hunt hollywood

It was no secret in the circle that Simon and Catherine had a special relationship.

Therefore, Daenerys Entertainment is not too concerned about the film's failure.Even, it has been a blockbuster for a whole year, and occasionally loses one or two movies, which seems to be a good feeling.

The world cannot go on abnormally forever.

On February 2, after more than a month of financial audit, Daenerys Entertainment's 17 financial report was finally released.

As of December 1988, 12, Daenerys Entertainment Group's total annual revenue reached 31 million US dollars.

Because Daenerys Entertainment is still in the early stages of development, the revenue of each department of the company has not been divided too finely. For the time being, it is only divided into three business segments: film, TV, and comics. The revenue scale is still very small. Film and television derivatives Such income is directly consolidated, and expenses such as office space purchase and private jet lease are also treated in the same way.

of the three business segments.

The total revenue of the film business is 2.76 million US dollars, including various types of income from Daenerys Pictures' series of films and channel income such as theaters and video tapes of New World Entertainment films.

Daenerys Entertainment invested a lot of money in film production, publicity and copyright procurement last year. Films such as "Rain Man" and "Dead Poets Society" did not bring returns to the company before December 1988, 12. , The income of various films under New World Entertainment is also very meager.

Excluding various costs and taxes and other expenses, the net profit of Daenerys Entertainment's film business is only 6772 million US dollars.

In comparison, Robert Iger's TV business has revenue of $3.61 million, of which "Who Will Be a Millionaire" alone contributed $1.96 million. Other reality TV shows such as "Survivor" and TV projects such as "The Age of Innocence" left over from New World Entertainment have brought in good money.

Due to the ultra-high profit margins of "Who Will Be a Millionaire", the net profit of the TV business department is still as high as $3.61 million, excluding all costs, out of the $1 million in revenue.

In the end, Simon wanted to separately account for the Marvel Entertainment comics business, with an annual revenue of 7132 million US dollars and a net profit of 526 million US dollars.

In fact, Marvel has been consistently profitable since 1975 under the stewardship of both Stan Lee and James Gold.

Although the North American comics industry has continued to shrink in recent years, and Marvel’s net profit rate of less than 10% seems a bit low, but if it hadn’t been for the bankruptcy and liquidation of Marvel’s parent company, Candace Industries Holdings Group, in 1986, this comic company would not have been easily taken over. sell.

So, all calculated, Daenerys Entertainment Group's annual net profit in 1988 reached 2 million US dollars.

Net profit of 2 million US dollars, not mentioning Hollywood's second- and third-tier film companies, even among the seven major studios, only Warner, Paramount and Disney's profit scale can exceed this figure.Among them, Warner calculates the performance of the entire Warner Bros. company, not just Warner Bros. Pictures.

As for the others, Columbia and MGM lost money last year. Only Universal's "Dragon Brothers" at the end of last year supported the film performance in the past two years. The profit of the entire MCA Group in 1988 was less than 2 million US dollars. Le's business focus has been on the expansion of the TV network, and Fox Films is barely maintaining it.

In fact, the current situation is not due to the lack of strength of Hollywood studios, but mainly due to the outstanding performance of Daenerys Entertainment.

Even if it expands to other North American companies, according to the revenue and profit data of the top 500 American companies by Forbes, the statistics for 1988 have not yet been completed, but referring to 1987, Daenerys Entertainment’s profit scale of 2.38 million US dollars is enough to squeeze into North America. The top 500 of the local top 70 list.

这个年代，除了福特汽车、通用电气等寥寥十数家企业的利润规模能够达到10亿级别，北美本土500强榜单上超过95%的公司年利润规模都在10亿美元以内，净利润超过1亿美元的也只有大概150家。

Therefore, when this financial data that would definitely make too many people jealous was released, several senior executives of Daenerys Entertainment unanimously decided to keep it as secret as possible.

The outside world has already had various speculations about the profit scale of Daenerys Entertainment in 1988, and most of the media's analysis is also very accurate.

However, just like many well-known closets in Hollywood, as long as a star does not come out publicly, even if there are many traces to prove that he is gay, movie fans who are often reluctant to face the reality are still happy to believe that this is not the case.

For the same reason, as long as Daenerys Entertainment does not disclose detailed financial data, other Hollywood film companies will just subconsciously ignore this matter.

Chapter 238 Amy's Reminder (Modify)

Daenerys Entertainment HQ.

Nancy Brill was picked up by the driver as soon as she got off the plane. When she came outside Amy Pascal's office, she happened to see Amy sending three tall girls out of the office.The girls didn't know Nancy, but they all greeted her politely before turning away.

After the three women left, Nancy followed Amy into the office and asked, "Are these the three Wonder Woman candidates selected by the boss?"

Amy turned to the desk, nodded and said, "Yes, the company arranged a few small roles for them, and they just participated in the audition."

Nancy sat down opposite Amy, and commented: "I think the one in the black windbreaker is pretty good. The other two, one with a weak temperament and one with a baby face, are not suitable."

"Linda Carter is also a baby face," Amy said, and after sitting down on the leather chair, she went straight to the topic: "Wayne Huizenga called in the afternoon, and he is going to be driven crazy by you. "

After Blockbuster was acquired by Wayne Huizenga and others, the company's headquarters is currently located in the small town of Mosweed, south of Denver, the capital of Colorado.

Nancy Brill flew to Sweden yesterday afternoon and planned to attend Blockbuster's board meeting this morning, which was originally just a routine meeting with no important issues.

However, at the morning meeting, Nancy suddenly joined forces with several other Blockbuster board members to put pressure on the management, asking Blockbuster to invest in updating the data management system and adding a dedicated data analysis team.

During the process of becoming a shareholder of Blockbuster, Daenerys Entertainment has promised not to interfere with the management of Blockbuster within three years.However, as the largest shareholder with a 35% stake, both Daenerys Entertainment and the management of Blockbuster know that this kind of promise cannot be fully implemented.

In fact, Blockbuster had already accepted Daenerys Entertainment’s proposal to add peripheral product sales counters inside the chain stores, and this plan was also proposed by Nancy first.

Because of the rapid pace of expansion, Blockbuster's funds have always been stretched.

After Nancy arrived in Sweden yesterday afternoon, she discussed her new data processing plan with Wayne Huizenga privately.But because the budget of this plan was as high as 2000 million US dollars, Wayne Huizenga could only choose to refuse.

Then what happened in the morning.

Daenerys Entertainment's Board of Directors at Blockbuster was temporarily restricted, but other board members were not, and Nancy found a different way to convince those people to support her plan.

Understanding Amy's intention to intercept herself directly from the airport, Nancy took out a document from her satchel and handed it to her, while explaining: "Amy, the number of Blockbuster stores is increasing rapidly, but can you Imagine, what they are still using is basically the data management system developed by David Cook. This system can only provide simple data such as which video tapes are more popular. If there are only dozens or hundreds of companies storefronts, David Cook's management system is adequate. But if the number of chain stores grows to thousands, the system becomes very primitive and inefficient."

Listening to Nancy's explanation, Amy opened the document she handed over. It turned out to be a research report on the operation of Blockbuster chain stores in several major cities in California.

After Nancy finished speaking, Amy looked up at her and said, "But, Nancy, before you do this, you should at least discuss it with everyone."

"I'm sorry, Amy, I just got this report before I left Los Angeles yesterday afternoon," Nancy explained, and then said: "The threshold for the video chain business is very low. If you just blindly expand the scale and ignore the business operation With the simultaneous improvement of standards, we can only end up with a big fat man who has been fed to 600 pounds and can’t even walk, and competitors who are slightly healthier can easily surpass this company on the runway.”

Amy just nodded slightly, stopped talking, and read Nancy's research report carefully.

In the report, Nancy explained the necessity of Blockbuster upgrading its data management system and increasing its data analysis team through a series of data.

A big reason why large supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart and Aldi are successful is that they can give customers as much profit as possible.However, profit distribution is not simply a matter of price cuts. Short-term price cuts and promotions will not have much effect, and this strategy must be long-term.

So here comes the problem, only if you have enough profit margins can you give profits to customers in the long run.For this to happen, a company's operating costs must be low enough.

Companies such as Wal-Mart and Aldi have successfully achieved this through streamlined and efficient management systems.

Also in the chain retail business, Blockbuster’s market share in the video chain chain field is only about 5%, but if it wants to grow bigger and continue to maintain its own advantages in the industry, it must follow the business strategies of companies such as Wal-Mart.

For video chain companies, an efficient data management system allows the operation team to more accurately judge the company's terminal sales data and make timely adjustments in procurement, warehousing, and logistics.Efficiency increases, costs naturally decrease, and the number of employees companies need to hire will also decrease.

Wal-Mart had more than 200 million employees at its peak, which shows how high the labor cost of the retail chain business is. Blockbuster’s recent video chain stores have just reached 500, and the number of employees has exceeded 3000.

After reading the research report in hand, Amy also understood why the other directors of Blockbuster sided with Nancy.

Anyone with a little foresight will probably not reject such a measure that is very beneficial to the company's development.

Nancy's suggestion was also affirmed in the complaint calls from Wayne Huizenga. He just hoped that this matter could be delayed, because Blockbuster's cash flow is indeed too tight.

Daenerys Entertainment’s $1.2 million stake in Blockbuster has spent half of it in repaying due debts and accounts payable in just over a month.The remaining 6000 million US dollars of funds, including the continuous contribution of Blockbuster's chain stores, can only support the company for half a year at most.

Blockbuster's management has now begun to consider financing issues in the second half of the year.

Closing the report, Amy said: "Okay, Nancy, I will pass this report to Simon, forget it this time, but you must not do this kind of surprise attack next time."

Amy wanted to expose it, but Nancy didn't finish it, saying: "Amy, Huizenga still only agreed to 1000 million US dollars to upgrade the data management system. The plan to set up a data analysis team and build a movie data database is not Passed. I was thinking, can the company pay for this? It’s not just Blockbuster, building such a team and database will also be of great benefit to Daenerys Entertainment.”

Nancy's report also suggested that Blockbuster set up a dedicated data analysis team based on previous research results, and even further build a comprehensive movie data database.

Speaking of which, the proposal was inspired by the recent turmoil in Japan's financial markets.

A few days ago, the news of Simon's entry into the Japanese financial market was exposed, which caused many ordinary people to start paying attention to current financial affairs, and further affected people's entertainment and leisure life.

The research team hired by Nancy found that many customers of Blockbuster chain stores began to ask the clerks to recommend some commercial and financial movies. However, either the clerks did not understand the types of movies that customers wanted, or there were not many movies with similar themes in the store. .

As you can imagine, the chain stores unknowingly missed a lot of sales opportunities.

The employees who are willing to work in video chain stores are basically just to support their families, and a large part of them are part-time jobs. It is impossible for the company to expect that all of these people have a wealth of film knowledge that can serve customers.

At the same time, because the data management system of chain stores is relatively primitive, customers' needs cannot be fed back to the management in a timely manner to quickly arrange the deployment of film and television resources.

These reasons will result in the inefficiency of Blockbuster's operation.

Nancy believes that the data analysis team and movie data database solution proposed by herself can not only effectively solve the above problems, but also actively create business opportunities.

For example, this time, if there is a data analysis team that can receive and process the sales information feedback from terminal chain stores in a timely manner, and confirm that consumers are interested in commercial and financial films, the supply team can quickly check the corresponding content resources from the movie data database and conduct deployment.

If the data can be more refined, it can even judge the content demand in different regions in advance, avoid wasting resources in procurement, warehousing and logistics, and save costs as much as possible.

Moreover, with the data support behind the company's backstage, even shop assistants who don't know much about movie materials can skillfully provide customers with appropriate suggestions at the right time: "Oh, you are interested in this type of movie, maybe you can watch it Wall Street by Oliver Stone."

Across the desk, Amy listened to Nancy's introduction, and felt an urge to rub her forehead: "Nancy, such a team and database may be of great help to Blockbuster, but it is difficult to generate direct revenue. And profits. If we invest, not only will we not make money, but we will need long-term continuous investment, and it is impossible for the company to do this kind of thing.”

"I've already talked with Huyzenga, Amy. Daenerys Entertainment can set up a subsidiary company for this purpose, and then sign a cooperation agreement with Blockbuster. After several years of operation, when Blockbuster is strong enough, it can If we pay to acquire this company, we will be able to recoup our investment at that time. Even, if this company’s effect on Blockbuster is obvious enough, we can request to obtain more shares from Blockbuster through a share swap and merger.”

Amy wanted to refute a few more words, hesitated, and said: "I will pass this report to Simon, Nancy, and if he agrees, I will provide you with a budget. However, you have just recently established Blizzard The studio is also in charge of the consumer product department, if you add this company, are you sure you can handle it?"

"Of course no problem," Nancy nodded, seeing that the matter was settled, she got up and said goodbye: "If there is nothing else, Amy, I will leave first."

Amy sent Nancy to the door, and said, "Do you want to come to the "Rain Man" celebration party tomorrow night?"

《雨人》在此前的2月10日到2月12日周末三天顺利冲破亿元大关，完整的第九周上映后，这部影片七天时间再收663万美元，累计票房达到1亿零632万美元。

After the data came out on Monday, Daenerys Entertainment announced that it will hold a celebration party on Saturday night, which is also a public relations for the film's Oscar sprint.

Nancy didn't have any plans for tomorrow night, but she still refused: "I won't go there."

Amy didn't force it, and reminded: "In this case, you can choose a gift tomorrow, or write a greeting card, and have someone send it to Jenny."

Nancy was a little puzzled: "Huh?"

Amy explained: "Next Wednesday is Simon's birthday, and Jenny will probably fly to Melbourne the day after tomorrow."

Nancy stood there looking at Amy, smiled after a while, and said, "I thought you wouldn't remind me of this kind of thing."

Amy is just 30 years old this year. Although Nancy is a little short and looks younger in appearance, she is actually a few years older than Amy and has more work experience than Amy.Therefore, she was actually very aware of Amy's vaguely guarded attitude towards herself during this time.

Although Simon's 20th birthday party last year had a lot of noise, if it wasn't for Amy's reminder, Nancy really wouldn't remember it.For my boss's birthday, if everyone sent greeting cards, gifts or other greetings, she was the only one who didn't care about it. It's hard to think whether Simon would have any grievances because of this.

"I actually hope you can forget about it," Amy shrugged as she helped Nancy open the office door, "but anyway..."

Seeing that Amy opened the door for herself, Nancy was no longer in a hurry to leave, and said, "Speaking of which, I'm not very good at this kind of thing. What gift do you plan to give our little boss?"

Amy said: "A box of pencils."

Nancy was a little surprised: "Isn't it too shabby?"

"I specially asked someone to bring it back from Germany. Besides, do you think we can give away anything that can surprise Simon? Even if there is, you and I probably can't afford it."

"That's true," Nancy thought of Simon's ever-expanding terrifying net worth, and considered what gift to choose, but she said, "I'm sure I can't afford it, but you don't have to."

Amy's salary plan is not a secret, 5% of the annual net profit share and forward equity rewards of the same value, according to the size of Daenerys Entertainment's net profit last year, this is a huge sum of more than 2000 million US dollars.

In comparison, the agreements signed by Robert Rehm and Robert Iger with Daenerys Entertainment, in addition to the basic salary, the maximum annual bonus amount is only 300 million US dollars.Nancy's own three-year compensation package is only $15 a year plus bonuses of up to $100 million.

Rem, Iger and Nancy's compensation package is actually comparable to that of executives in the same position at the seven major studios.

Everyone knows that Amy gave up the position of Vice President of Fox and went to work for a fledgling "little boy". If she fails, she may become a laughing stock.

Strictly speaking, Amy is another founder of Daenerys Entertainment.

Therefore, Nancy herself didn't feel anything wrong, and she didn't care about what other people would think.

艾米是1987年3月入职，她的年度奖金也要到下个月才会结算。因为新年之后《雨人》、《死亡诗社》等影片的票房分成陆续到账，她能拿到的现金奖励其实比去年2亿3873万美元净利润的5%还要高一些。

However, Amy also knew that some people in the company would feel unbalanced, so she didn't pick up Nancy's topic, but just smiled and said: "The company's financial report last year was just completed in the morning, and everyone's intention is to keep it as secret as possible. So , If you want to see it, come to my office next week, this data cannot be taken out or passed on.”

Nancy nodded understandingly: "I understand."

Chapter 239 The Third Woman (Revised)

Melbourne.

These days, Anthony Johnston deliberately put down his work to assist Simon in dealing with the operation of the Japanese financial market.

In more than two weeks, the North American side successfully completed the cash out of the technology stock market, and the local funds in Australia have also arrived in succession, with the final scale of funds reaching 15 billion US dollars.Among them, Simon's own capital amount is 7000 million U.S. dollars, the Johnston family contributed 5 million U.S. dollars, and other capital forces in Australia totaled 1 million U.S. dollars.

Speaking of which, there are also many people in North America who want to invest in the game recently, but Simon chose to refuse this time.

Funding over $15 billion is already a big goal, and adding more will only dilute profits.

Simon didn't intend to be a big banker who would affect the direction of the Japanese stock market. If he brought down the Japanese stock market, other companies under his name would not be able to do business in this country in the future.

Leading Australian capital into the market, Simon believes that the Johnston family will definitely be able to turn this favor into real connections and benefits.

In North America, although Simon has an American identity, he has very little connection with local forces, and it is impossible for the two parties to establish a deep friendship just by bringing someone casually to make a fortune.

In fact, Simon has unconsciously had the idea of ​​using the Australian Gang as his personal backing.The Australian gang here is definitely not the Australian filmmakers in Hollywood, but the capital forces in Australia.

The plutocratic power structure in the United States has been finalized for many years. After all, a capital upstart like Simon cannot compete with the old plutocrats, and he has no idea of ​​​​attaching to any side.

Therefore, in order to ensure that the industry under his name can continue to expand, Simon must have more bargaining chips.

In the confrontation between capitals, the bargaining chip is capital after all.

Australia's current economy is small, but it's a country anyway.

Simon brings Australian capital together through interest connections, forming a chaebol power that is absolutely no less powerful than any established consortium in the United States. As long as it operates properly, Simon can even gain a dominant position in this system.