Hollywood Hunter

In a manor on the outskirts of Greenwich, northern New York.

The time is January 7th.

The New Year has passed, and 1993 has officially entered.

Just the day before yesterday, Time Warner Group officially confirmed the new management through an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders. Gerald Levine succeeded Steve Rose as the new chairman of Time Warner Group and the two leaders of Steve Rose. The direct line, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, jointly serve as the co-CEO of Time Warner.

Although the official management has been confirmed on the surface, in fact, this kind of power arrangement after mutual compromise still makes Time Warner Group's internal hilltops scattered.

Nominally the leader, Gerald Levin can only control the business that originally belonged to the company system of the times. The two co-CEOs still firmly control the companies of Warner Bros.

The Wall Street Journal published an article commenting on the company's "synergy" the day after the new management of Time Warner confirmed it.

The key to the merger between Time and Warner Bros. was that the management of the two companies vigorously advocated the "synergies" of the enterprises, claiming that once the merger, Time Warner would greatly increase its business cooperation in film, television, and magazines. The company’s competitiveness and overall revenue.

However, the fact is that for three years from the merger in early 1990 to the present, the synergies that shareholders hoped to see did not appear. Time Warner is still in a state of disarray, and even HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures’ TV broadcasting rights issues have emerged. In the face of tit-for-tat, the management changes this time are also in constant disturbance.

Not only that, because of the original merger, Time Warner has never been able to get out of the heavy debt quagmire.

All in all, in the view of The Wall Street Journal, the original merger was a complete failure, only satisfying the personal ambition of Time Warner management to blindly expand the scale of the enterprise.

Facing the criticism from the Wall Street Journal, Time Warner officials publicly refuted it immediately, but failed to prevent the company's stock price from falling further.

At the beginning of the new year, Simon still stays in New York these days because of various things.

Watching the Wall Street Journal’s sudden criticism of Time Warner with cold eyes, Simon discovered that this small public opinion storm will have another important impact on Warner.

In several contacts at the end of last year, Terry Semel revealed to Simon that he hoped to further expand the diversity of Warner Bros. Pictures in the production field.

In fact, it is to imitate the current operation mode of the three Daenerys Entertainment labels, and get involved in the genres of horror art that New World Pictures and Gaomen Pictures are good at.

For Warner Bros., the easiest way to do this is undoubtedly an acquisition.

The management of the group has completed the replacement. Even if there is not much change in power, the new executives need to make some achievements, even if it is a face project, to show the new outlook.

The original timeline happened to be 1993. Time Warner acquired the thriving New Line Film Industry, and in the following years, it won the "Rush Hour" series, the "Lord of the Rings" series and other super-selling blockbusters. The sub-label even caught up with the development of the main label.

This time, due to the rise of Daenerys Entertainment, New Line Pictures lost its first domestic box office big-selling series "Teenage Ninja Turtles", and was forced by New World Pictures in the field of horror and horror. Retreating steadily, the strength is far less compelling than the original time and space.

Compared with the original timeline that had to sell itself to Time Warner, which monopolized the Hollywood film distribution channel for further expansion, the current new line seeks buyers mainly for survival.

Therefore, the attractiveness of this second-tier label is not as great as the original time and space. In addition, the Wall Street Journal accused Time Warner Group’s last merger as a blind expansion. In order to avoid more criticism, the acquisition of New Line or other The plans of second- and third-tier film companies to increase the diversity of their productions must be shelved.

Lack of takers, New Line Films, which has been in trouble due to excessive expansion in the past two years, is likely to go bankrupt this year.

Affected by the parallel success of the three labels of Daenerys Entertainment, other Hollywood studios are more or less imitating. Simon can’t stop this. However, suppressing a troubled second-tier film company, for the current Dan For Nilis Entertainment, it's easy.

Whether it is a new line or Miramax, or even Orion Pictures, which is still struggling to maintain, under Simon's watch, these companies basically have no hope of getting projects that may sell well.

In recent years, "The Silent Lamb", "Crying Game", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", etc., should have belonged to these companies, but all were smoothly cut by Simon, and used New World Pictures and Gomen Movies in advance. The two major labels in the industry occupy the partial film field that mainstream studios would not care about in the past.

The fate of the new line is destined to change, and Simon has also settled another company in recent days.

Miramax.

Hollywood's second and third-tier film companies, like Daenerys Entertainment's early development, rely largely on bank loans to maintain operations.

In recent years, the bank that provided the funds for Miramax has also become famous on Wall Street, Chase Manhattan Bank. In my memory, this bank merged with Morgan Bank around 2000.

Of course, it's only the Hollywood film investment department under Chase Manhattan.

The Weinstein brothers have been running Miramax after several twists and turns over the years, and owed approximately $15 million in debt to Chase Manhattan Bank.

US$15 million is not worth mentioning for the current Daenerys Entertainment, but it is a huge sum of money for a small studio-style film company that can only release some low-cost literary films.

Moreover, according to the survey, in addition to Chase Manhattan, the largest creditor, Miramax also has other arrears, with a cumulative debt amount of $23 million.

The Westeros system started to discuss some cooperation projects with several major U.S. banks around the New Year, mainly the loan financing required by various subsidiaries for further development, as well as the further cooperation between Internet payment tools and physical banks.

For major banks in the United States, subsidiaries of the Westeros system are undoubtedly the highest-quality lending targets, and each will naturally strive for it.

Chase Manhattan is also one of them.

In order to form as many interests as possible, the Westeros system also habitually selects more partners.

During the negotiations between Verizon Telecom and Chase Manhattan on a US$300 million loan financing, Simon asked James Rebald, who was involved in the negotiations, to propose a condition to Chase Manhattan: advance debt recovery from Miramax.

A small Hollywood company that is always on the verge of bankruptcy is not worth mentioning for Chase Manhattan.

It is unlikely that it wants to recover all the debts from this troubled film company. Chase Manhattan is actually doing debt collection and is ready to take on another bad debt.

The incidental requirements of the Westeros system, in the view of Chase Manhattan, also think that this small company has offended Daenerys Entertainment. The potential cooperation between the two parties is far more than a $300 million financing, and it is a smooth sail , Of course I am happy to sell a favor at hand.

So, on the same day that the Wall Street Journal criticized Time Warner for over-expansion, a third-tier film company headquartered in New York officially filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York.

Although the development of the Westeros system has been smooth sailing, Simon has always understood that business competition has never been tender.

Cruelty is the essence of business.

He didn't have any burden in his mind to erase a film company that should have shined on the original timeline.

After having lunch in the reception room of the manor house, the Simons, James Rebald and the chairman and CEO of Verizon Telecom Raymond Smith were discussing the next step of the Westeros system in the field of telecommunications.

The week before Christmas last year, the U.S. Congress officially passed the lifting of the industry ban on telecommunications operators not being allowed to engage in equipment manufacturing.

Although it is a bill passed by Congress, it can be regarded as a way of accumulating as much political legacy as possible by the Bush administration before the formal transfer of power. The resignation of Bush Sr. is doomed, and Bush Jr. will also officially enter the American political arena.

Speaking of, in the last few months of the election, the Bush administration has also been trying to pass some bills related to the new technology industry.

However, because the "Information Superhighway Act" is preceded by jewels, this bill has also entered the final stage of discussion. In any case, the Bush administration cannot take the bill proposed by Clinton's campaign partner as its own political achievements. Therefore, in the field of new technology, the White House In the end it seems a little inactive.

Of course things need to be done step by step.

Telecom operators are not allowed to get involved in the lifting of the ban on equipment manufacturing. In the next step, Nokia can naturally enter the North American market.

In the original timeline, Nokia’s share in the North American market was actually not high. The main reason was that the North American telecommunications equipment market was too closed and sales channels were also monopolized by telecommunications operators. Until the iPhone appeared many years later, US telecommunications operators still rely on The bundling sales model with telecom packages dominates over 90% of the telecom equipment market.

This time, with the cooperation of Verizon, Nokia's pace of opening up the North American market will not be as difficult as it once was.

In the past two years, AOL has been strategically located in the field of Internet service providers. While cooperating with AOL to develop Internet services, Verizon has been vigorously deploying its own mobile communication network.

With the best quality markets on several continents along the eastern coast of the United States, and at the same time, it does not hesitate to lock in the second-generation GSM format. It does not hesitate between different telecommunication standards like other operators, or even waste resources to enable different formats at the same time. Sen's layout in the field of mobile communications also far surpasses other peers.

Next, while cultivating the mobile communications business in its own market, Verizon's next goal is to expand.

Of course, if you want to do this, you must also resolve the antitrust restrictions when AT-T was split in 1984.

This is actually just a matter of course in the next few years.

Whether it is public media or private lobbying, the Westeros system has been promoting the concept of ‘triple play’ as much as possible in the past two years.

Internet broadband, cable TV, and home phone, if these three networks can be combined into one, it will greatly save operators' operating costs, and at the same time bring users cheaper services.

The US anti-monopoly is mainly to avoid the monopoly of the telecommunications industry from causing excessive prices to harm consumers' interests.

Now, the integration of the three networks can not only save social resources to a large extent, but also provide consumers with cheap communication services to the greatest extent. Therefore, this concept, whether it is a media platform or American politics, has a very market.

Continuous deregulation of the telecommunications industry is beneficial to the major telecommunications giants.

The concept put forward by the Westeros system was quickly recognized by the telecommunications industry.

AT-T even published a report that once the telecommunications industry is deregulated and the triple play is promoted, the U.S. telecommunications industry can save hundreds of billions of dollars in costs each year. These cost savings happen to be able to maximize the benefits to consumers. By.

There was a discussion about Verizon and Nokia's entry into North America all afternoon.

In the evening, James Rebald and Raymond Smith were sent away, and Simon and his wife officially boarded the plane returning to the West Coast.

The next day is Friday, January 8.

The first box office week in 1993 officially ended.

During the seven days from January 1st to January 7th, as a result of the working day, there was a sharp drop in the movies in North American theaters.

"Jurassic Park", which was released in the third week, dropped 35% in a single week, and continued to earn 46.91 million US dollars.

At the same time, the cumulative box office of this dinosaur movie in North America broke through the 200 million U.S. dollar mark, reaching 210.46 million U.S. dollars.

Daenerys Entertainment's other film "Home Alone 2" at the end of the year also fell by 43% in the first week after the new year, leaving only 5.66 million US dollars in the box office for a week, and the cumulative box office was 147.69 million US dollars.

Different from the two commercial films that plunged into the workday, Daenerys Entertainment’s awards season featured "Scent of a Woman", but the box office trend was relatively good. The first week of the new year fell only 28%, and the other film "Cry The downward curve of Game also showed signs of slowing down.

At the same time, in the past 1992 year, the box office rankings as of December 31, 1992 have also been released.

Daenerys Entertainment's "Wonder Woman" in the summer archive, with a huge box office of 371 million U.S. dollars, unsurprisingly became the annual box office average in 1992.

Although "Jurassic Park" is still gaining momentum at the box office, it is generally difficult to overtake "Wonder Woman". Both the company and the outside world predict that the local box office of "Jurassic Park" will probably be around $350 million. . However, judging from the market performance of the overseas box office that has been opened, it is difficult to say who wins and who loses the overseas box office of the two films.