Chapter 731 Gap

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"It's really hard to be like Buffett. In fact, if most people can have his level of status and wealth, it's absolutely difficult to keep doing one thing without distraction for decades," Eric said. Looking at Caroline's pretty face, she said, "However, I found that you have some potential similar to Buffett."

Ordinary people always have too many distractions and desires in their hearts, which actually become the biggest obstacle to preventing a person from moving forward. Eric couldn't see these things from Caroline. From the first time they met two years ago to now, the simple and pure temperament of this girl has not changed much, plus she is smart. With an unusually small brain, Eric believes that if Caroline concentrates on developing in the direction of investors like Buffett, she will definitely achieve extraordinary achievements in the future.

Caroline was a little embarrassed by Eric's praise. She was not as familiar with Buffett as Eric, so she didn't know what similar potential she had with Buffett. The little hand under the desk pinched the professional suit. She was still embarrassed to ask, and said, "Eric, if there is nothing else, I'm going back to work."

With a smile on the corner of Eric's mouth, he couldn't help but tease: "Don't want to chat with me?"

Knowing that Eric was joking with herself again, Caroline couldn't help shaking her head solemnly: "But, it's working time now."

Eric looked at Caroline's somewhat old-fashioned appearance very much, and continued: "You are my assistant, any of my needs can become your work content, even chatting."

"It's not like that," Caroline retorted, blinking her eyes.

However, having said this, Caroline suddenly had the shadow of Kelly in her mind, thinking of the intimacy that this mature and capable but full of charm female boss occasionally showed with Eric. And the relationship between the two is not too secret, Caroline couldn't help but have a very absurd idea in her little brain: Is this also the work of a female assistant? If so, if he asks himself... …

As the thought deepens. Caroline's face turned red before she knew it, and her bright eyes glanced at Eric secretly, then quickly avoided it.

Seeing Caroline's inexplicably rosy face, Eric asked amusingly, "What are you thinking of?"

"No, no." Caroline shrank her neck and stood up immediately: "I'm going back to work."

After that, without waiting for Eric to answer, Caroline turned around and escaped from Eric's office.

It was as if he was about to be held down by the Great Demon King a second later.

Alas, to dare to neglect the boss so much, it seems that the salary will be deducted and punished.

Eric thought unscrupulously, pressed the call button of the landline next to him, summoned the secretary outside, and asked the other party to send her the memo that Caroline left on his desk.

July. Most companies have begun to count their revenue performance in the first half of the year, and Firefly is no exception. With the rapid recovery of the U.S. economy, Firefly's film, television, theme parks, peripheral stores and other businesses have maintained a very strong growth momentum compared to the same period last year. There is no suspense that the revenue has exceeded 10 billion US dollars.

At the same time, "Fortune" magazine released the list of the world's top 500 companies for the first time in July. Before that, "Fortune" magazine only counted the top 500 domestic companies in the United States.

Despite the bursting of the bubble in the early 1990s, Japan still occupies six places in the top 10 of the world's top 500, and General Motors, which ranks first in the United States, can only rank fifth in the entire list. The top four are all Japanese consortiums. Firefly Group's annual revenue of about 20 billion US dollars is very inconspicuous in front of the first-ranked Mitsubishi Corporation's 175.8 billion US dollars in revenue.

Although Eric lamented the huge gap with these world-class corporate oligarchs, he would not belittle himself. As long as all the companies in the entire Firefly system grow fully, they will definitely become giants that everyone needs to look up to. Moreover, with the rapid development of high-tech, this day will not be too far away.

In the sharp corner manor, Eric was sitting on the sofa by the curtain wall and was flipping through Fortune magazine. Natasha walked in with Amy Pascal and helped them make coffee. The twins walked upstairs quietly. Today is July 9th. Tomorrow, the Yahoo annual meeting will officially start. Eric will soon To fly to Boston, Drew and the twins were packing their bags upstairs.

Amy sat down on the opposite sofa, took a sip of coffee, glanced at the magazine in Eric's hand, and smiled: "Eric, I decided you should like Forbes more."

Knowing that Amy was referring to the Forbes Rich List, Eric said, "Always stare at those who easily lose their initiative, or face the reality and motivate yourself."

Amy shook her head and sighed: "You have already left everyone behind. It's hard to imagine where you will go in the future."

"Anyway, I don't have the good habit of stopping and waiting for others," Eric smiled and asked, "Drew said that you talked to Kevin Costner about the sequel to "Mission Impossible" yesterday, and it turned out that How about it?"

The $175 million "Future Water World" was officially released the day before yesterday, and the box office on the first day was only more than $6 million. Although this figure is almost the same as the original "Forrest Gump", the heavyweight of the two films is also very different. What's more, after the release of "Future Water World", it also received a lot of bad reviews. It is impossible for the box office to go out of the long-term. In addition, the living space is squeezed by many blockbusters that are still in theaters and are about to open, and the prospects are extremely bleak.

After the box office was released on the first day, Kevin Costner's last hope was shattered, and he took the initiative to contact Huahua Pictures, hoping to start the sequel of "Mission Impossible" to maintain his popularity.

"It's just a preliminary contact," Amy replied: "I hope to sign two sequels at one time, Kevin Costner is only willing to sign one, and, in terms of remuneration, they are not willing to make Too much concession."

Although the two blockbusters "Law Enforcement Titans" and "Future Water World" have been hit in a row, "Mission Impossible" was just a big success last year, and its popularity is still at its peak. Kevin Costner is reluctant to do too much. The concession is not surprising.

"But the initiative is always on our side, let's talk slowly." Eric said after listening.

Amy nodded and said, "I met Joe Silver yesterday, and he asked me to ask you if the agreement last year counted."

Amy's tone was a little suspicious. Apparently Joe Silver didn't make things clear to her.

Last year at the "True Lies" celebration banquet, Eric met Joe Silver, who happened to be the producer of "The Matrix". Intend. Eric talked to Amy about the ins and outs of the future, and said: "Although "Fair Game" failed. But it is undeniable that Joe Silver is a producer who is very good at making action movies, and I think he is very suitable for being in charge. The Matrix series."

After Amy heard this, she shook her head and said, "Eric, I don't think this is a good idea."

"Why?" Eric asked in confusion.

"Do you remember Peter Cooper and John Peters?"

Eric nodded. After the two left Columbia, they faded out of Hollywood. After all, few people would be willing to invite these two prodigals as producers, but. With a 'brilliant resume' that lost more than two billion dollars in assets in Colombia, few people in Hollywood will forget the two of them.

Amy continued: "At the beginning, Sony hired Peter Cooper and John Peters from Time Warner to be the CEO and president of Columbia, but they still had contracts with Warner at the time. Sony spent $200 million to buy them. They got rid of the studio affiliated with Warner, but because of the contract, they later compensated Time Warner for 800 million US dollars. His production company is also affiliated with Warner, and he has signed a long-term contract with Warner himself. He has not even participated in the production of any film other than Warner over the years. Time Warner is in a very bad situation now. In this case, If Firefly takes the initiative to poach people, they will not let it go easily, and the price Firefly will pay will not be much lower than that of Sony."

Eric listened to Amy finish. He can only shake his head regretfully. If Joe Silver can turn to Firefly, he doesn't mind paying Time Warner a proper liquidated damages, but Eric will never take advantage of Sony.

Speaking of which, although the summer season is not over yet, Warner's distribution strategy of replacing quality with quantity in this summer season in order to improve performance is doomed to fail in Eric's view.

Three of the five planned films have already been released. But with the exception of "Batman Forever" which was decent at the box office, "Fair Game" at the end of May and the just-released "Waterworld" both ended in failure, although there will be Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Waterworld" in the next two weeks. Evaporating Secret Order and Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's "The Wire", but in Eric's memory, neither of these two films did much at the box office.

The box office results of "Evaporating Secret Order" are likely to be similar to Fox's "Die Hard 3" in May. They belong to the kind of old-fashioned action films that barely break 100 million in China and are slightly better overseas. Although "Pirates of Fire" is a classic, But the film's nearly three-hour run will also largely limit its box-office size.

Because none of the five films has a special effects blockbuster that may be a big hit overseas, and at this time, Batman's overseas box office appeal is not even as good as that of North America. In this way, the total global box office that the five films can get in the future will only be At about $1 billion, this figure is only slightly more than Firefly's "Jurassic Park 2" at the global box office.

With the excellent reputation and the popularity accumulated by the first film, although the global box office of "Jurassic Park 2" cannot reach the global box office of the first film, it is almost the same. What's more, the entire production and publicity cost of "Jurassic Park 2" is only about 150 million US dollars. Just the box office has made Firefly a huge profit, but the average production cost of Warner's five films is close to 100 million US dollars. US dollars, the total production and distribution expenditures even reached a huge US$700 million, and the global box office of US$1 billion was far from being able to recover such a huge cost for Time Warner. Compared with the weak loss of US$90 million last year, it was affected by the film business. The drag of Time Warner's losses this year will further expand.

Perhaps it's time to test whether Time Warner's board of directors has the possibility of splitting the business. Relying on the advantages of the second largest cable TV operator in the United States, several well-known premium cable stations in the future will basically have a more or less shareholding relationship with Time Warner. And this one happens to be the short board of the Firefly Group.

"Eric, what are you thinking?" Amy's voice suddenly came from his ear.

Eric retracted his thoughts, smiled apologetically, and said, "It's nothing, let's talk about MGM."

I had a casual chat just now, but the main purpose of Amy's visit today was the acquisition of MGM by Flower Pictures. Taking advantage of the period before Eric left Los Angeles, Amy came to exchange this matter with Eric.

Amy nodded and didn't ask why Eric was distracted just now, saying: "Vivendi, Kerkorian, and the three forces that want to buy MGM's temporary offer are all about $1.5 billion. After news broke that Studios and DreamWorks might cut their deal with MGM, neither of the other two made another offer. Vivendi executives and Kerkorian have both been in touch with me and hope to be able to work with them. When you meet, they know that Huahua Pictures does not have enough funds for the acquisition, so they all hope to cooperate on this acquisition. Lyon Credit, their offer is 1.8 billion US dollars, and everyone is temporarily deadlocked ."

Eric listened to Amy quietly with the coffee cup in his hand, and was also thinking quickly in his heart.

Even if the final purchase price is maintained at around $1.5 billion, it will not be easy for Huahua Pictures to spend the money.

In Eric's plan, Firefly Group will buy out the distribution rights of "Forrest Gump" overseas and video tapes and TV broadcasts with US$300 million in cash. The "Mission Impossible" released by Huahua Pictures at the end of last year, the income will be used to repay the production financing of the previous films. The next "Wonderful Night at the Museum" was used as a bargaining chip to recover the copyright of Marvel's superheroes and give Huahua Pictures. The income it brings is also limited, not to mention that the income settlement of "Wonderful Night at the Museum" will probably wait until the end of the year.

After all, the funds available to Huahua Pictures are only the domestic box office revenue brought by "Forrest Gump" and the buyout funds of Firefly, which are roughly around 400 million US dollars, and there is still a big gap from 1.5 billion US dollars. .

ps. For the children who are chasing more, do you still have free appreciation tickets and starting coins? The countdown to the 515 red envelope list is coming. Let me get a ticket, ask for an extra ticket and an appreciation ticket, and finally rush! (To be continued.) Enable new URL