Hollywood Hunter

In a manor on the outskirts of Greenwich in northern New York.

The time is January 7.

The New Year has passed and officially entered 1993.

Just the day before yesterday, Time Warner Group officially confirmed the new management through the extraordinary shareholders meeting. Gerald Levin succeeded Steve Rose as the new chairman of Time Warner Group, Steve Rose’s two The lineage, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, co-CEO of Time Warner.

Although the formal management was confirmed on the surface, in fact, the power arrangement after this mutual compromise still scattered the mountains within Time Warner Group.

Nominally the leader, Gerald Levin can only control the business that originally belonged to the era company system.The two co-CEOs are still firmly in control of Warner Bros. companies.

The Wall Street Journal's new management at Time Warner confirmed the next day it published an article commenting on the company's'synergy'.

The key to the merger of Time Company and Warner Brothers was that the management of the two companies vigorously promoted the "synergy" of local enterprises, claiming that once the merger was completed, Time Warner would significantly increase its business cooperation in various aspects such as movies, TV, and magazines. The company's competitiveness and overall revenue.

However, the fact is that in the three years since the merger in early 1990, the synergies that shareholders wanted to see did not appear. Time Warner’s internals were still scattered, and even HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures’ television rights to movies were mutually exclusive. The situation of tit-for-tat dismantling is also constant.

Not only that, because of the merger of the entire Time Warner, it has not been able to get out of the heavy debt mud.

All in all, in the Wall Street Journal's view, the initial merger was a complete failure, but only satisfied the personal ambition of Time Warner's management to blindly expand the scale of the company.

Faced with criticism from the "Wall Street Journal", Time Warner officials publicly rebutted it for the first time, but failed to prevent the company's share price from falling further.

At the beginning of the new year, Simon still stays in New York for various things these days.

Watching the Wall Street Journal's sudden criticism of Time Warner, Simon found that this small public opinion storm will have another important impact on Warner.

In several contacts at the end of last year, Terry Semel revealed to Simon that he hopes to further expand the diversity of Warner Bros. Pictures in the production field.

In fact, it is to imitate the operation mode of the three brands of Daenerys Entertainment, and set foot in the genre of thriller literature and art such as New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures.

For Warner Bros., the easiest way to do this is undoubtedly acquisition.

After the management of the group completes the replacement, even if there is not much change in power, the new executives also need to make some achievements, even face-saving projects, to show the new atmosphere of the newcomers.

The original timeline happened to be in 1993. Time Warner acquired the prosperous new line of film industry, and in the following many years, it won the super blockbuster blockbuster series such as "Rush Hour" series and "The Lord of the Rings" series. The deputy label even followed the development of the main label.

This time, because of the rise of Daenerys Entertainment, New Line Pictures lost its first homegrown box office hit "Big Ninja Turtles", which was forced by New World Pictures in the field of horror and horror. Retreating day after day, the strength is far less eye-catching than the original time and space.

Compared to the original Timeline that had to sell to Time Warner who monopolized the distribution channel of Hollywood movies for further expansion, the new line now seeks buyers mainly for survival.

Therefore, this second-tier label is not as attractive as the original time and space. In addition, the Wall Street Journal accused Time Warner Group’s last merger of blind expansion. In order to avoid more criticism, it acquired new lines or other Second and third-line film companies' plans to increase production diversity,

The lack of receivers, the new line of film industry that has fallen into business troubles due to excessive expansion in the past two years, may very well but will go bankrupt this year.

Affected by the success of the three brands of Daenerys Entertainment, other Hollywood studios have more or less followed suit. Simon cannot stop this. However, suppressing a second-tier film company that is in trouble. For the current Dan For Nellis Entertainment, it is a breeze.

Whether it's the new line or Miramax, or even the Orion Pictures that is still struggling to maintain, under Simon's close eye, these companies basically have no hope of getting a project that may sell big.

In recent years, "Silent Lamb", "Crying Game", "Ninja Turtles", etc., should have belonged to these companies, but all of them were successfully cut off by Simon, and in advance used New World Pictures and Gaomenying. The industry's two major brands occupy the part of the film industry that mainstream studios did not care about in the past.

The fate of the new line is destined to change, and Simon has also solved another company in recent days.

Miramax.

Hollywood's second- and third-line film companies, like Daenerys Entertainment's early development, rely largely on bank loans to maintain operations.

Over the years, the bank that financed Miramax has also become famous on Wall Street, Chase Manhattan Bank.In memory, this bank merged with Morgan Bank around 2000.

Of course, it's just the film investment department of Chase Manhattan, which is dedicated to Hollywood.

The Weinstein brothers have operated Miramax after many twists and turns over the years and have owed Chase Manhattan Bank approximately $15 million in debt.

$15 million is not worth mentioning to Daenerys Entertainment today, but it is a huge sum of money for a small studio-style film company that can only pick up some low-cost literary and artistic films.

Moreover, according to the survey, in addition to Chase Manhattan, the largest creditor, Miramax also has some other arrears, with a cumulative debt amount of 23 million US dollars.

The Westeros system began to discuss some cooperation projects with major banks in the United States around the New Year, mainly the loan financing required by each subsidiary for further development, and further cooperation between Internet payment tools and physical banks.

For the major U.S. banks, the subsidiaries of the Westeros system are undoubtedly the highest-quality lending targets, and each naturally strives for it.

Chase Manhattan is also one of them.

In order to form as many interests as possible, the Westeros system also habitually chooses more partners.

During the negotiations between Verizon Telecom and Chase Manhattan on a $300 million loan financing, Simon Lebrade, who participated in the negotiations, proposed a condition to Chase Manhattan: early recovery of debts from Miramax.

A small Hollywood company on the verge of bankruptcy is not worth mentioning to Chase Manhattan.

It is unlikely that I would like to recover all the arrears from the film company that is in trouble. Chase Manhattan is actually doing debt collection and is ready to take on another bad debt.

The additional requirements of the Westeros system, in the opinion of Chase Manhattan, also thought that this small company has angered Daenerys Entertainment. , Of course, happy to sell a favor.

So, on the same day that the Wall Street Journal criticized Time Warner's excessive expansion, a third-line film company based in New York formally filed an application for bankruptcy with the Southern District Court of New York.

Despite the smooth development of the Westeros system, Simon has always understood that business competition has never been tender.

Cruelty is the essence of business.

Easily erasing a film company that should have shined on the original timeline, he did not have any burdens in his heart.

In the manor house’s reception room, after lunch, the Simons and James Rebled and Verizon Telecom Chairman and CEO Raymond Smith are discussing the next layout of the Westeros system in the telecommunications field.

The week before Christmas last year, the US Congress formally passed an industry ban that lifted telecom operators from being involved in equipment manufacturing.

Although it is a bill passed by Congress, it is also largely a way for the Bush administration to accumulate as much political heritage as possible before formal power transfer.Bush's resignation has been doomed, and Bush Jr. will also formally enter the US political arena.

Speaking of this, in the last few months of the election, the Bush administration has also been trying to promote the passage of some bills related to the new technology industry.

It’s just that because the “Information Superhighway Act” is at the forefront, this bill has also entered the final stage of discussion. The Bush administration is unlikely to take the bill proposed by the Clinton campaign partner as its own performance. Therefore, in the field of new technology, the White House In the end it seems to be doing nothing.

Of course things need to be done step by step.

Telecom operators are not allowed to get involved in the lifting of the ban on equipment manufacturing. Next, Nokia can naturally enter the North American market.

In the original timeline, Nokia's share in the North American market has not been high, mainly because the North American telecommunications equipment market was too closed, and the sales channels were also monopolized by telecom operators. Until many years later, the iPhone appeared, and American telecom operators still rely on The bundling sales model with telecom packages monopolizes more than 90% of the telecom equipment market.

This time, with Verizon's cooperation, Nokia's pace of exploring the North American market will no longer be as difficult as it once was.

In the past two years, AOL has taken a siege in the field of Internet service providers. In line with AOL's development of Internet services, Verizon has been vigorously deploying its own mobile communication network.

Owning the best quality markets on the eastern coast of the United States, and not hesitating to lock in the second-generation GSM format, there is no hesitation between different telecommunications standards like other operators, and even extremely wasteful resources to enable different formats at the same time. Sen's layout in the field of mobile communications also far exceeds that of other peers.

Next, while deeply cultivating the mobile communications business in its own market, Verizon's next goal is to expand.

Of course, if you want to do this, you must also resolve the anti-monopoly restrictions when the AT-T split in 1984.

This is actually just a matter of course in the next few years.

Whether it is public media or private lobbying, the Westeros system has been promoting the concept of'triple play' as much as possible in the past two years.

Network broadband, cable TV, and home phone. If these three networks can be combined into one, it will greatly save the operator's operating costs and bring cheaper services to users.

The antitrust in the United States is mainly to prevent the monopoly of the telecommunications industry from causing excessive prices and damaging consumers' interests.

Now, the integration of the three networks not only saves a lot of social resources, but also provides consumers with cheap communication services to the maximum. Therefore, this concept, whether it is a media platform or the American political arena, is already very marketable.

The continuous deregulation of the telecommunications industry is beneficial to major telecommunications giants.

The concept proposed by the Westeros system was quickly recognized by the telecommunications industry.

AT-T even published a report, arguing that once deregulation of the telecommunications industry is promoted and the integration of the three networks is promoted, the US telecommunications industry can save hundreds of billions of dollars in costs each year, and these cost savings can just maximize the benefits to consumers By.

The discussion about Verizon and Nokia's entry into North America all afternoon.

In the evening, James Rybold and Raymond Smith were sent away, and the Simons also boarded the plane back to the West Coast.

The next day is Friday, January 8.

The first box office week in 1993 officially ended.

During the seven days from January 1st to January 7th, due to entering the working day, movies in North American theaters have experienced a sharp drop.

The third week of "Jurassic Park" was released, with a single-week drop of 35%, and continued to receive USD 46.91 million.

At the same time, the cumulative box office of this dinosaur film in North America has also exceeded the US$200 million mark, reaching US$210.46 million.

Daenerys Entertainment's other film, "The Alone 2", fell by 43% in the first week after the New Year, leaving only 5.66 million US dollars at the box office in a week, with a cumulative total of 147.6 million US dollars at the box office.

Unlike the two commercial films that plunged into the business day, the award-winning season of Daenerys Entertainment featured "Wen Xiang Zhi Jing", but the box office trend was relatively good. The decline in the first week of the new year was only 28%. The game's downward curve also showed signs of slowing down.

At the same time, the box office rankings as of December 31, 1992, which have just passed in 1992, have also been released.

The "Wonder Woman" of Daenerys Entertainment's summer file, with a huge box office of 371 million US dollars, became the annual box office average of 1992 without suspense.

Although Jurassic Park's box office momentum is still rapid, it is generally difficult to overtake "Wonder Woman". Both the company and the outside world predict that the local box office of "Jurassic Park" will be about 350 million US dollars. .However, judging from the market performance of the overseas ticket warehouses that have been drawn, it is still difficult to say who wins and who loses at the overseas box office of the two films.