Hollywood Hunter

The producer of the original "Terminator 2" was Hollywood's wasteful Carlock Pictures. Not only did Arnold Schwarzenegger get Hollywood's first high-paid fixed film of 15 million US dollars in this project, the film also became Hollywood The first film to cost more than $100 million.

In the memory, "Terminator 2" is just over a million feet of film, and the final material used is less than 1%, which is enough to prove how wasteful the film is.

Films over one million feet actually mean a huge expense for the film crew to shoot these lenses.Once a film crew starts, it costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. A group of shots that could be finished in three days took six days, and the budget naturally doubled.

From "The Abyss" to "Terminator 2" to the later famous "Titanic", James Cameron's series of films have never been completed on time, which is why Cameron's films are more expensive than other directors. Root cause.

Simon discussed with Joe Rose, only to ensure that Fox continues to keep in touch with Cameron, and can add another code on the basis of the screenwriter to let the other party become the producer. As for Cameron, personally directed is the last option.At the same time, this project will not be included in the 10 film plan temporarily until all aspects are finalized, so as to avoid selling the original price.

After talking about things, Simon returned to the Santa Monica Daenerys Entertainment headquarters. Amy Pascal and another middle-aged man in his forties wearing glasses were waiting for him.

After receiving the advice of Simon, during this time, Amy has been looking for the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Family Entertainment.

Daenerys International has confirmed that Mark Belford, who was promoted internally, serves as the president.

Mark Belford is about the same age as Amy. The young man in his early thirties did not go to college. After graduating from high school at the age of 18, he relied on some family relationships in Hollywood.

After joining Daenerys Entertainment last year, Mark Belford accidentally attracted Simon's attention, and subsequently performed well in the release of many films such as "Scream" and was quickly promoted.

The Hollywood media have different attitudes towards Mark Belford's rocket promotion. Some people commented that Simon dared to hire others, and some criticized Simon for being too hasty. It was inevitable that Daenerys Entertainment had made some comments about it.

However, less than a month after taking office, Mark Belford quickly took over the overseas business of Daenerys Entertainment. During this time, he basically worked as a trapeze in all countries of the world.

In the dispute between Daenerys Entertainment and Alistar Records, the suspension of the "Bouncer" soundtrack album not only did not affect the overseas distribution of the film, but the movie's box office and popularity in various overseas ticket warehouse countries have increased against the trend. It has nothing to do with the marketing operations that Mark Belford has carried out in overseas countries for a month.

This alone made Simon confirm his choice.

The person in charge of Daenerys International has determined that Simon will meet with the person in charge of Daenerys Family Entertainment today.

Morris Coman, in his forties, looks fat and wears a pair of rimless glasses. He has nothing to do with Roger Coman, the king of Hollywood B-class films. He has been working in Columbia Pictures and his position is marketing. vice president.

After Sony completed the acquisition of Columbia Pictures, this period of time can be described as frequent activities. It purchased the original MGM Studios in Culver City and merged Peter Cooper and John Peter’s Cooper-Peters production company. It cut off all the equity of its subsidiary Samsung Pictures, and cooperated with Daenerys Entertainment to sell TV station assets and so on.

At the same time, the original management of Columbia Pictures is also in the ranks of Sony's replacement.

It is against this background that Morris Coman resigned, and was formally elected to join after a few weeks of Daenerys Entertainment negotiation. The position is President of Daenerys Family Entertainment Company, mainly responsible for Daenerys Entertainment's Danelli The distribution of videos and television broadcasts of films produced by the two major brands of Silk Films and New World Films.

The determination of the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Family Entertainment also means that the power that originally belonged to Robert Rem was divided into three, and Robert Rem will continue to be responsible for Daenerys in the next two years Domestic distribution of films produced by Film and New World Film.

The gap between the two sides has been deep, and Simon has not communicated too much with Robert Rem about this matter.The reason why he did not dismiss him is because of his contribution to Daenerys Entertainment in the past year. Simon is not a person who likes to kill and kill donkeys.

However, this is also based on the fact that Robert Rem has to do his due diligence to complete his work for the next two years.If he was resentful because of power diversion and even deliberately messed up Daenerys Entertainment's movie project, Simon would never be soft-hearted when he rushed.

In fact, after confirming that the power of Rem was divided into three, Simon told Amy to focus on the company's issuing department.

At the end of the meeting with Morris Coman, Simon and Amy discussed the matter of Ella Doichman again.

Ella Doicman’s one-year trial period is coming to an end. Although Gaomen Pictures is directly responsible for Simon, it is still Amy who discusses the post-employment salary plan with Doicman.

After several communications, it was roughly confirmed that Ella Doichman’s formal contract period was 5 years and the basic annual salary was $300,000.At the same time, Doi Qiman can also get 5% of the annual net profit of Gaomen Pictures as a bonus.According to Deichman's performance over the past year, Simon promised that the other party's entry bonus amount was also confirmed to be $2 million last year.

Ella Doicman's 5% high-end film industry's net profit share seems to be the same as Amy, but the difference between the two is actually the difference between the net profit share of a movie and the omni-channel net profit share.Moreover, Deichman's terms do not involve equity awards.

Unconsciously is a busy day.

At six o'clock in the afternoon, Simon was about to leave work, and Nancy Brill came to his office.

Putting a box of game cards on Simon's desk, Nancy sat down opposite and said, "The game team made some adjustments to the details again. Simon, you try again to see if there are any areas for improvement. "

Blizzard Studio was officially established in February at the beginning of the year, and it has been 8 months now.

In this era, the normal development time of a game is 3 to 5 months. As in "Alien ET", it takes only 6 weeks to make a game in a hurry. However, Blizzard Studio spent 8 It only took a month to polish a game, which also gave Simon a feeling of wrong name.

The real Blizzard is famous for jumping tickets.

Moreover, the game development plan of "Ninja Turtles", which was divided into two, was an action role-playing type and a fighting type.At this time, Nancy came up with an action role-playing game similar to the Kelome version of Simon's memory. Another battle fighting game only took three months to set up in the early stage, and is still under development.

Bounced tickets naturally means budget overruns.

The original production budget of both games was 500,000 US dollars. Now, the production budget of this action role-playing game is close to 1 million US dollars. The other battle fighting game, if it is released early next year, the budget is at least 120. Ten thousand dollars, all more than doubled.

Because it is determined that the action role-playing version will be officially released in early November, Nancy Brill is also currently promoting it and intends to launch it in two major markets, Japan and North America. According to Nintendo’s royalty system, the cost of future game cassette production will also be Requires Daenerys Entertainment to take it personally.

Taken together, Daenerys Entertainment's total investment in this game has exceeded 2 million US dollars, which is not counted as other aspects of Blizzard Studios' expenditure.

If it is not that the quality of the two games is very good during several trial games, Simon will definitely stop the project directly.

In recent months, it has been used as a "white mouse" for trial play more than once. Seeing that Nancy has brought a cassette that obviously will not change much, Simon quickly shook his head and said, "There are only three weeks left. It's released, can it be modified now?"

"The first batch of 100,000 cassettes produced will certainly not be changed, but the follow-up can be improved."

Simon casually gestured: "Actually, you should find a consumer of this game for a demo, not me."

"Of course, the potential consumers in the 8 to 22 age group are all within my test range, now, you are 21 years old."

Simon interrupts: "How old are you?"

"It's really impolite," Nancy glanced at Simon white, got up and pushed the card towards Simon, and said, "Anyway, you try again, I'll get off work first."

Simon watched Nancy leave, put the box of game cards in his briefcase, and left the office.

In the next few days, Simon was still busy with various projects, and the undercurrent of the US junk bond market became more and more turbulent.

Friday, October 13.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, United Airlines held a press conference announcing that the company was unable to liquidate a corporate bond of up to US$1.5 billion on time because of cash shortages. The management is urgently negotiating all possible financing options, which will ensure maximum The interests of investors.

Of course, financial markets would not believe that United Airlines ensured the interests of investors, so they sold the shares and bonds of United Airlines in a swarm and caused a series of chain reactions.

The long-standing crisis in the US junk bond market has officially erupted.

Calculated carefully, compared with the sudden Black Monday in 1987, this Black Friday'little crash' has too many early signs.

Since the first half of this year, De Chong Securities, where the “king of junk bonds” Michael Milken once started, has fallen into crisis.

The Wall Street financial giant, which has issued more than $80 billion in junk bonds over the past decade, was badly hurt by various insider trading scandals involving Milken, and many enterprise groups that have been working closely with De Chong Securities It is no longer possible to obtain funding to support operations through the use of drinking junk to quench thirst and repeat junk bond financing.

At the same time, the market's enthusiasm for investing in junk bonds has also cooled sharply after the 87-share disaster, and the federal government's supervision of junk bond financing has become stricter in the past two years. All these factors are driving the eventual collapse of the junk bond market.

After the announcement of United Airlines, the stock prices of a large number of companies in the North American stock market plummeted sharply during the last two hours of trading on Friday, and the Dow Jones index plummeted 217 points in two hours, creating October 19, 1987. The second largest single-day decline after 508 points on the day of the Japanese stock market crash.

With the collapse of the broader market, the S&P 500 index plunged 32 points in the next two hours, compared with 286 points at the opening of the day, a drop of 11%.It directly triggered the 10% limit for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange S&P 500 index futures.

As of the close of the day, the share price of United Airlines of Storm Center plunged 21% within two hours, and the price of United Bonds fell by 27%.

In addition, many other companies, banks and other institutions that issue or hold large amounts of junk bonds have also plunged in price.

De Chong Securities bears the brunt. The stock price of the company that has been declining for the past six months has fallen 19% in just two hours. The share price of Columbia Savings and Credit Bank, which has maintained close cooperation with De Chong Securities for a long time, also fell by 16%. .

A long list of well-known American companies such as Gillette Holdings, American Newspaper Group, Integrated Resources Corporation, Unified Oil and Gas Corporation, and Reynolds-Nabisco Corporation, which just created a record of leveraged buyout scales earlier this year, have seen a sharp drop in share prices Countless investors are thrilled.

Everyone felt that another stock market crash was coming.

Fortunately, this time it was Friday.

Everyone has two days to discuss coping strategies.

However, compared with two years ago, the federal government’s bailout measures this time were obviously not so strong. The hope of the top US federal government who could have received funds under such a crisis has just ignited, and it was just The federal government will not dispel claims that high-debt companies pay.

At the same time, there were more negative news about the junk bond market during the two days of the weekend.

The front page of the Wall Street Journal on Saturday is a comprehensive statistical report on the junk bond market.The article points out that the overall yield of investment junk bonds in the past decade has grown by only 145%, while the North American stock market has seen a 207% increase in yield over the same period. Even the overall yield of U.S. Treasury bonds has increased by 177% over the past decade.

Not only that, in the previous decade, 24 of the 100 randomly selected companies in North America that issued junk bonds were bankrupt or unable to meet their repayment obligations like United, which is five times the rate of other companies.

The article concludes that Michael Milken's theory of high-risk, high-yield junk bonds has been wrong for the past ten years.

Therefore, junk bonds actually have no investment value, and many companies are merely maintaining a seeming prosperity with a repeated financing method similar to the Ponzi scheme.The debt default of United Airlines is only the beginning of the collapse of the junk bond market after the 10-year boom.In the coming months, more companies and institutions will be dragged down by a large number of worthless junk bonds.

In addition to the overall pessimism of the Wall Street Journal on the market level, a lot of negative news about the target of issuing or holding a large number of junk bonds has also been exposed.

De Chong Securities was disclosed by the New York Times that the company’s cash flow has been reduced from less than 1.5 billion dollars at the beginning of the year to less than 300 million dollars. The Wall Street financial giant, which itself holds a large number of junk bonds and needs a high proportion of capital for turnover, may collapse at any time. .

The Columbia Savings and Credit Bank was also exposed by the New York Post to hold United Airlines bonds of up to $1 billion, and is the largest creditor of United Airlines.

As the United Airlines crisis continues, the conservative estimate of this bond asset will also shrink by more than 50%, and in the worst case, it will even be completely cleared.

"Washington Post" also aimed at Reynolds-Nabisco.

After the record $25 billion merger and acquisitions at the beginning of the year, Reynolds-Nabisco’s share price not only did not show the sharp increase that was originally expected, but the share price fell 33% compared with the merger this year.The company's market share in the tobacco market has also shrunk sharply, shrinking by 8% in less than a year.

Moreover, the two companies, Reynolds and Nabisco, which were all profitable, merged, but this year it is expected that the loss will exceed 1 billion US dollars. This company has laid off 2,300 employees in recent months in order to save money. Some High-quality assets have to be sold at low prices because of debt pressure.

All in all, the Reynolds-Nabisco merger and acquisition case was a complete disaster, and only a group of financial companies that had been drawn from it had obtained huge profits.The commission paid to Wall Street companies such as KKR, De Chong Securities, Merrill Lynch and other banks for the entire transaction exceeded US$1.5 billion.

Although there is no shortage of comments to support the junk bond market, all these negative reports are seriously hitting countless investors who are not so firm in confidence, under the intensive public opinion bombardment.

After the weekend, the media was still noisy, and the North American stock market fell again after opening on October 16.

The financial markets may also feel the "spearhead" of the crisis. Therefore, in addition to the continued decline in the stock prices and bond prices of companies such as United Airlines, the overall situation in the US stock market has stabilized.

As a result, United Airlines, De Chong Securities, Columbia Savings and Credit Bank and other companies are like an old and weak sick who have only been abandoned outside the flock. Cersei Capital and other follow-up capital forces behind the scenes have continued for several months. After the layout, began to harvest their hunting results.

Simon knew that this small collapse would not last long, so he told Janet to clear the stock index futures contracts held by Cersei Capital for the first time.

In the following week, only the closing of more than 32,000 S&P 500 index futures contracts brought Cersei Capital a profit of more than 500 million U.S. dollars. .

Moreover, the size of these shorts is less than half of all positions of Cersei Capital.

In the next few months, as the domino effect of the North American junk bond market continues, Cersei Capital will continue to earn more lucrative profits.