Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 621

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In fact, as they took on projects from the government and the military, companies like Tang Huan began to be investigated by intelligence agencies, including the FBI. This is what the question should mean, and it is nothing to make a fuss about.

Some of these investigations are conducted covertly, some openly, some in consultation with third parties, and even more directly.Tang Huan once accepted telephone interviews from FBI investigators. Some of the questions were even "interesting", such as whether he had a history of drug use, how many times he had been high, etc.

It was only with the public listing of Fangyuan Computer Company that Tang Huan tried his best to get rid of the daily management responsibilities of the company, and this kind of harassment began to disappear.

After drinking the cup of hot milk in a leisurely manner, Tang Huan slowly ordered: "In this way, you keep calm and do whatever you need to do; let the younger sister come out from Goldman Sachs to help temporarily; in addition, the business volume of EA in Japan It is very large, including real estate projects such as theme parks, with ample room for operation, and can further cover through its subsidiaries."

Zhuang Menghua, who graduated from Harvard Business School, has experienced well in the past few years, enough to take on the heavy responsibility.

Tang Huan planned to let himself, who was further freed from the specific work, stand in the light and attract the attention of those who were interested as much as possible, so that the entrusted confidants could handle the secret work more freely.

In fact, he has nothing to be afraid of. Merchants seek profit, and the tricks in it can be understood by sensible people-the two brothers Nelson Hunter and William Hunter brought the silver futures market to the brink of collapse, and there is no prison in the end. This is a major feature of the American ecology.

The point is, as long as you are worthy, you will be welcomed.Mark Rich insisted on doing oil business with Iran, violated the US trade embargo, and finally had to flee to Switzerland.

Tang Huan, who has mastered information asymmetry, sees through the rules, and has controlled enough resources, is very calm from a high position, which is not something close subordinates like Tang Wenmao can understand.

After Tang Wenmao left, Tang Huan could not go back to sleep in, and started a day's work.

During lunch, my little cousin Meng Jing came over.She just entered college this year, Tang Huan was worried about this wild girl, so she arranged to go to Stanford University nearby so that she could take care of her.

"After going to college, I can finally breathe the air of freedom." Tang Huan joked, because the management of the high school the other party attended was very strict, which made him complain a lot.

"That's it." Meng Jing took a sip of juice and replied nonchalantly.

The two were chatting about interesting things on campus, and Spielberg and George Lucas came over with drinks.

"Two, rare customers, and they appeared at the same time." Tang Huan said with some surprise: "Didn't you come to Cupertino for a special trip to taste our restaurant's food?"

Tang Huan was really surprised. Both of them are busy people. In addition to supervising the production of this summer's "Back to the Future", Spielberg is also directing a movie called "The Color Purple"; George Lew On Cass's side, the endless quarrels in the divorce lawsuit alone were enough to make him miserable.

Speaking of which, George Lucas and his first wife, Marcia Lucas, were kindred spirits. She was a film editor.In 1974, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Editing for his low-budget and fresh work "American Graffiti", which was a box office hit.

After that, Marcia Lucas also served as editorial supervisor of "Taxi Driver", starring Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, which won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival; Cass won the 1977 Academy Award for Best Editing for Star Wars.

It's a pity that things are unpredictable. This life partner and business partner will now have to spend time together.

"The restaurant here is really not like a staff canteen. The food quality can be compared with the professional restaurants outside." George Lucas complimented with a smile.

Tang Huan guessed that something must be wrong with the two people running over, but he didn't ask in a hurry, he just asked them to sit down.

Spielberg was the first to explain, "George's cash flow has been tight recently, so he plans to sell some businesses under Lucasfilm, and he wants to ask Don if he is interested."

Among the series of companies created by George Lucas, the most familiar one may be Industrial Light and Magic, which deals with visual effects—Industrial Light and Magic. In fact, SkywalkerSound, which handles sound effects, is also important. Games LucasArts - Lucasfilm games and more.

Hearing that Spielberg said that George Lucas was going to sell some companies to cash out, Tang Huan immediately guessed that George Lucas was affected by the divorce lawsuit, plus the "Star Wars" It is impossible for his income to remain strong all the time, which has caused his cash flow to be so tight.

It must be pointed out that for these celebrities in the United States, if there is no agreement, the cost of divorce is often very high.

Take Robert Noyce, one of the founders of Intel, for example. Because of his extramarital affair, his first wife filed a divorce lawsuit with him in a California court and directly divided half of his family property worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

George Lucas is in such a difficult situation now, he must have net worth, but cash is another matter.

Tang Huan reckoned that George Lucas hadn't reached the point of selling Industrial Light & Magic, so he asked curiously, "Which departments or subsidiaries does George plan to sell?"

"Computer department." George Lucas replied: "At present it has two main components, a team responsible for developing custom computers that can digitize images on live-action film and incorporate cool special effects; A team focused on computer animation."

"I'm going, isn't this the predecessor of Pixar Animation Studio!" Tang Huan immediately reacted, and wondered secretly, "Why hasn't Jobs hooked up with this money-losing guy?"

Then he suddenly realized that George Lucas was troubled by divorce lawsuits, and Jobs was not much better, also entangled in lawsuits-Apple was preparing to sue him for digging his own foot.

In other words, Jobs hasn't had time to spare time to take care of other things.

To be honest, Tang Huan was not very interested in this deal.Gein's industry layout has basically taken shape in the fields it is currently involved in, and it has also gone through a stage of brutal expansion. Now the focus is on "practicing internal strength".

DigitalDomain——Digital Domain is D2. It is not an exaggeration to say that it has surpassed Industrial Light and Magic in terms of visual effects and computer animation.

If you have to find one factor that can impress Tang Huan, it might be talent.

But his company has already made a name for itself, and talents in the IT field often come to him on their own initiative; as for the relatively scarce artistic and creative talents, they have also recruited a lot.

For example, John Lasseter, who was fired by Disney, turned around and happily joined D2 after being frustrated.

As a result, the computer department of Lucasfilm, whether in terms of technology or talents, could not generate the attraction that Tang Huan had to take action.

You know, in the original time and space, the Pixar animation studio in the hands of Jobs had been losing money before "Toy Story" was released.And the success of "Toy Story" also has a certain coincidence. At that time, Disney did not plan to release it online in movie theaters.

It is estimated that only Jobs, a paranoid, would spend tens of millions of dollars out of his own pocket to tenaciously maintain the survival of Pixar Animation Studios, but it almost couldn't stand it, and sold "Toy Story" before it was released.

Seeing that Tang Huan didn't make a statement right away, George Lucas couldn't help but feel a chill in his heart. He probably would have made a futile trip this time.

Lucasfilm's computer division isn't deserted, it's just that willing buyers have been hesitant.

The main reason is that, under the leadership of Tang Huan, the entry threshold of the rapidly developing computer industry has begun to increase at this stage, and non-professionals who want to make quick money may plunge into it and disappear.The prospects for non-mainstream computers like Lucasfilm's computer division are too confusing.

In this case, the highest offer that George Lucas got was only 500 million US dollars, which was a bit far from his expectation, so that Edwin Catmull, the head of Lucasfilm's computer department, and Eric Elvie Smith planned to buy the company according to the market, and then recruit a powerful investor to continue the operation.

George Lucas had to raise enough cash flow within a limited time.Seeing that there was not much time left for him to raise funds, he planned to sell at a loss.

After Spielberg knew about this, he suggested that George Lucas should take the initiative to contact Tang Huan. The richest man has always paid attention to the sparks that may erupt after the combination of computer technology and creativity, including art. The computer department of Cass Films will be able to get into the eyes of others, and then get a satisfactory quotation.

In this way, George Lucas, who had no choice but to be persuaded, decided to follow the enthusiastic Spielberg to try his luck with Tang Huan; but judging from the other party's reaction, it seemed that there was no way.

Seeing this scene, Spielberg also felt a little embarrassed, and was about to try to persuade by insinuating, Meng Jing, who was sitting next to Tang Huan, muttered in Mandarin: "Are you worthy of being so stingy? Things tested in the movie "Star Wars" After all, it won’t be too bad. Even if you don’t need it, you can’t keep it for others, anyway, you are not short of money.”

"You little prodigal girl..." Tang Huan laughed out loud at being teased by his little cousin, but the sentence "I don't need it and can't keep it for others" made him feel moved.

Sometimes, it must be admitted that "people make things happen". Edwin Catmull and Elvy Smith, the current heads of Lucasfilm's computer department, are like this for the Pixar animation studio in the original time and space.Although the latter was kicked out because of conflicts with Jobs, and then deliberately removed from the history of Pixar Animation Studios, the credit cannot be erased.

For these two alone, it was worth buying Lucasfilm's computer division, while also selling George Lucas and Spielberg's favor.

Now Warner boss Steve Ross and Universal Pictures president Sid Sheinberg are trying to win over Spielberg in various ways, and they can't carelessly give up this connection.

More importantly, controlling the computer department of Lucasfilm under the leadership of Edwin Catmull can also cut off the help of Pixar Animation Studios to Disney in the animation field in the original time and space.

Calculated in this way, the little cousin's playful words of "I don't need it and can't keep it for others" still contain a considerable amount of game philosophy.

Tang Huan, who changed his mind in a blink of an eye, immediately laughed, "Lucasfilm and the following subsidiaries, I have long admired the innovations in film creativity and computer technology. Since George decided to sell Lucasfilm If you are in the computer department of the industry, then I will continue, and I will definitely give you a competitive and satisfactory quotation."

Hearing this, both George Lucas and Spielberg breathed a sigh of relief. The former no longer had to secretly make a sale price of $500 million; face.

George Lucas is also a real person. He specifically explained to Tang Huan and reminded: "Tang, you have to be mentally prepared. Compared with developing computers, people in this department care more about and are more willing to make Animated film."

Tang Huan smiled lightly, and said playfully: "My computer research and development capabilities are already strong enough, but animation production doesn't mind adding a new force, so that I can make full use of the hardware and software platforms I provide."

……

The reason why Tang Huan thinks that Edwin Catmull and Elvie Smith have the ability to "make things happen because of people" is that Gein is both an accomplished computer scientist and computer graphics scientist.

In the original time and space, Pixar Animation Studios is commendable and can produce technical research and development achievements, such as Reyes rendering architecture, RenderMan specification, alpha channel that supports image transparency and translucency, depth buffer for processing image depth coordinates in [-]D graphics, etc. It is inextricably linked with them.

Therefore, after deciding to buy the computer department of Lucasfilm, Tang Huan, who was already very busy, specially took the time to go to Lucas Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, where its headquarters is located, which is connected to downtown San Francisco through the Golden Gate Bridge. .

Obviously, after the acquisition of the Lucasfilm Computer Division, which has a total of about 40 employees, it will move from this remote location.

After seeing the managers Edwin Catmull and Elvy Smith, Tang Huan immediately noticed the unnaturalness and disappointment on their faces. After all, these two had planned to take advantage of the opportunity to become their own bosses. Unexpectedly, George ·Lucas suddenly found a buyer whose strength could not compete.

"Why, you don't like my new employer?" Tang Huan asked with a half-smile.

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(End of this chapter)