Eight Hundred and Thirtieth Chapters of the Oligarch

The best venue for a Titanic-themed exhibition is undoubtedly the Rosarito studio in Mexico.

However, after the discussion, everyone agreed that this would not work at all.

Not to mention visa issues, most moviegoers are unlikely to take a cross-country trip just to visit a film's filming location.

What's more, the security of the Mexico-U.S. border is also a big problem. Eric felt deeply during his trip to Mexico last year. If a tourist is robbed or kidnapped while visiting the set of "Titanic", or even died unexpectedly , that Firefly will be very passive. This kind of thing is very common in Mexico, where drug dealers are entrenched in gangs. Cameron’s friend, and also the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who first introduced and assisted him in the construction of the “Titanic” set in Rosarito, When he was just making a name for himself in Hollywood, the old father in his hometown was kidnapped immediately.

But Los Angeles is different. According to statistics, Los Angeles has received more than 30 million tourists from all over the world in recent years. Los Angeles is a film mecca in the hearts of movie fans all over the world. Most tourists come to Los Angeles and basically visit movie-related attractions such as Universal Studios, Disney World, etc., which provides sufficient visitors for the "Titanic" theme exhibition. source guarantee.

After an afternoon of discussions, Eric finally decided to put the "Titanic" themed exhibition in the Firefly Studios in Los Angeles. The Titanic ship model built in Rosarito will also be disassembled as it is and shipped back to Los Angeles for new It is assembled and completely renovated, and areas such as exhibition halls and restaurants are opened up inside for tourists to better visit. While doing so would cost a fortune, it was nothing compared to the huge profits that Titanic would bring to Firefly.

At the beginning, Eric purchased 100 hectares of land in Playavista at one time. Although the studio has spent most of the land purchased after years of expansion, it is still more than enough to open up an area specifically for "Titanic". , as a legendary masterpiece destined to be included in the history of world film, "Titanic" also deserves such treatment.

The group has a dedicated team that builds and maintains several of the world's largest Disney parks, known as Dream Engineers.

The plan is determined, and the next work will also be in charge of this experienced team.

During the discussion at the meeting, there were also some people at the top of the group who proposed to imitate the model of Universal Studios and directly expand the Firefly Studios into a tourist attraction.

This proposal made Eric quite excited, but, if not Disney's brand resources, there are not many projects that Firefly has accumulated over the years to provide tourism resources for the studio, and it is not enough to support a theme park. This plan We can only give up temporarily, but "Titanic" is undoubtedly a good start. As long as it can be successful, Firefly's next movie projects that are not suitable for Disneyland can open up attractions in Firefly Studios, and accumulate to a certain extent. , Firefly Studios into a tourist attraction will also be a matter of course.

In order to complete "Casino Royale" as soon as possible, Eric did not rest on the weekend. In the last two days, he completely ended the later stage of the film. He didn't need to worry too much about the next film rating work and preliminary publicity work.

In the new week, although Eric hoped to rest for a few days, the influx of various affairs made him unable to take time off.

On Sunday night, March 16th, "Black Road Family", which was carefully produced by ffm TV, officially began to air. Eric had great expectations for this TV series. However, in addition to personally intervening in the casting process, the male In the selection of the protagonist, except for James Gandolfini who was once in the original time and space, he did not intervene in other aspects. Eric also instructed Weinstein to delegate as much power as possible to David Chase, the main creator of the TV series.

The reason why "Black Road Family" was rated as TV drama No.1 by many media in the original time and space is that this movie completely broke the traditional TV drama model and created a new and meticulous narrative model. If these managements with traditional production thinking mode intervene indiscriminately, "Black Road Family" is likely to be in a traditional form and lose its original characteristics.

Although there are some differences from the original version, the main production ideas have not changed.

Therefore, "Black Road Family" has attracted the attention of many film critics after the first episode was broadcast.

"Entertainment Weekly" directly gave a near-full score in the drama review, and rated "Black Road Family" as a "TV series full of surprises".

A well-known film critic in The Boston Globe even gave an impassioned review of the play.

"The Black Road Family is an amazingly special new series."

"The male protagonist Tony Ceprano is the leader of a gang in New Jersey, but his gang has absolutely no pomp like the Corleone family in "The Godfather", but a small group of five or six people, whose daily work is also It's just to collect the account protection fee, and the biggest industry may be the strip club. Even in addition to this heavy gray identity, he is also an ordinary middle-aged man who has suffered a mid-life crisis, and two restless children. , his neurotic mother and his wife, all caused him all kinds of troubles, which forced him to seek help from a psychiatrist."

"Therefore, it is almost impossible to find any bright spots just from the characters in the film. But it is precisely under this ordinary appearance that this creative series has opened up a new kind of progressive narrative for us. The mode, the narrative structure of the episodes are eloquently explained, and they are not messy at all, and the screenwriter's control of the plot structure is perfect.

Eric didn't know much about the process of "The Black Road" from its launch to its popularity, so he originally thought that the show would gradually improve like "Breaking Bad" later. However, the response of the film after the first season aired far exceeded Eric's expectations. During the call with Harvey Weinstein, Eric also asked whether the media such as Harvey reflected that he did it on purpose. As a result of the research, Harvey gave a negative answer with a smile.

At the same time, under the good publicity in the early stage, the premiere of "Black Road Family" also created a good audience of 1.76 million, which is close to 40% of the total subscribers of ffm TV station. As a paid cable station, every viewer of ffm TV station is valid. Subscribers, plus the show doesn't feature any commercials and doesn't count 18- to 49-year-olds.

The good start of "The Black Road" almost immediately alerted its main rival hbo, and in the new week, it was announced again that it would start production of its own drama. The reason why it is said to be 'once again' is mainly because although hbo has also announced that it will be producing its own TV series since last year, due to the delay of the slow execution efficiency in the Time Warner system, until the "Black Road Family" was launched, hbo all The official list of self-made drama projects has not been announced yet.

Of course, Eric clearly remembers hbo's first self-made drama. It was not "Wanted City" or "Black Road Family", but a "Prison Storm" that was not too famous but was of equally good quality.

Since HBO's response is so slow, it is of course impossible for the project of "Prison Storm" to fall into the hands of HBO. FFM has already bought the script at the beginning of the year. Production will also start soon.

On weekends, although Eric went to work as usual, Christina did not leave, but stayed at the sharp corner manor. The girl who originally planned to come to the manor for the weekend heard the news, but only complained to Eric on the phone.

Monday, early morning.

Eric hung up the phone with Harvey Weinstein and went into the dining room to read today's paper.

Christina, wearing a cropped t-shirt and jeans with an apron around her waist that almost envelops her petite body, ran around like a little bee, bringing breakfast to the dining room before facing Eric. Sit down, but this girl's expression today is a bit strange, she looks like worship, or awe, which makes Eric feel a little inexplicable.

Taking a sip of the hot milk at hand, Eric asked half-jokingly, "Why do you suddenly look at me with such eyes, or did you just find out that I am so handsome today?"

"No," Christina smiled, looked down at the stack of newspapers in front of Eric, raised her hand to point to something, but was stunned, stood up, and said inexplicably, "I remember, this morning I I looked through it in advance, and it should have landed on the sofa by the curtain wall."

Eric watched curiously as Christina ran out of the kitchen and soon returned with a magazine.

It turned out to be this month's "Forbes" magazine, and then I remembered that the official release of the new "Forbes" magazine should be today, oh, there is also a list of the 400 richest people in the United States in this issue, no wonder this girl will reveal that just now. This kind of expression, Eric's worth reached 67.7 billion US dollars last year. Before this issue of "Forbes" magazine was released, most financial media predicted that his worth this year would exceed 80 billion US dollars, 80 billion, and most people come That said, it's still quite impressive.

This year, in addition to the steady growth of Firefly Group, Cisco, Yahoo, AOL and other companies under Firefly Investment have achieved almost doubled growth. Like Cisco, whose market cap at this time last year was just over $10 billion, but based on recent stock prices, Cisco's market cap has grown to $33.2 billion. AOL's market value has also grown to $15.3 billion compared to last year's scale of less than 10 billion.

"Come on, let me see how much money I have now," with a smile on his face, Eric took the magazine from Christina. There was no surprise on the cover. It was a close-up photo of him, just swept away. At a glance at the title, Eric immediately widened his eyes in surprise and said, "They really want to bake me on the fire."

On the cover of the magazine, what surprised Eric the most was not the striking figure of US$98.7 billion, which was tens of billions more than most media forecasts, but the fact that Forbes magazine used a very sensitive number below the series of figures. Title: "The Rise of the Media Oligarchs".

The word 'oligarch' is definitely not a compliment in the West. Although almost all capital forces have the ambition to become an oligarch in the industry, even if this goal is achieved, few people will publicize it with great fanfare. The so-called oligarch, in the consciousness of Westerners, also means monopoly and huge profits, as well as exploitation and oppression.

Just like at the beginning of the 20th century, although the Rockefeller family created an unprecedented wealth myth, but because of a series of bad behaviors such as using mercenaries to suppress miners, even a hundred years later, the Rockefeller family has a bad reputation. The descendants of the Rockefeller family who are involved in politics will even be grabbed by reporters and asked, 'Do you still want to control the United States? ’.

Of course, even if you don't care about the reputation of the outside world, if you associate it with the word 'oligarch', you will often face antitrust investigations that all companies don't want to encounter. This is the most troublesome thing.

However, Eric soon discovered something strange. The title used by Forbes magazine was "The Rise of the Media Oligarchs" instead of simply "The Rise of the Oligarchs". With one more word, there must be a big difference.

Realizing this, Eric hurriedly opened the magazine and found relevant articles.

"As we all know, in the course of a century of development, Hollywood film companies have always been in a state of coexistence. Because of the strong uncertainty in the creative industry, it is difficult for Hollywood to have a situation where one company dominates. However, in recent years, In 2008, with the gradual opening of the federal government to the regulation of the media industry, major Hollywood film companies are no longer limited to the field of content production, so the originally relatively balanced situation is being quickly broken. In the new round of reshuffle in the media industry , the strongest development momentum is undoubtedly the Firefly Group, which has been established for less than ten years."

"Although Firefly Group has not released its 1996 financial report for the time being, according to a large amount of public information, it is not difficult to predict that the overall revenue of Firefly Group in 1996 is likely to exceed the unprecedented figure of US$30 billion, even if it is five years. Until recently, there were very few companies in the media industry with annual revenue exceeding $10 billion."

"The explosive revenue data of Firefly Group is due to its mergers and acquisitions since the 1990s. Although Time Warner, Viacom and other media groups also have corresponding merger activities, only Firefly Group, After successive mergers and acquisitions of New Line Cinema, Disney Group, Metropolis ABC Group and other companies, through Eric Williams' amazing forward-looking vision and the company's strong and efficient executive management team, Firefly Group has perfectly realized The rapid integration between different companies after the merger and the continued rapid development of related businesses.”

"In contrast, Time Warner, which lost Steve Ross, can almost be described as a mess of sand. Although Viacom's Summer Redstone is old and strong, he obviously lacks the keen judgment of the fast-growing media industry. After merging the Blockbuster videotape chain store and Paramount Pictures, the conservative Redstone in his bones did not carry out a substantial and effective reorganization and integration of the two companies. Blockbuster's business has experienced a significant decline. The film business of Mongolia Pictures has also not improved."

"Theoretical analysis makes it difficult for people to see the differences between the three local media giants, but the annual performance reports of the three companies can clearly show this."

"According to the known information, we can find that in 1996, Time Warner's annual revenue was only 10.1 billion US dollars, and the annual loss of 191 million US dollars again, the sluggish performance led to the 35 billion US dollars in fixed assets of Time Warner Group's stock market value was only 243%. 100 million. Viacom's 1996 annual revenue reached 12.1 billion US dollars, annual net profit was 1.2 billion US dollars, and its market value was 28.8 billion US dollars. Although it surpassed Time Warner and became the second largest media group in North America, it was far behind Firefly Group. Pretty obvious."

"With the outstanding performance of its media networks, film and television entertainment, theme parks, peripheral products and special effects companies, Firefly Group's annual revenue has reached 30 billion US dollars, compared to Firefly Group's average net profit margin of 11% in previous years. The annual net profit should be around US$3.3 billion, because the various businesses of Firefly Group still maintain a strong growth momentum, and according to the standard of listed companies, the market value of Firefly Group should reach US$85 billion.”

"Therefore, whether in terms of annual profit, revenue data or market value, Firefly Group has opened a huge gap with competitors in the same industry, showing the trend of a dominant oligarch."