Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 743 Another year of Miss Hong Kong
……

The water in Hollywood is too deep, but it is by no means a tricky slogan, and the Coca-Cola that plunges into it is a bit unbearable. When the movie box office is a big hit, you are excited like you are in the clouds;

The financial situation that seems to be riding a roller coaster has made Coca-Cola executives who are gradually losing their freshness feel bored.They are more used to keeping their finances on the safe side in order to present Wall Street with a nice report.But as the financial situation of the entertainment division assembled by Columbia Pictures has become more and more volatile, the Coca-Cola ship will inevitably rock with it.

In the late 1970s, Columbia Pictures had two unconventional troubles. One was the embezzlement scandal, and the other was being targeted by Kirk Kerkorian. 20.00% of the five shares fell into the other party hand.

The Las Vegas gambling tycoon has caused such misery to MGM, and Hollywood certainly feels sorry for it.Columbia Pictures, which did not want to follow in its footsteps, resorted to antitrust litigation and other means, and finally forced the other party to give up its 20.00% stake and give up its plan to control itself.

In sharp contrast to this, in 1982, Columbia Pictures happily sold itself to the prestigious and powerful Coca-Cola for a price of 7 million U.S. dollars. After hugging this big thick leg, it started Rapid expansion.

First of all, Columbia Pictures acquired 80.00% of the shares of Walter_Reade_Organization, a long-established theater chain, Walter Reade Group, and took the remaining 1985% of the shares in 19.00.

Then, Columbia Pictures acquired Spelling-Goldberg_Productions-Spelling-Goldberg Films, co-founded by famous Hollywood producers Aaron_Spelling-Aaron Spelling and Leonard_Goldberg-Leonard Goldberg. .

Of course, the most famous operation is Columbia Pictures and HBO under the Time Group, and CBS, one of the three traditional TV networks in the United States, jointly created Samsung Films, thus showing its ambition in the TV field exuberant.

In the initial period before the head Frank_Price-Frank Price and Coca-Cola management had conflicts and left, Columbia Pictures performed well in the film, 1982's "Tootsie"-"Mr. Toots", 1983 "The_Big_Chill" in 1984-"The Great Cold", and "The_Karate_Kid" in [-]-"The Kid Is Hard to Deal with", the box office revenues are quite objective.

However, "Ghostbusters", which was also released in 1984 and achieved box office success, had a shooting budget of US$3000 million, which began to expose Columbia Pictures' cost control problems.

During this period, Columbia Pictures also suffered a small setback, which was affected by the North American video game industry crisis that broke out in 1983. The pinball game company Gottlieb, which it acquired in 1976, was forced to close in 1984.

In 1985, Columbia Pictures spent $4 million to acquire the embassy Media Co., Ltd., which had made great achievements in the television field, but CBS withdrew from Samsung Films in the same year.

The following year, Columbia Pictures continued to expand in the field of television, buying Merv Griffin Company, famous for the famous American TV quiz show "Jeopardy!" - "Jeopardy!" for US$2; A few months later, another US$5000 million was spent to acquire Danny Arnold, Danny Arnold's company that owns the sitcom "Barney Miller".

At the same time, Coca-Cola invited the famous British producer David Puttnam to lead the entertainment department that he had built with a lot of money.As a result, this man tried to challenge the existing production model of Hollywood, but ultimately failed at his job and was driven out after only one year on the job.

At this time, Coca-Cola suddenly realized how deep the water in Hollywood was, and hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into it, but the results were still unsatisfactory.

The straw that crushed the last psychological defense of Coca-Cola management was the film "Ishtar" released in 1987 - the unprecedented fiasco of "Ishtar" - which cost a whopping $5100 million to shoot and only reaped just over $1400 million in the end. Cost, and at the same time losing money, the evaluation was extremely poor. It "won" the Golden Raspberry Award for worst screenplay, two nominations for worst movie and worst director.

This loss was worse than that of United Artists' "Heaven's Gate" a few years ago. It shocked Hollywood and made Coca-Cola President Roberto Gosta, who once placed high hopes on the integration of fashion and product strategy, unable to calm down. He made a special call to Tang Huan asked, "How come your Hollywood company is doing so well, but Coca-Cola's turn is struggling?"

Roberto Gosta really can't figure it out. The lineup of "Ista" is quite strong. The actor who plays the male lead is Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman, and the equally famous Warren Beatty, who plays the female lead. The actor is Isabelle Adjani, the number one beauty in France, and the big cast composed of real actors and actresses. How could it be a crushing defeat?
At that time, Tang Huan couldn't help grinning, after all, Coca-Cola also had its share of the money.

It can only be said that Coca-Cola, a self-righteous stick, has stretched its hand too far when it should not be in charge, but has done nothing to control what it should be.

"Istar" is obviously a failure of project management. Although the field is different, the management experience here can always be used for reference.

Seeing that the filming in the politically turbulent desert area of ​​North Africa did not go well, one should be vigilant. How could it be possible for the investment to soar from more than 2000 million US dollars to more than 5000 million US dollars?
The matter has come to this point, it is useless to say more.Tang Huan could only say one sentence regretfully, "It's really too hot-headed!"

As HBO also withdrew from Samsung Film Company, Roberto Gosida, who was hit hard, quickly and vigorously began to clean up Coca-Cola’s entertainment business department: the theater chain Walter Read Group, sold to Tang Huan; the Embassy Media Co., Ltd. The embassy production and embassy home entertainment under the company are also sold to Tang Huan...

In the end, Coca-Cola spun off the entire entertainment business unit and sold it to TriStar Pictures for $31 billion.

The reason for this operation is not that the richest man can't afford it, but that he has to avoid suspicion and anti-monopoly. In order to completely remove the entertainment business department from its financial statements, Coca-Cola can only do this.

This also makes the value of this industry relatively clear a lot—Sony should not plan to take advantage of it, if it wants to succeed, it must offer at least US$31 billion or more.

Columbia Pictures, which regained its independent status, initially divided its equity between Tang Huan and Coca-Cola roughly [-]%, and then Coca-Cola hurriedly pushed it back onto the stock market at the beginning of this year.

However, due to the unsatisfactory performance and the influence of "Black Monday", the stock price of Columbia Pictures fell slightly on the first day of listing.

Coca-Cola, eager to get out, quickly traded out 30.00% of Jiu's shares; Tang Huan took in 5.00% on the surface, and secretly instructed other investment companies to take in 15.00%.

The richest man did this, in addition to preparing for a possible Sony strategy to enter Hollywood in the future in exchange for bargaining chips, the more important purpose is to obtain the copyright.

In the United States, which has a well-established business environment and strong copyright awareness, entertainment content for the general public is not as readily available as the Chinese are accustomed to. Many cable TV stations in North America are still playing old black-and-white Hollywood movies.

All in all, commercial companies will try their best to find ways to let the audience contribute their profits.In this case, excellent copyrights will become more valuable in the future, and the hoarding of the richest man will naturally start from the present.

On the other hand, the reason why Tang Huan was thinking that Sony might continue to enter Hollywood's original time and space routine, such as making a fortune from it and exchanging some chips, was secondary. Hold each other's footsteps.

Although Sony and Tang Huan are generally co-produced together, there are still differences such as the format of the video tape.

For example, VCD has indeed pioneered the commercial use of digital video, but this standard is destined to be just the beginning. Perhaps Sony is holding back its energy secretly, and will make a return to the digital video standard equivalent to the original space-time DVD.

In addition, EA's Xiaobawang game console has been slamming the competing products of Nintendo, Sega, NEC and other peers, which has made them embark on various roads of grouping, among which the cooperation between Nintendo and Sony is the most worthy of vigilance-this If the two are really married, Sony's hardware technology background in consumer electronics products, coupled with Nintendo's long-term deep skills in game content production to please players, it is difficult to estimate what kind of energy will eventually explode.

Therefore, try to distract Sony as much as possible to prevent its invisible layout from obstructing itself in more areas, which is far more important than the apparent profit from buying and selling.

After seeing the instructions with these purposes as the core, Zhuang Menghua suddenly said: "I'm just saying, what about adult beauty, it's too fake, it's so insidious, that's your style."

Tang Huan laughed and corrected the other party's biased conclusion, "Sony has implemented its plan to enter Hollywood as it wished, and I have also relieved the suspicion of boring people about monopolizing Hollywood. It can be described as the beauty of adults and the best of both worlds. "

Having said that, Tang Huan lightly patted the document he had personally drafted in front of him, and pondered: "While stumbling quietly on the negotiation terms, we should also be careful not to delay Sony's acquisition plan because of this." Pull it up, and try to secure the funds as much as possible.”

Zhuang Menghua asked with concern: "Are you worried that the economic bubble in Japan will suddenly burst and hit Sony's plan?"

In 1985, when the Plaza Agreement was signed, the Nikkei average index of the Japanese stock market closed at 13113.32 points at the end of the year, with an annual increase of 13.61%; in the following 1986, the Nikkei average index soared by 42.61%. The heat is evident.

The Plaza Accord, signed in 1985, aimed to promote the depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Japanese yen and German mark through bilateral agreements at the G1987 Finance Ministers' Meeting.But this momentum was out of control, and by 1, the yen had risen to a new price of 150 yen to the dollar.

In order to stabilize the international currency market and stop the continued depreciation of the US dollar caused by the Plaza Accord, ministers from the G1987 countries gathered at the Louvre in Paris, France in February 2. Although Italy eventually withdrew, it still signed the Louvre Agreement. to put the brakes on this momentum.

However, the Nikkei average remained unaffected and continued to rise, breaking through the 20000-point mark, and withstood the pressure of the global stock market crash brought about by "Black Monday", with an annual increase of more than 15%.

At this stage, investors are full of confidence that the Nikkei Stock Average will reach 30000 points this year.But rational people all know that the stock market has its ups and downs, and only by calmly discovering the turning point can we truly become a winner.But that’s where the difficulty lies. No one can analyze the precise results in such complicated changes, and speculators like Tang Huan, who are highly involved, have to wait until the golden wind blows. After all, Hundreds of millions of dollars cannot be escaped overnight.

"I do have this concern." Tang Huan nodded, "I estimate that the Japanese stock market should reach its peak next year. In addition, I may participate in the Arctic scientific expedition plan next year. There will be a blank period of control, so I have to be careful. Ah. On my next trip to Japan, I will keep my eyes open and observe for myself.”

……

Tang Huan soon flew back to Asia, and the first stop was naturally Xiangjiang, which he had not visited for a while. It happened to be Miss Hong Kong again, so he caught up with the excitement of the finals.

When the Miss Chinese Contest appeared, the Miss Xiangjiang finals, which were relatively stable at the end of May and early June, began to be pushed back to curb the limelight of competitors.

After the Miss Chinese Contest moved to Canada this year, the Miss Xiangjiang finals were scheduled for late August, which originally belonged to the Miss Chinese Contest.

Otherwise, Mr. Richest Man would really have missed it.

Flipping through the roster of contestants, Tang Huan had a playful smile on his face. It was no surprise that the most popular candidate was there.

(End of this chapter)