Modern family: Addition

Back story : Star wars (4)

After our first meeting which ended somewhat bitter- sweet with no advances on business front, days goes by. I was able to return to do my work with almost no mental distraction but someone was not able to achieve his normalcy so easily.

George Lucas and his team went on information hunt spree to collect every publicly available information about me after our meeting.

Lucas : Who was he?! How can someone of his age earn millions of dollars? is he related to any powerful family?

Member 1 : I haven't heard of any Dunphy family being financial or political giants. According to our investigator, he comes from very middle class family living here in LA. His father is small time realtor, mother is housewife; although his grandfather is a businessman but he isn't that big or well known though he has some name in closet industry. So I'm almost 95% sure that his background is quite humble.

Member 2 : George, what he had said is true. Both Dunphy Comics and Galaxy video games Pvt Ltd is owned by him. There is no official data but revenue of both of these companies is almost billion dollars. I think he is Genius and also rare one.

Lucas : So how come Genius of his calibre is not famous in public domain? Has whole media gone senile?

Member 3 : Sir, media has covered some news about him two months ago. According to them, he hasn't attended any formal education until the age of 5. No pre- kindergarten, kindergarten. It wasn't until it became mandatory by law to enter to school ie. at the age of 5; he was enrolled into Sierra canon private school at full scholarship which is quite famous in his area and also in the our state. On top of that he didn't enroll in elementary school but directly into middle school. Newspaper and media has covered this for few days.

Member 1 : How come he was directly admitted into middle school?

Member 3 : It is mentioned here that School provided him a separate comprehensive test to check his knowledge of the elementary school material and the he aced every single of them.

Lucas : How come millionaire like him is granted scholarship?

Member 3 : At the time of his enrollment; he has just started his business so officially he had no income of his own and his parents are not that rich. And most importantly; him being Genius is enough for school board to grant him Full scholarship for him to stay in their school.

Member 4 : Also, it hasn't been even a full financial year since he started his business so very few people who is familiar with him know about his business venture and I think that's why media also didn't know about this because they're not actively seeking for him.

Member 5 : Also it is true that every comic title under Dunphy Comics is written by him. Also Arcade machines and video games of Galaxy is also created by him. Our investigator has confirmed from some of the employees. Also few essential patents of the industry in which his business is involved, is registered under his name. Patent office don't share information proactively, also it is very difficult to know about things if they don't reveal on their own but our investigator contacted few experts of Arcade and video games industry to know about few essential components and who owns their patents and confirmed with patent office.

Lucas : So in nutshell; he is an outright Genius and their seems to be no doubt about it. Very few people know about him because he is in this arena for very short period of time. Atmost in a year or two; he will become celebrity in public domain.

Members : True.

Lucas : And seeing his demeanour, his personality and his way of handling things; he is also quite mature of his age. Only thing lacking is his background and connections, which will also be compensated given due time if he progresses at this rate. What a rare Genius! There are very few people who can become almost unstoppable like him. But then again who knows what will happen in future.

Member 1 : So, what we are going to do?

Lucas : Of course we will sit again for negotiation. We almost made fool of ourselves in first meeting but I hope we can leverage our familiarity of entertainment industry in next meeting. Afterall, I don't think he and his team can gain upper hand on us given that they have no background or experience with film industry.

Member 2 : It's not entirely true. Michael Steiner of Fox was with them in last meeting. It was he who contacted us for meetings. He will also be present from their side.

Lucas : It's fine. He is an insider and I don't think he will lay every card in front of him otherwise we will get less money but it will permanently reduce his value. But then again it is his problem, let's see how it proceeds.

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Finally day for next meeting came. I along with my team reached the destination where Lucas and his team was waiting.

This time it was George Lucas who started speaking.

Lucas : Good afternoon, Mr. Dunphy. Very nice to meet you again. I apologise for lack of seriousness of my team in previous meeting; I hope it will have no bearing on this meeting.

Me : Good afternoon Mr. Lucas. Of course not. Negotiation is multi layered long process. I hope that we can come up with mutually beneficial agreement for us so that we can start with this project.

Lucas : We will.

Me : I have read your script for Star wars : New hope. I think story has a lot of potential. I heard you want to film trilogy on this.

Lucas : It's good to hear that you think like this. Afterall major production houses thinks that it's loss making and will not be liked by people.

Lucas : Yes, I have thought about shooting trilogy but only script for first film is completed till now.

Me : It's understandable, afterall who knows how this film will perform on box office. But purely from the perspective of story, art and grandness of star wars universe; I very much hope that it becomes successful so that you can finish the trilogy.

Lucas : so, shall we start?

Me : Yes, let's proceed.

Me : How much budget do you need?

Lucas : According to our evaluation, we need around 8 million dollars. Here is our estimates.

Me (going through the estimate file) : 8 million dollars is a lot for film of the genre which hasn't been tested in the market. How much do you asked from Fox, Warner Bros. and Disney?

Lucas : Same amount.

Me : Sure? I heard you were willing to reduce the budget by 1 -1.4 million for them.

Lucas : No, it's not true, where you heard these rumours?

Me : I have my sources, Mr. Lucas.

Lucas : We were in the process of negotiation and I didn't agree on those terms.

Me : But you were willing to negotiate at that amount.

Lucas : Yes because they were not very optimistic of my film so we thought we would be able to increase the negotiable amount in the end and also they are giants of Hollywood, have complete system owned by them including shares in distribution companies. But you are new in Hollywood, don't have that extensive contacts/network.
You don't have complete infrastructure or system of your own for successful production.

Me : We are building our system as well as our connections as we speak. It will take time for us to spearhead in film distribution but production part is more or less halfway through completion.

Lucas : Of course, but for things that we don't have, they will charge exorbitant amount. Also they are very resistant for independent producers, so you can assume that cost will be higher than what we had negotiated with them.

Me : Fair enough.