Hollywood Hunter

At the end of September, San Francisco didn't feel like autumn at all. It was still sunny and green.

Mountain villa in Woodside.

The time is Saturday, September 25.

These days, Simon is basically in Los Angeles on weekdays and spends two days on weekends with the female assistant in San Francisco.

Actually, Janet came to San Francisco.

Because Veronica would fly by from New York every weekend to see the children.

On vacation days, most of the time seems very leisurely, because it is maternity leave, it is inevitably monotonous.

I accompanied the female assistant to play the guitar for a while and read a few pages. The afternoon sun made me tired, so I curled up beside Simon to sleep. The outdoor environment is somewhat unsuitable for pregnant women to sleep peacefully. Simon took the sleeping female assistant into the bedroom and returned to the backyard porch by himself, sitting at a round table drinking coffee and looking through some of the information that Girl A had compiled today.

No longer entangled in various meticulous work every day, Simon can finally carry out a serious combing of the entire Westeros system.

The most recent concern is the influence of the Westeros system on the distribution of Daenerys Entertainment's movies due to the opposition to traditional paper media caused by the launch of 58list.

Daenerys Entertainment’s three labels, including the award-winning work of this year’s Venice Golden Lion Award by Gomen Films yesterday, Kyeslowski’s "Red, Blue and White Trilogy: Blue", were released this September. Four movies.

One of the more important ones is Brian de Palmer’s new film "Dawn of the Owner of Love" released on September 10. This old-fashioned gangster film that Palmer is good at starring Al Pacino, cost 30 million US dollars. , The number of screens opened was 1679.

The other two, one is the Cold War drama "Peachy Accusation" starring Anthony Hopkins, released by New World Pictures. Another is "Golden Giants" launched by Gaomen Films, which is a novel adapted from a novel starring Meryl Streep. It tells the ups and downs of a Chilean girl who has the ability to predict.

In fact, only one of the four movies is "Dawn of the Owner of Love" completely produced by Daenerys Entertainment, and the other three are all bought out or distributed by agents.

Based on the word-of-mouth and box office data of the four films, Daenerys Entertainment's publicity and distribution department judged whether the opposition between the Westeros system and the paper media is obviously affecting the company's film distribution.

Take "The Dawn of the Owl" as an example. After the film was released on September 10, the media score was 7.1, which is slightly better than the passing score and not excellent. Many film critics give the evaluation that Brian de Palma and Al Pacino repeat the previous "Scarface", so the plot is old and lacks breakthrough.

In contrast, the new Internet platform has a reputation for comprehensive statistics of about 8 points.

The gap is very obvious.

However, in terms of box office, the box office of "Dawn of Love" was 11.39 million US dollars in the first week, a 26% drop in the following week, and another 8.36 million US dollars. The total box office in two weeks was 19.75 million US dollars. The total box office in North America is expected to be around 35 million US dollars.

Such commercial performance basically met Daenerys Entertainment's expectations.

The production cost of 30 million U.S. dollars, the publicity expenditure of 10 million U.S. dollars, and the North American box office of 35 million U.S. dollars are certainly not successful. However, relying on overseas distribution and follow-up channels to recover costs and achieve a certain profit is not a big problem.

When Simon approved the project, he had actually expected this result.

Daenerys Entertainment cannot be successful forever, and occasionally it still needs this kind of tepid project to support the ‘facade’.

Based on a comprehensive assessment, it is not surprising that traditional paper media has obviously affected the film reputation of "Dawn of the Love Owner", but did not cause too obvious impact on the box office.

At this stage, the publicity expenditure of Hollywood movies is actually only used for traditional paper media. The proportion is only about 25%. The more important platform is the TV channel, accounting for 50%. Other cinema posters, street advertising, radio advertising and other channels account for the remaining 25%.

The proportion of paper media's publicity expenditure also means the weight of the influence of this publicity channel on the commercial performance of a movie.

25%.

Does not have a decisive influence.

Of course, this ratio is actually for standard commercial films, such as art films produced by Gaomen Films, it is impossible to give too high publicity expenses, and in many cases, it mainly depends on the word-of-mouth of the paper media for dissemination.

The "Golden Giants" released on September 17, received a direct hit from the media, with a comprehensive score of only 2.6.

The quality of the film is indeed unsatisfactory, but the Gaomen Films team also stated that the mainstream paper media is obviously too harsh on this film.

As a film with 513 screens opened, the box office in the first week was only $1.71 million, and the total box office in North America is expected to be only about $5 million. However, the film’s budget is as high as $25 million.

It's almost lost.

Fortunately, the producer of the film is not Daenerys Entertainment, and the budget mainly comes from Europe.

A project doomed to fail, with a box office of $5 million or $7 million, the difference is actually not big. The traditional paper media's attitude towards Daenerys Entertainment has changed with the naked eye.

Daenerys Entertainment has been experiencing a good group of film critics in recent years. It is obvious that Simon has somewhat overestimated the independence of film critics.

It's also easy to understand.

Daenerys Entertainment can give film critics some small favors, but this group has to rely on the contribution fees of the paper media platform to feed, it is impossible to really do it alone.

This is actually not a bad thing.

The lack of independence actually means that it can be influenced by external forces.

Simon thought for a moment, put down the information, opened the laptop on the round table in front of him, and started writing emails to several executives of Daenerys Entertainment.

The key to Daenerys Entertainment's next film announcement is to ensure that key projects, such as several important movies, and other movies, only need to do their best.

If some paper media is too excessive, if necessary, you can still kill the chicken and the monkey.

In addition, it is necessary to strengthen the cooperation between Daenerys Entertainment and Eaglet Portal, and guide as many users as possible to log on to the Internet platform to view movie reputation and participate in movie discussions. As long as users can be introduced to the Internet, this will be the main battlefield of the Westeros system.

The number of Internet users in North America has reached one-third of the total population, and they are all the best consumers.

As long as it is operated properly, relying on the home field advantage of the Westeros system on the Internet platform can offset the negative impact of traditional paper media on the announcement of Daenerys Entertainment's movies to the greatest extent.

After writing an email, it was already more than four o'clock in the afternoon.

Girl A quietly appeared, helped Simon sort out the scattered information on the desktop, and said: "Mr. Gates is here."

"Let him come here."

Alison nodded and turned to leave.

After a while, the doormate came over under the guidance of Girl A, Simon got up and shook hands with the other party, and the two sat down at the round table together.

When Girl A left again, the classmate who pretended to pick up the coffee and sipped the door without a trace, withdrew attention from Alison's Miaoman figure wrapped in the OL suit.

I was a little dissatisfied with Simon's behavior that he didn't even show up to greet him, Gates didn't say much, and went straight to the topic: "Simon, what's the matter with Linux?"

On Wednesday, Eaglet suddenly released a completely open source Linux1.0 operating system source code. This is the result of the work of the Eaglet Linux team for more than half a year. Compared with the founder Linus Tor Watts's crude kernel, this version of the operating system kernel has 200,000 lines of code, although it is not perfect, but it can basically realize practical applications.

The mainstream operating system in the computer industry has never been completely open source and free.

So you can imagine what kind of impact this completely free and open operating system will have on the industry.

For public reasons, Yigrete released this product to further demonstrate the company's openness.

Of course, privately, this openness is actually for long-term layout considerations.

For the computer industry, a piece of software, whether it is a large-scale operating system application or a simple program that only implements one or two instructions, can form an industry and even achieve monopoly purposes only if there are enough users.

Eaglet’s plan does not directly target the Linux operating system for commercial operations, but intends to rely on the Linux platform to provide further services such as application software and solutions.

The Red Hat company in memory is this mode of operation.

Later, in order to strengthen its layout in open source applications, IBM acquired Red Hat with a huge sum of more than $30 billion, which is enough to prove the feasibility of this business model.

However, the prerequisite for all this is that the Linux system must be sufficiently popular.

Eaglet released the Linux operating system source code, which it invested a lot of money and manpower, to promote this process in advance.

Facing the problem of Damen students at this time, Simon just said flatly: "Bill, you must have already understood that this is a public open source operating system project. Moreover, Eaglet’s goal is the server operating system field and will not be against Microsoft. Cause too much impact. I know what you are scrupulous about, Bill, I can assure you that Eaglet will not further develop a Linux-based desktop operating system."

Damen's expression did not ease because of this. Instead, he was a little excited. Unconsciously, he raised his voice and said: "But you should also know that Simon, Microsoft has just launched WindowsNT, you are disrupting the situation!"

"Unix is ​​already open enough, and there are still many people who are worried about this product, Bill, do you think everyone can accept a completely closed-source server operating system?"

"Why not, as long as we can provide a more stable service?"

"Without an absolutely stable service, any operating system will inevitably encounter various problems. What everyone needs is to find the source of the problem very quickly and quickly, and then solve it. A closed-source operating system, Just like a car with a completely welded hood, even if you say that this operating system is reliable, users will be worried."

Damen students seem to have lost patience: "How to sell the welded car is our business, Simon, you must stop the development of Linux, don't forget, you are also Microsoft's majority shareholder and the second largest shareholder."

"Sorry, Bill, I can't promise you."

Damen classmate stared at the opposite youth fiercely. After a while, he realized that he didn’t seem to have much to do with the other party, which made him even more angry: "Okay, then, promise me, Igreat will not continue to publish in the future. The source code of Linux."

Although this 1.0 kernel has made great progress in the initial version of Bilinus Torvalds, it still needs continuous improvement to compare with other operating systems that have been widely used.

Simon is very simple: "Well, I can promise you that."

Bill Gates was speechless for a while.

Simon also did not explain to the other party that Igreat has supported Linus Torvac to set up the Linux Foundation to coordinate free software development volunteers around the world to continue to improve this operating system.

Even if Eaglet does not release the latest Linux source code, the Linux Foundation will continue to release operating system versions above 2.0.

Of course, this still has the participation of the Linux development team under Eaglet, in order to guide this operating system to the direction that Eaglet hopes.

Bill Gates also knew that Simon had something to hide from him, but for a while, he couldn't get to the bottom of it. He could only change the subject: "About the pre-installation of IE, I think we can talk about it again."

Simon smiled at the corner of his mouth and said, "Bill, you can discuss this with Jeff and the others."

At the beginning, Simon wanted to pre-install the IE browser directly on the Windows operating system, but was rejected by the doormates. He had no choice but to step back and cooperate with OEM manufacturers such as Compaq, HP and Dell.

With the further popularization of the Internet, whether or not to pre-install the IE browser software has also become one of the influencing factors when consumers buy personal computers.

As a result, even if the pre-installed IE browser on each computer costs an additional $10, the major mainstream OEMs have continued to cooperate with Eaglet, even Apple has no exception.

Now that the mainstream OEMs have basically been settled, it is not necessary to cooperate directly with Microsoft.

After all, to do so requires greater monopoly risk.

Simon also knew why Daemen had suddenly changed so much.

Microsoft's MSN portal was launched recently.

For the conditions that can be given to AOL, Eaglet has basically given it to Microsoft.

Microsoft is also imitating AOL and cooperating with other Internet service providers in North America to launch Microsoft's news box to increase the traffic of the MSN portal.

The news box, which was similar to the advertisement pop-up window, was regarded as a window opened by Igreat for the two competitors.

Compared to many other websites, AOL and Microsoft are lucky enough.

It's just that Damen students are obviously not satisfied.

If the IE browser becomes the pre-installed software of the Windows operating system, Damen students probably think that Microsoft should be able to use this as a condition to require the default power of the IE browser's homepage, thereby further increasing the traffic of the Microsoft MSN portal.

This is actually a considerable investment.

Even if Eaglet can provide certain price concessions for Microsoft pre-installation, according to the annual sales of Microsoft operating systems, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

However, the Internet wave has begun to surge, and even Microsoft is inevitably worried about being left behind in this industrial transformation. Therefore, as long as it can obtain enough online traffic, this expenditure is completely worth it.

If Simon, he would actually be so decisive.

Therefore, at this time, it is even more impossible to agree to the requirements of Damen students.

Igreat's dominance in the Internet field cannot be provoke. Even if he knows that Microsoft will fail in the Internet industry later, Simon does not intend to open this hole to Microsoft. Who knows if other variables will appear in history.