Hollywood Hunter

At the end of the work in the morning, Simon at noon and Amy Pascal, Mark Belford and other group executives dine in the management restaurant.

The topic everyone was talking about at the dining table was about Disney's recent turmoil.

Things still have to start from the "Left Behind the Scene" directed by Robert Redford last year. Simon used a small trick to deliberately push this project to Disney. The film eventually cost $40 million, but the final effect was Unsatisfactory.As a result, Disney not only gave up the high-quality schedule at the end of last year, but also nearly lost it to the cemetery in the beginning of January and February.

Eventually, under the mediation of Redford, "Lie Behind the Scenes" was released on April 1 at the same time as "Ninja Turtles 3".

Unfortunately, compared to "Ninja Turtle 3" and the subsequently sold "Detective Aircraft Head", "The Behind the Scenes" had a box office of only 6.19 million US dollars in the first week.

Not only that, but the impact of the two blockbuster films in the same period, when the film was drawn around the screen, the total box office in North America was only 16.35 million US dollars. The box office share only barely offset Disney’s advertising costs, considering the loss of the local box office. The gloomy prospects for overseas and peripheral distributions triggered, "Lie Behind the Scenes" will bring Disney a net loss of at least $30 million.

The failure of "The Lies Behind the Scenes" can be described as a microcosm of Disney's increasingly bleak situation in the past two years, and it has also become a fuse for the outbreak of conflicts within the management of this veteran film studio.

In 1984, when he took over Disney to the present, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Kasenberg, who were once under Barry Diller's early cooperation, can be described as having an early cooperation. By inheriting from Barry Diller's high-concept film model and To tap the commercial potential of Disney's classic animation, Disney in the second half of the 1980s was prosperous, and it once launched "Three Fathers and a Baby", "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Supreme Detective" and other annual lists Ten blockbuster movies, the re-screening of Disney's classic animated movies and the release of video tapes have also brought Disney's huge profits into account.

Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Kasenberg, one is the CEO of Disney and the other is the chief of several Disney studios. Because of differences in corporate management and personal compensation, the two of them It has accumulated deep contradictions unconsciously.

For example, in 1988, after Disney experienced a bumper harvest prospect, Michael Eisner received a $6.8 million bonus. However, due to the special accounting rules of the major film company's studios to deliberately create losses in order to avoid tax, Jeffrey Card Sunberg's bonus numbers are pitiful'zero', and the contradiction between the two sides has been made public once.

According to the original agreement, in 1994, this year, Disney's second-in-command, the contract of current president Frank Wells expired, and Kasenberg will become the successor of Disney's president.However, Michael Eisner did not mean to let Kasenberg take over the president. Instead, he quietly discussed with the CAA president and his neighbor and friend Michael Ovitz recently to join the Disney party.

The Hollywood circle was small, and the news spread unexpectedly, and Kasenberg directly confronted Eisner.

It happened to be the box office loss of "Behind the Scenes" again, and Michael Eisner did not hesitate to buckle the behind-the-scenes of "Behind the Scenes" and Disney’s sluggish movie performance in the past two years. As a result, the executive who worked for Disney for ten years angrily announced his departure.

In the past history, the conflict between Eisner and Kasenberg also broke out this year. However, the fuse was the accidental death of Frank Wells during the ski helicopter accident during Easter 1994.At that time, Disney's situation was much better than this time and space, but Eisner still did not want to let Kasenberg take over as president, eventually leading to Kasenberg's departure, Disney lost Kasenberg, the second half of the nineties film business The landslide all the way eventually led to Michael Eisner being forced to step down.

Now, because of Simon’s big butterfly, Frank Wells has not suffered a helicopter accident, but the Disney president’s contract will still expire in August this year, and Wells is 62 years old this year, and has not been renewed. With the intention of about, intending to retire early to enjoy life, Disney still needs to re-select a new company president.

Then there have been recent changes.

Disney’s management turmoil is largely due to the rise of Daenerys Entertainment.

Today’s Daenerys Entertainment is similar to Disney’s 20 years later in Simon’s memory. At that time, Dibao passed the Marvel movie universe, Disney animation, fairy tale adaptation, Star Wars series of several trump cards, and almost every year at the North American annual box office. In the top ten list, half of the share was divided, and other major Hollywood film companies were suppressed to the arrogance. Eventually, the seven majors became six majors, and the six majors became five majors. It is short-lived.

Relying on his own prophetic advantage, Simon has already done this now, and, by careful comparison, Daenerys Entertainment is now stronger than Disney, the most prosperous stage of Simon's memory.The result of this strength is that the living spaces of several other major Hollywood studios and second and third-tier film companies have been continuously compressed, and a series of domino effects have been triggered.

In the early 1990s, Disney relied on blockbuster animations such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Lion King" and blockbuster movies such as "Wind Moon Beauty" and "Supreme Detective" to be in the limelight in Hollywood.

Because of the emergence of Simon, many of the selling items that originally belonged to Disney were included in Daenerys Entertainment, and the commercial performance of other films developed by Disney was not good, which led to the rapid rise of Disney in the late 1980s. It has gone downhill in the last two years.

The entire Hollywood has the same experience, obviously more than the Disney family.

The seven giants in Hollywood at this stage can be described with vitality at this time, one is Daenerys Entertainment, the other is Time Warner Group, and even MGM, which is personally supported by Simon, is still in the stage of recovery. As for the remaining four, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and Fox, in recent years, it has been found that with the rapid recovery of the Hollywood film market, business is becoming increasingly difficult.

As for the original Miramar Max and the new line that should have shined in recent years, they completely disappeared from the perspective of the Hollywood circle.

Several old-fashioned studios in Hollywood have survived for more than half a century, and it is very difficult to completely eliminate them.

Simon’s short-term goal is to bring Disney to actual second-tier film companies. Hollywood needs only Daenerys and Time Warner to stand side by side.

Tolerating Time Warner's coexistence with itself is on the one hand due to the DC movie universe and on the other hand due to antitrust considerations. entertainment.Now, with the addition of Time Warner, it is also possible to share part of the firepower.

However, this is only temporary.

Simon's ultimate goal is still the three-legged stand that was considered. Two of the big tripods are still Daenerys and Time Warner. The last one is either MGM that Simon personally supported, or Bise, which has quietly planted seeds. Tat Entertainment, the remaining few majors, will truly become the second line that cannot be turned over at all, and even disappear completely.

In the management restaurant of Daenerys Studios.

Nancy Brill's question interrupted Simon's thoughts: "Boss, do you think Michael Ovitz will choose to join Disney?"

Simon nodded: "It should be, but this may not be good news for Disney."

Everyone looked at it, and came to Robert Iger on the west coast yesterday: "Eisner and Ovitz are very good friends, and I think they should cooperate seamlessly."

Simon shrugged and said: "Without the direct use of conflict, the friendship between individuals is easy to maintain. The key problem is that both Eisner and Ovitz are strong characters who are used to being firsts, Eisner Even Kasenberg, who was not so strong, could not tolerate it. How could Ovitz be allowed to enter Disney to share his power?"

Amy asked: "In this case, why did Eisner ask Ovitz to join Disney?"

Simon said: "It's very simple, he needs a strong enough excuse to squeeze out Kasenberg from Disney. If promoted from inside Disney, everyone except Kasenberg will have a hard time convincing. Ovits created CAA, the implementation of the project packaging mechanism, and a large number of top Hollywood stars as behind-the-scenes fans, these can be the reason for Eisner to convince the board."

Amy asked, "What then?"

Simon replied: "Then, Eisner should find that in order to stabilize his power, he had to find a way to remove his good friends from the company."

Nancy suddenly glanced at a few people around and said, "I said, our boss is a guy who doesn't believe in people's hearts very much and always thinks about things in the worst."

Simon looked at the senior executives of his little children: "Shall we make a bet?"

Nancy was unwilling to show his weakness: "What about the bet?"

Simon smiled: "I happened to have bought a batch of Mi-24 helicopters some time ago. If Ovitz didn't look back at Esna after joining Disney, I will give you one."

Nancy didn't feel that she should be irritated. Not long ago, she also swept the killing weapon of tens of thousands of African soldiers in Rwanda, nodded and said: "Okay, I lost, please have a meal."

Simon's sudden dissatisfied expression of such unsincere conditions.

Everyone laughed.

Nancy showed no weakness in front of her boss, saying: "Your bet is your own, of course, my conditions must be opened by myself, and you did not say that our two bets must be equal."

Simon raised his hand in frustration, indicating that he recognized the plant.

In fact, when it comes to Disney's infighting, everyone has just thought of Daenerys Entertainment itself, but they soon understood it.

With the strong boss of Simon sitting in person, Daenerys Entertainment does not exist in the soil of high-level infighting. Simon has been promoting collaborative cooperation within Daenerys Entertainment over the years, while unknowingly turning Daenerys Entertainment into Each department's relatively independent flat enterprise structure.

Everyone has their own mountain, and most of them are directly responsible to the boss Simon. There is no strong conflict of interest between them, so there is no soil for infighting.

After all, once the signs of internal friction appear, the strength of Essimon will surely wipe out the dispute in the cradle soon.The young boss of his family seems to be very fancy to everyone, but this is definitely not the case. If a senior executive needs to leave to ensure the internal stability of Daenerys, he will not hesitate to do so.

The flat corporate structure of Daenerys Entertainment also brings some hidden concerns. The most important point is that once a strong boss like Simon is missing, it will be difficult to have a second leader with sufficient power and prestige. Consolidate the huge Daenerys entertainment firmly.

However, Simon is only 26 years old this year. Compared with some veteran businessmen who are about to retire before building a corporate group at the age of 50 or 60, he does not lack time. Therefore, he also has enough experience to deal with many things.

A few jokes about Simon and Nancy’s bets, Amy talked about another thing: "David Geffen has been trying to unite several of his good friends to set up a brand new large studio in recent years. Fury was also one of his lobbying targets, and Steven, as a result, the establishment of this big studio should be a sure thing."

In the past history, Hollywood billionaire David Geffen joined Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Kasenberg to set up DreamWorks.In the late 1990s, a large number of blockbuster films were produced continuously.

It's a pity that because the foundation is not reliable, it's just that DreamWorks, which simply lacks a perfect film distribution channel for the studios, is not good. Most of the profits of many blockbuster films are either drawn by the major studios responsible for distribution, or are historically Steven Spielberg’s creative divisions were left to those who initially invested heavily in this “big film company” investor, but it was just a mess of continuous losses.

The rise of Daenerys Entertainment is relatively short compared to traditional Hollywood productions, but from the initial small workshop to the acquisition of New World Entertainment to improve its own production and distribution team to the final acquisition of MCA, it was completely promoted to Hollywood Seven One of the big, every step is a steady fight.

The dream factory of David Geffen is equivalent to building a large castle directly on the beach without even digging the foundation. The appearance looks powerful, but it is vulnerable in the bone.

Simon does not intend to blend in this, feeling the emotion in Amy's tone, saying: "We don't need to pay attention to this matter, just do our own work."

Amy said: "Simon, I mean, maybe MGM could work with this new studio."

Simon shook his head and smiled again: "Even if we are willing, do you think Steven will agree to cooperate with us?"

For the "Jurassic Park" series, although everyone seems to be together, but in fact, it is clear throughout Hollywood that Steven Spielberg was directly expelled from Daenerys Entertainment as a seventy Since the beginning of the era, the arrogant Hollywood star who has been praised by the stars, it is strange that Spielbergken continued to cooperate with the Westero system.

Moreover, even if the other party agrees, Simon will not agree.

Simon's arrangement for MGM is also steady and steady, through the personal production and distribution of films, to re-cultivate his team.If you cooperate with the studios of Spielberg and others, MGM can only reduce the output to adapt to each other. The end result is that the studios of Spielberg and others may eventually become a mess. It is still lame in both production and release.