The First Thousand and Twenty-Four Chapters Come One After Another

Many years later, when I recalled the summer of 1998, a series of blockbusters such as "Charlie's Angels 3", "The Matrix 2", "The Day After Tomorrow" and so on may be inescapable topics, but for most people, The first thought that popped into their minds was almost always the scene of the extremely frightening ghost crawling out of the TV.

"Midnight" didn't fare too well in its three-day opening weekend, coming in at $26.68 million.

However, as word of mouth for the classic horror film spread rapidly, the film grossed $43.88 million in its first week and seven days.

On the surface, the $43.88 million figure doesn't seem like much of a summer hit. But don't forget, the film also cost only $30 million to make, far less than any of the summer blockbusters.

Moreover, comparing the first three days of the first weekend, it is not difficult to find that the box office number of "Midnight" on the first four days of the week was 17.2 million US dollars, equivalent to 39% of the box office in the first week, far more than most films occupying 30% of the whole week on weekdays. % of the average box office. Combining this, with the feedback of a large number of media and fans, New Line Cinema keenly judged that the reputation of "Midnight Bell" is continuing to ferment, so it decisively increased the number of screens released from 2,161 to 2,395.

Then, in the first week of August, "Midnight Bells" fell unexpectedly at the box office by a very meager 9.7%, collecting an additional $39.65 million. Released in the same week, "The X-Files" only surpassed "Midnight" by less than two million dollars in its first week at the box office, barely taking the top spot at the box office of the week.

Under such circumstances, the new line once again greatly increased the screening scale of "Midnight Bell", bringing the number of North American screens for the film to 2,775. At the same time, after half a month of fermentation, the word-of-mouth and popularity of "Midnight" has reached a peak. There has even been a trend among young people to watch "Midnight" as a challenge. More Under the influence of the media and the public, passers-by and audiences began to enter the cinema.

In the third week, "Midnight Bell", which was suppressed by "The Scorpion King" and "The X-Files" for two consecutive weeks, finally won the top spot in the box office chart of the week, with a single-week box office drop of only 11.2%. Collect another $35.19 million.

Before you know it, many people suddenly discovered that a medium-budget horror film that was originally inconspicuous has reached a cumulative box office of 118.75 million US dollars in three weeks, even surpassing the "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Lethal Weapons 4", which started in the summer. The total North American box office of big-budget films such as The Patriot and Truman World, and, judging from the current situation, the box office potential of "Midnight" is far more than that.

With the help of the Firefly Group, the group of fans of "Midnight Bell", which has gradually formed, began to pay more attention to the box office of this film. The growing popularity and a new wave of publicity have once again attracted a whole new audience.

So, in the fourth week, the box office drop of "Midnight Bell" ended up being a meager 1.7%, yes, 1.7%, not 17%.

The single-week box office of $34.59 million also pushed the film's total North American box office to $146.97 million. This box office figure directly made "Midnight" rushed to the sixth place in the North American box office chart as of August 1998. The position follows "Charlie's Angels 3", "The Day After Tomorrow", "The Matrix 2", "Scorpion King" and "Ace Power 2" in the Easter schedule. And, every other film on the top ten box-office charts cost at least twice as much to make as "Midnight".

At this point, all the media who had originally predicted that the Firefly Group would have a silent summer season were dumbfounded. Even Eric himself did not expect that "Midnight Bell" would have such a strong box office potential.

According to the current box office trend, "Midnight Bell" is likely to have a box office potential of not less than 100 million US dollars, and the film's total North American box office will even exceed that of "The Day After Tomorrow", the flagship of Firefly's summer season.

In the face of such an excellent North American box office, the film's overseas box office will naturally not be inferior, especially in Japan, considering various reasons, just this overseas box office is enough to bring no less than 100 million US dollars to Firefly overseas. box office.

In one summer, there are two works that are enough to rush into the top five of the North American annual box office rankings. Who would dare to say that this is the trough period of Firefly Group's film business?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Russia's economic crisis finally broke out almost the same week that "The Bell" was released.

Unlike the long tug-of-war between Southeast Asian countries, the fragile Russian economy is almost powerless to face the attacks of major hedge funds. The country's foreign exchange reserves of more than 10 billion US dollars are not enough to repay even the huge foreign debts. Not to mention effective intervention in currency exchange rates.

So, in just two weeks, the Central Bank of Russia, which basically did nothing to effectively resist, announced to the outside world that it would completely abandon the protection of the ruble exchange rate.

The ruble, which has been stable for less than three years, plummeted, depreciating more than 50% in just one week.

However, the opponent lays down completely before the fight starts, and the attacker who accumulates enough strength and punches will not have a good result.

Russia's practice of completely letting the ruble depreciate has also brought huge losses to international financial speculators.

After all, foreign exchange futures are a zero-sum game. Only when someone takes over, can both sides of the bet win or lose. The international financial speculators who bought a large amount of rubles in the early stage and prepared to build short positions were targeting those foreign exchange reserves in Russia. Now Russia is not accepting the move. The rubles in the hands of international financial speculators have not only depreciated significantly, but also have to pay high interest costs for short-term lending. It can be said that lost heavily.

In addition, capital such as Soros's Quantum Fund, which was optimistic about Russia's economic recovery in the early stage, invested heavily in its stock market and bonds, was also trapped in the economic quagmire of Russia. It was just the Quantum Fund. After the completion of the cut, the expected loss Possibly more than $3 billion.

I have to say that compared with those countries in Southeast Asia that have been sheared twice in a row, although the economy is also collapsing, the fighting national momentum of Russia, which you want me to finish playing with everyone, is still revealed.

The rapid collapse of Russia, an emerging economy, has accurately confirmed the speculation given by Morgan Stanley more than a month ago. Under the further advocacy and guidance of Morgan Stanley, more and more capital has begun to pay more attention to the Nasdaq technology stock market.

In one month, the Nasdaq index was not only not affected by the Russian economic crisis, but broke through the high of 2,100 points, and almost all mainstream technology stocks were in the red.

On Saturday, August 22, Eric flew from Los Angeles to New York early in the morning.

Today is the day when Firefly Investment and several other major shareholders of AOL signed the equity transfer agreement. Although Saturday is not a working day, "Gravity" is in a tight shooting period, and Eric will only have time on weekends. , New York can only match his schedule.

In the past month, AOL's stock price has reached a maximum of 49.6 billion US dollars without the pressure of firefly investment to reduce its holdings, and it is just around the corner to break the 50 billion US dollar mark.

Although AOL's share price rose nearly 20% in a month, in order to avoid another wave, Eric did not adjust the already negotiated transfer price.

In many cases, giving up the idea of ​​greed can get more. If Eric sits on the ground and starts to raise prices at this time, the confidence that investors have just built up in AOL will definitely be hit hard again, and Firefly Investment's plan to reduce its holdings in the first phase of AOL's stock will also be in jeopardy.

Since Eric gave the same price for the other 15% of the shares that Firefly Investments will reduce through Morgan Stanley, at this time, Morgan Stanley's underwriting plan has not yet started, and a large number of investors have been frequent. Contact Firefly Investments and Morgan Stanley to try to get more subscription shares.

Although according to the regulations of the agreement and sec, the stocks bought at this time will have a lock-up period of half a year, but even if the stock price of AOL continues to remain unchanged for the next half year, they will be able to get 20% of the shares at that time. profit.

Under the favorable economic situation of the Nasdaq market, the performance growth rate of AOL itself is very bright. Therefore, most investment institutions have gradually changed their initial cautious attitude, believing that the possibility of loss of this transaction is very small.

On the plane to New York, Eric was leaning leisurely on the sofa with a box office analysis report of "Midnight Bell" in his hand. Caroline and Mayer were sitting beside him, but they were reporting another. thing.

"Last month, Warner Music, Sony Music, bmg and EMI released their second-quarter financial reports, which fell by 27%, 33%, 29% and 26% respectively compared to the same period last year. The performance of Universal Music, which has integrated business operations, has fallen by 36%, with a loss of US$320 million in a single quarter.”

Mayer gave a general introduction to the current situation, looked at Eric's expression, and continued: "According to the statistics of major record companies and media during this period, the collapse of the revenue of the five major record companies was mainly caused by the end of last year. It is caused by a batch of free mp3 music sharing websites. Among them, there is only a music sharing website called napster, which has more than 7 million registered users in just over half a year, and the number of free music on this website has reached more than 1.6 million. First. Napster was a registered member of the Yahoo Advertising Alliance in the early days. However, in March, with the rapid growth of napster, considering the legal risks involved, Yahoo terminated its cooperation with napster and another batch of pirated music sites in a timely manner. But This time, Yahoo was also included in a batch of lawsuit targets filed by the five major record companies. The reason they sued was that Yahoo contributed to the growth and spread of napster. The five major record companies therefore claimed 100 million US dollars from Yahoo and demanded Yahoo's search The engine actively blocks sites that distribute pirated music content."

Yahoo's IPO is approaching day by day, and the large-scale lawsuit of the five major record companies will bring Yahoo along, apparently to require Yahoo, the first Internet portal platform, to give sufficient cooperation in combating online pirated music.

At this juncture, Yahoo had to make compromises and settle out of court with the five major record companies as soon as possible in order to avoid unforeseen complications. Just like the condition that the five major record companies offered napster to pay $100,000 for each pirated music, the $100 million compensation against Yahoo is definitely not a thought, but in the process of out-of-court settlement, Yahoo must also agree to the five records. More conditions for the company.

"They have learned to be smart this time, and they will save the enemy when they attack," Eric just smiled. After hearing Madonna's reminder in the UK a few months ago, he asked several companies to make preparations for this. Now He was not worried that Yahoo would not be able to handle it, and continued to ask, "What about Firefly Electronics?"

Mayer shook his head and said: "The five major record companies have not yet acted against Firefly Electronics. However, they should file a lawsuit requesting Firefly Electronics to strengthen restrictions on audio copying."

After the lawsuit brought by Sony Records and several other companies last year was directly dismissed by the federal court in San Francisco, the five major record companies obviously knew that their attempts to continue to demand a ban on mp3 players would not succeed, and this time they had to start from other aspects.

"After this time, record companies should be able to see the situation clearly. The trend of digital music is inevitable, and the Yahoo Music Store can just get more licensed music licenses." Eric said, not wanting to worry too much, he looked up. Caroline and Mayer instructed: "Send an email to remind Yahoo to pay attention to the debate in this regard. If someone still can't see the situation clearly, we will help them see clearly."

For several months, the global monthly sales of fireflyer players have remained above 2 million units and have shown a steady growth trend. The trend of portable digital music players replacing traditional music players has been irresistible. In this case, if record companies continue to resist and resist digital music players, it will only lead to more pirated music resources on the Internet.

Talking about these things, the private jet has arrived on the east coast before you know it.

The signing ceremony of the equity transfer was determined to be held at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, which was close to 1:00 p.m. This time, the private plane did not fly to MacArthur Airport in the middle of Long Island, but landed at Kennedy International Airport, which is very close to New York City.

As soon as Eric got off the plane, Chris, John Mark and others greeted him, including several AOL executives including Steve Case. Although the two sides almost completely tore their faces some time ago, this time When faced with Eric, AOL did not dare to ignore the proper etiquette.

After everyone greeted each other and left the airport together, Eric and Chris got into the car dispatched by the Firefly Group and waited for the car to drive smoothly, remembering the expression John Mark had made when he offered to invite him into his car and asked the person beside him. Chris said, "What's wrong with John?"

Chris glanced at the BMW sedan that was following nearby and said, "He probably wanted to explain it to you in advance. You were on the plane, and I didn't have time to tell you. At the luncheon at noon, Philip Pusey Moore told me that Morgan Stanley had confirmed that 15% of AOL's shares were over 70% of the subscription quota. However, perhaps taking credit or something else, John Mark hid this information from us. Also, Philip Purcell should have forcibly intervened in this project. You know, Dean Witt is mainly engaged in the stock distribution and retail business, and their resources and channels in this regard are much stronger than the original Morgan Stanley."

Eric was not very interested in the fight between the CEO of Morgan Stanley and the president, and just warned: "You should pay more attention here, if their infighting affects our interests, we need to be cautious in future cooperation. some."

Chris nodded earnestly and said, "I understand, yes, on your side, the box office of "Midnight Bell" is really surprising."

The topic became lighter, and Eric also smiled: "This is really an accident, I never thought that this horror film would be so successful."