and Pretty Woman.
But the truth was not like the media’s exaggerated claims that Eric already possessed two hundred million dollars in cash. Although Home Alone’s revenue share had already been transferred into Eric’s account at the beginning of July, after repaying the bank’s two fifty-million-dollar loans, he only had twenty million dollars left. Even this sum still had to be shared with the Home Alone actors. According to the contract signed back then, Stuart Rankle alone would first take away three million dollars. As for the other actors, Eric could not be too stingy either. In the end, he probably would not have much left.
As for Pretty Woman, because of the thirty-five percent North American share and ten percent overseas share, Eric would indeed receive as much as one hundred five million dollars in revenue share. However, Columbia settling the payment within about a month was only because they had promised to do so in order to win Eric’s favor for the Running Out of Time project. Eric had no such agreement with Fox, so everything had to follow normal procedures. Given Eric’s current influence, Fox would not maliciously delay payment in order to maintain a good relationship with him, but even receiving the money within three months would already be considered pretty good. Although Pretty Woman had already been out of theaters for nearly a month, Eric had not yet received a single payment.
At the moment, looking at the girl in his arms who seemed somewhat depressed, Eric never expected that this usually carefree little brat would have such emotions. It actually felt... rather novel.
Drew fiddled with the fountain pen in her hand and muttered, “That’s more than two hundred million. I don’t even know if I’ll ever earn two hundred million in my lifetime.”
“Forget it. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Didn’t you say you had a good money-making idea? Tell me, and I’ll help you analyze it.”
Drew immediately became a little more energetic and gestured with her fingers as she said, “It’s like this, Eric. After that Sophia Talk Show episode, didn’t lots of viewers call asking for those videotapes to be publicly released? I think this is a really good opportunity. I heard some videotapes sell tens of millions of copies now. Even if we only sold one million copies, at thirty dollars each, that would already be thirty million dollars. After deducting costs, we’d still earn a lot, right?”
Eric did not rush to shatter the girl’s dream of getting rich. Instead, he asked, “Alright then. Let me ask you something. If it makes money, who does the money belong to?”
“Of course it belongs to me. I worked really hard filming those tapes,” Drew said. But halfway through, she herself grew a little embarrassed and lightly stuck out her tongue. “At worst, I can share some with Columbia. You definitely won’t want any, right?”
“That won’t work,” Eric said. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable, he let go of the girl, kicked the stool aside, pulled over the comfortable leather swivel chair, and sat down. Then he casually pulled the girl back into his arms before explaining, “You forgot the most important thing: the contents of the videotapes.”
“Hm?” The girl blinked in confusion.
Eric patiently explained, “The contents of the videotapes. I won’t even mention myself, but you also filmed big stars like Cruise and Hanks. There are also many temporary actors and crew staff in there. None of those people were paid a single cent to appear on camera. If you just keep the tapes for yourself, or use them for promotional broadcasts like the talk show did, that’s fine. But if you want to use them for profit, then you’ll have to obtain the permission of every single person appearing in the videotapes one by one. Otherwise, just wait to be sued in the future. Even earning a hundred million dollars wouldn’t be enough to pay the compensation. And obtaining authorization from that many people would be even more troublesome than filming a major movie production.”
“Wow, that’s so complicated. Forget it then,” the girl said dejectedly as she pressed her head against Eric’s chest.
Eric lightly patted the girl’s back. “Alright, stop being depressed. Making money is mainly a man’s job anyway. You just need to dress yourself up beautifully. It’s getting late now, so go back and sleep early. Let me quietly write scripts for a while too.”
“But I want to make money. Summer vacation is still so long. It’s boring. Eric, how about letting me take another movie? If I keep doing nothing all the time, I’ll become stupid.” Drew rubbed herself against Eric while her little claws scratched at his chest.
“Alright, alright. Let me think. Think...” Eric rubbed his temples. His gaze landed on the Sleepless in Seattle script lying on the desk, and suddenly, he recalled certain things.