Hollywood Hunter

PS: [VIP is eaten, this chapter is a free chapter]

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On December 24, Christmas Eve.

The much-anticipated "Steel Bone" officially landed on the North American cinema on this day, and the number of screens opened reached 3106.

The strength of the DC movie universe has been confirmed by five consecutive films, so "Steel Bone" can almost be said to dominate the schedule. The other three films released on the same day are small-scale screening projects with only a few dozens of screens.

Christmas Eve is the day when Westerners reunite with their families. Usually, it is not the best time to start a movie.

However, under the propaganda of Warner Bros., a large number of fans still watched "Steel Bone" as a kind of holiday celebration, and chose to enter the theater to watch movies as soon as possible.

Compared with DC superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and so on, Steel Bone was born in 1980, and is still a black man. Its disadvantage is very obvious.If this project is launched alone, Warner has no confidence at all. Fortunately, this is a continuation after the cross-fusion of the DC movie universe. The story plot is closely related to the "Superman" of the summer file, and it inherits the past and the future, so it largely offsets the protagonist of the film. Weaknesses in popularity and ethnicity.

Especially film reputation.

The film has once again adopted a lot of new technologies in special effects, making the steel bone effect more outstanding than the robot in "Terminator". The plot has also been repeatedly polished. Although it is not amazing, it is also a one-stop process. The origin of the superhero steel bone has also laid a solid foundation for the follow-up development of the DC movie universe. In addition, the black protagonist needs to maintain political correctness. The comprehensive media score of the "steel bone" after the word of mouth ban has reached 9.1 points, completely Excellent level.

In the end, it’s Christmas Eve, and Warner Bros.’s marketing is ultimately unable to withstand the deep-rooted holiday traditions of Westerners.The first day of the "Gone Bone" large-scale painting box office ended with only 14.16 million US dollars, which ranked the bottom of the DC film universe project.

The media hadn't had time to render the film's failure. The following Saturday, the film's single-day box office skyrocketed 39%, and it received $19.73 million.

The following Sunday, "Steel Bone" box office also reached 17.37 million US dollars.

When the screening of the first weekend ended, the cumulative box office of "Steel Bone" for three days ended up at 51.26 million US dollars, surpassing the box office score of 49.31 million US dollars for the first weekend of "The Flash", which was also painted at the Christmas stage two years ago.

Although it still ranks second to last in the six films of the DC movie universe, Warner's reference to "Steel Bone" happens to be "The Flash".The film release team's box office expectations for "Steel Bone" are only comparable to "The Flash".Now, this superhero movie with many disadvantages has a tendency to surpass the veteran high-popular superhero Flash in the DC movie Universe Aura, completely making Warner overjoyed.

After the first weekend, from December 24 to December 30, "Steel Bone" accumulated a total of 76.21 million US dollars at the box office in the first seven days of the first week.

Because of the addition of "Steel Bone", the total box office size of the last full box office week in 1993 skyrocketed to US$193 million.However, the strong "Steel Bone" inevitably caused suppression of other films in the same period.

Shocked by the release of "Steel Bone", "Lion King", which has the highest popularity at the end of the year and is most suitable for the family to watch movies, failed to fall again at the box office at Christmas week, but the film's decline this week was only a negligible 3%. It received US$27.61 million, and the cumulative box office was US$23.729 million in six weeks.

"Mission Impossible" in the third place on the list has no such good luck. At the Christmas week, the box office fell by 19%, accounting for 20.52 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office was 143.73 million US dollars.

During the same period, other films were mixed, but they could not be compared with the top three films on the list.

On December 31, the last day of 1993, another box office week opened.

In order to avoid the edge of "Steel Bone",

After all, there is not so much in this world.

At the box office of only 730,000 US dollars on the first day, it also confirmed that "Mechanical Ghost" only exists at the end of the end of the year.

New Year's Day on January 1 happened to be Saturday. At the box office week from December 31 to January 6, there were no scenes where the box office fell sharply after the holidays in previous years.

The second week of "Steel Bone" the next week's box office fell only 26%, and received another 56.39 million US dollars. The cumulative box office of two weeks was 132.6 million US dollars. Whether the total box office of the North American film can impact 300 million still needs to see the follow-up trend. The original $253 million box office at "The Flash" was more than enough.

The phenomenal 3D animated movie "The Lion King" still ranks second.

In the seventh week of the release, the box office declined by only 33%, and continued to record 18.36 million US dollars. The cumulative box office reached 255.55 million US dollars, which is less than the 45 million US dollar gap from the 300 million mark.

"Mission Impossible" among the Big Three, the box office fell by 36% this week, which is considered to be the deepest box office slip in the list. The single-week box office accounted for 13.1 million US dollars, and the cumulative box office rose to 156.83 million US dollars.

Although the decline was deep, the overall box office trend of "Mission Impossible" still broke through the haze that was initially hit by the "Lion King" and caused the box office to open lower. The local box office in North America is about 180 million US dollars, according to the share ratio of about 55% Calculated enough, Daenerys and Paramount only rely on the North American box office to recover the total investment of 100 million US dollars in production and announcements. The box office income from overseas can basically be counted as profits.

Even if it can't be compared with the DC movie universe project or the explosions of "Jurassic Park" and "The Lion King", Paramount is satisfied with the market performance of "Mission Impossible", and the series sequel was officially launched recently.

Christmas accompanied the women and children for more than a week, Simon restarted work on January 3 after New Year’s Day, and Janet flew to New York on the first working day after the New Year, leaving only the female assistant in Du Mei Cape Manor looks after the three children.

Veronica flew to Australia during the Christmas season and brought Melbourne back to North America after the holiday.

After Janet gave birth to Nicholas, Veronica mentioned the matter of reopening her work, but was circumvented by the Simons and the couple, during which Janet added a burden to monitor the Black Rock Asset Management Company.

Black Rock Asset Management has the most conservative investment strategy among the three core subsidiaries of Cersei Capital. It can’t bear the huge amount of funds held by this company. The current total has reached 170 billion US dollars of total assets. If something goes wrong, it will inevitably be involved. The entire Westeros system.

In order to prevent personal energy from hindering the rapid expansion of the Westeros system, the Simons and his wife have been delegating power to the management as much as possible. On the other hand, the supervision of the financial, personnel and legal aspects of each subsidiary in the system has also been Continue to strengthen.

Veronica is undoubtedly one of the most trusted people of the Simons, and it is suitable for related work.

At the beginning of the new year, Daenerys Entertainment's first large-scale commercial move was to fully eat the remaining half of the shares of the USA TV network from the Canadian Seagram Group.

After the successful acquisition of Paramount Communications in October last year, restricted by relevant federal regulations, Seagram Group, as a foreign investor, cannot continue to hold the USA TV network, and can only choose to sell it.

The USA TV network was jointly held by Paramount Communications and MCA. Both parties hold equal shares, which are both 50%.Daenerys Entertainment merged with MCA, and half of its shares once fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. Simon also obtained absolute control of the USA TV network.

In recent years, the USA television network has developed rapidly through hot shows such as the spouse series Reality Show and Desperate Housewives.In less than three years, the number of subscription users has increased from the initial 21 million to the current 43 million, and the annual revenue has increased from the initial 60 million to 330 million in 1993.

The preliminary estimate of the TV network’s full-year net profit in 1993 also reached about $40 million.

If it is not restricted by federal media regulations, Seagram Group will certainly not agree to disengage from such a basic cable network that continues to grow rapidly.

As the major shareholder, although Daenerys Entertainment has the right to preferentially purchase the other half of the shares in the United States, after other federal media groups have expressed interest in this part of the shares, it is not realistic to want to take over at a low price.

After more than two months of negotiations between the two sides, Seagram Group finally agreed to transfer its US TV network shares at a price of US$700 million in cash. Based on the profit scale in 1993, it is equivalent to a price-to-earnings ratio of 35 times. Not outrageous, but already very expensive.

Even so, if it was not for the success of Mission Impossible that Seagram realized that he needed to maintain a good cooperative relationship with Daenerys Entertainment, this agreement may continue to lie for some time.

After successfully winning the USA TV network, Daenerys Entertainment announced the group's second major move in mid-January and reorganized its gaming business.

Four-year equity investment in EA, two years of wholly-owned acquisition The preliminary annual revenue statistics are 1.16 billion US dollars, and the net profit is expected to be about 230 million US dollars, which is roughly equivalent to one-tenth of the group's annual net profit.

The total output value of the global video game market in 1993 was approximately $13 billion.

Daenerys Entertainment’s video game revenues account for nearly 9% of global gaming revenue. If it’s another company, it’s very rare to have such an achievement in just a few years, but it doesn’t satisfy Simon.

The most typical point is that although the game business department has also launched a series of popular PC and console games for several consecutive years, there has not been any super explosions like "Ninja Turtles". The sequel of Ninja Turtles games in recent years Inevitably, the popularity fell.

Since the development of Daenerys Entertainment, the core movie business has reached the extreme. The future growth point will be TV on the one hand and games on the other.

Simon's equally fancy music business has been going downhill for the next two or three decades, but the game is different.

At this stage, the total output value of each platform game is already equivalent to the size of the global box office. In Simon's memory, this number will increase tenfold in the next 20 or 30 years, reaching 100 billion.

According to the current development status of the Daenerys entertainment game business, as long as ten or twenty years later, as long as it can still maintain the current market share, it will still be a Big Mac in the industry.

No company can survive forever, Simon will not be blindly optimistic about his current achievements, and he also expects the group's gaming business to go further.

To do this, it is inevitable to reorganize the existing game business.

Because Simon and Tripp Hawkins, the head of the group's gaming business, have serious differences in business philosophy.

According to the group's management structure, Nancy Brill is responsible for the game business. Tripp Hawkins, the former EA founder and chairman and CEO, normally only needs to report to Nancy.

After Nancy's successful development of the Daenerys entertainment game business, the focus of her work in the past two years has been on Blockbuster Entertainment, as well as the DC movie universe and the blockbuster projects such as "Jurassic Park", "Toy Story" and "Lion King". The increasingly prosperous Da Ni Lisi entertainment peripheral products business, it is inevitable to neglect the management of the game business department.

Tripp Hawkins’s business philosophy for EA is on the one hand to make top-quality games. This is probably the principle that any game company upholds. On the other hand, it is strictly the control of game production. Avoid it as much as possible. Uncontrollable risks during game development.

It is this latter point that Simon cannot recognize.

Video games, like movies, music, and books, also belong to the creative industry. Creativity is essential to any game that wants to be successful.

Tripp Hawkins strictly controls the dominance of the game and develops the game entirely on the basis of pure merchandise, which directly damages the creativity of the game development team.

In the original space and time, although it has maintained the status of giant in the industry for a long time, because of the business philosophy inherited from Tripp Hawkins, the founder, EA has always excessively interfered with the development of games by its studios, resulting in many excellent jobs. After the acquisition by EA, the room gradually disappeared, leaving only a sequel that the department is more inclined to commercialize.

EA is therefore called'industry cancer'.

In comparison, Blizzard Entertainment, which attaches great importance to game quality, although the total number of games developed in the past few decades can be counted by both hands, but because of the quality of the game, it has been recognized by a large number of users. The company's market value is higher than EA with a large number of game categories.

Simon has always attached great importance to the budget control of Daenerys Entertainment's movie projects. However, if you want to choose between movie quality and budget progress, Simon usually chooses the former. He is still a person who pays more attention to movie quality.

Because of this, Daenerys Entertainment will collaborate with James Cameron, an overspending repeat offender. Some projects in the DC Movie Universe, Pixar’s two animated movies, and even many other projects under Daenerys Entertainment, compared to the original It is expected that they are all overspending.

The mediocre quality of the film can also be compensated by the announcement and the channel advantages of the company itself.

Once the quality of the game is not satisfactory, there will not be many users to buy and consume, so the quality of the game is more important to Simon than the movie.

So, under Simon's personal leadership, EA founder Tripp Hawkins left the company after receiving a generous compensation, and the new Daenerys entertainment game business unit was led by EA's original president Larry Probst Responsible, still return to Nancy Brill.

After the reorganization, the EA production department was separated from the distribution team, and the original production team directly under EA was reorganized into a studio model with strong independence.

In the future, the EA team will mainly be responsible for the game release work of platforms such as PCs and consoles. For each studio under its management, the management team only has the power to supervise personnel and finance, and the creative leadership will be delegated to the responsibility of each studio as much as possible. people.

Simon's new operating philosophy is that EA only needs quality products.

The creative team can overspend, skip tickets, make a comeback, or even cancel the unsatisfactory work entirely. In the end, all you need to do is to produce a quality game.

Of course, freedom is always limited.

The creative team must be responsible for all their actions.

Simon can tolerate failure, but will not condone successive failures.The studio's overspending and other acts must also be based on the quality of the game. If it is due to other reasons, it will also be punished.

After completing the reorganization of the game department, Simon also personally finalized the acquisition plan of several game studios.

One of the most important is a studio called'Silicon and Neural Keys' from Los Angeles. This studio was established only two years ago, and the results are not outstanding. However, the real-time strategy game that the other party is developing recently is Simon's favorite point is that the game's name is "Warcraft".