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MTL - I’m in Hollywood-Chapter 1149 condition
Venice Beach is next to Prea Vista, with only one Barona Canal between them.
Leaving the restaurant with Carl Icahn, Eric’s car has already arrived at Firefly Studios.
Because it was a weekend, there were not many people in the studio. The driver told the driver to stop the car. Eric took Elizabeth and got off the bus. He walked freely on the main cement road in the studio to answer her question. Dao: "Calculating time, Carl Icahn came to visit me, and everyone who knows should already know."
Elizabeth and Eric walked side by side. When they heard him say this, they quickly reacted and said, "Do you let people send the news out?"
In order to take control of a company unexpectedly, the first thing to do is to keep it secret.
Carl Icahn naturally cannot know how to come to visit Eric. If Eric intends to cooperate, there will not be many people who know that the two sides have just had lunch together.
Eric smiled uncontrollably and said: "Karl Icahn and Ron Perelman, although they are better at slamming corporate stocks, they are not lacking in the vision and ability to run a business. Like Ron Perelman, after he first won the Revlon with Xiaobo, he has been personally serving as the chairman of Revlon for many years. The cosmetics company is also in very good condition. Similarly, if Ike Icahn Mastering the control of Viacom, it is difficult to predict whether the media group will become a threat to the firefly system. An old king who values his own power more than the company’s interests, and an ambitious and energetic new lord, If you want to pick an opponent, I will of course choose the former. As for the benefits he promises now, there is no legal constraint. Who knows if it will be honored in the future? What's more, why does an outsider rush to Hollywood to promise me the benefits, if you want Yes, of course I will take it myself."
Elizabeth looked at her arrogant man in obsessiveness, feeling a little hot on her cheek, but still habitually said: "It seems that the whole Hollywood is yours."
"Of course it's all mine," Eric raised his arms and showed the tall studio on both sides of the road. "In the future Hollywood, I let them have meat, they can eat, if I don't want them, they even Don't want to drink soup."
Elizabeth wanted to refute a few words, but think about Eric's series of layouts against Hollywood over the years, only to find that this situation is likely to be realized.
First, the Firefly system has taken control of four of the top seven Hollywood studios.
Just last year, the four major film companies accounted for more than 70% of Hollywood's box office market share. The other three major film companies and many small and medium-sized filmmakers can only share the remaining 30% market share. If it is other industries, this disparity The market share ratio has already meant the emergence of a monopolistic giant. Such a monopolistic enterprise giant usually draws most of the profits in the industry, and the firefly system has just done this.
Secondly, as CG special effects movies gradually become the mainstream of Hollywood, whether or not they have the power to make special effects movies is becoming more and more important for Hollywood film companies.
The digital domain company under the Firefly System not only controls the industry's top CG special effects technology, but also gathers most of the second and third-line special effects companies in the industry around the digital field through special effects software, technology licensing, and interest bundling. These small and medium-sized special effects companies, due to the use of special effects software and technology licenses in the digital field, most of the projects are also from the major movie companies of the firefly system, so it will only be a vassal of the firefly system, and it is destined to listen to fireflies when necessary. The deployment of the system.
As for those special effects companies that want to get rid of the firefly system, if they don't have enough technical strength and can't get too many special effects orders, it is a problem to survive, not to mention further development.
Finally, it is the ‘4200’ plan that Eric is laying out.
Once the 3D and IMAX film modes controlled by the Firefly system have been promoted, other Hollywood manufacturers want to take a slice of this new film technology revolution, and even more is the only firefly system.
Since the threshold for traditional filmmaking is very low, there have been many latecomers who want to enter Hollywood by saving money.
But in the future, the accumulation of heavy barriers, simple money-saving behaviors that want to be played in Hollywood, will eventually return only to the feathers, the impact of the power of capital on Hollywood will be gradually weakened. The firefly system will completely evolve from the traditional head snake that may have been jealous of crossing Jianglong to the powerful mountain tiger of Xiaoju Mountain.
I thought about this, until a passing producer enthusiastically greeted the two, and Elizabeth returned to the other side, nodded to each other, and said to Eric next to her: "Speaking of soup, you were not Is there any other project that Marvel can do for us? Now that Iron Man has been successful, what about us?"
"X-Men universe, is this meat big enough?"
"Uh huh," Elizabeth glanced with satisfaction and whitened Eric. "I thought you would give this piece of meat to MGM, or Colombia."
"I certainly thought about it," Eric said with a smile. "Actually, if Fox did not simply follow the footsteps of the Firefly Group to announce the blockade of Blockbuster, I will not hand over the X-Men universe to you. of."
Elizabeth suddenly got a little angry. She grabbed Eric’s arm and gently rubbed it on him. He was dissatisfied: "You still don't trust me."
"Of course I trust you," Eric said. "But I don't trust your old man. I remember last time he didn't just say that he would hand over Fox to you. Then he turned to the TV station and stuffed in?"
Eric mentioned this, and Elizabeth was a bit frustrated.
Speaking of this, this time the blockade of the Baishida, Elizabeth is actually a ‘first sequel,’ after the news was released before notifying his father, and the result was inevitably reprimanded.
"You still said, I was smashed this time," leaned against Eric, and Elizabeth muttered: "It’s really hard to squeeze between the two control freaks."
Eric patted the film on Elizabeth's waist and joked: "Would you like to launch a coup and drive your father down?"
"That will have his old life," Elizabeth said with a smile. "I don't want to be cold-blooded, and my father is not the kind of person who is struggling with his own children." In fact, if I am a man, Dad will be happy to let me take over."
"If you are a man, I will be miserable."
"You don't lack women."
With that said, I have already passed through the studio area without knowing it.
Eric is about to move on. He wants to go to the digital studio to see the progress of Gravity, but he is pulled by the girl next to him and sits on the bench next to the center garden at the crossroads. under.
Relatively leaning on Eric, looking at the surrounding studios, Elizabeth quickly said: "However, to the X-Men universe to Fox, MGM and Colombia, MGM did not say, I think Colombia should need this project more?"
"MGM has already had a special movie universe. This project will continue to be maintained for at least ten years. Colombia has already had a large series of plans. Marvel can also separate some projects in the past. By comparison, you are here. But the weakest, Fox didn't even have a big production series. Moreover, the Fox is more tightly wrapped around the firefly system. Your father will be dissatisfied in the future, and you can only let us do anything in Hollywood, right? ?"
"I don't want to do anything with you."
"Well, Leeds is a good girl, I am forcing you."
"Nonsence."
Eric took the girl's shoulder and played with her blonde hair, laughing: "In fact, Fox wants to further expand the film business, Fox has another good choice."
Elizabeth blurted out and said: "Star Wars?"
"Smart, it seems that you have considered this issue."
"Lucas said that after completing the prequel trilogy, he will retire. I thought about buying Lucasfilm at the time," Elizabeth said, but she hesitated, saying: "However, prequel Although the box office is very high, but the word of mouth is not very good, and the sales of the surrounding products of the Star Wars series are not as expected, I am not sure if people will be interested in this series in the future."
"You think wrong, the Star Wars brand is absolutely no problem. The problem is mainly in Lucas himself. The sales failure of peripheral products is also caused by the excessive authorization of Lucasfilm. In the future, as long as With Lucas kicking off, the brand is still very promising."
"Kicking Lucas out, fans will definitely be upset."
"The influence of the Star Wars series has far surpassed the founder of Lucas. The audience would like to see this series continue on the big screen. As for who is going to operate, they will not care too much. Not to mention. There is no need to kick off Lucas clearly, and let him hang a virtual title like executive producer."
Elizabeth thought for a while, nodded and said: "You seem to think more than me."
"Yeah, if Fox doesn't shoot at the time, the fireflies will definitely take Lucas's film."
As I said, Eric’s cell phone rang.
I took a look at my mobile phone and looked at it. It was a strange number. I didn’t care. I answered it: "Hello... Oh... I have a weekend break, let me talk about it on Monday... If you have dinner, you can contact my assistant to arrange a time."
Simply talking a few words, Eric hung up the phone.
Elizabeth didn't come over again this time, and when Eric took the line, he asked, "Who?"
"Tom Freston."
"Oh," Elizabeth naturally knew Tom Freston, and she understood the other party's intention to call. Nodded, "It is said that Redstone has confirmed Freston as the successor to Viacom CEO. He is also one of the executives of the Lei Shidong Family Trust."
"This kind of thing is hard to say," Eric smiled. "Although Lei Shidong is already 76 years old, if he suddenly finds himself can work for another ten years, there is a person waiting for him." Picking up his class, he will definitely kick the other side."
"After another ten years, he is eighty-six years old. How is it possible?"
"Power is this thing."
"Oh, it seems that you don't care about power at all."
"Who knows, I used to think that I would retire early at the age of forty, and then enjoy life," Eric looked up at the clear blue sky of Los Angeles and said: "But after a long time, I found out that this is actually not very good. Possibly. People from different walks of life are not the same. You let a middle-class white-collar worker who wants to live a life all day to retire and enjoy life early. He will be very happy. But let a person standing at the peak of power lay down everything. That should be more uncomfortable than killing him, because power is a real enjoyment for them."
"You can say that in the future, it will definitely be better than Lei Shidong and my father."
"Not necessarily, the wise king when you are young, you will often become faint when you are old, but it is hard to say in the future."
"Eric, you are always so pessimistic," Elizabeth came over and kissed Eric on her shoulders with some pity, saying, "Don't be like this, okay?"
"Well, I may always have a mental problem. So, you have to be nice to me, or if it happens, the result is hard to predict."
"Not good enough, you bastard."
Eric smiled and got up and took the girl's hand and said, "Let's go, "Gravity" will finish the final cut next month, and take you to see the results of my work over the past year."
......
The weekend passed quickly.
From Saturday to Los Angeles, until Tuesday morning, Viacom co-president Tom Freston was able to see Eric.
Although the plan to detach the Blockbuster chain from Viacom Group was announced on the weekend, this kind of tail-cutting method did not help the situation too much in the face of the decline of the media.
On the first day of the working day, the Viacom Group's share price fell again by 1.7%. On the surface, the decline seems to have narrowed, but even according to this decline, Viacom's market value will definitely evaporate for a week. One hundred million U.S. dollars.
Moreover, yesterday afternoon, some film funds on Wall Street also released news that if Viacom could not solve the dilemma it faced as soon as possible, these film funds are likely to stop cooperation with Paramount Pictures.
Wall Street's film funds are actually similar in nature to credit financing institutions. These institutions provide funds to Hollywood, do not share copyright and do not participate in production, and only enjoy considerable dividends based on the box office performance of investment films. Most of the huge debts accumulated by MGM in the past were due to the continued loss of investment films and the arrears of funds from these film funds.
Once Wall Street cut off funding support, the news was released, and many of the projects in Paramount Pictures that were being prepared were likely to be shut down. This was as much a disaster for Viacom as another blockbuster.
Although it is clear that the Firefly system is still operating behind this incident, at this time, in the face of a series of problems, and Carl Icahn, who may be able to launch control over the battle at any time, Viacom reconciles with the Firefly system as soon as possible. There is no alternative to the second day of the road. Lei Shidong has even prepared for the harsh conditions of the firefly system.