Hollywood Hunter

After the New Year, the last popular box office week spanning 1994 to 1995 ended soon.

From December 30th to January 5th, the box office drop of "Suicide Squad" in the third week of its release narrowed to 17%, and again earned 47.91 million US dollars. It easily maintained its weekly box office champion position. It was released for three weeks. The cumulative box office of the hero masterpiece reached 197.38 million US dollars.

The cumulative box office in three weeks was close to 200 million U.S. dollars. Even if the film market quickly cooled after the holiday, the local gross box office of "Suicide Squad" could easily exceed 300 million U.S. dollars.

In the absence of competition for new films, it coincides with the New Year. The total box office in North America during the box office week from December 30 to January 5 fell by only 15% compared to Christmas week. Other subsequent films basically maintained the box office volume of Christmas week. , And the film achieved a reverse decline.

The 3D animation movie "Toy Story 2" still ranked second, with a box office drop of 13%, and another 16.29 million US dollars. The cumulative box office reached 270.98 million US dollars, which is only 30 million US dollars from the 300 million US dollars threshold.

The third place is Macaulay Culkin's "Ritchie the Rich".

After Warner Bros. Pictures’ $40 million holiday comedy started its first week of failure, it unexpectedly achieved a 14% reversal the following week, with a total of $14.03 million and a total box office of $26.35 million in two weeks. Unfortunately, compared to the huge cost of this movie, the next week's decline could not change the outcome of Warner Bros' loss on this project.

Disney’s holiday comedy "Santa Claus" ranked fourth, with a box office drop of 11% in the third week of its release, with a box office figure of 10.62 million U.S. dollars and a three-week cumulative box office of 38.97 million U.S. dollars.

The fifth place is "Street Fighter" jointly produced by MGM and Capcom.

The box office of this popular game adaptation action movie, which ranked second last week, is the most disappointing. The box office fell 36% the next week, and the box office fell directly to less than 10 million US dollars. In the second week of the show, it earned 9.01 million US dollars, with a cumulative box office of 2,312 Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

Outside the top five.

The sixth place "Little Women" dropped by 21%. In the third week of the large-scale painting, it received 8.73 million U.S. dollars, and the cumulative box office reached 31.76 million U.S. dollars.

The seventh place "IQ Love" was probably due to the only romance film in the Christmas file. It achieved a 16% decline the following week, surpassing last week's "Prince of the Forest", with a total of $7.16 million in two weeks. Ten thousand U.S. dollars.

The eighth place "Prince of the Forest" dropped by 12%, and the second week after the painting was opened, it received 7.27 million US dollars, and the total box office in the two weeks was 15.54 million US dollars.

In addition to these films, following the "Ghost in Disguise" that broke into the 100 million box office club last week, "Interview with the Vampire" earned $3.32 million at the box office in the eighth week of its release. It also achieved a local box office of over 100 million, with a cumulative box office of 100 million. Zero 370,000 US dollars.

January 6, the first box office week after New Year's Eve.

In terms of new films, this week there are still only two sporadic films released by independent studios with a combined number of less than 500 yuan, which is not worth mentioning.

However, on December 23rd, in order to be nominated for the awards season, the three films "Niel's Heart", "Big Wisdom", and "The Years of Love" were opened on a large scale this week. The number of screens They were all over RMB 1,000, and the number of screens of "The Years of Love", which had the best response during the screening period, even reached RMB 2005.

Daenerys Entertainment will release its own new year movie from January 13, but the first more important new film this year is the Hong Kong film "Red Zone", which opened on January 27. This is Jack Another attempt to sprint to Hollywood.

Speaking of it, the past year can be described as a turning point for Hong Kong movies from prosperity to decline.

Although there were many Hong Kong film classics such as "A Journey to the West", "Evil Evil", "Chongqing Forest" and so on in 1994, due to serious over-investment, there were hundreds of movies in Eastern Hollywood on the other side of the ocean this year. The film was not delivered on time, causing huge losses to many film companies and severely impacting the enthusiasm of investors. Hong Kong films began to decline rapidly.

Moreover, this is also the result of the continued impact of Hollywood blockbuster.

Since 1994, Hong Kong films have become less and less living space, and Hollywood gradually dominates the vast Southeast Asian market.

Filmmakers such as Jack Cheng and Bai Gewu have chosen to enter Hollywood in this context.

In addition to the "Red Zone" which will be released on January 27, the "Broken Arrow" that Bai Ge Wu collaborated with Daenerys Entertainment last year has also been completed. The schedule is February 10, during Valentine's Day. Like David Fincher's new film "Mind Game", which is scheduled to end in the summer, the "Broken Arrow" with a production budget of $50 million was placed in February. It is also due to the fact that Daenerys Entertainment has too many high-quality projects.

Even the Easter schedule, which is similar to the schedule of "Broken Arrow" and higher quality, is also occupied by Daenerys Entertainment's series of comedy series "Anti-Wisdom Multi-Star 3".

"This Man from Earth", written by Simon himself, is expected to be placed in the more popular end of February after participating in the Sundance Film Festival at the end of the month. "Broken Arrow" still occupies a Valentine's Day.

With the local market becoming more and more difficult to perform, Simon's main proposal at the first Daenerys Entertainment high-level meeting at the beginning of the year was to maximize the expansion of overseas markets. In fact, Daenerys Entertainment has been doing this in the past few years, but it will pay more attention to it in the future, in order to use the vast overseas market space to maximize the commercial potential of a series of film projects produced by Daenerys Entertainment and share the local Risks caused by differences in market schedules.

After returning to Los Angeles after New Year's Day, Simon rushed to San Francisco on January 9th, busy with Daenerys entertainment.

The 20-hectare Eaglet Park in Mountain View, planned since the beginning of 1993, has undergone more than one year of development and construction, and will be officially put into use after the year. Prior to this, the Eagles could only rent office buildings scattered throughout Silicon Valley. Reiter moved into a new office space in the first week after the new year.

In the name of Westeros, Simon had set up as many as 300 hectares of land in the seaside area of ​​Mountain View, and Igreat occupied only one-fifteenth.

In addition to Igreat, who has sufficient financial strength to build his own park, Simon also built an additional office area under the name of Westeros. The office area planned to be leased to Silicon Valley new technology startups was also in the same period at the beginning of the year. Put into use.

As a result, at the same time that Eaglet moved, Tincobair, Broadcast, Instagram and other companies closely related to Eaglet also moved into this office park in Mountain View.

The residential area that has invested heavily in the development of the northern seaside of the office park was also opened to employees of Yigrete or related companies earlier, and temporarily only allowed to lease, and the price for employees of Yigrete is very low. There are mainly five-story villas and three-story apartments, each of which has 500 units. A total of 1,000 houses are enough to easily accommodate 5,000 people.

With the rise of new technology industries, the real estate growth rate in the Bay Area is now ahead of other cities in the United States.

Perhaps the housing pressure is not too great for employees of technology companies in the Bay Area. However, ten or twenty years later, even the top technology company employees will not want to buy a house in the Bay Area. So easy. Simon even remembers the news that employees of companies like Google and Facebook have been living in RVs for a long time.

The properties built by Simon under the name of Westeros are mainly leased, and the huge amount of funds invested in the previous period cannot be recovered in the short term. However, in the long run, not only the continuous appreciation of the property itself will bring huge profits to Simon, but also The ability to provide employees with cheap rental housing will also become a major advantage for Eaglet to compete with other technology companies in the future.

Of course, even if it is a cheap rental, Simon will not suffer.

Because the ‘cheap’ here is only for employees of related companies. If it wants such a cheap price, whether it is Yigrete or other companies that want to provide employees with similar benefits, they need to make up for the rent difference in the form of subsidies.

Moreover, this business is not a loss for Igreat or other park enterprises.

Because the competition for human resources in Silicon Valley is at a very fierce stage, housing subsidies are undoubtedly a highlight for new technology companies to attract employees. Not only that, because this part of the property is very close to the office space, which can save employees’ commuting time to the greatest extent. It can even encourage employees to work overtime to a large extent.

In addition, although rent collection is very inefficient compared to selling real estate directly, Simon can use this part of the property as collateral and obtain loans from the bank as long as necessary. Due to the high growth trend of housing prices in the Bay Area, if the loan is only the annual increase in housing prices, it will be enough to offset related interest expenses and achieve a surplus.

All in all, no matter how you look at it, this business is very cost-effective.

Arriving in San Francisco, Simon spent the entire day on January 9th in a modern office building with a glass and steel structure in the Eaglet Park to participate in the company's high-level meeting. The main topics were the review of 1994 and the planning outlook for 1995.

Due to the overall explosion of the new technology industry in the past year, Yigrete, whose multiple businesses are in monopoly positions in the industry, also showed a more rapid and explosive growth in its annual revenue than in 1993. Now Yigrete has begun to start. Various audits before the IPO, in order to increase investor confidence, the company will also announce its 1994 financial report next month.

At that time, many people will inevitably be surprised.

Simon's requirement for Yigrete's core management is no longer to advance by leaps and bounds, but to calm down and slow down to further cultivate a series of core products of Yigrete.

Another core issue is overseas expansion.

Simon did not forget the remarks made by several Washington core members last time at the White House and Clinton, and Washington did not forget either.

Overseas expansion does not conflict with Yigrete's strategy of slowing down and deepening of core products.

Portals, e-mails, search engines, and other businesses, it is not difficult to imitate the more basic technologies. Not only in the United States, but also overseas, many new technology industry counterparts have begun to launch similar products. If Yigrete wants to maintain its advantages in this competition, it can only continuously improve and optimize its own products.

Users are actually very smart.

Whether it is a search engine or a social network, a product is good or bad, you can probably tell it after using it a few times, and then you will naturally tend to use the best one.

In the past history, Yahoo actually launched the content search function very early. Why did it lose to Google afterwards? In addition to serious mistakes in corporate strategy, the originality and inferiority of Yahoo’s own search tools were also quickly overtaken by competitors. important reason.

In fact, relying on the accumulation of the past few years, a series of products of Yigrete already have considerable advantages. Simon didn't dare to take it lightly. Every time he met, he drove to instill a sense of crisis in the senior executives of Igreat. In an era of information technology explosion, a little slack might be overtaken by competitors in the blink of an eye.

Especially at this stage, it is still in the early stage of the development of the new technology industry, and Igreat is far from being taken lightly.

After a busy day, in the evening, he attended an in-circle party organized by John Chambers. Simon did not return to his mountain villa in Woodside until more than ten in the evening.

After taking a bath and relaxing, I just discussed a few words with the former housekeeper Alice Ferguson, who returned with me tonight, about Igreat’s satellite map service recently. Girl A came to remind me that Kiev called.

Celia Miller and Ken Dixon set off for Ukraine on January 2.

Things are not too smooth.

Hearing that Simon wanted to replace the governor of the Rivne region, Ukrainian President Leon Kuchma began to react very negatively, and he unabashedly expressed to Celia that the Westero system's requirements were too far beyond the border.

Simon was also unceremonious.

On the one hand, Celia continued to lobby Kuchma.

On the other hand, the arms trading company of the Westeros system directly stopped the latest business negotiations with Ukraine.

Ukraine, which has inherited a large amount of Soviet heritage, is a major arms power.

This is true.

Throughout the 1990s, Ukraine basically relied on arms sales to continue to regain some vitality for this economically declining country.

However, the arms that Ukraine can sell to the outside world are actually not many.

The more basic individual weapons or the old Soviet-made heavy weapons are in small demand in other countries. High-end strategic missiles and nuclear weapons cannot be sold to the outside world, at least not publicly. Coupled with the separation with Russia, the production of many of the more popular helicopters or ships has been restricted. Ukraine's arms trade is actually selling the assets of the Soviet era.

Moreover, these arms sales are often difficult to fall into private pockets, and most of them still go to the treasury.

The Westeros system is similar to an intermediary arms trading company, but it builds a bridge for the export of low-end weapons that Ukraine originally had little demand.

The most important point is that there is still a lot of room for operation.

Ukraine has a lot of low-end weapons, which are not needed in Europe, Asia, and North America. If you want to sell them directly to Africa, where the demand is greatest, the countries there simply cannot afford them. It is also impossible for the Ukrainian government to barter goods like the arms trading company of the Westeros system. What Ukraine lacks is money, not resources. It has access to oil drilling and mines that are thousands of miles away. Any meaning.

So the arms trading company of the Westeros system is very important.

Simon decisively asked the arms trading company to stop the negotiation of new transactions, and Kuchma immediately realized the seriousness of the matter. A large number of people in the Kuchma administration rely on this pocketbook. In comparison, a governor seems It seems irrelevant. After all, Ukraine is not a big country like the United States. A governor is almost the same as a mayor in the United States.

After a few days of bargaining, Kuchma finally agreed to all the requirements of the Westeros system.

The time difference between Los Angeles and Kiev is ten hours.

Simon received a call from Celia. It was already nine o'clock in the morning on January 10th in Kiev. Celia had just had breakfast with Kuchma and got the President to relieve Rovno from the governor. Warrant for the position of Li Miloslav. After finishing the call with Simon, and finally confirming the details of a series of actions with her boss, Celia will rush to Rivne, the capital of Rivne State, to officially launch the cleaning plan in the morning.