Chapter 1036 1136. Ghost idea

The call was quickly connected.

"What happened?" Nie Wei asked in a deep voice.

Hearing Nie Wei's low voice, the staff member knew what Nie Wei was going to ask without asking, and hurriedly reported in a panic and respectful tone: "Mr. Nie, the thing is this, Brad Pitt and his agent had a little unpleasantness with William's agent during lunch."

At this point, the staff member suddenly changed the subject: "But don't worry, after our persuasion, there is no problem between the two parties now, and the matter was resolved smoothly, so I didn't report to you immediately."

"What I want to know is what happened specifically?" Nie Wei raised his voice. He didn't want to listen to those excuses. He just wanted to know the actual process of the conflict.

The staff member trembled with fear and dared not talk nonsense anymore. He quickly explained the whole thing to Nie Wei.

"Okay, I know." After speaking, Nie Wei hung up the phone, thought for a moment, and flipped through the materials he had just sorted out in his hand, and found the materials of Brad Pitt and William from them.

Nie Wei took the two documents and looked at them for a while. Suddenly, he had an idea and thought he had guessed the cause of the conflict.

According to the staff, the conflict between the two sides was caused by the issue of seats, but this was simply a joke in Nie Wei's eyes. Huayi Restaurant has many seats for dining, and there are definitely enough seats for everyone who came for the interview today.

So the conflict between the two sides is definitely not as simple as the location.

As for the staff's so-called settlement under their persuasion, Nie Wei didn't believe it even more. This was obviously just the staff's words to flatter himself or afraid of being scolded by him.

After all, Nie Wei knows the personalities of those European and American stars very well.

Flirting with girls in nightclubs, drinking, and racing are all daily routines. Smoking leaves is not uncommon. What's amazing is that they dare to do this publicly on TV shows. In addition, live broadcasts are even more common, and fighting in public is not uncommon...

Compared with these European and American stars, Asian artists are actually good kids.

Perhaps Asian stars would be concerned about the impact in public and would not want to make a big deal, but for these Hollywood stars, they don't care. Nie Wei would not be surprised if they had a fight because of the conflict. Maybe the winner would brag to Nie Wei in the afternoon during the audition.

And the conflict at noon, in Nie Wei's opinion, was more like a confrontation between the agencies behind the two Hollywood stars.

When looking at the information just now, Nie Wei found that the agency behind Brad Pitt is CAA, one of the three major agencies in the United States, and the agency behind William is WMA, which is also one of the three major agencies.

Although they are called the three major agencies, in fact, in terms of scale, CAA is one head higher than the other two. As the strongest agency in the United States, CAA controls almost one-third of Hollywood artists and has countless top Hollywood stars, such as Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks, Nicolas Cage, and Jolie-Pitt couple, all of whom are its artists.

Even Keanu Reeves, who I saw in the morning, was the will of this company when he was at the peak of his popularity.

During the heyday of CAA, even the bosses of the eight major film companies had to be friendly with this company.

In the past, WMA and another ICM were just younger brothers in front of CAA, but as time went by, the influence of CAA in Hollywood has gradually declined.

After all, the biggest reliance of an agency is the artists, but artists are people, and people will get old. As the top stars of that generation get older, fresh blood cannot fill the popularity gap caused by the departure of old artists, which inevitably makes the influence of the agency decline.

While CAA was going downhill, WMA and ICM also used all their hands and feet behind the scenes to poach many new stars that CAA thought were a sure thing, and even some top actors who had signed with CAA were poached. The most representative of these was Nicole Kidman's switch to WMA last year.

The "job-hopping" of this top actress dealt a big blow to CAA, and through this incident, the whole Hollywood could see that CAA was strong on the outside but weak on the inside.

WMA and ICM were just doing some small actions in private, but in the past year, their conflicts have become more and more public.

The conflict in the cafeteria at noon was obviously a tentative contest between the two companies behind the scenes.

Nie Wei didn't care about their small actions in private. After all, there was no conflict between the two sides. Although Nie Wei also developed the agent business of actors in Hollywood, it was far from threatening the three companies.

The only thing that puzzled Nie Wei was that Brad Pitt was a top Hollywood star and came to compete for the male lead, but William was just a Hollywood newcomer and came to audition for the role of the male lead's son. After all, he was only sixteen years old.

Even if it was a problem with the agency behind the scenes, Nie Wei really couldn't find any conflict between the two people.

After the audition in the afternoon was successfully completed, Nie Wei finally knew the answer.

After the audition, Nie Wei was about to organize the documents on hand and go home, and the secretary Xiao Tang ran in to report that Brad Pitt and his agent were waiting at the company and wanted to invite Nie Wei to dinner.

Nie Wei naturally rejected this invitation.

He is the director of this film and also an investor. He had dinner with the actors during the audition. If this news spreads, it will inevitably cause controversy.

Even if it is just a dinner, the reporters and the public will never think so. They will definitely doubt what kind of private agreement Nie Wei and Pitt reached during this dinner.

At that time, even if Nie Wei wants to explain it clearly, he will not be able to do so. Choosing Pitt means another private agreement. If he does not choose Pitt, the media will also say that Nie Wei gave up Pitt under public pressure. At that time, no matter what choice Nie Wei makes, he will be labeled as "unfair".

As for keeping it secret? Nie Wei thinks it is almost impossible, and the most likely to release the news is the agency that invited the director to dinner.

So Nie Wei rejected the invitation of Pitt and his agent without hesitation.

But what Nie Wei did not expect was that Pitt and his agent would come to Nie Wei's office together. People came to the door, and Nie Wei could not refuse.

"Hello, Mr. Nie. I'm Butler, Pitt's agent. This is my business card." Butler handed a black business card with gold inlay to Nie Wei and introduced himself.

Although Nie Wei met Butler for the first time, he was familiar with his name.

He is the top agent of CAA. In addition to Brad Pitt, he also has Oscar winner Jamie Foxx. In addition to these Hollywood big stars, he has more than ten artists under him, including some potential newcomers who have the potential to become superstars in the future.

Nie Wei couldn't be unfamiliar with such a big agent, but he didn't know what this agent wanted when he came to the door so "enthusiastically".

"Mr. Nie, this is a gift from me and Pitt to you. I hope you can accept it." After Butler greeted him, he took a carefully wrapped gift from Pitt and handed it to Nie Wei.

However, Nie Wei didn't take it. After all, it's a shortcoming to take a gift from someone. When you don't know what the other party wants, you will become passive when accepting any gift.

"Mr. Butler, forget about the gift. I'm more curious about what time you have to see me. I'm sorry that my time is precious. I can give you ten minutes." Nie Wei sat on the chair and said directly.

Although Butler is a big agent, Nie Wei still gave face to CAA to see him. Now seeing him setting traps for himself continuously, Nie Wei is a little annoyed.

Nie Wei's reaction did not surprise Butler. He did not insist on giving the gift like the general gift giver. After Nie Wei clearly expressed that he did not like it, he immediately stopped.

"Sorry, Mr. Nie, thank you for giving me ten minutes. I think this is enough to explain my purpose this time."

Butler did not waste time and directly told Nie Wei the purpose of this visit.

"For your new movie, Mr. Nie, we all CAA have the idea that you will succeed, so we really want to participate more in your movie. In addition to Pitt, we also have many excellent actors in CAA. We would like to ask you to give them a chance."

As soon as Butler said this, Nie Wei immediately understood what the other party meant.

CAA's old routine, bundled sales

Using the big to lead the small is CAA's traditional way of promoting people. CAA has many top stars. When someone invites them to film, CAA will add this additional clause during the negotiation, bringing some newcomers who are not qualified to film into the crew.

In this way, Nie Wei also figured out the reason for the conflict at noon.

Sure enough, when Nie Wei asked Butler which role he had an idea for, Butler also implicitly told Nie Wei that the role was the son of the male lead who was auditioned by William.

Nie Wei smelled a hint of conspiracy from Butler's words, but it was not directed at him, but at William, or WMA behind him.

Although Tom is the son of the male lead Cooper, his role is actually far less than Cooper's other daughter, especially Tom in high school, who has even less role.

Such a role does not need Butler's personal help to lobby. There are many more roles in the list of roles announced by Nie Wei, but Butler just mentioned this role to Nie Wei. In connection with the conflict at noon, Nie Wei can easily guess that this is completely CAA behind Butler wants to teach WMA a lesson.

But it is obvious that CAA is also very self-aware, knowing that the main characters can't affect Nie Wei at all, so they picked such a "soft persimmon".

"I will have my own considerations. If there is nothing to do and I still have work to do, I won't send him off." After listening to Butler, Nie Wei did not give Butler any reply, but sent him away directly.

Butler was not angry at Nie Wei's indifference, and even felt that this was justified.

However, when he left at the end, he still mentioned it to Nie Wei implicitly, meaning that as long as Nie Wei was willing to cooperate with CAA this time, he was willing to help Nie Wei contact more top stars, or find many big stars to help promote.

This is also what Butler could think of Nie Wei's most needed, and CAA behind him could do it.

Like bringing money into the group, Butler gave up from the beginning. Nie Wei has never lacked money for filming, and every one of his movies is still very profitable. I think before Nie Wei failed, he must have no shortage of investment.

As for how Nie Wei would choose, Butler was very confident. In his opinion, Nie Wei was very likely to agree to his request. After all, it was just an insignificant role, but he could get a favor from CAA. This was a great deal.

Butler felt that if he were Nie Wei, he would definitely know how to choose.

Unfortunately, he was not Nie Wei. At this moment, he could not guess what Nie Wei was thinking.

The first day's audition was for male actors, while the second day's audition was for female actors. Compared with the first day, the work on the second day was much easier, because there were not many female roles in the movie, and the heroine had been determined early, so there were only six actresses from Asia and Hollywood, including two little girls.

Nie Wei felt that he could complete the audition task in one morning.

The first two girls Nie Wei auditioned were Foy and Chloe.

Foy was born in 2000 and is not yet 13 years old this year. She is the perfect age for the movie character. This girl is not a rookie either. She has played the half-human, half-vampire daughter of the male and female protagonists in "Twilight".

In addition, she has some acting experience. Although it is not rich, it is rare for her at such a young age.

Another Chloë is much more famous than Foy, but Chloë was born in 1997 and her birthday is in February. She is already 16 years old this year, which is beyond the role setting. The only thing that Nie Wei can accept is that this girl should not have grown up yet and looks younger than her actual age. It's barely acceptable.

In terms of resume, her resume is much better than Foy's. At a young age, she has become the star of two box office movies with good box office. She has a lot of fame and has even been rated by the American media as one of the most promising young actors in the next ten years.

Nie Wei hesitated for a moment and decided to start with Foy.

Soon, the staff brought a little girl into the audition room. The little girl seemed a little nervous after entering the room, and was stunned for a moment when she saw Nie Wei and Zhang Ziyi.

"Please introduce yourself first." Nie Wei saw that the girl was a little nervous, so he took the initiative to ask.

"My name is Mackenzie Foy, I am 12 years old this year, and I am very happy to meet you." When Foy spoke, Nie Wei and Zhang Ziyi showed surprised expressions, because she was actually introducing herself in Chinese.

Thanks to Fantasy Paradise and 0773 for their generous rewards.