Hollywood Road

I just got the news this morning...

Seeing Murphy sitting on the sofa, Bill Rosses said succinctly, At the Sony Entertainment executive meeting, many people once again brought up the plan to spin off Sony Columbia Pictures and sell it as a package.

Murphy nodded. Ever since the news of Sony Columbia Pictures' divestiture and sale first came out, he had been keeping an eye on Sony Entertainment. However, he is also preparing to make a decision to try to buy Columbia Pictures.

So, Murphy said directly to Bill Rossis, I'm going to buy Sony Columbia Pictures.

Bill Rossis had known about Murphy's plan for a long time and was not surprised.

Is there anything I need to do? he asked.

Now Murphy and the Stanton party members are his most important clients. Without the support of these people, his partner status will not be stable.

Of course. Murphy was not polite to Bill Rossis at all, Bill, I need you to convince CAA's partners to let CAA fully assist me in completing this acquisition.

Although after so many years of directing career and film investment, I have accumulated a lot of money, and various assets are worth billions of dollars, but it is definitely a big deal to buy Columbia Pictures, one of the six traditional Hollywood companies. Very difficult thing.

This kind of acquisition involving billions of dollars in assets is not that I pay for it, you agree, the two parties simply say a few words, and then it is done with a slap on the head.

It's either a fantasy, or a child's play house, or a group of psychopaths...

Not to mention anything else, financing alone is quite troublesome.

Murphy is not going to complete this acquisition with a 'sole proprietorship'. Only a fool will pour all his funds into a project. To his current level, of course the funds cannot be put on one project, just like all the funds in this country. Like acquisitions, financing or loans is the most reasonable way.

Even, like Shanghai Disneyland, which uses future ticket income as collateral to obtain loans, if it really reaches an agreement with Sony Entertainment, he can use the film copyrights in Columbia Pictures' film library as collateral for financing.

Of course, several promising partners can also be brought in.

Although this may cause trouble, in the business circle, intrigue is the most normal situation, and he is not afraid of it at all.

As for choosing CAA, on the one hand, he is now the number one customer in CAA, and the two parties have cooperated for ten years. As long as the interests are consistent, CAA will definitely help him complete this acquisition; on the other hand, CAA has experience in this field. Entertainment acquired Columbia Pictures, and the middleman or what facilitated the deal was Netbsp created by Michael Ovitz; although Michael Ovitz is gone now, the strength of CAA is better than that of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Only strong but not weak.

Bill Rosses, one of the partners of CAA, also knew what Murphy was thinking. After thinking about it for a while, he nodded and said, No problem, I can bring your words directly to the partner meeting.

That's good. Murphy is very clear about the fact that the purpose of business cooperation is profit, so he added, If caa can assist Stanton Studios to acquire Sony Columbia Pictures at a reasonable price, I will come up with this deal Three percent of the quota, as netbsp; Three percent? Bill Rossis immediately widened his eyes. Even if the situation of Sony Columbia Pictures is not good, the purchase price cannot drop by 5 billion US dollars.

Such 3% can be worth more than half a year's profit of CAA.

In this case... Bill Rossis said confidently to Murphy, I'm 90% sure to persuade the company to participate in this acquisition.

Murphy nodded lightly. Commercial companies are not charities, and they want the horses to run.

It is natural to feed the horses.

The two exchanged opinions again. After all, the acquisition is not a trivial matter, and this is only the initial intention. If Stanton Studio really wants to cooperate with CAA, there are still a lot of things that need to be discussed and dealt with slowly.

After chatting for a while, Bill Rosses reminded Murphy, Although Sony Columbia Pictures is not doing well recently, the background is still there after all. You must be mentally prepared to fail.

I know. Of course Murphy understands the reason why the other party might not necessarily want to sell if he wants to buy.

Even if Sony Columbia Pictures is in a bad situation, there are voices from Sony Entertainment to Sony Group to sell Sony Columbia Pictures, but the sale of Sony Columbia Pictures did not happen when he used to.

But Murphy also knows that now is the best chance to win Sony Columbia Pictures.

In the past two years, Sony Columbia Pictures has invested heavily in the production and production of films. Except for the good revenue of Where Spider-Man, most of the other films are facing losses. The projects that can recover the cost only occupy a relatively small proportion proportion.

If it weren't for the fact that a considerable part of the cost of these films came from multi-party financing, and the magic weapon of Spider-Man was once again sacrificed to continue life, Sony Columbia Pictures would have been unable to sustain it.

However, when the potential of life-saving magic weapons is always exhausted, the Spider-Man series can save Sony Columbia Pictures once, twice, three times... but not forever.

This summer, Where Spider-Man 2 was released in North America. The production cost of the film alone was as high as 230 million US dollars. It can be said that Sony Columbia Pictures has high hopes for this film, looking forward to recreating the time when Spider-Man 2 of brilliance.

But many things will not develop according to people's expectations, and movies with huge investment may not have good results.

Up to now, Where Spider-Man 2 has been lowered in North America, with a cumulative North American box office of a little over 200 million US dollars, which is far from Sony Columbia Pictures' North American box office expectation of 350 million US dollars.

Such a result is definitely not what Sony Columbia Pictures wants to see.

Although the film's overseas box office is not bad, and the global box office has now reached nearly 700 million US dollars, this cannot make the executives of Sony Columbia Pictures laugh at all.

The huge production cost of Where Spider-Man 2 and the huge investment in promotional expenses, even if the global box office exceeds 700 million US dollars, it may not be able to pay back.

What made them even more crazy was that countless Spider-Man fans were very angry about the death of Gwen Stacy in the film. Coupled with word-of-mouth and other unfavorable factors, the sales of the film's peripheral products were extremely poor, and the The income is extremely limited, and a considerable part of this limited income is owned by Marvel Comics, the creator of Spider-Man.

According to the news Murphy got, Where Spider-Man 2 was far from a successful performance. Although it would not bankrupt Sony Columbia Pictures, it also caused extremely tight capital chains, and it might break at any time.

Therefore, the voice of divesting and selling Sony Columbia Pictures once again appeared within Sony.

In fact, when Murphy lived on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Sony Columbia Pictures had a similar situation. However, Sony Columbia Pictures finally survived with its background as the six major Hollywood companies.

Murphy's eyes are on not only Sony Columbia Pictures, but also Sony Electronics and Sony Entertainment.

Needless to say, Sony Electronics is Sony's core business, but it has struggled in recent years. Many departments have been poorly managed and sold off by Sony's management; the situation of Sony Entertainment is not much better. Many subsidiaries of the entertainment group, except Sony Records, which can bring relatively stable profits every year, other companies such as Sony Columbia Pictures, have suffered losses one after another.

Of course, from a certain level, the Sony Group is very powerful, and there is an even stronger consortium behind it, but anyone who knows a little about business knows that companies like Sony Entertainment or Sony Columbia Pictures have financial difficulties. On a separate basis, when they acquired these companies to make profits, when these companies could not generate profits and would instead drag down the group company, the best way was to divest them and then sell them.

This is why Sony Entertainment intends to divest and sell Sony Columbia Pictures.

Presumably in the eyes of many Sony executives, Sony Columbia Pictures, which has been ranked last among the six major Hollywood film companies for years, is not only not a profitable weapon, but has become a drag on them.

However, as Bill Rossis said, even if Sony Entertainment wants to sell, completing the acquisition of Sony Columbia Pictures will be a huge time-consuming and labor-intensive project.

Because there are also people who don't want to sell Sony Columbia Pictures. After all, Sony Columbia Pictures still holds a huge film library. As long as this film library is still there, Sony Columbia Pictures has huge value.

These are the troubles facing Murphy and Stanton Studios, and they must be faced squarely. Such an acquisition is not because he wants to buy it. If he throws out enough funds, Sony Entertainment will obediently hand over Sony Columbia Pictures. from.

Sony Columbia Pictures isn't out of the woods yet.

Murphy is very aware of this, as long as there is a big-budget commercial film that can sell well, Sony Columbia Pictures will definitely get rid of this decline temporarily and rebuild its confidence in the film market.

Is there such an opportunity? According to Murphy's investigation, not only does such an opportunity exist, Sony Columbia Pictures is still taking action in order to seize the opportunity and make a comeback.

Not only Murphy thinks so, but also Bill Rossis.

One more thing, I want to remind you.

In the office, Bill Rossis said to Murphy seriously, Sony Columbia Pictures is in contact with Marvel Studios and wants Peter Parker to return to the Avengers!

I know. Of course Murphy remembered these things, I'm already working on it. 8