WMA headquarters in Beverly Hills.
Courteney Cox and Jonathan Friedman finished talking about a script they had just received recently and were about to leave. She remembered seeing the progress of the investigation into the attack case a few years ago in the newspaper yesterday. Courteney He couldn't help but sit down again and said to Jonathan: "Qiao, do you know about Christy Swanson?"
Jonathan Friedman paused and nodded: "I know."
The Santa Monica Police Department's investigation into the attack four summers ago remains ongoing.
Yesterday, the media suddenly exposed further news about the case, and Hollywood actress Christy Swanson was involved. It is said that before Matthew Broderick rushed to intercept Simon Westeros that night, it was Christie Swanson who revealed Westeros's work location to them.
This evidence further tilted the situation to Simon's side.
In fact, as the investigation progresses, no one believes what Matthew Broderick said when he held the first press conference to launch an attack. The matter has become very clear. However, the Santa Monica Police Department had to give the media and the public an undoubted investigation result of the case, so they continued to dig out everything related to the original attack.
Although the public is easily inclined to sympathize with the weak, they are not incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Once they find that they have been deceived and fooled, their anger will only become more intense.
The six people who originally held the press conference in an attempt to 'preemptively strike' were now considered to be like rats crossing the street. In fact, most of them wanted to take the initiative to reconcile and get rid of this incident, but Simon had no intention of letting go.
Courteney Cox thought about her words for a while, then suddenly changed the subject and said, "Qiao, has our company got an invitation to Simon's birthday party this time?"
For parties organized by Simon personally and Daenerys Entertainment in the past, they would send a batch of invitations to WMA for them to distribute on their own.
Courteney asked, and the purpose was obvious.
But Jonathan shook his head and said: "Kurt, Simon doesn't plan to hold a large birthday party this time. He will probably only invite some company executives, relatives and friends."
After saying this, both of them suddenly fell silent.
Today is February 19th, only 3 days away from Simon’s birthday. Theoretically, for a party like Simon's birthday party that many people attach great importance to, invitations would be sent out a week in advance.
Jonathan naturally got his invitation letter.
However, Courteney, whom Simon met just after arriving in Los Angeles, was excluded from the list of 'relatives and friends' he just mentioned.
The ups and downs of life's fortunes can sometimes be really unpredictable.
Jonathan then thought of Sandra Bullock, who was also a client of his own. As Simon's closest friend of the opposite sex, he almost even developed into a lover. Sandra's career development in the past few years has been smooth sailing.
In comparison, as the heroine of the "Scream" series, Courteney is also considered a first-line actress, but after this year's "Scream 3" ends, she may face an uncertain future. .
The transition to being a horror film actress is very difficult.
After all, there are not many opportunities for female stars in Hollywood, but the competition is very fierce.
In Hollywood at the moment, the veterans include Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Cher, etc., the Mesozoic generation Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc., and the new generation Sander La Bullock, Julia Roberts, etc., these female stars are very strong, and major studios are more inclined to hand over high-quality projects to these people when selecting suitable roles.
Jonathan could roughly understand Courteney's thoughts at this time.
The actress who had the best chance to rise with Simon has now been excluded from Simon's social circle. The two things that were suddenly mentioned just now were probably because Courteney wanted to use the opportunity of Simon's birthday party to explain the original attack case to him in person, and at the same time, to deepen the relationship between the two parties.
However, Jonathan knew that Simon actually didn't care much about the attack that year, but Janet was clinging to it.
So women are the ones who hold grudges the most.
As for Christy Swanson, who 'guided' Matthew Broderick and others to attack Simon, he is still a client of WMA.
However, in recent years, this young actor has only been able to play supporting roles in some youth horror films. Simon did not even mention it after the news was exposed. Although WMA will not block the other party too deliberately to avoid causing any trouble. There is trouble in terms of public opinion, but it is impossible for it to obtain any resources in the future.
After a while, Courteney finally plucked up the courage and said, "Qiao, can you get an invitation letter for me?"
Jonathan could only shake his head.
As far as he knows, the size of this birthday party will be controlled within a hundred people, with 100 party places. For other social gatherings in Hollywood, such a birthday party is already quite large, but for Simon Westeros’ birthday For parties, every invitation must be carefully selected.
Speaking of which, these days, not only Courteney, but also many WMA stars, or in other words, countless people in Hollywood are trying every possible means to get an invitation to Simon Westeros's birthday party.
Simon actually doesn't care about things like birthday party lists, Janet is in charge of taking care of them.
Jonathan did rely on his relationship with Simon to get a few invitations from Janet for his connections, but the party list had been basically finalized, and Courteney was not yet ready for him to consume her favors.
After sending Courteney Cox away, Jonathan sighed again in his heart, and quickly turned his energy to other things.
The last time I talked to Simon, he was planning to train several male stars around 30 years old who are suitable for action movies.
There are many action stars in Hollywood at this stage, such as Dolph Lundgren, Steven Seagal, etc., but they are not very A-list. Under the name of WMA, Keanu Reeves and other new generations are still a little immature for the time being. As for Mel Gibson, who is currently the most popular, he is a bit older.
Jonathan actually thought of Tom Cruise. If there is an actor in his 30s who is suitable for action movies, there is no one in Hollywood who is more suitable than him.
However, Simon is not interested at all in this actor who is on the front line and has good box office appeal.
Being disliked by a Hollywood boss of this level, as Daenerys Entertainment deepens its cooperation with Paramount, the resources available to Tom Cruise in Hollywood will only be further compressed. It is very likely that within a few years, it will gradually decline.
Daenerys Studios.
While Jonathan was thinking about the action star, Simon was also discussing the next cooperation with Paramount executives.
Simon is a person who attaches great importance to commitments. In order to get Paramount to stop obstructing Daenerys Entertainment's acquisition of MCA, he did not intend to violate whether it was a paper contract or a verbal agreement.
The next major cooperation between the two parties is on the one hand, three movies, and on the other hand, the USA TV station, in which the two companies each hold 50% of the shares.
Among the three movies, the key project that has been finalized is "Mission: Impossible", which is completely capable of being made into a long-term series. However, since he does not plan to use the original Tom Cruise, Simon is not in a hurry to develop this project for the time being, because there is no suitable actor candidate in the short term.
Moreover, although three films have been agreed upon, the cooperation time is very relaxed and neither party will be too anxious.
What everyone is discussing at this time is the development of the USA.
As a basic cable station, USA was established in 1977 as a joint venture between MCA, Paramount and Warner. Later, due to some reasons, Warner withdrew its shares and MCA and Paramount each held 50% of the shares.
Founded more than ten years ago, USA is a very old basic cable station. However, compared with the basic cable stations such as ESPN, CNN, and MTV that were born in the same era and are becoming more and more popular, USA has never found its own position. The development process is like a hodgepodge. It has tried sports styles, made children's programs, broadcast original series, and produced TV movies. In recent years, with the rise of reality shows, it has also developed some low-cost variety game shows. .
In Simon's memory, later ESPN, CNN, and MTV were all considered dominant in their respective fields. Although USA has always existed, it has always been tepid. In the end, its style became closer to that of several major public television networks, relying only on some crime police. Original collections such as Bandits and Bandits support ratings, but due to the structure of basic cable channels, these dramas are destined to be unable to compare with public television networks in terms of their own quality and ratings.
The only thing that satisfies Simon about USA now is its 21 million access users.
Calculated based on an average of 3 users per household, USA already has more than 60 million basic viewers, which is close to one-third of the total population of the United States.
Of course, because the four major public television networks are still in a monopoly state for the time being, basic cable stations with distinctive styles such as ESPN, MTV, CNN and even HBO have taken away most of the cable TV users. Although they have a very considerable access user base, USA The program management situation has been very bleak.
Because there is no mainstay TV program, it is difficult to catch the audience's attention. USA is one of those whose TV station numbers are basically difficult to remember on the remote control.
The main sources of income for basic cable stations are operator sharing and their own advertising.
Operators pay a certain amount of share to basic cable stations on a monthly basis based on the cable station's viewing status and number of users. For a basic cable station that attracts a lot of attention, such as CNN, each user can contribute up to 70 cents per month to the TV station. , advertising revenue is equally generous.
USA's average operator share is only 15 cents, which is less than a quarter of CNN's, and the number of users is also less than half of CNN's.
Therefore, although it has 21 million access users, its monthly operator share revenue is only a little over 3 million US dollars, and its annual revenue, including advertising revenue that is roughly equivalent to operator share, is only over 60 million US dollars.
Simon understands that this situation is mainly due to the lack of clear positioning of the USA TV network, which always wants to do everything, but the result is like a bear breaking a stick, and nothing is done. Basic cable networks such as ESPN, MTV and CNN, which focus only on sports, music and news, have all achieved success.
Before acquiring MCA, Simon had already begun to consider the next development of USA.
The areas that cable TV stations can focus on, such as music, sports, news and even movies, have already been taken advantage of. Then, USA can only start by segmenting its audience.
Because of having an IP like "The Housewives of Beverly Hills", Simon finally decided to build USA into a women's TV station and target a very large group of housewives in the United States.
You must know that although the United States is the most developed country in the world and has experienced many feminist movements to liberate women in recent decades, in the early 1990s, the proportion of American women who chose to give up their jobs after marriage and become full-time housewives remained the same. More than 40% of these women’s biggest pastime after taking care of housework is undoubtedly television.
USA happens to be a 24-hour basic cable station that is very suitable for housewives to watch.
After so many years of continuous operation, Paramount Chairman Martin Davis was not too insistent after Simon proposed to keep the ownership structure unchanged but demanded absolute control of USA.
The two sides held an afternoon of discussions and basically finalized USA's budget plan and program plan for the next year.
Over the next year, Daenerys Entertainment and Paramount Communications will jointly invest $100 million in USA for series development, copyright purchase, and advertising and marketing.
In terms of TV shows, while relaunching "The Housewives of Beverly Hills", another series of "The Housewives of New York" will also be launched. While focusing on the Housewives reality show series, Daenerys Entertainment will also continue to develop and purchase a number of TV programs specifically targeted at female groups.
At five o'clock, the meeting ended on time.
Others left one after another, but Paramount Chairman Martin Davis was not in a hurry to leave. He proposed to walk around the Daenerys Studios campus with Simon, and Simon did not refuse.
"Actually, Simon, regarding Mission: Impossible, can't we really let Tom give it a try? I think he is still very suitable."
The two were walking on the asphalt corridor in the park. When Simon heard Martin Davis mention this matter, he just shook his head and said: "Martin, this is a matter of principle."
When necessary, Simon will make some compromises, such as cooperating with Paramount, and releasing Meg Ryan. These are all to avoid the twists and turns of the MCA acquisition. Simon will not lose big because of small things. However, Tom Cruise has no leverage to make him compromise, and Simon also needs to insist on expressing an attitude, an attitude that the studios are the controllers of Hollywood.
Moreover, because Daenerys Entertainment now has too many high-quality IP reserves, it does not mind too much the failure of one or two projects, even the previous "Mission: Impossible" series.
Feeling Simon's persistence, Martin Davis was not too reluctant and wisely turned the topic elsewhere.
After all, Martin Davis is not a latecomer like Simon. It is impossible to know the connection between Tom Cruise and the "Mission: Impossible" series. I just mentioned it because of the relationship between Tom Cruise and Paramount over the years. The cooperation was quite pleasant, and there was a somewhat personal relationship involved.
Moreover, as Paramount's performance has begun to turn sluggish in the past two years, Martin Davis's control over the company has also rapidly weakened. He has a premonition that Paramount is likely to encounter the same situation as MCA in the next few years. fate. Once this happens, this company will have nothing to do with him, and he will naturally not care too much about it at this time.
This was actually the main reason why we easily gave up control of USA in the afternoon meeting.