Before Eaglet's first public financing, Simon had quietly launched the site selection plan for Eaglet's headquarters.
In fact, you don’t need to choose too much.
Based on the information in his memory, Simon directly selected the Google campus in Mountain View, just south of Palo Alto.
The location selection of large corporate parks will almost inevitably lead to an increase in surrounding land prices. Simon doesn't mind paying more money, but he just doesn't want to see nail households appear on the land he selected. It is still very difficult to remove nail households in the United States. big.
Therefore, a few months in advance, Simon began to acquire land in relevant areas of Mountain View through an agency.
Although Silicon Valley is now very developed, its main area is still limited to Stanford University in Palo Alto. Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino and other areas in the south are still very backward. There are many large companies, and in many places there are even large patches of farms and wasteland.
The land Simon selected in his memory where the Google campus is located is currently composed of farms and wasteland with few residents.
After several months of quiet operation, Simon's agency has unknowingly taken over about 60 hectares of land in an area of more than 10,000 hectares of undeveloped land located east of Palo Alto, north of Mountain View and adjacent to the bay. , which is mainly farm land, and the purpose is to remove the "nail households" in this area in advance.
The next step is to discuss the acquisition of the large wasteland adjacent to the bay with the Mountain View City Government.
Speaking of which, even if it is only 60 hectares of land, if it is not a little scattered, it is actually more than enough to build the Yigrit Company campus. However, due to some deep-rooted personal preferences, Simon is always happy to buy land.
With the completion of a huge financing of US$1.5 billion by Yigrit, the news that this increasingly dazzling new technology company is about to build a headquarters campus spread quickly.
I remember why Amazon’s choice of second headquarters attracted competition from countless big cities in the United States. The key is that the settlement of large companies will inevitably mean a huge tax source.
Amazon is good at avoiding taxes and can even operate its corporate tax rate into a negative number, but it is impossible for tens of thousands of Amazon employees to avoid personal income tax.
The more developed countries are, the greater the proportion of personal income tax in national tax revenue.
Personal income tax in the United States accounts for about 50% of the total federal tax revenue. Employees of high-tech companies happen to be the most high-quality high-income group among individual taxpayers.
Therefore, when the news spread about the location of Eagle Reiter's headquarters, the entire Bay Area took action, whether it was Redwood, Menlo Park in the north, Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley, or Mountain View in the south. , Sunnyvale or Cupertino, administrative officials in various cities are chasing after several executives of Yigrit Company almost every day. Even if they think that the possibility of introducing Yigrit to settle in their area is unlikely, they will not easily Pass the opportunity to try.
Tim Berners-Lee and others have already known about the big boss’s choice of location for the company’s campus. Although they all want to set up the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Palo Alto at this stage wants to set aside It is not difficult to acquire dozens of acres of land, but the land near the bay in the north of Mountain View is actually not too bad, and the straight-line distance from Stanford University is only about 7 kilometers.
After low-key negotiations with several major cities in the South Bay area for more than a month, they finally 'selected' the tax preferential plan offered by Mountain View City, and quickly allocated a total of 300 acres on the deserted land near the sea in the north of Mountain View City. hectares of land.
300 hectares, which translates to more than 700 acres.
Although it is far less than the 8,000 acres of land donated to Stanford University by the Stanford couple, for a company headquarters, 300 hectares of land is still somewhat eye-popping.
In fact, if the Mountain View city government didn't dare to approve too much, Simon would have hoped to get at least 500 hectares of land.
Even so, when the news was officially announced in mid-May, it immediately aroused skepticism in the San Francisco Bay Area media.
You know, even HP, a veteran company in Silicon Valley, only owns an office park covering an area of only 12 hectares in Palo Alto. Igret has taken over 300 hectares of land at one time, which is intended to give everyone Do every employee build an office villa
The U.S. real estate market is showing signs of recovery after several years of slump.
Therefore, many media have publicly accused Yigruite Company of acquiring a large amount of land with impure motives, and are obviously suspected of land speculation.
As more information was revealed, the media discovered that the corporate entity that purchased the land was the Westeros Company, and the Igret Company took over 20 hectares of the land from the Westeros Company at the same price. It was planned to be used to build an office park, so the media became even more noisy.
Westeros Company is definitely going to get involved in the real estate industry.
However, after the detailed information was disclosed, the media from all sides became somewhat at a loss when it came to accusations.
Ygritte actually only got 30 hectares of the land. Although it was much larger than HP's 12 hectares, it was not too much. As for the Westeros company's enclosure behavior, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it.
The seaside land in the north of Mountain View is a barren area waiting to be developed. If a company is willing to take over the development, it will be beneficial to the city to a large extent.
Moreover, no one has stipulated that Westeros companies cannot get involved in the real estate field
Not only that, as long as Simon Westeros is not too slow, he should understand that the industries and regions he likes are worth betting on.
As a result, the clamor in the media has not ended yet. A large number of capitals have turned their attention to this tens of thousands of hectares of land in the north of Mountain View City, and have made offers to purchase the land to the Mountain View City Government or farmers who still stick to the area. Require.
This also led to the fact that in just one week, it was said that the quotations of some companies for purchasing land increased by 30% based on the purchase price of the Westeros Company. With Palo Alto as the boundary, the original southern part of the South Bay District The development of this city has always lagged behind cities such as Redwood and Menlo Park in the north.
Mountain View was suddenly so popular that the district administrator was ecstatic.
In most countries and regions in the world, the performance of government officials is measured by a few sets of criteria.
If the current momentum continues, the growth rate of Mountain View’s tax revenue and employment index in the next few years will definitely far exceed that of other cities in the Bay Area.
Simon rushed to San Francisco on May 20 and spent a whole day participating in the planning of the Eaglet headquarters campus. He also personally walked around the land in the northern part of Mountain View.
The 300-hectare land has its southern boundary adjacent to Highway 101, which runs through California, and its eastern side is close to the Stevens River that runs straight down from the southern mountains across Mountain View. The plot is generally rectangular, about 1.2 kilometers wide from east to west. It is about 2.5 kilometers long from north to south. It can be said to be the best land in the northern area of Mountain View.
The planned development of the Yigret Park is located in the center of this prime land, far away from the noisy 101 Highway.
As for the remaining land, Simon considered some plans, but gave up on them all for the time being.
To put it bluntly, there is no plan.
Therefore, if anyone knows the inside story, they will definitely feel that Westeros’ acquisition of 300 hectares of land for US$230 million this time is definitely a failure within a failure.
Simon doesn't care.
Just like Tasmania, which Australia has continued to buy, he now has such willful capital.
It doesn't matter if you plant trees or grass or simply leave it uncultivated, as long as the land is yours.
It's very solid to step on.
After spending a day in San Francisco, we returned to Los Angeles in the evening and flew to New York early the next morning.
It’s the TV series promotion season in New York recently.
The television business is the focus of Daenerys Entertainment's expansion in the next few years, and Simon deliberately took the time to fly to the East Coast to follow up on some matters.
At the same time, May 21st is another Friday.
After last week's warm-up of several films such as "The Legend of the Condor", "The Legend of Bruce Lee" and "My Genius Family", the 1993 summer season has officially begun.
The most talked-about blockbuster film this week is undoubtedly the action blockbuster "Jumanji" starring Sylvester Stallone produced by Columbia Pictures' Tristar Company. The film cost 70 million US dollars and opened on the number of screens in its first week. 2333 yuan.
In addition, the comedy "Made in America" starring Whoopi Goldberg was released at the same time, opening to 2,048 screens.
Stallone's "The Last Stand" and Schwarzenegger's "Phantom Hero," scheduled for June 18, are the two blockbusters that Columbia Pictures will release this summer. The production cost of the latter is as high as 85 million. Dollar.
Columbia Pictures also tried to develop "Phantom Heroes" with Daenerys Entertainment last year, only to be rejected by Simon.
Compared with Columbia's complacency, Simon is very clear that these two movies are two big pitfalls for Sony, Columbia's parent company.
It was the failure of these two projects that caused Sony to completely lose patience with Columbia head Peter Cooper, and even wanted to sell the big studio again.
After boarding the plane to the East Coast, Girl A sent Simon the just-released box office data for last week.
Sitting in the front cabin office of the Boeing 767, Simon opened last week's box office report and first found the new week's box office data for the Easter release of "Tokyo 2".
From its release on April 9 to now, "Tokyo 2" has been in theaters for a total of 6 weeks.
It opened with US$43.67 million in the first week, and dropped 39% in the second week. In the following weeks, relying on the popularity of the series and the lack of competitors during the same period, the box office curve of "Tokyo 2" was relatively stable.
From May 14th to May 20th, compared with the fifth week, "Ultra Stars 2" dropped 23% in a single week and continued to earn US$8.96 million.
In six weeks, the film's cumulative box office revenue reached US$124.55 million.
Based on the next week's box office, Daenerys Entertainment predicts that the total North American box office of "Tokyo 2" will be between 130 million and 150 million US dollars.
Now, six weeks after its release, based on the box office curve statistics of the first month and a half, the promotion team further predicts that the film's final North American box office should be around US$145 million, with an error of no more than US$3 million.
The total production and promotion budget of "Twilight Zone 2" is US$45 million. If the local box office is calculated as US$145 million, Daenerys Entertainment will probably receive a net income of US$35 million.
Compared with the local market, "Toy Fighter 2" still failed to break through the cultural restrictions of overseas markets.
According to data feedback from overseas ticket warehouses that have already started filming in the UK, Spain, Australia, etc., the film can only recover about US$70 million in overseas markets.
Of course, for a comedy movie to gross over $200 million worldwide, it's a hit no matter what.
Relying on a box office revenue of more than 120 million U.S. dollars in 6 weeks, "Twilight Zone 2" is not only the first domestic film in 1993 to have a box office of over 100 million U.S. dollars, but also temporarily ranked first in the North American box office list in 1993.
Returning to the past few months in the first half of the year, there are not many blockbuster projects.
Apart from "Groundhog Day", only Columbia Pictures' "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray is still a hit. "Groundhog Day" opened during the Valentine's Day period in February. As of last week, it had accumulated a box office of US$66.32 million. It is expected that the total box office will reach US$70 million before the next release.
Simon actually paid attention to "Groundhog Day" at first, but he did not forcefully grab the script because Daenerys Entertainment could not capture all the blockbuster projects.
The temporary third place on the annual list is the American Civil War historical film "Welcome from the Past" starring Pierce Brosnan and Jodie Foster. The film is produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and will be released on February 5. It has been released, with a cumulative box office of US$50.08 million.
Simon had seen this movie.
The original version starred Richard Gere and Jodie Foster.
This time, because of Simon, the big butterfly, Richard Gere's role in "Pretty Woman" fell on Pierce Brosnan, and he was replaced by Brosnan in this "Old Man".
It's not really a coincidence.
Pierce Brosnan and Jodie Foster are both artists under ICM and share the same agent.
The three major brokerage companies are now promoting project packaging mechanisms.
After Pierce Brosnan came to power with "Pretty Woman", ICM naturally tended to pair him with Jodie Foster, rather than Richard Gere, who missed out on "Pretty Woman" and was completely outdated.
In addition to "On the Road", Daenerys Entertainment's three brands have released a total of 15 movies as of mid-May. However, other than "On the Road", there are no other box office dark horses.
Among them, the one with better box office performance is "Chocolate," a Mexican literary drama film launched by Gomen Pictures on February 19. This is an award-winning film at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year. Gomen Pictures bought it for US$2 million. The North American distribution rights were cut off, and the cumulative box office after its release was US$21.66 million, making it a small dark horse.
"The Sea of Algae", which was released during the Easter period on April 16, has grossed US$15.39 million in the five weeks since its release after opening to US$4.67 million in its first week. It is expected to exceed the US$20 million mark before placing an order. .
The Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear Award-winning work "The Wedding Banquet" was released in early March to take advantage of the popularity of the Golden Bear Award. After two months of screening, the cumulative box office was US$12.07 million, and the revenue was also considerable.
Except for these 4 movies that are still blockbusters, the other 11 movies all have a box office of less than 10 million US dollars, which is basically a loss and a profit.
This is actually what the company expected.
The key films of Daenerys Entertainment, especially the films produced by Daenerys Pictures, which are the most direct relatives of Daenerys Pictures, are all released in the second half of the year.
Moreover, in the first half of the year, Daenerys Entertainment will be able to produce a movie "Toy Fighter 2" that temporarily tops the annual box office list, as well as other projects with good profits such as "Love in Chocolate", "The Vast Sea of Algae", and "The Wedding Banquet" , is enough to be the envy of other Hollywood film companies.