Rebirth of the Tech Madman

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The water in Hollywood is too deep, but it is by no means a tricky slogan. The Coca-Cola that plunges into it is a bit unbearable.

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.

At the end of the 1970s, Columbia Pictures had two troubles in an unconventional range. One was the public embezzlement scandal, and the other was being targeted by Kirk Kerkorian. Twenty-five percent of the shares fell into the into the opponent's hands.

The Las Vegas gambling tycoon has caused MGM to suffer so miserably, and of course Hollywood has sympathy. Columbia Pictures, who didn't want to follow in the footsteps, resorted to various methods such as anti-monopoly lawsuits, and finally forced the other party to give up the 25% of the shares and give up their plan to control themselves.

In sharp contrast to this, in 1982, Columbia Pictures happily sold itself to the prestigious and powerful Coca-Cola for a price of 750 million U.S. dollars. After hugging this big thick leg, it started Rapid expansion.

First of all, Columbia Pictures acquired 81% of the shares of Walter_Reade_, the Walter_Reade_, a long-established theater chain, and in 1985 took the remaining 19% of the shares.

Then, Columbia Pictures acquired spelling-goldberg_—Spelling-Goldberg Films, which was co-founded by famous Hollywood producers aaron_spelling——Alan 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 American TV networks, jointly created Samsung Films, which shows its ambition in the TV field exuberant.

In the initial period before the head of frank_price-Frank Price and Coca-Cola management had conflicts and left, Columbia Pictures did well in the film industry, 1982's tootsie-Mr. Dou Si, 1983 The_big_chill in 1984-The Great Chill, and the_karate_kid in 1984-The Kid is Difficult, the box office revenues are quite objective.

However, the ghostbusters - Ghostbusters, which was also released in 1984 and achieved box office success, had a filming budget of 30 million US dollars, which began to expose Columbia Pictures' cost control problems.

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

In 1985, Columbia Pictures spent $485 million to acquire Embassy Media Co., Ltd., which had made great achievements in the television field, but in the same year, CBS withdrew from Samsung Films.

In the following year, Columbia Pictures continued to expand in the TV field, buying Maeve Griffin, famous for the famous American TV quiz show jeopardy! A few months later, it spent another $50 million to acquire dannyarnold--Danny Arnold's Danny Arnold company that owns the sitcom series barneymiller-Barney Miller.

At the same time, Coca-Cola invited the famous British producer davidputtnam-David Putnam to lead the entertainment business department that he built with a lot of money.

As a result, this dude tried to challenge the existing production model in Hollywood, but in the end his work failed, and he was kicked out after only one year in office.

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 Coca-Cola's management's last line of defense was the 1987 film ishtar - the unprecedented fiasco of Ishtar - which cost as much as $51 million to shoot and only reaped just over $14 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 mallet, stretches its hand too far when it shouldn't be in charge, but it does nothing when it should be in charge.

Ista 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 20 million US dollars to more than 50 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 resolutely 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 Samsung Films for $3.1 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—Sony should not try to take advantage of it. If it wants to succeed, it must offer at least US$3.1 billion.

Columbia Pictures, which has regained its independent status, had an initial equity allocation of roughly 20/80 between Tang Huan and Coca-Cola, and then Coca-Cola hurriedly pushed it back to the stock market at the beginning of this year.

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

Coca-Cola, eager to get out, quickly traded out 39% of the shares; Tang Huan took in 5% on the surface, and secretly instructed other investment companies to take in 15%.

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

In the United States, where the business environment is perfect and the copyright awareness is strong, the general public enjoys entertainment content, but it is not as easy as the Chinese people are used to. Many cable TV stations in North America are still broadcasting old Hollywood black and white 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 secretly holding back its energy to make a return to the digital video standard equivalent to the original space-time DVD.

What's more, ea's Xiaobawang game console has been slamming the competing products of Nintendo, Sega, nec and other peers, which makes them embark on various roads of grouping together. Among them, the cooperation between Nintendo and Sony is the most worthy of vigilance-this is 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, so as to avoid its invisible layout that will block itself in more fields, which is far more important than the benefits of buying and selling on the surface.

After seeing the instructions with these goals as the core, Zhuang Menghua suddenly said: Let me just say, what is the beauty of an adult, it's too fake, so insidious, it'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 at depreciating the U.S. dollar against the Japanese Yen and the Deutsche Mark through bilateral agreements at the G7 Finance Ministers' meeting. But this momentum was out of control, and by 1987, 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 U.S. dollar caused by the Plaza Agreement, the ministers of the Group of Seven countries gathered at the Louvre in Paris, France in February 1987. Although Italy eventually withdrew, it still signed the Louvre Agreement. To put the brakes on that momentum.

However, the Nikkei average remained unaffected and continued to rise, breaking through the 20,000-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 average index will reach 30,000 points this year. But reasonable people know that the stock market goes up and down, and only by calmly discovering the turning point can one truly become a winner. But here lies the difficulty. No one can analyze the exact results in such intricate changes, and speculators like Tang Huan, who have a high degree of participation, need to know before the golden wind moves, after all Hundreds of millions of funds cannot be safely escaped overnight. Baidu Sao Suo@半(.*液)生 — Rebirth of a Technology Madman

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 flew back to Asia soon, and the first stop was of course Xiangjiang, which he hadn't visited for a long time. It happened to be another year of Miss Hong Kong, and 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, the 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.