Hollywood Hunter

At the end of September, San Francisco did not feel like autumn. The sun was still bright and the trees were green.

Woodside Mountain Villa.

The time is Saturday, September 25.

These days, Simon is basically in Los Angeles on weekdays, and accompanied by female assistants in San Francisco on weekends.

It was actually Janet who came to San Francisco.

Because Veronica will fly over from New York every weekend to see the children.

On vacation days, most of the time seems very leisurely, because it is maternity leave, and it is inevitable that it is monotonous.

Accompanying the female assistant to play the guitar for a while, read a few pages of books, the afternoon sun was exhausting, so he curled up next to Simon and slept.The outdoor environment is somewhat unsuitable for pregnant women to sleep in. Simon carried the sleeping female assistant into the bedroom and returned to the backyard porch of his own, sitting at a round table drinking coffee and looking at some of the information compiled by girl A today.

No longer entangled with various meticulous work every day, Simon can finally comb the entire Westeros system seriously.

The most recent concern is the impact of the Westeros system on the distribution of Daenerys entertainment films due to the launch of the 58list website, which is opposed to traditional paper media.

Three brands under Daenerys Entertainment counted the award-winning works of this year’s Venice Golden Lion Award released by Highgate Pictures, Chieslovsky’s "Blue of Red, Blue and White Trilogy", which was launched in September. Four movies.

One of the more important is Brian de Palma's new film "The Dawn of Lovers", which will be released on September 10. This old gangster film that Palma is good at starring Al Pacino, the production cost is $30 million. The number of screens opened is 1,679.

The other two, one is the Cold War period drama "Peachy Complaint" starring Anthony Hopkins, released by New World Pictures.There is also a "Golden Giant" launched by Gaomen Pictures, which is a novel adaptation of the film starring Meryl Streep, which tells about the ups and downs of a Chilean girl who has the ability to predict.

In fact, only one of the four movies, "The Dawn of Lovers", was produced entirely by Daenerys Entertainment, and the other three were released by agents who bought out or divided them.

According to the word-of-mouth and box office data of the four films, Daenerys Entertainment's advertising department judged whether the opposition between the Westeros system and the paper media obviously affected the company's film distribution.

Take "The Dawn of Love Owl" as an example. After the film was released on September 10, the media's comprehensive score was 7.1, which was slightly better than the passing score, and it was not excellent.Many film critics gave the evaluation that Brian de Palma and Al Pacino repeated the previous "Scarface", so the plot is old-fashioned and lacks breakthroughs.

Compared with the emerging Internet platform, the word-of-mouth of comprehensive statistics can reach about 8 points.

The gap is very obvious.

However, at the box office, "The Dawn of Lovers" had a box office of US$11.39 million in the first week, a 26% drop the following week, and another US$8.36 million. The total of the box office in the two weeks was US$19.75 million. The total box office in North America is expected to be around US$35 million.

Such business performance basically meets the expectations of Daenerys Entertainment.

With a production cost of US$30 million, a US$10 million announcement expense, and a US$35 million box office in North America, the project is certainly not a success. However, relying on overseas issuance and follow-up channels to recover costs and achieve a certain profit is not a problem.

Simon initially approved the project, but in fact already expected this result.

Daenerys Entertainment cannot succeed forever, and occasionally needs this kind of lukewarm project to support the'facade'.

After a comprehensive evaluation, the traditional paper media obviously affected the movie reputation of "The Dawn of Lovers", but it did not cause too obvious impact on the box office. This is actually not surprising.

The promotion of Hollywood movies is currently only about 25% of the traditional paper media. The more important platform is the TV channel, which accounts for 50%. Other theater posters, street advertising, radio advertising and other channels account for the remaining 25%.

The proportion of paper media in advertising expenses also means that this advertising channel has a heavy influence on the commercial performance of a film.

25%.

Does not have decisive influence.

Of course, this ratio is actually for standard commercial films, such as the literary and artistic films produced by Gaomen Pictures, it is impossible to give too high advertising expenses. In many cases, it mainly depends on the word-of-mouth communication of the paper.

In the "Golden Giant" released on September 17, the media's word of mouth reached the bottom, with a comprehensive score of only 2.6 points.

The quality of the film is indeed unsatisfactory, but the senior film team also said that the mainstream paper media is obviously too harsh for this film.

As a 513-screen film, the box office in the first week was only $1.71 million, and the total box office in North America is expected to be only about $5 million.However, the budget of the film is as high as 25 million US dollars.

It's bloodless.

Fortunately, the producer of the film is not Daenerys Entertainment, the budget is mainly from Europe.

A project destined to fail, the box office is 5 million US dollars or 7 million US dollars, the difference is actually not big.The change of traditional paper media's attitude towards Daenerys Entertainment is visible to the naked eye.

Daenerys Entertainment has been making good film critics in recent years. Obviously, Simon has overestimated the independence of film critics.

It's also easy to understand.

Daenerys Entertainment can give film critics some small favors, but this group is relying on the manuscript fee of the paper media platform to eat. It is impossible to be completely independent.

This is actually not a bad thing.

The lack of independence means that it can be influenced by external forces.

Simon thought about it for a moment, put down the information, opened the laptop on the round table in front of him and started writing emails to several executives of Daenerys Entertainment.

The key to Daenerys Entertainment’s next movie announcement is to ensure that key projects, such as several important schedules, for other movies, only need to do their best.

If some paper media are too excessive, you can kill chickens and monkeys when necessary.

In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the cooperation between Daenerys Entertainment and the Eaglenet portal, and guide as many users as possible to log in to the Internet platform to view movie reputation and participate in movie discussions.As long as users can be introduced to the Internet, this will be the main battlefield of the Westeros system.

The number of Internet users in North America has reached one-third of the total population, and they are all the highest quality consumer users.

As long as it operates properly, relying on the home field advantage of the Westeros system on the Internet platform can offset the negative effects of traditional paper media for the release of Daenerys entertainment movies to the greatest extent.

After writing an e-mail, the time is already more than four o'clock in the afternoon.

Girl A appeared quietly, helping Simon to sort out the scattered information on the table and said, "Mr. Gates is here."

"Let him come here."

Alison nodded and turned away.

A moment later, the door classmates came under the guidance of girl A. Simon then got up and shook hands with each other, and the two sat down together at the round table.

When A girl left again, the door classmate pretending to pick up the coffee and sipping away the trace of her attention from Alison’s figure in the OL suit.

I was a little dissatisfied with Simon's move that he hadn't even greeted him, and Gates didn't talk too much.

Just this Wednesday, Igrid suddenly released a version of the fully open source Linux1.0 operating system source code. This is the result of the Igrid Linux team's work for the past six months. Compared with the founder Linus Tor Waltz's rough kernel. This version of the operating system kernel has 200,000 lines of code. Although it is not perfect, it can basically achieve practical applications.

There has never been a mainstream operating system in the computer industry that can be completely free and open source.

So it is conceivable what impact this completely free and open operating system will have on the industry.

For public reasons, Igrid released this product to further demonstrate the openness of this company.

Of course, privately, this opening is actually for long-term layout considerations.

For the computer industry, a piece of software, whether it is a large-scale operating system application or a simple program that only implements one or two instructions, can only form an industry with enough users to achieve monopoly purposes.

In the company's plan, it will not directly conduct commercial operations for the Linux operating system, but intends to rely on the Linux platform to provide further application software and solutions and other services.

The Red Hat Company in memory is this mode of operation.

Later, in order to strengthen its layout in open source applications, IBM acquired Red Hat with a huge investment of more than 30 billion US dollars, which is enough to prove the feasibility of this business model.

However, the prerequisite for all this is that the Linux system must be sufficiently popular.

Egrete released the source code of the Linux operating system, which invested a lot of money and manpower, to promote this process in advance.

Faced with the problems of the classmates at this time, Simon just said flatly: "Bill, you must have known that this is a public open source operating system project. Moreover, Igrid’s goal is in the field of server operating systems, not to Microsoft. It’s too much impact. I know what you’re worried about, Bill, and I can assure you that Igreut will not further develop a Linux-based desktop operating system."

Damen’s expression didn’t relax, but he was a little excited and raised his voice unconsciously: “But you should also know that Simon, Microsoft has just launched Windows NT, you are in the middle!”

"Unix is ​​already open enough. There are still many people who are worried about this product. Bill, do you think everyone can accept a completely closed source server operating system?"

"Why not, as long as we can provide a more stable service?"

"Without an absolutely stable service, any operating system will inevitably encounter a variety of problems. What everyone needs is to find the source of the problem very quickly and easily and then solve it once the problem is encountered. Closed-source operating system, Just like a car with the hood completely welded to death, even if you say that the operating system is reliable anymore, users will be worried."

The door classmates seem to have lost patience: "How to sell the welded dead car is our business. Simon, you must stop the development of Linux. Don’t forget that you are also the largest shareholder of Microsoft and the second largest shareholder."

"Sorry, Bill, I can't promise you."

The door classmates stared at the opposite youth fiercely, and after a while, they found that he seemed to have no way to take the other party, which made him even more angry: "Okay, then, promise me, Igret will not continue to release in the future. Linux source code."

This 1.0 kernel, although the initial version of Billinus Torvalds has made great progress, but if you want to compare with other operating systems that have been widely used, you still need to continue to improve.

Simon is very simple: "Well, I can promise you this."

Bill Gates was speechless for a moment.

Simon also did not explain to the other party that Igrid has supported Linas Tovac to establish the Linux Foundation to coordinate free software development volunteers worldwide to continue to improve this operating system.

Even if Igrid no longer releases the latest Linux source code, the Linux Foundation will continue to release operating system versions above 2.0.

Of course, there is still the participation of the Linux development team of Igret in order to guide this operating system to the direction Igret wants.

Bill Gates also knew that Simon had concealed himself, but for a while, he could not continue to investigate the issue, and could only change the topic: "About the pre-installed IE browser, I think we can talk again."

Simon smiled at the corner of his mouth and said, "Bill, you can discuss this with Jeff."

At the beginning, Simon wanted to pre-install the IE browser directly on the Windows operating system, but was rejected by the door classmates. But he had no choice but to take the second place and turned to cooperate with OEM manufacturers such as Compaq, HP, and Dell.

With the further popularity of the Internet, whether or not to pre-install IE browser software has also become one of the influencing factors when consumers purchase personal computers.

Therefore, even if each computer is pre-installed with an IE browser to increase the cost of 10 US dollars, major mainstream OEM manufacturers have continued to cooperate with Igrid, even if Apple is no exception.

Now that mainstream OEMs have been basically dealt with, it is not necessary to cooperate directly with Microsoft.

After all, doing so involves taking on greater monopoly risk.

Simon also knows why the gate classmates suddenly changed too much.

Microsoft's MSN portal was recently launched.

The conditions that can be given to AOL have basically given Microsoft the same.

Microsoft is also imitating AOL and partnering with other Internet service providers in North America to launch Microsoft's news box to increase MSN portal traffic.

A news box similar to the later pop-up window was regarded as a window opened by Igret for two competitors.

Compared with many other websites, AOL and Microsoft are already lucky enough.

It's just that the gate classmates are clearly not satisfied yet.

If IE browser becomes the pre-installed software of Windows operating system, the door students probably think that Microsoft should be able to use this as a condition to request the homepage preset power of IE browser, thereby further increasing the traffic of Microsoft MSN portal.

This is actually a considerable investment.

Even if Igrid can provide a certain price discount for Microsoft's pre-installation, according to the annual sales volume of Microsoft's operating system, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

However, the Internet wave has begun to surge, and even Microsoft will inevitably be worried about being dropped in this industrial transformation. Therefore, as long as enough online traffic can be obtained, this expenditure is totally worth it.

If Simon, he will be so determined.

Therefore, at this time, it is even less likely to agree to the requirements of the door students.

Igret’s dominance in the Internet field should not be provoked. Even if he knew that Microsoft would be defeated in the Internet industry later, Simon did not intend to open this mouth to Microsoft.Who knows whether other variables will appear in history.