Hollywood Hunter

In the new box office week that started on July 15th, two major new films were released in the North American theater, namely "Blood Romeo" by Damenli Entertainment's High Gate Pictures and Paramount's Children's Baseball. The theme film "Boy League".

Last year, the working Title Films team that produced famous films such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Murder Green Toe", "Ice Blood Storm", and "Notting Hill" directly received Danny. Under the entertainment of Lisi Entertainment, Simon selected the first three items from the scripts reserved by the other party, namely "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Love in My Heart" and "Blood Romeo".

The first two films have been launched. "Four weddings and a funeral" was sold at the box office after the Valentine's Day opening at the beginning of the year. Subsequently, it also caused a wave of movie watching around the world.

Because of the poor quality of the film, "Love is Deep in My Heart" was abandoned in early March. It was a complete failure.

Finally, the script of "Blood Romeo" was handed over by Simon to Quentin Tarantino because his big butterfly completely changed his career line as the second project of the other party after "Waterfall".

"Blood Romeo" tells the story of a FBI agent who relied on the hiding information of betrayed witnesses in exchange for black money after getting involved in a betrayal.

After Quentin took over this script, which was very suitable for his personal style, he modified it greatly according to his own preferences.

After the project started, although the budget was only 15 million US dollars, but relying on the extensive contacts accumulated by Daenerys Entertainment over the years, the film also attracted a series of famous Hollywood movie stars with low salaries or even free guest appearances based on the actor Gary Oldman. , Including Robert De Niro, who has been cooperating with Daenerys Entertainment for many years, Wonder Woman's actor Famique Jensen, Madonna who loves Quentin's "Water Dog", and should have relied on "Vulgar" this year. In the novel, John Travolta and other big coffees have more or less exposed their faces in this movie.

Compared with the original version of "Blood Romeo", the first day of the official drawing, it received a comprehensive media score of 8.7 in major media in North America.

In fact, if it is not the internal audition stage is very good, Gaomen Film will not put this movie in the summer file.

As a non-mainstream crime thriller that needs to take the word-of-mouth route, the number of screens for "Blood Romeo" still reaches 2031.

During the same period, Paramount’s “Boy’s Grand League” is still at the core of the “Man of the Ghost” type of children’s movies, about a boy who accidentally inherited the baseball team left by his grandfather, and then used his young people’s unique The story of cleverness leading the team to the championship.

The script is obviously trying to extract the successful experience of such films as "Flying Over the Future", "Pink Alliance" and "The Alone", but unfortunately failed to do so.

A comprehensive media score of 3.3 points means that another summer cannon fodder was born.

Paramount probably didn't have much expectation for "Boy's Grand League", and only gave 1532 open screens. Obviously, he has turned his expectations to Harrison Ford's new film "Burrowing Chase" that will be released next week.

Simon returned to Los Angeles on July 16, Hollywood, the popularity of Daenerys Entertainment gradually faded, and many people's attention turned to Spielberg and others who are preparing hot DreamWorks Pictures and French Victoria Wangdi's acquisition of Disney Pictures is above.

The biggest recent news about DreamWorks is undoubtedly the news that software tycoon Bill Gates has invested $500 million in this company to join the company.

Since the initial unpleasant cooperation in the pre-installation of the IE browser, Damen students have continued to use various means to eliminate the influence of the Westeros system on Microsoft, and even some important board meetings while increasing the layout of Microsoft in the Internet industry. Deliberately forget the representative of the Westeros system.

Simon is just watching with cold eyes.

If Microsoft goes completely to the opposite of the Westeros system, it is actually not a bad thing. Of course, the premise is that the classmates must first buy back nearly 20% of the Microsoft stocks in the Westeros system.

With the advent of the new technology wave, Microsoft's stock price has exceeded 50 billion US dollars. Although it is still far from the highest point ever, if the door students are willing to take out 10 billion US dollars in cash to buy back Microsoft shares, Simon will not refuse .

Unfortunately, $10 billion in cash is not available to anyone.

However, 500 million US dollars is not a big money for the classmates whose personal net worth has exceeded 20 billion US dollars at this stage.

The software tycoon apparently gave birth to a lot of wealthy people who chased after fame.

As for the result.

It has been proved once in Simon's memory.

He returned.

On the Disney side, after the news of Vivendi's contact with Disney executives about the acquisition was revealed, Michael Eisner denied it for the first time.

However, many subsequent news have proved this point.

After Jeffrey Kasenberg left, considering that Disney will be adjusted in the future once it is acquired, it was originally intended to join Disney to take over from Michael Ovey, who will retire from Frank Wells as president next month. Ci also began to wait and see.

At this stage, Disney is basically a publicly held company.

However, Disney's two largest shareholders, the Texas Bass family and the company's founder, the Disney family, still hold 25% and 11% of Disney's shares, totaling 36%, which can basically determine the ownership of Disney after the acquisition. .

Simon received information that the Disney family expressed strong opposition to the company being acquired, but the Bass family was not determined.

The downturn of Disney in the past two years, the continued turmoil of management, and the Disneyland Paris in Europe are like a mess that may explode at any time, making the Bass family feel that while this company is still worthwhile, taking off gloves is now a good one. select.

Now, Vivendi Group, which is trying to acquire one side, and Disney management and the Disney family, who are resisting the acquisition side, are trying their best to win the support of the Bass family.

After Simon and Joseph Schlapp reformulated the lobbying strategy for the media integration ban, he returned to Los Angeles and was also considering how to help the Bass family make a'decision'.

Daenerys Studios.

The time is Monday, July 18.

The group’s weekly high-level meetings are taking place in a large office in the Studio City. Simons are in Los Angeles and naturally attend.

"The investment plan for the group's cash reserves is generally the same. To avoid risks and for the next stage of expansion, the funds we obtained from the IPO and the company's original cash reserves will only have a low investment risk and can be carried out in the short term Cash-out fixed income products. The CEO of Black Rock Asset Management, Mr. Lawrence Fink, will also come to Los Angeles to explain the board in person. Then, the next topic, about Universal Studios Osaka, theme park business president Bruce Pei Ke submitted a bill to me last week, thinking that there should be more attractions with local Japanese cultural characteristics inside Universal Studios. At the same time, he also put forward some suggestions. The information is in the hands of everyone. You can take a look first."

After Amy Pascal finished speaking, a group of core senior officials who could participate in the meeting bowed their heads to read the materials.

Although their respective businesses are different, Simon strongly believes in the management of collective efforts. In order to prevent the company from being misunderstood because of the wrong ideas of a certain senior management, many more important issues will be discussed at the high-level regular meeting.

The final closing of the IPO has recently ended. Excluding various commissions and fees, Daenerys Entertainment Group still received more than $5.4 billion in cash. In addition, before the listing, Daenerys Entertainment Group’s own cash reserves also reached $2.7 billion, just this part of the total funds of $8.1 billion, has exceeded the market value of several other major Hollywood studios.

Simon does not intend to use this money to repay Daenerys Entertainment’s liabilities, and there are no large projects to invest in in the short term, so he intends to place this fund in Heiyan Asset Management Company through investment in treasury bonds, agreement deposits, and 3A corporate bonds Fixed-income financial products have gained certain value.

The fundamental goal is actually to resist inflation and make profits optional.

In fact, there are of course more lucrative investment channels. However, since it is already listed, Daenerys Entertainment’s capital flow is subject to supervision by the board of directors, shareholders and the SEC, and it cannot be used at will.Moreover, if the huge amount of more than 8 billion US dollars is invested in certain fields, the dynamics will be very large, and public disclosure will be required. Unevenness will become the goal of some people, so it is best to seek stability.

Simon combed this matter while looking at the planning of the theme park business president Bruce Peck.

Universal Studios Osaka began planning in 1991 and broke ground in mid-1992, and it is expected to be completed by the end of this year and open in the first half of next year.

There has been a perfect plan between the opening of the studio, and it was impossible to add additional projects. However, one of the "space fantasy train" projects has proved to be a safety risk some time ago. For the theme park, even if it allows tourists I feel that it is not so exciting, and it is absolutely necessary to ensure safety first, not to mention that this is not a core project such as'Jurassic Park' and'Great White Shark Water Park'. Simon personally approved the cancellation of this attraction, and then appeared vacancy.

Looking at the information in his hand, at a certain moment, a flash of light flashed in Simon's mind, and he thought of another thing.

In the conference room, Nancy Brill has taken the lead in saying: "I think this is not credible. In terms of theme park operations, we need to adapt to the cultural and lifestyle habits of the Japanese, so that we can achieve better localization, just like Tokyo Disney However, for the setting of attractions, I believe that Japanese tourists buy tickets to enter the paradise and want to see American culture, not things in their own homes."

"I think I can give it a try," said Danny Morris, president of New World Pictures: "Nancy actually makes sense, but we can also Americanize Japanese culture, and Hollywood never excludes those from direct countries. culture."

"The more important issue now is," said Ella Doichman, President of Highgate Pictures: "Universal Studio Osaka will open next Easter, and it is now mid-July. It is time to reproduce a Japanese cultural classic. Is it enough? I’m not talking about simply building, but planning from scratch, this will be very troublesome. So, it is best to select mature projects from our existing theme parks and transplant them. First, ensure that the opening of Easter next year will not Procrastination. The Disney Disney disaster in Paris is largely due to procrastination."

Mark Belford, Group Vice President of Global Operations, also said at this time: "I agree with Ella's opinion that ensuring that it is completed and opened as planned is very important for our first overseas theme park."

Everyone talked eloquently, Simon had never expressed his opinion.

After more than ten minutes of discussion in this way, everyone finally decided that Bruce Peck's suggestion was to transplant mature attractions from the existing Universal Studios Los Angeles and Universal Orlando to most of Universal Studios.

When Amy finally looked at Simon, Simon also nodded.

This year's meeting lasted until 11:30 near noon.

At the end of the meeting, the others left to eat at the restaurant, and Simon shouted Amy.

Starting from the issue of Universal Studios in Osaka, Amy discovered that Simon was a little absent-minded, and when only two of them were left in the conference room, Amy said first: "Simon, the Panasonic side invited you to Japan during the IPO at the beginning of the month. Be a guest, and Universal Studios, maybe you should go to Japan during this time."

In this IPO process, in accordance with the agreement signed with Daniels Entertainment when Panasonic gave up the acquisition of MCA three years ago, Panasonic initially invested $1 billion in Daniels Entertainment in the form of a loan to replace Dani at the issue price The shares of Lisi Entertainment Group, at this time also considered to be one of the small shareholders of Daenerys Entertainment, holding 45 million shares, equivalent to taking one-fifth of 250 million new shares at one time, occupying Daenerys 1.9% of the total share capital of entertainment.

The stock price continued to rise after the IPO of Daenerys. In fact, a large part of the stock was taken away by the stakeholders of Daenerys. Among them, only the Black Rock Asset Management Company subscribed for a full 20 million shares, plus A large number of stocks granted to Daenerys Entertainment employees in advance generally have a 3 to 6 month sales restriction period, resulting in not many stocks eventually flowing to the secondary market for trading.

Market demand far exceeded the supply of stocks, and stock prices naturally rose.

For most of the first half of the year, he had been entangled in the affairs of the Hearst family. Simon had never left the United States. After hearing Amy said, Simon nodded and smiled, "The Japanese may just be polite, not necessarily welcome. I will be a guest."

Amy laughed.

She did not forget the original "Westero effect".

After making a joke, Amy said: "Just now you are a little distracted, Simon, what happened?"

Girl A brought in coffee at this time, Simon took the coffee and said to Amy: "You know, I have been thinking about how to make Disney shareholders make a decision to sell this company in the past few days, and it just happened to be inspired."