Chapter 489 It’s a matter of course
The Los Angeles Lions made it directly to the playoffs in the 76-77 season, and the team's coordination was excellent.

But the Los Angeles Lakers in the same city are in better shape, and their team jumped to the top of the regular season standings with a record of 53 wins and 29 losses.

However, neither team made it far in the playoffs.

In the playoffs, the Lions met the Portland Trail Blazers, who were in even better form. Led by Bill Walton, the team was in excellent form and won all the way, preventing the Lions from going further. In the Western Conference Finals, they swept the Lakers, led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

That’s right, the Trail Blazers were the champions of that season.

In the East-West matchup with the 76ers, they were in an unfavorable situation of 0-2 behind in the first two games, but they won four consecutive games to win the championship.

This is also the Trail Blazers' only championship.

The Lions deserved their defeat against the Trail Blazers.

In the 77-78 season, the defending champion Portland Trail Blazers won 58 games and lost only 24 games, the best record in the NBA that season. After the games in February, the team's record was even as high as 50 wins and 10 losses, including a team-hit 26-game home winning streak. However, the Trail Blazers lacked stamina, and only won 22 and lost 8 in the last 14 games. They also failed to wake up in time in the playoffs. Although they defeated the Lakers 2:1, they lost to the Lions, who had a deeper bench, in the Western Conference semifinals. The Lions lost to the dark horse Seattle SuperSonics in the Western Conference Finals.

In the Eastern and Western Conference Finals in May, the Seattle SuperSonics lost 5:3 to the Washington Bullets, and the Washington Bullets won their first and only championship.

However, the basketball market in Los Angeles is very hot, especially when there is a city derby, tickets are hard to come by.

When Wang Yuanchao was in Los Angeles, he would also go to watch his own team's games.

In the United States, Wang Yuanchao has no constraints from women and often exchanges the company of different stars.

In fact, they are all old friends, whether it is Diane Keaton, Natalie Coppola, or even Sandra Locke in the film industry, but Locke is Eastwood's girlfriend now, so they can only be good friends. In the music industry, there are more, SHE and Debbie, all watched the game with Wang Yuanchao.

Ordinary people don’t know Wang Yuanchao, they only know that there is a very powerful guy who looks ordinary and is surrounded by celebrities.

This led to a misunderstanding. As soon as he appeared, many female stars, actresses, and even women who considered themselves to be somewhat pretty would go to watch the game, fantasizing about being noticed by this big shot and getting a role in a movie.

Among them are many women whose looks are extremely consistent with Wang Yuanchao's aesthetic.

This is forcing Wang Yuanchao to become Principal Wang!

He has always been honest and trustworthy, and usually recommends some insignificant roles to others. Later on, he no longer dared to watch the game, after all, he was not Principal Wang.

You must go to watch a game. Usually you go with a group of people, or if you have a female companion, you will stay in the box. It is unsafe to be exposed to the public.

Ramsey made it to the playoffs for two consecutive years, but it was difficult to go further, and he felt that he didn't have enough energy to take care of it. So this time, I came here to talk to the boss about whether I could unload the burden of general manager and concentrate on being a head coach.

His authority in the team is such that he no longer needs to serve as general manager.

Wang Yuanchao said that he could just give the job directly to the deputy general manager. At least so far, he has not found a suitable candidate for general manager.

Ramsay had no choice but to continue to let those who are capable do more work. Anyway, he was now leaving a lot of management work to his deputies.

Ramsey came here purely for vacation, because the boss often went to watch the playoffs this year.

After asking around, he roughly knew why the boss asked everyone to come here. However, just because he often met with the boss, it didn't mean that other general managers and presidents could, so he felt it necessary to go and talk to the lucky little guy.

what do you say that is?

Ferguson!
With his personal experience, Ferguson felt that his previous suspicions were a bit too reckless and impulsive.

Fortunately, the boss is indeed a generous person.

Not only was he generous, he actually flexed his muscles in front of him.

So the last bit of worry is gone.

So without waiting for Sir Wang to come to him, he took the initiative to find Wang Yuanchao.

Alex Ferguson officially announced his entry into Chelsea.
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The Ferguson issue has come to an end for the time being, but Wang Yuanchao still needs to continue talking to the presidents and general managers about the matters of other companies.

Muse Music collects songs from everywhere and signs singers.

With three top bands, they have countless creators who recommend themselves, hoping that their songs can become popular overnight with the three top bands, thus earning a lot of copyright income.

Muse Music will also take the initiative to arrange songs with some famous songwriters, so that everyone can complement each other and get what they need.

Muse will also sign some new singers, who will need the boss's approval.

If Wang Yuanchao had heard of this singer, he would agree.

Mature singers don’t have any publicity and promotion advantages to fight for.

On the film company side, Orange is more about executing Wang Yuanchao's decisions. Their investment projects will be reviewed by Wang Yuanchao. So far, unfortunately, Orange does not have the ability to invest independently - those projects are basically not familiar to Wang Yuanchao. It is so difficult to make money from movies. MGM has a certain amount of independent investment ability because they have distribution business. Even if they lose a little on investment, they can make a lot of money back from distribution.

If Wang Yuanchao had not needed Orange to invest in some projects that MGM was not suitable for, Orange would probably have been swallowed up by MGM.

"Rocky" two years ago, "Star Wars" and "The Spy Who Loved Me" last year made him a lot of money.

I also picked up the script for Alien, which is currently being filmed and directed by Ridley Scott.

"Alien" appeared on MGM's desk due to the success of "Star Wars".

As for Hollywood, he really doesn't need to put in much energy. He just needs to pick up the right projects and make sure they don't miss out on Orange or MGM.

This time, Clark came to report to his boss about the negotiations with Lucas and Spielberg on the "Indiana Jones" project.

In 1977, Lucas met Steven Spielberg on Maui. Spielberg, who had just completed "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", expressed interest in directing a 007 movie, so Lucas told him the idea of ​​"The Adventures of Indiana Smith". Spielberg thought that Smith's last name was not suitable for the protagonist of the story, so Lucas renamed the character Indiana Jones inspired by his Alaskan Malamute.

This year, Lucas began to focus on preparing for "Indiana Jones" and "The Empire Strikes Back". During this period, Lawrence Kasdan and Frank Marshall joined in successively as screenwriters and producers respectively. Kasdan spent 6 months to complete the first draft of the script. Cartoonist Jim Steranko drew a preview for the film, which greatly influenced Spielberg's decision on the picture style and Jones's role.

As Lucas' best partner, Lucas must talk to Wang Yuanchao about this project.

After all, without Adam's support, he wouldn't have been able to get through all this smoothly. What he didn't know was that without Wang Yuanchao, he would still be so successful.

Wang Yuanchao admired Raiders of the Lost Ark very much. Orange Film and Lucasfilm jointly invested, MGM distributed, and Spielberg directed. Everyone had no major objections to the preliminary cooperation agreement.

But Spielberg had a project on hand, a movie about the Pearl Harbor incident (the war comedy "1941", one of Spielberg's few failed projects), which was a collaboration with his old employer Universal Pictures and former employer Columbia Pictures, and had to take priority over "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Clark came over, and the first thing he did was to report this matter to his boss. Actually, it was not a big deal.

Wang Yuanchao happily agreed to line up behind the other person. He liked people who talked about feelings and principles.

When Spielberg was filming "Jaws", he wanted to get involved, but he couldn't.

At that time, Spielberg was a contracted director of Universal. Now he is a free agent, but he still maintains a good relationship with Universal.

Fortunately, Spielberg and Lucas have a good relationship, and Lucas has a good relationship with Wang Yuanchao, which is equivalent to Spielberg and Wang Yuanchao having a good relationship.

After getting "Indiana Jones", Spielberg's "ET" will definitely be a must-have, it's all about money.

As for the second thing, it is naturally related to "Alien".

The initial budget for this film was only 500 million US dollars. Now, according to conservative estimates, an additional investment of 500 million is required because once filming started, it was discovered that the budget was far from enough.

This is a project chosen by the boss, so additional investment should not be a problem.

Wang Yuanchao thought for a moment and said:

"At first they said they only needed a budget of 400 million, right? They said they would add more money and they treated the contract as nothing? What price are they prepared to pay?"

This project was not directly under the control of MGM, but was signed by Brandywine Films, a company founded by Walter Hill, David Giler and Gordon Carroll. They were the producers, and MGM was only the financial producer.

Clark immediately understood what his boss meant. The producer's failure to control the budget gave the producer reason to doubt his professionalism.

This is the bargaining chip, MGM must take a larger share of the profits.

"Understood, Boss. I will try to dilute the producer's share."

Wang Yuanchao said:

"Control the degree. After all, what we need is an excellent work."

……

As for Catalina Fashion and Condé Nast Group, Wang Yuanchao did not give any explanation.

Although the two companies look down on each other, one thinks the other is vulgar and the other thinks the other is hypocritical, they are under the same boss and cooperate well when it is time to cooperate. Sometimes we have to admit that Condé Nast's grasp of trends is more in line with the current era than Wang Yuanchao's. The design of some products is still a little ahead of its time. Catalina cannot lead the trend for the time being and needs further accumulation.

Wang Yuanchao proposed that they design a million-dollar gold jewel underwear, which would be equivalent to making a glory armor for the beauty pageant champion to expand the publicity impact.

As for the gimmick, the bigger the better.

Being extremely tacky is trendy, you can try it.

As for the Adventure Plan Company, they didn't have much to say. They just wanted to hold more music festivals outside, and Wang Yuanchao was no longer holding back. Anyway, in the United States, after so many years, the Woodstock Music Festival has become a belief, especially since one of the days must be a weekend, which is like the Spring Bowl, and it is not inferior to the Super Bowl in terms of gold content, and it is also large in quantity and full of food.

(End of this chapter)