America's Road to Fame

Chapter 74 Marvel
"Now our "Observer" APP has been launched on the AppStore, and the Android version of the APP is also under intensive development."

William Chen came to the newspaper office of the "New York Observer", and now he is lucky to have Kaplan back. He is indeed an experienced newspaper man, and he has a very moderate control over the content. Now the paper newspaper has regained its victory. It has returned the hearts of users, and the breadth of reports has also been significantly improved.

Of course, this is also due to the investment of funds, which has increased the scale of editorial reporters and made the newspaper's sources of news more extensive.

The online editor Alan has also done a good job. The just-launched Observer APP, William Chen, has also been downloaded and used. This app is doing well, and in order to promote it, all newly downloaded and registered users will be given a month's mobile version of "" New York Observer.

The key point is that this measure did not reduce the sales of paper newspapers too much, because the target groups are different. Most of the users who download Observer APP are young people, and they themselves are not interested in paper newspapers.

"Next, we need to enrich the content of the APP. We can make a newsletter every day, summarizing the most important news of the day in the shortest words, and attach a link to the detailed content at the end. Well, it can be called "Today's Highlights", As a column in the obvious position of the home page in the APP."

"Also, the audio-reading function I mentioned before. You can contact Nuance and entrust them to develop a text-to-speech built-in program for us. We must pursue quality and try to be as close as possible to a normal human voice. Before, You can find some professional dubbing professionals to record the vocal readings of more important news and articles, and these can be used as value-added services after testing to test user feedback.”

Nuance Company was known by Chen William in the conversation with the company founder when he acquired Siri Company.This is the world's largest company specializing in the development and sales of speech recognition software, image processing software and input method software.

Siri is cooperating with Nuance to use their services to recognize the user's voice and give feedback in the form of voice, while the main research direction of Siri is the part of artificial intelligence.

Nuance is currently listed on Nasdaq, with a market value of about US$20 billion. After this company entered William Chen’s field of vision, it became one of his investment targets. However, the company’s market value is somewhat high and it can be replaced. Sex is also big, so there is no rush to make a decision.

Kaplan also brought up another matter. Recently, he discovered a good novel, which is being serialized in both paper newspapers and electronic editions, and has been loved by many readers.The name of the novel is "Gossip Girl".

oh? Gossip Girl?William Chen remembered hearing this name in his previous life, but it was a very popular American drama, which was adapted from a novel.In his impression, that American TV series should have been released for many seasons, which shows that the ratings are still very good.

Most American dramas are filmed and broadcast at the same time. Once the ratings are not good, the episodes will be cut decisively. Therefore, American dramas that can produce many seasons are definitely popular and have long-term ratings, such as "Friends". , "CSI" and so on.

Therefore, Chen William said to him decisively: "I also read this novel on the APP, and I know that it is written about the life of a girl born in the Upper East Side. It is really good, so sign a long-term contract with the author and keep it. Her. In addition, I am also optimistic about the adaptation of this novel into a TV series, and I will find someone to contact her to buy the adaptation rights."

Up to now, the benefits of William Chen's initial purchase of the "New York Observer" have gradually emerged. In terms of media, the future will be dominated by online media, but the role of the "New York Observer" is to provide him with a A batch of professional media content workers, based on this, can be expanded to the aspect of network media.

Just like in Huaguo in the previous life, the field of Weibo used to be extremely competitive, including Zhalang, Penguin, Wangyi and other Internet giants all participated in it. Why did Zhalang win the final competition?

One of the important reasons is that the DNA of this company is very suitable for Weibo. From portals to blogs to Weibo, their media content has a strong combat effectiveness, which is in line with the characteristics of Weibo.Without relevant experience, the control of the content is not in place, and it is easy to cross the line. The earlier Fanfou is a typical example.

In the United States, the importance of public opinion is needless to say, so Chen William wants to have a certain right to speak in this regard, and the "New York Observer" is a key for him to enter this field.

In the field of film and television, William Chen has also initially been involved in content, production, and channels. Netflix will develop in these three areas in the future. He has Future Pictures in his hand, although it is still a small company , but it is still under development. After "Magic Mike", he is ready to start filming "Gossip Girl".

In terms of content, the "New York Observer" provided him with "Gossip Girl", and another of his goals-Marvel.

Currently, Nelson is in contact with Marvel, which is headquartered on Fifth Avenue in New York, hoping to negotiate on the investment of Meta Investment Company.

According to the information that William Chen saw, Marvel’s current situation is not good. Since the end of the last century, the sales of their comics have been on the decline. They have previously made film adaptations of comics including "Spiderman" and "X-Men" It was sold to film companies such as Sony, but after experiencing a lot of chaos, it is still sluggish.

In fact, at that time, Sony had the opportunity to buy the film adaptation rights of all Marvel characters. At the end of the last century, Marvel filed for bankruptcy because of a debt of 7 million US dollars. At that time, the court even appointed the trustee to sell Marvel, but in the end Marvel saved the crisis and avoided the fate of being sold.

But in order to survive, he once proposed to pack all the comic characters at a price of 2500 million US dollars and sell them to Sony for the film adaptation rights. However, Sony only had Spider-Man in their eyes and did not think other characters were of any value, so it ended up costing 2000 million. Dollar bought the film adaptation rights of Spider-Man, and was not even willing to spend an extra $500 million to buy other characters.

In their words, it is-Marvel's superheroes, except for Spider-Man, are not worth mentioning.

Ha ha.

Now, Marvel is still not as powerful as before, so in order to get out of the predicament, coupled with the success of the "Spider-Man" series of movies launched by Sony Pictures, the president of Marvel at this time, Kevin Feige, hopes to form Marvel's own The film and television production department, Marvel Pictures, gradually took back the copyrights of superheroes that had been released, and filmed and released the superheroes in their hands.

But what's embarrassing is that they don't have enough funds to carry out these plans now, and because of Marvel's chaos over the years, whether it is banks or other film companies, they are not optimistic about Marvel's plan to produce their own movies. Therefore, it is not easy to obtain financing.

In Marvel's plan, they are preparing to shoot two films, "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" at the same time, gradually launching their Marvel universe concept.

There is no way to do this. Their more popular superheroes, such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc., have been authorized, and they can only pick from other characters to find a more suitable one. .

And they predict that the two films "Iron Man" and "Invincible Hulk" will only cost more than 3 million US dollars in production, plus publicity and distribution and recovery of film copyrights, at least 4-5 million US dollars will be spent.

But with Marvel's current situation, where can it get the money?At first, it was not that they did not think about seeking cooperation with other film companies to co-produce these two films first. If the effect is good, they will start their own Marvel universe plan after recovering part of the funds.

But after asking all the big six in Hollywood, all the companies have no interest in their plan.If it's a popular superhero like Spider-Man or Fantastic Four, maybe they'll consider it.

As for Iron Man and Hulk, these two heroes will also be popular?This has almost become the consensus of all film companies at this time, that is, Marvel's attempt will eventually end in failure.

In the end, Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel, even prepared to mortgage all their assets to the bank for loans to complete the plan this time.

But in that case, it can only be regarded as the last desperate.If the movie project this time fails, the only thing waiting for Marvel is bankruptcy.

Kevin Feige's idea is that if this inaction continues, Marvel's return is still slow death, so why not take a gamble, maybe you can turn salty fish over.

At this time, Nelson came to Marvel on behalf of Meta Investment Company.

(End of this chapter)