Hollywood Hunter

On April 9, the Easter schedule officially opened.

This Friday, a total of three new films will be registered in North American theaters. New World Pictures’ "Most Stars 2" has 2516 screens, and Fox’s "Legend of the Sands" has 1819 screens. New "Xin Menggui Street" by Line Pictures has 1,365 yuan on screen.

Many vulgar spoof comedies in Hollywood can't escape the vicious circle of box office plummeting in the follow-up episode of the first big hit.

In Simon's memory, this is the case for the "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star" series.

However, because the cost of this type of comedy is often not too high, even if a sequel is developed, the studio can often achieve good profits.

The key is cost control.

Otherwise, if you don't pay attention to the studio, you may become a part-time worker for the star.

I spent a lot of budget and gave the best schedule. In the end, I barely recovered the cost. Looking back, I found that the creators who had paid huge salaries were making a lot of money.

Daenerys Entertainment originally signed two film contracts with Mike Myers, the creator of "Most Stars". Therefore, after the first film "Most Stars" sold $120 million in the box office in North America at a cost of 20 million, the sequel The budget is well controlled at 30 million US dollars.

Speaking of it, the curse that the sequel of vulgar spoof comedy is easy to plummet at the box office has not been broken. The previous "Anti-Wild Stars" series failed to escape, and it is precisely the realization of Mike Myers' other series "Ace Ace With this pioneering move, the first step of "Powers Ace" was just barely over 50 million U.S. dollars. However, "Powers Ace 2" achieved an outstanding record of over 200 million US dollars in the North American box office. "Spy 3" successfully maintained such a level.

Because of the box office curse of the vulgar spoof comedy sequel, Simon decisively abandoned the development plan for the sequel of "Flying by the Innocence".

For "Flying by the Innocence", the sequel is really difficult to innovate. Mel Gibson is also strong enough in terms of salary. The development of the sequel is very risky. It happens that Daenerys Entertainment does not lack projects.

However, for "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star", on the one hand, the original packaging contract of the creator successfully controlled the cost. On the other hand, it is precisely because of the precedent of the "Ace Powers" series that Simon agreed to the development plan for the sequel of this series.

Many media can hardly give a specific reason why the first "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star" box office was so popular.

After the sequel was approved, the New World Pictures team and Mike Myers spent a long time discussing this issue. Simon also gave a lot of suggestions based on the "Ace Ace" series in memory.

The key is the same lineage.

Comedy movies are often very interesting.

Just like "The Hangover", the audience still bought it for two consecutive episodes of mishaps after being drunk. The creators of the third film felt that we had to innovate, so they stopped playing the "Hangover", and the box office plummeted.

Therefore, the sequel will continue to maintain the style of the first part.

The plot innovation and so on, shit, piss, no need for innovation.

Since the audience thinks "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the first song is a magical touch, the sequel will choose another good music.

Since the audience thinks the style of breaking the fourth wall is very interesting, the sequel is naturally the same.

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment has also used its own resources to equip this series with many musical elements with a more powerful guest lineup. Madonna, who has a good personal relationship with Simon, and the Guns and Roses under Universal Music, are all big-name singers. Involved in a cameo in the sequel.

Now that this project has been agreed, the budget for the release of "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" has reached 15 million US dollars based on the production cost of 30 million US dollars. In this era when film marketing is becoming more and more important, it is essential to maintain sufficient publicity for a film to be successful.

Even the Easter time is carefully considered.

The first "Most Stars Against Wisdom" won a local box office of 120 million U.S. dollars. With such a big selling level, the sequel should be able to squeeze into the summer or end of the year. However, competition for these schedules is often very fierce. Once the film’s reputation is unsatisfactory, or other box office dark horses appear during the same period, the box office of "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" will inevitably be seriously affected.

The Easter schedule is different.

Although Hollywood has paid more and more attention to the second-tier periods of Easter and Halloween in recent years, the competition is not as cruel as the summer or year-end files.

This Easter, "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Stars 2" is far more popular than other movies of the same period in terms of popularity and publicity. Unless there is a very strong box office black horse, otherwise, the film can almost certainly dominate this period.

The other two films, "Legend of the Sands" and "New Ghost Street", no matter how you look at them, there is no dark horse potential.

Fox's "Sand Legends" tells the story of a group of baseball teenagers, a standard sports youth film.

Although the new line "New Ghost Street" has the word'new', after six consecutive episodes, the audience will inevitably get tired of the repeated killings of Freddy, even with the $50 million box office in North America. The goal is not high, but Hollywood is not optimistic about the prospects of this movie.

On Easter weekend, at the invitation of Joseph Lewis, whom I just met some time ago, Simon took two Jeannies and flew to the Bahamas for an independent vacation.

Joseph Lewis is a British citizen. However, in order to avoid taxation, Lewis has long settled in the Bahamas across the sea from Florida.

As one of the world's famous tax havens, the Bahamas also only levies a small amount of license fees from local registered companies, and no other sales tax, value-added tax, inheritance tax, and capital gains tax.

After completing last year's operation in the European currency market, Joseph Lewis plans to gradually shift the focus of his career to the physical industry, and is astutely trying to establish business links with the Westeros system. Simon also took a fancy to Joseph Lewis’s registration place The Tavistock Group in the Bahamas.

Tavistock Group seems to be an industrial company, but in fact it is a comprehensive investment company.

Over the years, while continuing to speculate on currency in the financial market, through the Tavistock Group, Joseph Lewis has successively invested in many real estate, energy, sports, catering, and medical projects in North America and Latin America.

However, even after last year’s European currency operation, the total assets of the Tavistock Group are only US$3 billion, most of which exist in the form of cash and short-term convertible bonds. Investments in the physical sector can only It's a little trouble.

Tavistock Group’s total assets of US$3 billion belong to Joseph Lewis himself, about US$600 million, accounting for one-fifth of it.

With a net worth of 600 million US dollars, this era has been regarded as the ranks of the super rich, of course, it is really not worth mentioning in front of Simon.

In Simon's plan, in the next few years, as the Internet bubble becomes more raging, the Westeros system will gradually reduce its holdings of technology stocks in its hands. At present, it is only Cisco and AOL, whose market value has both exceeded 30 billion U.S. dollars. These companies, in the next high market value position, even if they only reduce their holdings by 1%, it will be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Throughout the reduction plan, the funds drawn by the Westeros system from the technology stock market may even reach tens of billions of dollars in total.

Therefore, even if according to the original plan, use this fund to jointly build a super mining group in Australia with the Johnston family, there will definitely be a large balance in the end. With these capital, Simon does not intend to continue investing in the field of technology stocks, but intends to get involved in more traditional physical industries.

The Tavistock Group, which is involved in real estate, energy, sports, catering, medical and other industries, happens to be the shell of the Westeros system's investment in the physical industry.

Not only North America, with this shell, Simon can also extend his tentacles to the vast Latin American market.

Although the economy of Latin America has been suppressed explicitly or implicitly by North America, it is a huge market with a population of more than 500 million.

In addition, using the Tavistock Group as a shell can also hide the assets of the Westeros system to a certain extent.

As long as it operates properly, most of the media and the public will only see Tavistock in the industries that the Westeros system will be involved in in the future, and will not know that the actual controller behind the scenes is the Westeros Group.

Just like many large funds on Wall Street, according to public information, the public can see the shares held by these funds in some large groups, but they cannot figure out who the real controllers behind these holdings are.

You must know that large fund companies do not only have one fund under their umbrella. There are often dozens or hundreds of funds. The investment objectives of each sub-fund are also different. This gives many investors who do not want to expose their goals a lot of room for operation. .

Therefore, to buy a fund and control the fund to purchase shares of a company, for the public, it is often the large fund itself that holds the shares of the company. In fact, these shares are controlled by someone else.

Obviously, in many cases, this operation is of course a violation of the federal securities laws.

Just, who cares?

Just like a narrative circulating in the legal profession in New York, the crimes committed by Wall Street during a meal may be no less than a war.

If it's not true, of course nothing will happen.

Cersei Capital can already be regarded as one of the shells of the Westeros system, and the Tavistock Group is another shell chosen by Simon. This shell will also be involved in domestic investment in North America, but the main target is still overseas, and more accurately, it is Latin America.

Two days over the weekend, Simon and Joseph Lewis quickly reached an agreement, Westeros injects 100 million US dollars into the Tavistock Group, which is a small test. The US$100 million is a small percentage of the total capital of the Tavistock Group of US$3 billion. However, the two parties are not familiar with each other after all, and Simon would not be so stupid to bet more on this company immediately.

Joseph Lewis understood it naturally.

In order to show his sincerity, Lewis also proposed to take the initiative to liquidate the capital of other investors, but Simon declined.

It is completely unnecessary.

If the Westeros system accounts for too much capital in the Tavistock Group, the company will lose a very important hidden function as a shell.

On the contrary, Simon also suggested that Joseph Lewis continue to absorb more capital.

3 billion US dollars, most of which are cash or bond assets, which seems to be a large sum of money, but if it is operated on a large scale, it is actually impossible to operate a few projects.

Just like Eaglet’s 10% share transfer plan, if Simon agreed to it, it would directly consume half of the Tavistock Group’s wealth.

With sufficient funds, it is of course impossible to find too large projects in the short term.

Although unable to reach an agreement on the transfer of Eaglet's shares, Simon also suggested that Joseph Lewis temporarily invest in US domestic technology stocks. The Internet bubble is still in the early stages of inflation and there is still much room for growth in the future. As for how much Joseph Lewis has the courage to invest in, Simon did not give specific suggestions. He also wanted to see the investment perspective of the other party.

If Joseph Lewis can bet all the funds in the technology stock market at one time, and can maintain a rational and successful exit at the peak of technology stocks, the current $3 billion may even increase by more than 10 times in the future.

Of course, if it was Simon, he would definitely do it.

But if Joseph Lewis did this, even if the capital of the Tavistock Group increased significantly in the future, Simon would have reservations about Lewis.

Because this is completely a gambler mentality.

After the weekend, returning to Los Angeles, the box office for the first three days of Easter weekend was officially released.

After the opening of the painting last Friday, under the operation of the New World Pictures team, the overall media rating of "Most Stars 2" was 7.3 points, which is barely good. However, the box office of the film for the first three days of the first weekend exceeded Simon. Everyone inside expected.

The original goal of the New World Pictures team was to expect the box office of "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" to reach US$20 million in the first three days of the weekend, so that the cumulative box office of the first week and seven days is expected to reach US$30 million.

The first "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star" relied on word of mouth to come out of a very beautiful long-term. The sequel does not dare to expect this, but even if it starts with a 50% drop in the next week and starts with 30 million US dollars, the total North American box office can reach at least 60 million Dollar.

This kind of box office performance only relies on local box office revenue, and there is still not a small gap between recovering the cost of 45 million US dollars. After the global operation, it is enough to realize a small profit, and the subsequent channels are enough to bring good income to Daenerys Entertainment.

In fact, as the cost of film production and distribution continues to increase, it is difficult for most Hollywood movies to return at the box office stage. Basically, they need to achieve profit through video tape and TV channels. This is actually more and more difficult for second and third-tier film companies to survive. The reason for this is that omni-channel operation requires a lot of time and resources, especially time, which cannot be consumed by second- and third-tier film companies.

Compared with the expected first weekend of 20 million US dollars, the actual three-day box office figure of "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Stars 2" reached 31.79 million US dollars. It achieved an average of 10,000 yuan in the first three days and is expected to reach 4000 in the first week. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

In the first week of 40 million US dollars, even if the subsequent decline is deep, it is easy to reach the 100 million US dollars threshold.

With a box office of over 100 million in North America, "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" can directly make profits in the local market.

Under the strong impact of "Wisdom Fighting 2", Fox's "Legend of the Sands" only collected 5.36 million US dollars in the first weekend of three days.

New Line Films’ high hopes for "Xin Meng Gui Street", the box office in the first three days of the opening of the painting was only 3.71 million US dollars. It is expected that the total box office in North America can barely exceed 10 million US dollars. "The fantasy of turning over is completely shattered.