Hollywood Hunter

Before the first public financing of Eaglet, Simon had quietly launched the site selection plan of Eaglet's headquarters.

In fact, there is no need to choose too much.

According to the information in his memory, Simon directly picked the original Google site located in Mountain View, just south of Palo Alto.

The location of large-scale enterprise parks will almost certainly lead to the rise of surrounding land prices. Simon does not mind paying more money, but he does not want to see nails appear on the plots he chooses. The nails in the United States want to be removed. It is still very difficult. big.

Therefore, a few months in advance, Simon began to acquire land in the relevant areas of Mountain View through an agency.

Although the current Silicon Valley is very developed, the main area is limited to the anniversary of Stanford University in Palo Alto. The areas of Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino in the south are still very backward, not more than a dozen or two decades later In the situation where large companies are lined up, many places are even large farms and wasteland.

In the memory selected by Simon, the block of the Google Park is currently composed of farms and wasteland, with few residents.

After several months of quiet operation, in the area of ​​more than 10,000 hectares of land to be developed, which is located in the east of Palo Alto and north of Mountain View, near the bay, Simon’s agency has unknowingly eaten about 60 hectares of land. , Which is mainly farm land, the purpose is to remove the'nail household' in this area in advance.

A large area of ​​wasteland near the bay, then only need to discuss the acquisition with the Mountain View city government.

Speaking of it, even if it is only the existing 60 hectares of land, if it is not a little scattered, in fact, it is more than enough to build the Ygritte company park. However, due to some deep-rooted personal preferences, Simon is very happy to buy land.

With the completion of the huge US$1.5 billion financing from Eaglet, the news that this increasingly dazzling new technology company is about to build a headquarters campus quickly spread.

The reason why Amazon’s choice of the second headquarters in memory will attract countless large cities in the United States. The key is that the settlement of large enterprises will inevitably mean a huge tax source.

Amazon is good at tax avoidance, and can even operate its own corporate tax rate as a negative number, but tens of thousands of Amazon employees cannot avoid personal income tax.

The more developed countries are, the greater the proportion of personal income tax in national tax revenue.

The personal income tax in the United States accounts for about 50% of the total federal tax revenue. Employees of high-tech companies happen to be the best high-income groups among individual taxpayers.

Therefore, when news of the site selection of Igret's headquarters spread, the entire Bay Area was moving, whether it was Redwood in the north, Menlo Park or Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley, or Mountain View in the south. , Sunnyvale or Cupertino, administrative officials in various cities are chasing behind several senior executives of Igret, almost every day, even if I think Igret is not likely to be settled in my area, it is not easy Let go of the opportunity to try.

Tim Berners Lee already knew the big boss’s location for the company’s park. Although several people wanted to set up the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto nearby, Palo Alto wanted to mark it out. A few dozen acres of land is not difficult, but the land near the bay in the north of Mountain View is actually not too bad, and the straight-line distance from Stanford University is only about 7 kilometers.

Low-key negotiations with several major cities in the Nanwan District for more than a month, and finally "selected" the tax incentives given by Mountain View, and quickly marked a full 300 on the barren land in the north of Mountain View. Hectares of land.

300 hectares, which translates to over 700 acres.

Although it is far less than the 8,000 acres of land donated by the Stanford couple to Stanford University, for a company headquarters, 300 hectares of land is also a bit of a surprise.

In fact, if it wasn't for Mountain View, the government would not dare to approve too much, Simon even hoped to get at least 500 hectares.

Even so, when the news was officially announced in mid-May, it immediately aroused skepticism in the San Francisco Bay Area media.

You have to know that even the old Silicon Valley HP company only has an office park in Palo Alto that covers an area of ​​only 12 hectares. Igreat eats 300 hectares at a time, which is intended to give each Do all employees build an office villa?

The US real estate market has shown signs of recovery after several years of downturn.

Therefore, many media have publicly accused Igrid of improper motives for a large number of plots, with obvious speculation of plots.

As more information was revealed, the media found that the main body of the company that bought the land was Westeros, and Igerit took over 20 hectares of land from Westeros at the same price. It was planned to be used to build an office park, so the media became more noisy.

Westeros, this is definitely going into the real estate industry.

However, after the detailed information was disclosed, the media accusations of all parties were somewhat at a loss.

Igret actually got only 30 hectares of land, which is a lot bigger than HP's 12 hectares, but it is not too much.As for Westero's enclosure behavior, it seems that there is nothing wrong with it.

The coastal land in the north of Mountain View is originally a barren area to be developed. If any company is willing to take over the development, it is largely beneficial to the city.

Moreover, no one has stipulated that Westeros can not be involved in the real estate field?

Not only that, Simon Westero's favorite industries and regions, as long as they are not too slow, should understand that it is worth betting.

As a result, the clamor in the media is not over, a large amount of capital has turned their attention to this tens of thousands of hectares in the northern part of Mountain View, and has proposed to the Mountain View city government or the farmers who are still sticking to the area to purchase land. Claim.

This also led to the following short period of one week, it is said that some companies quoted for land purchases increased by 30% on the basis of Westeros purchase price, with Palo Alto as the limit, the southern part of the South Bay The development of this city has been lagging behind the cities of Redwood and Menlo Park in the north.

Mountain View was suddenly highly sought after, and the district administrator was ecstatic.

In most countries and regions of the world, there are only a few sets of criteria for measuring the political performance of principal officials.

The current momentum continues, and the growth rate of taxes and employment indexes in Mountain View in the next few years will definitely far exceed that of other cities in the Bay Area.

Simon rushed to San Francisco on May 20, spent a whole day participating in the planning of the Igret headquarters campus, and walked on the plot in the north of Mountain View.

300 hectares of land, the southern border is adjacent to the 101 Highway that runs through California, and the east side is close to the Stevens River from Mountain Range in the south to Mountain View. It is about 2.5 kilometers long from north to south, and it can be said to be the best plot in the northern area of ​​Mountain View.

The planned Igret Park is located in the center of this high-quality plot, away from the noisy 101 highway.

As for the remaining land, Simon had considered some plans and temporarily gave up all of them.

To put it plainly, there is no planning.

Therefore, if anyone knows the inside story, he will definitely feel that Westeros' 300 million hectares of land for $230 million this time is definitely a failure.

Simon doesn't care.

Just like the Tasmanian island that has been continuously bought in Australia, he now has such a willful capital.

It doesn't matter if you grow trees and grass or even simply grow wild, as long as the land is your own.

Stepping on it is very practical.

I spent a day in San Francisco, returned to Los Angeles at night, and flew to New York early the next morning.

Recently, it is the season of TV series promotion in New York.

TV business as the focus of Daenerys Entertainment's expansion in the next few years, Westmont intends to take the time to fly to the east coast to follow up with some things.

At the same time, May 21 is another Friday.

After last week's warm-up of several films such as "Fighting Condor 2", "Bruce Bruce Lee" and "My Genius Family", the 1993 summer file officially opened.

This week’s most watched blockbuster movie is undoubtedly the action blockbuster “Breaking Heroes” starring Sylvester Stallone, produced by Samsung, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. The film cost $70 million, and the number of screens opened in the first week was 2333 blocks.

In addition, the comedy "Made in America" ​​starring Ubi Goldberg was also released during the same period, with 2048 screens.

Stallone's "Breakfast" and Schwarzenegger's "Phantom Heroes" scheduled for June 18 are the two blockbuster bombs released by Columbia Pictures this summer. The production cost of the latter is as high as 85 million. US dollars.

Columbia Pictures also tried to develop "Phantom Hero" in collaboration with Daenerys Entertainment last year, but it was only rejected by Simon.

Compared to Colombia's aspirations, Simon is well aware that these two movies are two big pits for Colombian parent company Sony.

It was the failure of these two projects that caused Sony to completely lose patience with the head of Colombia, Peter Cooper, and even once wanted to resell this large studio.

Boarding the plane to the east coast, Girl A sent Simon's box office data just released last week.

Sitting in the front cabin office of Boeing 767, Simon opened the box office report last week and first found the new one-week box office data for the anti-fighting multi-star 2 of Easter period.

From April 9 to the present, "Rebel Stars 2" has been released for a total of 6 weeks.

The opening of the first week was 43.67 million US dollars, a decrease of 39% the following week. In the following weeks, the box office curve of "Fighting Stars 2" was fairly stable due to the popularity of the series and the lack of competitors over the same period.

From May 14th to May 20th, compared with the fifth week, "Anti-intellectual Multi-Star 2" fell by 23% in a single week, and continued to receive 8.96 million US dollars.

In six weeks, the cumulative box office of the film also reached $12.45 million.

Through the next week's box office, Daenerys Entertainment predicted that the total box office in North America 2 will be between 130 million and 150 million US dollars.

Six weeks after the release, according to the statistics of the box office curve that was drawn for a month and a half, the Xuanfa team further predicted that the final North American box office of the film should be about 145 million US dollars, and the error will not exceed 3 million US dollars.

The total budget for the production and publicity of "Fighting Stars 2" is US$45 million, and the local box office is calculated at US$145 million. Daenerys Entertainment can probably obtain a net income of US$35 million.

Compared with the local community, "Anti-intellectual Multi-Star 2" still failed to break through the cultural restrictions in overseas markets.

According to data feedback from overseas ticket warehouses such as the UK, Spain, and Australia that have already started painting, the film can only recover about 70 million USD in overseas markets.

Of course, for a comedy movie, the global box office is more than 200 million US dollars, which is a big sale anyway.

Relying on the box office receipt of more than 120 million US dollars in 6 weeks, "Fighting Stars 2" is not only the first film in 1993 with a local box office breaking 100 million, but also temporarily ranked first in the 1993 North American box office list.

In the months since the return to the first half of the year, there haven't been many selling projects.

In addition to "Fighting Stars 2", only Columbia Pictures' "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray is still a big hit."Groundhog Day" started painting on the Valentine's Day calendar in February. As of last week, the cumulative box office was US$66.32 million, and the total box office is expected to reach US$70 million before the next stage.

Simon actually paid attention to "Groundhog Day" at first, but held the idea that Daenerys Entertainment could not occupy all the selling items, and did not forcefully grab this script.

The third place on the annual list for the time being is an American Civil War historical film starring Pierce Brosnan and Judy Foster, "The Old Man Comes", produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and released on February 5. It has been downgraded, with a cumulative box office of US$50.08 million.

Simon once watched this movie.

The original version starred Richard Gere and Judy Foster.

This time, because of Simon's big butterfly, Richard Gere's role in "Fairy Moon Beauty" fell on Pierce Brosnan, and the role of "It seems like an old man" was replaced by Bruce South.

It's no coincidence.

Pierce Brosnan and Judy Foster are both ICM artists and belong to the same agent.

The three major brokerage companies are now promoting the project packaging mechanism.

After Pierce Brosnan relied on the "Wind Moon Beauty", he naturally tended to pair him with Judy Foster, instead of missing out on Richard Kiel who was completely out of breath in "Wind Moon Beauty".

In addition to "Counter-Star 2", the three brands under Daenerys Entertainment, as of mid-May, have launched a total of 15 movies, but in "Counter-Star 2", there are no other box office dark horses.

Among them, the box office is relatively good is a Mexican literary drama "Love Chocolate" launched by Gaomen Films on February 19th. This is an award-winning film last year at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Gaomen Films bought it for 2 million US dollars. After the release of the North American distribution rights, the cumulative box office after the release was 21.66 million US dollars, which is a small dark horse.

The "Big Algae Sea", which was released on April 16th during the Easter period, after the first week of painting began with 4.67 million US dollars, and it has been released for five weeks to the present. The cumulative box office has also reached 15.39 million US dollars. It is expected to break the 20 million US dollar mark before placing an order. .

The Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear Awards "Feast" was released at the beginning of March, taking advantage of the popularity of the Golden Bear Awards. It was screened for two months. The cumulative box office was US$ 12.07 million, and the income was also considerable.

In addition to these four movies that are still selling, the other 11 movies are all at the box office of 10 million US dollars, which is basically a profit.

This is actually expected by the company.

The key films of Daenerys Entertainment, especially the films produced by Daenerys Films, the most heirloom, will be released in the second half of the year.

Moreover, in the first half of the year, Daenerys Entertainment will be able to appear in the annual box office chart champion "Anti-intellectual multi-star 2", as well as "Love Chocolate", "Big Algae Sea", "Happy Banquet" and other profitable projects , Is enough to envy other Hollywood film companies.