Hollywood Hunter

On April 9, the Easter period officially opened.

A total of three new movies were posted on the North American cinema this Friday. New World Pictures’ "Fighting Stars 2" produced 2516 screens. Fox's "The Legend of the Sand" opened 1819 screens. New Line Film's "New Fierce Ghost Street" has 1,365 screens.

Many of the vulgar spoof comedies in Hollywood are often unable to escape from the first big sale follow-up set box office plummeted.

In Simon's memory, this is the case in the "Fighting Stars" series.

However, because the cost of such comedy is often not too high, even if the sequel is developed, the studio can often achieve good profits.

The key is cost control.

Otherwise, if you don’t pay attention to the studio, you may be reduced to working as a star.

It took a lot of budget, gave the best schedule, and finally just reluctantly returned the capital, looking back and found that the main creator who took a huge amount of salary made a lot of money.

Daenerys Entertainment originally signed two film contracts with Mike Myers, the creator of "Fighting Stars", so after the first "Fighting Stars" sold a $120 million box office in North America at a cost of 20 million, the sequel The budget is well controlled at $30 million.

Speaking of which, the curse of the vulgar spoof comedy sequel that the box office is prone to plunge is not unbroken After this initiative, the first step of "Ace Spy" was barely more than 50 million US dollars in sales, but "Ace Spy 2" achieved an excellent score of over 200 million US dollars at the North American box office, and in the "Ace Spy" Spy 3" maintained this level of success.

Because of the box office curse of the sequel of the vulgar spoof comedy, Simon decisively abandoned the development plan of the sequel of "Flying Childhood".

For "Flying Over Childhood", the sequel of the baby who speaks, the sequel is really difficult to innovate. Mel Gibson is also strong enough in the remuneration, and the development of the sequel is very risky.

However, for "Counter Star", on the one hand, it was the original packaging contract that successfully controlled the cost. On the other hand, it was because of the precedent of the "Ace Spy" series that Simon agreed to the sequel development plan for this series.

At the time, why the first box office of "Fighting Stars" sold at the box office was difficult for many media to give a specific reason.

After the sequel was established, the New World Pictures team and Mike Myers spent a long time discussing this issue, and Simon also made many suggestions with reference to the "Ace Spy" series in his memory.

The key is the same.

Comedy movies, people often watch some very interesting paragraphs.

Just like "Hangover", the bridge that went wrong after being drunk twice, the audience still bought it.The third creator thought we had to innovate, so we stopped playing'hangover' and the box office plummeted.

Therefore, the sequel continues to maintain the style of the first song.

Plot innovation and the like, no need to innovate.

Now that the audience feels that the "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the first song is a magical stroke, the sequel will pick another good piece of music.

Since the audience thinks that the style of breaking the fourth wall is very interesting, the sequel will be as usual.

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment also used its own resources to equip this series with a lot of musical elements with a more powerful guest lineup. Madonna, who has a good personal relationship with Simon, and the big-name singers such as the guns and roses combination of Universal Music Came in the sequel.

Since agreeing to this project, based on the production cost of US$30 million, the budget for the announcement of "Fighting Stars 2" also reached US$15 million.In this era of increasing importance of film marketing, it is essential for a film to be successful in order to maintain sufficient publicity.

Even the Easter period is carefully considered.

The first "Rebel Star" won a box office of US$120 million,

The Easter schedule is different.

Although Hollywood has paid more and more attention to the second-tier stalls of Easter and Halloween in recent years, the competition is not as cruel as the summer stall or the year-end stall.

This Easter, both "Introduction to Fighting Stars 2", both in the popularity and promulgation of the first song, far surpassed their other movies in the same period.Unless there is a very strong box office dark horse, otherwise, the film is almost certain to dominate this period.

The other two films, "Legend of the Sand" and "New Menggui Street", have no potential for dark horses no matter how they are viewed.

Fox's "Legend of the Sand" tells the story of a group of baseball teenagers, a standard sports genre.

The new line of "New Meng Gui Street", although it has a word of "new", after six consecutive episodes, the audience will inevitably get tired of the repeated Freddie murders, even if the new line of North America's $50 million box office The goal is not high, but Hollywood is not optimistic about the prospect of this movie.

On Easter weekend, invited by Joseph Lewis, who had just met some time ago, Simon flew with the two Jenny to the Bahamas for a vacation alone.

Joseph Lewis is British, but in order to avoid taxes, Lewis has long lived in the Bahamas across the sea from Florida.

As one of the world's famous tax havens, the Bahamas also only levies a small amount of license fees from local registered companies. Other sales taxes, value-added taxes, inheritance taxes, and capital gains taxes are not.

After completing the operation in the European currency market last year, Joseph Lewis plans to gradually shift the focus of his career to the physical industry, and savvyly attempts to establish business links with the Westeros system. Simon also fancy the registration place under the name of Joseph Lewis. Tavistock Group in the Bahamas.

The Tavistock Group seems to be an industrial company, but in fact it is a comprehensive investment company.

Over the years, while continuing to speculate in the financial markets, through the Tavistock Group, Joseph Lewis has successively invested in many real estate, energy, sports, catering, medical and other projects in North America and Latin America.

However, even after last year’s European currency operation, Tavistock’s current total assets are only $3 billion, most of which exist in the form of cash and short-term convertible bonds, and investment in the physical sector can only be It's a small play.

Of the total assets of the Tavistock Group of $3 billion, Joseph Lewis himself has about $600 million, accounting for one-fifth of them.

With a net worth of US$600 million, this era is already considered to be a super rich. Of course, it is really not worth mentioning in front of Simon.

In Simon's plan, in the next few years, as the Internet bubble becomes more and more violent, the Westeros system will gradually reduce its holdings of technology stocks in cash.At the moment, only two companies, Cisco and AOL, have already exceeded $30 billion in market value. These companies, even if they only reduce their holdings by 1%, will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Throughout the shareholding reduction plan, the funds drawn by the Westeros system from the technology stock market may even reach tens of billions of dollars.

Therefore, even according to the original idea, using this fund to join the Johnston family to build a super mining group in Australia, there will definitely be a large balance in the end.Simon does not intend to continue to invest in technology stocks, but intends to get involved in more traditional physical industries.

The Tavitec Group, which is involved in real estate, energy, sports, catering, medical and other industries, can happen to be the outer shell of the Westero system to invest in real industries.

Not only North America, with this shell, Simon can also extend his tentacles to the vast Latin American market.

Although the economy of Latin America has always been oppressed by North America, it is a huge market with more than 500 million people.

In addition, using the Tavistock Group as a shell can also hide the assets of the Westeros system to a certain extent.

As long as it works properly, most of the media and the public in the Westeros industry will only see Tavistock in the future, and will not know that the actual controller behind the scene is the Westeros Group.

Like many large funds on Wall Street, according to public information, the public can see the holdings of these funds to some large groups, but they can't figure out who the real controller behind these holdings is.

It is important to know that large fund companies do not have only one fund, they often have dozens and hundreds of funds, and the investment objectives of each sub-fund are also different. This gives many investors who do not want to expose their goals much room for operation. .

Therefore, to buy a fund and control the fund to buy a company's stock directionally, for the public, it is often the large fund itself that holds the company's shares. In fact, these shares control other people.

Obviously, in many cases, this operation is of course in violation of the federal securities laws.

But, who cares?

As a piece of circulation in New York's legal profession, the crimes Wall Street committed during a meal may be no less than a war.

If it is not true, of course there is nothing.

Cersei Capital can already be regarded as one of the shells of the Westeros system, and the Tavistock Group is another shell selected by Simon.This shell will also be involved in investment in North America, but the main goal is overseas, more accurately, Latin America.

Two days on the weekend, Simon and Joseph Lewis quickly reached an agreement. Westeros invested $100 million in the Tavistock Group, which is a small test.$100 million is a small percentage compared to Tavistock’s total capital of $3 billion. However, after all, the two sides are not familiar, and Simon will not be stupid enough to immediately bet on this company.

Joseph Lewis naturally understood.

In order to show sincerity, Lewis also made a proposal to actively liquidate the capital of other investors, but Simon refused.

No need at all.

If the Westeros system occupies too much capital in the Tavistock Group, this company will lose a very important hidden effect as a shell.

Instead, Simon also suggested that Joseph Lewis continue to absorb more capital.

Three billion US dollars, most of which are still cash or bond assets, seem to be a large sum of money, but if the big operation is down, in fact, few projects can not be operated.

Like the 10% share transfer plan of Eaglet, if Simon initially agreed, he would directly consume half of Tavistock's wealth.

With enough funds, it is of course impossible to find too many projects in the short term.

Although it was not possible to reach an agreement on the transfer of shares of Igret, Simon also suggested that Joseph Lewis temporarily invest in domestic technology stocks in the United States. The Internet bubble is still in the early stages of expansion and there is still much room for growth in the future.As for how much Joseph Lewis has invested in concrete, Simon did not give specific suggestions, he also wanted to see the other party's investment vision.

If Joseph Lewis can bet all the funds on the technology stock market at one time, and can quit rationally and successfully at the peak of the technology stocks, the current 3 billion US dollars will even be expected to grow more than 10 times in the future.

Of course, if it was Simon, he would definitely do it.

But if Joseph Lewis did so, even if the Tavistock Group's capital increased significantly in the future, Simon's attitude towards Lewis would be somewhat reserved.

Because this is totally the gambler mentality.

After the weekend, I returned to Los Angeles, and the box office for the first three days of Easter was officially released.

After the opening of the painting last Friday, under the operation of the New World Pictures team, the media comprehensive score of "Rebel Stars 2" was 7.3 points, which was barely good. However, the three-day box office at the first weekend of the film exceeded Simon. Everyone is expected.

The initial goal of the New World Films team is to look forward to the US$20 million box office in the first three days of the first weekend of "Fighting Stars 2", so that the cumulative box office will reach US$30 million in the first seven days of the first week.

The first "Fighting Stars" relied on word of mouth to come out of a very beautiful long line. The sequel did not dare to expect this, but even if it starts at a 50% drop in the next week and starts at $30 million, the total box office in North America can reach at least 60 million. US dollars.

This kind of box office performance is only dependent on local box office revenue. There is still a small gap between the recovery of the cost of 45 million US dollars. After the global operation, it is enough to achieve small profits. The subsequent follow-up channels are enough to bring good benefits to Daenerys Entertainment.

In fact, with the increasing cost of film production and distribution, most Hollywood movies are difficult to return to the box office stage, basically need to achieve profitability through video tapes and TV channels, which is actually more and more difficult for the second and third line film companies to survive The reason is that the operation of the omni-channel requires a lot of time and resources, especially time, the second and third line film companies can not afford it.

Compared with the first weekend expectation of US$20 million, the actual three-day box office figure of "Retro Fight 2" has reached US$31.79 million, and the average number of pavilions in the first three days of the week is 10,000. The box office is expected to reach 4,000 in the first week. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

In the first week, 40 million US dollars, even if the subsequent decline is deep, it is easy to touch the 100 million US dollar threshold.

If the box office in North America breaks through 100 million, "Fighting Stars 2" will be directly profitable in the local market.

Affected by the strong impact of "Anti-intellectual Multi-Star 2", Fox's "Legend of the Sand" only harvested 5.36 million US dollars in the first three days of the weekend.

"Xin Meng Ghost Street", which has high hopes from New Line Pictures, has a box office of only 3.71 million US dollars at the first three days of the opening weekend. It is expected that the total box office in North America can only barely exceed 10 million US dollars. "The fantasy of turning over is completely broken.