I’m in Hollywood - Chapter 1189

[Chapter 1155 Crazy Surroundings]

Eric returned to Los Angeles on June 10, and the second film of the Firefly Group’s summer program “Cars” has just completed its first week of screening.

Compared with other works of Pixar studio, although “Cars” maintains a consistent production level, it is generally considered by critics that the theme of the story is too young and not friendly to adult audiences.

In its first week of release, “Cars” grossed $83.32 million, slightly below the distribution department’s expectations.

However, the car toys developed around “Cars” were very popular with the release of the film, and even far exceeded the expectations of the Firefly Group.

In just one week, the sales of “Cars” goods exceeded 200 million US dollars, easily surpassing the sales figures of Star Wars goods in the same period when “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” was released at the end of last year.

The Consumer Products Department of Firefly Group even made a very bold report, predicting that the sales volume of peripheral products during the entire operating cycle of “Cars” is likely to be second only to the “Star Wars” series.

According to the first week of sales data, this year alone, the sales of all aspects of “Cars” will reach between 2.5 billion and 3 billion US dollars.

Coupled with the box office success of “Iron Man”, which is also rich in peripheral products, the revenue of Firefly Group’s consumer products business is expected to double this year to about $6 billion.

According to the average net profit rate of about 15%, the sales of peripheral products of 6 billion US dollars will bring a net profit of 900 million US dollars to Firefly Group.

According to the financial data of the first half of the year, even excluding the huge non-operating profit brought by the Clover Fund, the net profit of Firefly Group in 1999 will exceed the US$4 billion mark for the first time.

In this way, just the consumer product department will contribute more than 20% of the net profit share of the entire Firefly Group, while this figure is usually only around 10% in previous years.

Although the Firefly Group has the intention of making a fortune in silence, it has no intention to publicize the hot sales around “Cars”.

However, this matter was quickly discovered by the media, and even the “magic” media got the forecast report of the Group’s Consumer Products Department.

Last year, in order to gain more initiative in the merger with America Online, Time Warner Group’s well-designed annual financial report only managed to achieve an annual profit scale of more than 1.9 billion US dollars.

Now, Firefly Group is just a consumer product division, and the profit contributed by it is close to half of that of Time Warner Group last year. How can this not make the whole Hollywood jealous?

Although Pixar Animation Studio has also established similar software technical barriers to the digital field, a series of core creators of Pixar quickly became the target of headhunting companies, and even John Lasseter was approached, and the conditions offered were Eric himself was a little ‘hearted’.

In order to avoid brain drain, Firefly Group had to launch another round of salary increases for Pixar Studios.

In the original time and space, Eric always wondered why studios such as Blue Sky Animation and Lighting Entertainment were able to maintain the production cost of animated films at a low level of $60 million, while the production budget of Pixar Studios often reached $200 million. .

It is now completely understood.

The main input for animated films is labor costs. The same is a production team of 500 people. With a two-year production cycle, a team with an average annual salary of 100,000 US dollars and a team with an average annual salary of 50,000 US dollars can directly open the production budget. doubled.

Not only does Pixar’s animation production team far exceed the size of other small animation studios, but the average annual salary of its staff is also much higher than that of other studios. Naturally, the production cost of animated films remains high.

In addition to “Toy Story”, Amberlin’s “The Matrix 3” finally chose a Wednesday, June 9 release date.

There is a very common unspoken rule in Hollywood movie release dates,

If some films choose a non-Friday release date, it usually means that the producer does not have much confidence in the film’s box office, so they will lengthen the first week cycle in order to obtain higher box office revenue in the early stage of release. .

“The Matrix 3” obviously did not escape the shackles of this rule. Last year’s “The Matrix 2” has already consumed a large part of the charm of the film. Amberlin did not choose to release the finale as soon as possible at the end of last year, but delayed it to this year’s The summer season, the one-year wait, once again made many viewers lose interest in this series.

With the one-sided negative reviews after the release of “The Matrix 3”, after the first week of two days was a good $35.15 million at the box office, the film’s subsequent box office curve declined all the way, and finally from June 11 to June 17. In the second week of 2019, the box office was only US$62.53 million. In the third week that followed, the box office dropped by 67%. It is expected that the total North American box office will not even reach the production cost line of 150 million.

The failure of “The Matrix 3” also became the last straw that made Anberlin Pictures fall apart.

According to some news in the industry, David Geffen, Spielberg and George Lucas have begun to discuss the spin-off, and Microsoft, which had invested heavily in Amberlin Pictures, also stopped last year. financial support from a film company.

This film company, which was once thought to have the potential to replicate the miracle of the Firefly Group and become another major Hollywood studio, ended in failure, which also made many people realize that in the future Hollywood, it is obvious that there will no longer be comparable to the current seven major studios. The juxtaposed latecomers appeared.

In addition to a series of new films, “Iron Man” is still steadily acquiring the box office.

In its seventh week of release, the film grossed an additional $10.6 million at the North American box office, bringing the total to $359.11 million.

Although it will fall below 10 million US dollars next week, the North American box office close to 360 million US dollars is also close to the 370 million US dollars total North American box office of Eric’s last work “007 Casino Royale”.

However, according to the current box office curve, it is unlikely that “Iron Man” will hit the domestic box office of 400 million US dollars in North America.

400 million US dollars seems to have become a threshold.

Of course, even so, no one was too disappointed.

At the same time, with the continuous increase in the number of ticket warehouses, the overseas box office number of “Iron Man” easily exceeded 500 million US dollars. Although it also entered the closing period, in the next few months, including North America, “Iron Man” “The global box office exceeded 1 billion US dollars without any suspense.

Unconsciously, many people suddenly discovered that although “Iron Man” is the starring work of Eric, but including “Jurassic Park” and “007 Casino Royale”, this is already the first work he led and participated in. Three films that have grossed over $1 billion worldwide.

A filmmaker makes a film that grosses more than $1 billion worldwide, and he’ll be instantly celebrated by Hollywood.

However, for a filmmaker to make three consecutive films with a global box office of $1 billion, it can only be described as a miracle.

Moreover, with the continuous disclosure of various aspects of “Gravity”, many people gradually realized that this is likely to be another Eric Williams’ $1 billion box office miracle,

After rushing to New York for the celebration of the AOL-Time Warner merger, and returning to Los Angeles, Eric devoted most of his energy to the final cut of “Gravity.”

“Gravity” adopts the mode of production and conversion. During the post-production process, the 3D conversion studio in the digital field has synchronously converted the corresponding 2D footage into 3D images, and even includes the conversion of imax-3d .

Eric did this in order to continuously hone the 3D transformation team during the film production process, and at the same time further optimize the 3D and imax technology based on some experiences in his memory.

Now, the 3D transformation of “Gravity” has been completed simultaneously, and the team under the Digital Domain has started to produce the 3D version of “Underworld”.

Although the 2D film of “The Lord of the Rings” has been completed, Eric still hopes that the transformation team will be involved in the transformation of “The Lord of the Rings” after the training of “Underworld”.

The release date of “The Lord of the Rings” is December 17, and the time is also very abundant.

Just so busy, the time has come to the end of June unknowingly.

Near noon, Bill Gates got off the car in the parking lot of Firefly Studios. Although he didn’t have any expectations, he still felt a little bit when he saw Eric’s tall blond assistant waiting by the parking lot. Somewhat unhappy.

“Hello, Mr. Gates,” Mayer didn’t seem to notice Bill Gates’ expression, shook his hand politely, and said, “Please come with me.”

As Mayer walked out of the parking lot, Bill Gates couldn’t help but ask, “Is Eric busy?”

Mayer nodded. “The boss is currently finalizing his new movie.”

Bill Gates listened to Mayer’s corporative tone and remembered his recent downfall on a woman, so he didn’t speak in a self-deprecating manner.

But I couldn’t help thinking in my heart that Eric Williams’ chances of stumbling on a woman should obviously be much greater than him, why this guy hasn’t encountered unlucky things like himself.

All the way to the studio of the digital field, Bill Gates sat down in the lounge under the guidance of Mayer, and Eric walked in with a few others talking and laughing.

Bill Gates hesitated, but stood up and greeted him with a smile on his face.

“Bill, it’s nice to see you again,” Eric shook hands with Bill Gates and introduced the group of people beside him: “This is Jim, Michael, you must know him, and Peter, who is the master of The Lord of the Rings. “The director of the series.”

In fact, Microsoft has always had the ambition to enter Hollywood. Although it has just failed in Amberlin Pictures, Bill Gates has not given up this idea.

At this time, looking at James Cameron and Michael Bay, several hot Hollywood directors, he also shook hands with everyone very politely, exchanged a few words, and then jokingly asked: “Eric, what are you guys doing? Any big moves?”

Eric sat down with everyone and said, “It’s still about 3D movies. There are some new technological breakthroughs in the digital field, so let everyone come and have a look.”

In fact, in the past six months, in order to further lay out the 3d-imax film technology, a series of direct line directors of the Firefly system have frequently appeared in Firefly Studios.

Eric also personally approved a budget of up to 20 million US dollars, specially for these core directors of the Firefly system to shoot 3D short films to practice, so as to be familiar with all aspects of 3D and imax technology.

The core technologies of 3d and imax are all in the hands of the digital field, and Eric is not worried that these directors will switch to other companies after mastering the application of 3d-imax technology.

Everyone had a cup of coffee and chatted casually for a while. Knowing that Eric and Bill Gates must have something to talk about, Cameron took the initiative to leave.

Eric took Bill Gates to the restaurant on the ship.

After ordering the meal, the two quickly turned to the topic of today.

Five years ago, in order to make the Yahoo browser the default browser of Microsoft, as well as a series of other cooperation conditions, Yahoo and Microsoft signed a forward equity subscription contract, the content is that after five years, Microsoft can acquire up to 30% of Yahoo’s shares.

The expiration of this contract is next month, and then Microsoft has a three-month hesitation period to decide whether to execute the subscription rights.

Bill Gates’ original idea was to first acquire 30% of Yahoo’s shares, and then increase his shareholding in Yahoo step by step through open market acquisitions and other means. UUkanshu www.sonicmtl.com eventually took control of the company.

But now, the situation has changed far more than originally imagined.

With the continuous explosion of Nasdaq technology stocks, Microsoft’s current market value has reached 560 billion US dollars, and Yahoo’s recent market value has also rushed to 170 billion US dollars.

The original contract stipulated that Microsoft could choose to buy in any form of equivalent, such as a stock swap or cash.

But now, Yahoo’s 30% stake is worth more than $50 billion, and it’s impossible for Microsoft to come up with such a cash in any case.

In the case of stock exchange, although on the surface, Microsoft only needs 10% of the shares to get 30% of Yahoo’s shares, which seems to be a big advantage for Microsoft.

But in fact, many people understand that Microsoft, which already has a monopoly in the industry, has a gold content of 10% shares far exceeding the value of Yahoo’s 30% shares.

Moreover, once the stock exchange acquisition is carried out, Firefly System will become the second largest shareholder of Microsoft, and will even become the largest shareholder soon as Bill Gates continues to reduce his holdings of Microsoft.

Microsoft did not adopt a dual-shareholding structure at the beginning. Once Firefly System becomes Microsoft’s largest shareholder, it is likely to threaten Bill Gates’ control over Microsoft.

In comparison, even if 30% of Yahoo’s shares are transferred, Firefly Investments directly holds more than 48% of Yahoo’s shares. As long as the Firefly system is willing, it can achieve absolute control over the company at any time. Therefore, unless Eric Ken takes the initiative to let go Otherwise, Microsoft would not have been able to gradually seize control of Yahoo as Bill Gates envisioned.

Therefore, the current situation is that the original forward equity subscription contract has completely become a chicken rib for Microsoft.

[End of this Chapter]