The original "Terminator 2" was produced by Carlock Films, a Hollywood company known for its extravagance. Not only did Arnold Schwarzenegger receive Hollywood's first high fixed salary of $15 million for this project, the film also It became the first Hollywood movie to cost more than $100 million to produce.
In my memory, "Terminator 2" only developed and printed more than one million feet of film, and the final material used was less than 1%, which is enough to prove how wasteful the film was.
More than one million feet of film actually means that the film crew spent a lot of money to shoot these scenes. Once a film crew starts work, it will cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars every day. A set of shots that could have been shot in three days took six days, and the budget naturally doubled.
From "The Abyss" to "Terminator 2" and then to the famous "Titanic", James Cameron's series of films have never been completed on time. This is why Cameron spends more money making movies than other directors. the root cause.
After a discussion between Simon and Joe Roth, they decided that Fox would continue to keep in contact with Cameron, and that they could add more credits to the screenwriter and let him serve as a producer. As for Cameron's own directing, it was the last resort option. At the same time, this project will not be included in the 10-movie plan until all aspects are finalized, so as to prevent the main creators from waiting for a price.
After talking about the matter, Simon returned to the Daenerys Entertainment headquarters in Santa Monica. Amy Pascal was already waiting for him with another middle-aged man in his forties wearing glasses.
After receiving Simon's instructions, Amy has been looking for the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment during this period.
Daenerys International has confirmed Mark Belford, who was promoted from within the company, as president.
Mark Belford is about the same age as Amy. This young man in his early thirties did not go to college. After graduating from high school at the age of 18, he relied on some connections at home to work hard in Hollywood.
Mark Belford, who joined Daenerys Entertainment last year, accidentally caught Simon's eye and was quickly promoted after his stellar performance in several releases including "Scream."
Hollywood media have different attitudes towards Mark Belford's rocket promotion. Some people comment on Simon's courage to hire people, while others criticize Simon for being too rash. Daenerys Entertainment also inevitably criticizes this.
However, less than a month after taking office, Mark Belford quickly took over the overseas business of Daenerys Entertainment. During this period, he basically spent time flying around the world.
In the dispute between Daenerys Entertainment and Alistar Records, the suspension of the soundtrack album of "The Bodyguard" not only did not affect the film's overseas distribution, but the film's box office and popularity in various overseas box office countries bucked the trend. This It has something to do with the marketing operation carried out by Mark Belford over the past month.
This alone convinced Simon that he had made the right choice.
The person in charge of Daenerys International Company has determined that the person Simon will meet today is the person in charge of Daenerys Home Entertainment Company.
Maurice Corman, who is in his forties, is slightly chubby and wears a pair of rimless glasses. He is not related to Roger Corman, the king of Hollywood B-movies. He has been working at Columbia Pictures in the marketing position. Vice President.
After Sony completed its acquisition of Columbia Pictures, it has been a busy period of time. It purchased the original MGM Studios in Culver City, merged with Peter Cooper and Jon Peters' Cooper-Peters Production Company, purchased Separate all shares of subsidiary Samsung Pictures, cooperate with Daenerys Entertainment, sell TV station assets, etc.
At the same time, the original management of Columbia Pictures was also replaced by Sony.
It was against this background that Maurice Coleman resigned and formally joined Daenerys Entertainment a few weeks later. His position was President of Daenerys Home Entertainment, and he was mainly responsible for Daenerys under Daenerys Entertainment. Distribution of films produced by the two major labels, Pictures and New World Pictures, on video tapes and television broadcasts.
The confirmation of the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment also means that the power originally belonging to Robert Rehm has been divided into three. Robert Rehm will continue to be responsible for Daenerys in the next two years. Film and New World Pictures' domestic theatrical distribution of films.
The accumulated estrangement between the two sides was already deep, and Simon did not communicate much with Robert Rem on this matter. The reason why he was not fired was because of his contribution to Daenerys' entertainment in the past year. Simon is not a person who likes to take things off his feet.
However, this is also based on the fact that Robert Rehm must complete his work for the next two years with due diligence. If Rem is resentful because her power is being diverted and even deliberately messes up Daenerys Entertainment's movie projects, Simon will definitely not be lenient when he gets people to do it.
In fact, after it was confirmed that Rem's power would be divided into three, Simon told Amy to focus her energy on the company's publishing department.
After the meeting with Maurice Coleman, Simon and Amy discussed Ella Deutschman again.
Ella Deutschman's one-year probationary period is about to end. Although Gomen Pictures is directly responsible for Simon personally, it was Amy who came forward to discuss the salary package with Deutschman after he officially joined the company.
After several communications, it was roughly confirmed that Ella Deutschman's official contract period is 5 years and the basic annual salary is US$300,000. At the same time, Deutschman will also receive 5% of Gomen Pictures' annual net profit as a bonus. Based on Deutschman's performance over the past year, the entry bonus Simon promised to the other party last year was also confirmed to be US$2 million.
Ella Deutschman's 5% net profit share of Gomen Pictures seems to be the same as Amy's, but the two are actually equivalent to the difference between a movie's box office net profit share and omni-channel net profit share. Moreover, Deutschman's terms do not involve equity awards.
Before I knew it, it was another busy day.
At six o'clock in the afternoon, as Simon was about to leave work, Nancy Brill came to his office.
Putting a box of game cartridges on Simon's desk, Nancy sat down opposite and said, "The game team has made some adjustments to some details. Simon, you can try it again and see if there is anything that needs improvement. "
Blizzard Studio was officially established in February of the beginning of the year, and it has been eight months now.
The normal development time for a video game in this era is 3 to 5 months. It took only 6 weeks to make a game like "ET" back then, which was completely random. However, Blizzard Studio spent such time It took eight months to create a game, which also gave Simon the feeling that he had chosen the wrong name.
The real Blizzard is famous for ticket bounces.
Moreover, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game development plan was originally divided into two, an action role-playing type and a combat fighting type. What Nancy took out at this time was still an action role-playing game similar to the Konami version in Simon's memory. Another battle fighting game only took three months to set up in the early stage and is still under development.
Delayed checks naturally mean budget overruns.
The original production budget of both games was US$500,000. Now, the production budget of this action role-playing "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game is close to US$1 million. If the other fighting game is released early next year, The budget is at least 1.2 million US dollars, which is more than double.
Since it is confirmed that the action role-playing version will be officially released in early November, Nancy Brill has also been promoting it recently and plans to launch it in the two major markets of Japan and North America at the same time. According to Nintendo's royalty system, the cost of producing game cartridges in the future will also be Daenerys Entertainment needs to be personally responsible.
Taken together, Daenerys Entertainment's total investment in a game has exceeded US$2 million, not counting Blizzard Studio's other expenditures.
If it hadn't been confirmed during several trials that the quality of both games was excellent, Simon would have stopped the project directly.
In recent months, he has been used as a 'guinea pig' for trial testing more than once. Seeing that Nancy brought another cassette that obviously would not change much, Simon quickly shook his head and said, "There are only three weeks left. It’s published, can I still modify it now?”
"The first batch of 100,000 cassettes produced will definitely not be modified, but subsequent ones can still be improved."
Simon gestured casually: "Actually, you should try it with the consumers of this game, not me."
"Of course, potential consumers in the age group of 8 to 22 are within my test range. Now, you are 21 years old."
Simon interrupted: "How old are you?"
"That's so rude." Nancy rolled her eyes at Simon, stood up, pushed the cassette towards Simon, and said, "Anyway, you try again, I'll get off work first."
Simon watched Nancy leave, put the box of game cassettes in his briefcase, and left the office.
In the next few days, Simon was still busy working on various projects, and the undercurrent in the U.S. junk bond market became increasingly turbulent.
Friday, October 13th.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, United Airlines held a press conference and announced that due to cash flow shortages, the company was unable to repay a corporate bond of up to 1.5 billion US dollars on time. The management was urgently negotiating all possible financing options to ensure the maximum possible investors' interests.
Of course, the financial market would not believe the cliche that United Airlines ensured the interests of investors, so they rushed to sell United Airlines' stocks and bonds, triggering a series of chain reactions.
The crisis that has been building up in the U.S. junk bond market for a long time has officially erupted.
If you think about it carefully, compared to the sudden Black Monday in 1987, this Black Friday 'mini-crash' has too many warning signs in advance.
Starting from the first half of this year, Drexel Securities, where 'junk bond king' Michael Milken once worked, began to fall into crisis.
The Wall Street financial giant, which had issued more than $80 billion in junk bonds in the past ten years, was severely damaged by various insider trading scandals involving Milken. It also led to many corporate groups that had been working closely with Drexel Securities. It is no longer possible to obtain funds to support operations through repeated junk bond financing, which is like drinking poison to quench thirst.
At the same time, after the 1987 stock market crash, the market's enthusiasm for investing in junk bonds has also dropped significantly, and the federal government's supervision of junk bond financing has become more stringent in the past two years. All these factors are driving the eventual collapse of the junk bond market.
After the United Airlines announcement, in the last two hours of trading on Friday, the stock prices of a large number of companies in the North American stock market plummeted. The Dow Jones Index plummeted 217 points in two hours, setting a record of October 19, 1987. The second largest single-day drop after the 508-point drop on the day of the Japanese stock market crash.
The S&P 500 Index also plummeted 32 points in the next two hours as the market collapsed. Compared with the 286 points at the opening of the day, the decline reached 11%. It directly triggered the 10% limit limit of S&P 500 futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
As of the close of the day, the stock price of United Airlines, the center of the storm, plummeted 21% within two hours, and the price of United Airlines' bonds fell by 27%.
In addition, the stock and bond prices of many other companies, banks and other institutions that issued or held large amounts of junk bonds also plummeted.
Drexel Securities was the first to bear the brunt. The company's stock price, which had been declining for the past six months, plunged 19% in just two hours. The stock price of Columbia Savings and Credit Bank, which has long maintained a close cooperative relationship with Drexel Securities, also fell sharply by 16%. .
The stock prices of a long list of well-known American companies such as Gillette Holdings, American Newspaper Group, Integrated Resources Company, Uni-President Oil and Gas Company, and Reynolds-Nabisco, which just set a record for the scale of leveraged buyouts at the beginning of this year, have plummeted even more. It made countless investors frightened.
Everyone felt that another stock market crash was coming.
Fortunately, this time it's Friday.
Everyone has two days to discuss coping strategies.
However, compared to two years ago, the federal government's rescue measures this time are obviously not as strong. United Airlines' executives, who originally thought they would be able to obtain emergency funds in such a crisis, had just been ignited by the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Doused by statements that the federal government will not foot the bill for highly indebted companies.
At the same time, more negative news about the junk bond market broke out over the two days over the weekend.
The front page of the Wall Street Journal on Saturday was a comprehensive statistical report on the junk bond market. The article pointed out that the comprehensive yield growth of investment in junk bonds in the past ten years was only 145%, while the yield growth of the North American stock market during the same period was as high as 207%. Even the comprehensive yield growth of U.S. Treasury bonds in the past ten years reached 177%.
Not only that, in the previous ten years, among the 100 randomly selected companies in North America that had issued junk bonds, 24 companies fell into bankruptcy or were unable to meet their repayment obligations like United Airlines. This ratio was five times that of other companies.
The article concludes that the high-risk, high-yield junk bond theory that Michael Milken has been proclaiming for the past decade is simply wrong.
Therefore, junk bonds actually have no investment value, and many companies are only maintaining superficial prosperity through repeated financing similar to a Ponzi scheme. United Airlines' debt default was just the beginning of the collapse of the junk bond market after a decade of boom. In the coming months, more companies and institutions will be dragged down by a flood of worthless junk bonds.
In addition to the Wall Street Journal's overall bearish view of the market, a lot of negative news about some targets that issue or hold large amounts of junk bonds has also come to light.
Drexel Securities was disclosed by the New York Times that the company's cash flow has dropped from US$1.5 billion at the beginning of the year to less than US$300 million. This Wall Street financial giant, which itself holds a large number of junk bonds and needs a high proportion of capital for turnover, may collapse at any time. .
Columbia Savings and Credit Bank was also exposed by the New York Post as holding up to $1 billion in United Airlines bonds, making it United's largest creditor. As the United Airlines crisis continues, this bond asset is conservatively estimated to shrink by more than 50%, and in the worst case, it may even be completely cleared.
The Washington Post pointed the finger at Reynolds Nabisco.
After the record-breaking $25 billion merger at the beginning of the year, Reynolds-Nabisco's stock price not only failed to rise as much as originally expected, but instead fell 33% this year compared to the time of the merger. The company's share of the tobacco market has also shrunk sharply, with its market share shrinking by 8% in less than a year.
Moreover, after the merger of Reynolds and Nabisco, both of which were originally profitable, the losses this year alone are expected to exceed US$1 billion. The company has laid off a total of 2,300 employees in recent months to save costs. Some high-quality assets also had to be sold at low prices due to debt pressure.
All in all, the Reynolds-Nabisco merger was a complete disaster, and only a handful of financial companies that had been involved in it made huge profits. The entire transaction paid more than $1.5 billion in commissions to Wall Street firms such as KKR, Drexel Securities, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Although there is no lack of some support for the junk bond market, under the intensive bombardment of public opinion, all these negative reports have seriously damaged the confidence of countless investors who were not so firm.
After the weekend, the media was still noisy, and the North American stock market fell again after opening on October 16.
The financial market has probably felt the direction of this crisis, and the federal government has not done nothing. Therefore, in addition to the continued decline in stock prices and bond prices of companies such as American Airlines, the overall U.S. stock market The situation has stabilized.
As a result, companies such as United Airlines, Drexel Securities, and Columbia Savings and Credit Bank were like old, weak, and disabled people abandoned outside the flock. Cersei Capital and other capital forces that followed behind the scenes continued to struggle for several months. After the layout, he began to harvest his hunting results on a large scale.
Simon knew very well that this small collapse would not last long, so he told Janet to clear out the stock index futures contracts held by Cersei Capital as soon as possible.
In the following week, the closing of more than 32,000 S&P 500 index futures contracts brought Cersei Capital more than $500 million in profits, and the profits from the delivery of a large number of other short positions in stocks and bonds were as high as $1.1 billion.
Moreover, the size of this short group is less than half of Cersei Capital’s total positions.
In the coming months, as the domino effect in the North American junk bond market continues, Cersei Capital will continue to earn even more substantial profits.