Hollywood Hunter

Before Eaglet's first public financing, Simon had quietly started the location plan of Eaglet headquarters.

In fact, there is no need to choose too much.

According to the information in his memory, Simon directly picked the original space-time Google site in Mountain View, just south of Palo Alto.

The location of large-scale enterprise parks will almost inevitably lead to phenomena such as the increase in surrounding land prices. Simon doesn’t mind paying more, but he doesn’t want to see nail households appear on the plots he has selected. It is still very difficult for American nail households to remove big.

Therefore, a few months in advance, Simon began to acquire land in related areas of Mountain View through an agency company.

Although Silicon Valley is already very developed, the main area is still limited to the anniversary of Stanford University in Palo Alto. The southern areas of Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Cupertino are still very backward, not more than a decade or two. There are many large companies, and many places are even large farms and wastelands.

Simon’s memory of the location of the Google Park is currently composed of farms and wasteland with few residents.

After months of quiet operation, in this area of ​​over 10,000 hectares of undeveloped land located east of Palo Alto and north of Mountain View and near the bay, Simon’s agency has unknowingly eaten about 60 hectares of land. , Which is mainly farm land, the purpose is to remove the "nail households" in this area in advance.

A large area of ​​wasteland near the bay, then only need to discuss the acquisition with the Mountain View City government.

Speaking of it, even if it is only the existing 60 hectares of land, if it is not scattered, it is more than enough to build the Eaglet company park. However, due to some deep-rooted personal preferences, Simon can be said that he is not tired of buying land.

With the completion of Eaglet’s huge US$1.5 billion financing, the news that this increasingly dazzling new technology company is about to build a headquarters park spread quickly.

The key to why Amazon’s choice of the second headquarters in memory will attract competition from countless major American cities is that the settlement of large enterprises will inevitably mean a huge tax source.

Amazon is good at tax avoidance and can even operate its own corporate tax rate as a negative number, but it is impossible for tens of thousands of Amazon employees to avoid personal income tax.

The more developed the country is, the greater the proportion of personal income tax in the country's tax revenue.

The personal income tax in the United States accounts for about 50% of the total federal tax revenue. The employees of high-tech companies happen to be the highest-quality high-income group among individual taxpayers.

Therefore, when the news of the location of Eaglet’s headquarters spread, the entire Bay Area took action, whether it was Redwood, Menlo Park or Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley in the north, or Mountain View in the south. , Sunnyvale or Cupertino, administrative officials in various cities chase behind several senior executives of Eaglet almost every day, even if they think that the possibility of introducing Eaglet to settle in their own area is unlikely, they did not easily Let go of the opportunity to try.

Tim Berners-Lee has already known the big boss’s location for the company’s park. Although they all want to set up the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto nearby, Palo Alto at this stage wants to draw Dozens of acres of land are not difficult, but the land near the bay in the north of Mountain View is actually not too bad, and the straight-line distance from Stanford University is only about 7 kilometers.

Low-key negotiations with several major cities in the South Bay area for more than a month, and finally "selected" the tax incentive plan given by Mountain View, and quickly marked a full 300 on the barren land near the sea in the north of Mountain View. Hectares of land.

300 hectares, which is more than 700 acres.

Although it is far less than the 8,000 acres of land donated by the Stanfords to Stanford University back then, for a company headquarters, 300 hectares of land is also a bit shocking.

In fact, if it weren't for the Mountain View City government to dare not approve too much, Simon would prefer to get at least 500 hectares of land.

Even so, when the news was officially announced in mid-May, it immediately caused a lot of skepticism in the media in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You know, even the veteran HP company in Silicon Valley only owns an office park covering an area of ​​only 12 hectares in Palo Alto. Eaglet has eaten 300 hectares of land at a time. Do all employees build an office villa?

The US real estate market has shown signs of recovery after several years of downturn.

Therefore, many media have publicly accused the motives of a large number of plots in Eaglet's circle of being impure, with obvious suspicion of speculating on plots.

With the disclosure of more news, the media found that the main body of the company that purchased the land was Westeros, and Eaglet took over 20 hectares of land from Westeros at the same price. The plan was to build an office park, so the media became more noisy.

Westeros, this is a sure thing to get involved in the real estate industry.

However, after the detailed information was disclosed, the various media accused them of becoming a little confused.

In fact, Igreat only got 30 hectares of land. Although it is much larger than HP's 12 hectares, it is not too much. As for the enclosure of Westeros, this seems to be fine.

The seafront land in the north of Mountain View is a barren area to be developed. If a company is willing to take over the development, it will be beneficial to the city to a large extent.

Moreover, no one has stipulated that Westeros can not set foot in the real estate field?

Not only that, the industries and regions that Simon Westero has fancy, as long as they are not too slow, should understand that they are worth betting.

As a result, the clamor in the media is not over yet, a large number of capitals have turned their attention to the tens of thousands of hectares of land in the northern part of Mountain View, and have proposed to the Mountain View City government or farmers who are still stuck in the area to buy land Claim.

This also led to the fact that in the following short week, it is said that some companies’ quotations for purchasing land parcels increased by 30% on the basis of Westero’s purchase price. With Palo Alto as the limit, the original southern part of the South Bay The development of these cities has been lagging behind the northern cities such as Redwood and Menlo Park.

Mountain View was suddenly highly sought after, and the district administrator was ecstatic.

In most countries and regions in the world, there are no more than a few sets of standards for measuring the political performance of officials.

As the current momentum continues, Mountain View’s tax and employment index growth rates in the next few years will definitely far exceed those of other cities in the Bay Area.

Simon arrived in San Francisco on May 20, spent a whole day participating in the planning of the Eaglet headquarters, and walked through the plot in the north of Mountain View in person.

300 hectares of land, the southern border is adjacent to the 101 highway that runs through California, and the east side is close to the Stevens River, which runs straight down from the southern mountains and crosses Mountain View. The plot is generally rectangular and about 1.2 kilometers wide from east to west. About 2.5 kilometers long from north to south, it can be said to be the best quality plot in the northern area of ​​Mountain View.

The planned development of the Eaglet Park is located in the central area of ​​this high-quality land, away from the noisy 101 highway.

As for the remaining land, Simon considered some plans and abandoned them all for the time being.

To put it plainly, there is no plan.

Therefore, if anyone knows the inside story, they will definitely feel that Westeros’ consumption of 300 hectares of land for US$230 million this time is definitely a failure.

Simon didn't care.

Just like Australia's Tasmania, which has been buying continuously, he now has such capricious capital.

It doesn't matter if you plant trees or grass, or even simply leave it uncultivated, as long as the land is your own.

Stepping on it is very reliable.

Stayed in San Francisco for one day, returned to Los Angeles in the evening, and flew to New York early the next morning.

The recent season of TV series promotion in New York.

As Daenerys Entertainment's television business is the focus of expansion in the next few years, West Monte intends to take time to fly to the East Coast to follow up some things.

At the same time, May 21 is another Friday.

After the warm-up of several films last week, such as "Anti-Fighting Eagle 2," "Bruce Lee's Biography" and "My Genius Family", the summer vacation of 1993 officially opened.

This week’s most watched blockbuster film is undoubtedly the action blockbuster starring Silverster Stallone produced by Samsung, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. The film cost 70 million US dollars. The number of screens in the first week is 2333 yuan.

In addition, the comedy "Made in America" ​​starring Ubi Goldberg was also released in the same period, with 2,048 screens.

Stallone's "Fresh Wind" and Schwarzenegger's "Phantom Hero", scheduled for June 18th, are the two blockbusters released by Columbia Pictures this summer. The production cost of the latter is as high as 85 million. Dollar.

Columbia Pictures also tried to cooperate with Daenerys Entertainment to develop "Phantom Heroes" last year, but Simon refused.

Compared with Colombia's smugness, Simon is very clear that these two films are two big holes for Colombia's parent company Sony.

It was the failure of these two projects that caused Sony to completely lose its patience with Colombia's head Peter Cooper, and even wanted to sell the big studio again.

Boarding the plane to the east coast, Girl A sent the box office data just released last week to Simon.

Sitting in the front cabin office of the Boeing 767, Simon opened last week's box office report and first found the box office data of the new week of "Anti-Wise Multi-Star 2" during the Easter schedule.

Since its release on April 9th, "Anti-Wise Multi-Star 2" has been released for 6 weeks.

The first week started with $43.67 million, a 39% drop in the following week. In the following weeks, relying on the series' popularity and lack of competitors' advantages over the same period, the box office curve of "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" was fairly stable.

From May 14th to May 20th, compared to the fifth week, "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" dropped 23% in a single week, and continued to receive 8.96 million US dollars.

In six weeks, the film’s cumulative box office reached $124.55 million.

Through the next week’s box office, Daenerys Entertainment predicted that the total North American box office of "Anti-Wild Stars 2" will be between 130 million and 150 million US dollars.

Now, six weeks after the release, based on the box office curve statistics for a month and a half, the publicity team further predicts that the final North American box office of the film should be around US$145 million, and the error will not exceed US$3 million.

With a total budget of US$45 million for the production and distribution of "Wisdom Fighting 2", the local box office is calculated at US$145 million. Daenerys Entertainment will probably get a net income of US$35 million.

Compared with the local, "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2" still failed to break through the cultural restrictions of overseas markets.

According to data feedback from overseas ticket warehouses in the UK, Spain, Australia, etc. that have already been drawn, the film can only recover about 70 million US dollars in the overseas market.

Of course, for a comedy movie, the global box office exceeds 200 million US dollars, and it is a big seller anyway.

Relying on more than 120 million U.S. dollars in the box office in 6 weeks, "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Stars 2" was not only temporarily the first film with a local box office of over 100 million yuan in 1993, but also temporarily ranked first in the 1993 North American box office list.

In the months that have passed since the first half of the reunification period, there are not many projects that have sold well.

Except for "Groundhog Day 2", only Columbia Pictures' "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray is still a big seller. "Groundhog Day" opened on Valentine's Day in February. As of last week, the cumulative box office was 66.32 million U.S. dollars. It is expected that the total box office will reach 70 million U.S. dollars before the next stage.

Simon actually paid attention to "Groundhog Day" at first, but with the idea that Daenerys Entertainment could not account for all the top-selling items, he did not forcefully grab the script.

The temporary third place on the annual list is a historical American Civil War film starring Pierce Brosnan and Judy Foster. The film is produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and will be released on February 5. It has been downgrade now, with a cumulative box office of US$50.08 million.

Simon has seen this movie before.

The original version starred Richard Gere and Judy Foster.

This time, because of the big butterfly Simon, Richard Gere's role in "The Pretty Lady" fell on Pierce Brosnan, and the role of this "Looking Like An Old Man" was replaced by Brosnan.

It's not a coincidence.

Pierce Brosnan and Judy Foster are both artists under ICM and belong to the same agent.

The three major brokerage companies are now promoting the project packaging mechanism.

After Pierce Brosnan relied on "Pretty Girl", ICM naturally tended to match him with Judy Foster instead of Richard Gere, who was completely out of touch with "Pretty Girl".

With the exception of "Wisdom Fighting 2", Daenerys Entertainment's three labels have released a total of 15 movies as of mid-May, but there is no other dark horse at the box office except for "Wisdom Fighting 2".

Among them, the best box office is the Mexican literary drama "Chocolate" released by Gaomen Films on February 19, which was an award-winning film at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year. Gaomen Films bought it for $2 million. After breaking the North American distribution rights, the cumulative box office after the release was 21.66 million US dollars, which is a small dark horse.

"The Sea of ​​Algae", which was released during the Easter schedule on April 16, was released for the first week of US$4.67 million. It has been released in five weeks and has reached a cumulative box office of US$15.39 million. It is expected to exceed the US$20 million mark before the order is placed. .

The Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear Award work "Wedding Banquet" was released in early March taking advantage of the Golden Bear Award. It was screened for two months. The cumulative box office was 12.07 million US dollars and the revenue was considerable.

Except for these 4 movies that are still considered to be hits, the other 11 movies have a box office of less than tens of millions of dollars, which is basically a loss and a profit.

This is actually what the company expected.

The key films of Daenerys Entertainment, especially those produced by Daenerys Pictures, the most direct line, are released in the second half of the year.

Moreover, in the first half of the year, Daenerys Entertainment will be able to appear in the first half of the year a box office champion "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 2", as well as "Love Chocolate", "Large Algae Sea", "Wedding Banquet" and other profitable projects , Is enough to envy other Hollywood studios.