Celia Miller came to Los Angeles this time mainly to discuss with Simon the various details of forming the Wei family's private army.
The plan was launched at the beginning of the year and has been in preparation for more than half a year. It has been quietly implemented recently. The training base is mainly in Ukraine, but Simon does not plan to select too many Ukrainians this time. Instead, he will expand his recruitment scope to Eastern Europe, North America, Africa, and Latin America, basically casting a global net.
There are many benefits to preventing soldiers from coming from a relatively concentrated area.
Maintain loyalty to the greatest extent, reduce the possibility of encountering infiltration, eliminate the hidden dangers of cliques, and so on.
Recruitment conditions are for 16-year-old male boys, with priority given to orphans. After passing the background check and physical examination, they will first receive two years of cultural course training and preliminary preparatory training.
This process is mainly about developing language skills as well.
The most important thing is brainwashing.
Two years later, another group will be eliminated, and when they reach 18 years old, they will start formal military training. The time is still two years, at the age of 20, except for those who are eliminated again in the process or a small number of them advance to higher-level training, the others begin to join. Weijia served in the private army and signed a formal employment contract with a term of 20 years and retired at the age of 40.
Maintaining a private army is not a taboo in Western countries. The Rockefeller family had its own private army back then, and many mercenary companies today are actually private armies.
Last year's Rwanda War has made the existence of the Weijia private army an established fact.
This time, as long as the operation is done properly, there is no need to worry even if it is exposed. Simon has no intention of cultivating an army of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, let alone cultivating thousands of private armies at once. Instead, he will still use the method of breaking up the whole into parts. As for the strategy, Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, and Africa will put some emphasis on it.
Even if there are only one or two hundred people in a group, there will be one or two thousand people in ten years.
And so on.
The most important thing is to form a sustainable cultivation mechanism.
This, supplemented by ordinary mercenaries recruited from other channels, is enough to ensure that the Westeros family has a powerful violent machine when needed.
After talking to Celia, it was already ten o'clock in the night.
The guest room arranged for the woman was in the Cliff Villa next door. Simon personally escorted Celia out of the Shell Villa and went to the master bedroom upstairs. Janet, who had never been able to bear staying up late, was already asleep, but Jennifer was still sitting on the bed. Head flipped through the magazine while waiting for Simon.
After washing up, Simon got on the bed and came between the two women. Janet, who felt Simon's breath, naturally leaned over and pulled the man to lie down and use it as a pillow for her.
The female assistant reached out and turned off the bedside lamp. She also lay down and leaned over. She said softly to Simon: "The two babies' rooms are ready. You can take a look when you get up tomorrow."
Simon agreed and reached out to bring the female assistant over.
Jennifer rested her head on Simon's arm and said again: "Sophie really wants to send two babies here?"
"That's what I said, but it might be like you did before." Simon said, and then asked: "Do you think you can't take care of me?"
"No, I'm just worried that I can't take good care of him."
"How is it possible? You have taken good care of the three little guys and taught them well. To be honest, without you, it is hard to say what Jenny and I would have taught our children. You know, neither of us have raised a child." The gift of a child.”
Jennifer chuckled when she thought of how Janet always snatched the Melbourne duck to play with recently, and then added: "That's why you two can get together. You are the same person at heart."
"Oh, what about you?"
"I am, as the book says, a big girl."
"To be precise, it's the bed-warming girl."
"It's not cold in Los Angeles."
"It seems you still haven't learned the essence of Chinese."
"Haha, it's too difficult, and I don't have that much time. By the way, Moer will start kindergarten next month. Do you think we should add Chinese courses?"
Born in Melbourne in December 1991, he will be 4 years old by the end of the year and is already old enough to go to school.
In recent years, the female assistant has been personally managing the establishment of a school for little ones in Malibu. The private school for the children of the upper echelons of the Westeros system started operations last year and plans to provide a full range of education from kindergarten to middle school. The little guy will officially enter school next month.
In fact, both Veronica and Jennifer began to provide early education to the little ones from the time they were babbling in Melbourne, and Simon once considered completely home-schooling the children.
Finally gave up the idea.
When children enter school, learning knowledge is actually secondary. The main thing is to get in touch with the outside world and master various skills in dealing with others.
Because of Simon, the little guy has been receiving Chinese education in recent years. When the female assistant asked about it, Simon said: "No, joining Chinese courses may make other parents feel uncomfortable, but of course, you still have to learn Yes, we still hire a tutor for Moer as before."
Over the years, people around him have experienced too many unique things about Simon and have become accustomed to it.
However, to the outside world, even though he already has such great fame, power and wealth, Simon still tries not to take the initiative to show too many things unless necessary.
Chinese is one of them.
The two chatted in a low voice for a while, and then noticed Jennifer's little hands scratching up and down her chest. Simon understood, smiled and pulled away from Janet on the other side, put his arms around the female assistant's slender and soft body, and leaned into her ear. Bian said softly: “Do it yourself, don’t wake Jenny up.”
Entering August, the North American summer season is coming to an end in the second half.
In a box office week spanning July and August, the most eye-catching thing is the comparison of the box office of two new movies "Waterworld" and "The King of Fighters" that opened on July 28.
"Waterworld", which cost US$175 million, made only US$25.19 million at the box office in the first seven days from July 28 to August 3, unexpectedly losing to "The King of Fighters" produced by MGM.
The production cost of the action movie "King of Fighters" adapted from the video game "Mortal Kombat" is only 18 million U.S. dollars. It is not even a medium-cost movie at this stage. It also has a strong B-level movie style. However, it is such a movie. The movie unexpectedly earned $32.75 million at the box office in its first week, surpassing the opening score of "Waterworld" by more than $7 million.
According to the tiered sharing agreement signed between MGM and the theater chain, the studio can get 90% of the box office share in the first week after excluding the basic expenses of the theater chain. In fact, it is equivalent to about 75% of the total box office in the first week. After calculation, it is only In the first week of filming, MGM recovered a total investment of US$25 million in production and promotion.
This success is no accident.
Simon began to pay attention to fighting games when he developed the "Teenage Turtles" video game earlier, and achieved success. Therefore, the game department of Daenerys Entertainment has paid special attention to the production and distribution of such games in these years. With the prophet advantage, in 1991 After completing the full acquisition of EA at the end of the year, the game department acquired Midway, a Chicago game production company, in early 1992.
This happens to be the developer of Mortal Kombat.
The first "Mortal Kombat" was released in 1992 and sold 900,000 units in one year. It was not up to the level of several popular series in Daenerys' game department, but it was still a good success.
However, this is actually far lower than in the past.
Simon couldn't remember how many copies of "Mortal Kombat" sold in the original time and space, but it must have been over a million, and it even rivaled the "Street Fighter" series for a time.
After Simon personally paid attention, the game department paid more attention to the sequel. After two years, Midway finally released "Mortal Kombat 2" three months ago, and Daenerys Entertainment also spared no effort in marketing and promotion. It was released in early May in time for the summer vacation. As of the release of "King of Fighters", sales of "Mortal Kombat 2" had exceeded 500,000 units in three months.
The sales curve of video games is different from that of movie box office, but more like that of music records, which often remain popular for one or two years.
Sales have exceeded 500,000 units within three months of its release. The game department predicts that the total sales of "Mortal Kombat 2" will reach about 3 million units in the next two years.
Another blockbuster Daenerys game is born.
MGM's movie adaptation of this game is actually a linkage, and it successfully benefited from the release of "Mortal Kombat 2". It only invested US$7 million in the publicity budget, and the effect achieved is no less than other The film has an advertising investment of 10 to 20 million US dollars.
Simon has always been very cautious about adapting games into movies.
Because there are so many cases of tragic failure and very few successes.
Therefore, for the adaptation of "Mortal Kombat", he actually handed it over to MGM with the idea of transferring risks. Otherwise, New World Pictures, owned by Daenerys, could have produced it by itself. Unexpectedly, it would turn out to be A dark horse.
With an opening of US$32.75 million, even if the popcorn film's follow-up trend is not too strong, it will definitely not be able to escape the US$70 million domestically, and it will also be a big hit overseas.
Compared with Warner Bros., which is mired in the quagmire of "Waterworld", and Disney, which stumbled heavily with Stallone's "Defender", MGM's income this summer can be said to be huge with just "The King of Fighters" , not to mention "Clueless" which had a budget of US$12 million and grossed US$23.07 million in its first week, both of which are standard in making big gains out of small things.
For Daenerys, handing over the rights to adapt "Mortal Kombat" to MGM is definitely a mistake. However, in the end, it is considered that the good news does not go to outsiders.
Like last year's "Alien", following the release of the box office results in the first week, MGM immediately announced the project for a sequel to "The King of Fighters" and publicly stated that it would still adhere to the mid- to low-cost strategy.
In addition to the two new films, among the many old films, this summer's most blockbuster "Jurassic Park 2" has grossed another US$8.07 million in its ninth week of release. The single-week box office has officially fallen into the range of 10 million US dollars. The cumulative box office reached 381.76 million US dollars, continuing to steadily move towards the 400 million threshold.
"Apollo 13", which was released during the Independence Day holiday, grossed US$56.31 million in its first week, and its trend has been quite stable in recent times.
In the fifth week of release from July 28 to August 3, the box office of "Apollo 13" fell by 29% in a single week, and it collected another US$12.78 million, with a cumulative box office of US$143.57 million. So far, it has been roughly confirmed The domestic box office of "Apollo 13" is between US$170 million and US$180 million.
The final domestic box office of "Ultra 3", which was completely canceled in June, was US$176 million. The local box office of "Apollo 13" is basically the same as this blockbuster comedy during the Easter period.
If there were other blockbuster films from other studios on last year's annual box office list, Daenerys Entertainment has completely demonstrated its dominance from 1995 to now.
So far, the four movies that have crossed the threshold of the 100 million yuan box office club, "Jurassic Park 2", "This Man is from Earth", "Inside Out" and "Apollo 13", are all produced by Daenerys Entertainment , and this time they are all wholly-owned projects without external cooperation.
In addition to Daenerys, although there are films such as "Die Hard 3" and "Elf" that have temporarily entered the top ten of the annual list, the combined box office of these films is not as good as that of "Jurassic". Park 2", this situation is just like what Simon remembered many years later. The movies that other studios rushed into the top ten were not as good at the box office as "Star Wars" or "Avengers" from De Bao's family. .
The oligarchic trend is completely formed.
On August 4, a new box office week begins for the second half of the summer season.
Like MGM's release strategy, in order to avoid a series of blockbusters in the early part of the summer season, many projects from other studios have been placed in this period.
On this day, a total of 4 movies were released with more than 1,000 screens, namely "Dangerous Game" starring Michelle Pfeiffer produced by Disney, "The Magic" starring Julia Roberts produced by Warner Bros. Ramone is producing "The Man of Time," starring Denzel Washington, and "The Cursed Lawn," a low-budget family comedy from Fox.
The production costs of the four new films did not exceed US$30 million. Although they inevitably had an impact on many old films after their release, there were no blockbusters.
The Julia Roberts romantic movie "Love", which had the best first-week performance, only had a box office of $16.61 million in seven days. "King of Fighters", which was a hit in its first week, dropped 54% in the second week. It was an expected deep drop. It ranked second on the list with revenue of 15.21 million U.S. dollars, and the cumulative box office in two weeks was 47.96 million U.S. dollars.
Warner Bros.' "Waterworld" saw a 43% box office drop in the second week, collecting another US$14.35 million, with a cumulative box office of US$39.54 million. The total local box office is expected to be about US$60 million, which is about US$20 million lower than its previous record. .
Friday, August 11th.
Another box office week has begun, and the number of major new releases has been reduced to two, namely "Network" starring Sandra Bullock produced by MGM and the romantic comedy "Walking in the Clouds" produced by Fox.
Simon left for Europe at noon that day to accompany Sophia during her pregnancy.
The direct flight from Los Angeles to Rome reaches 10,000 kilometers and takes about 12 hours. It is expected to arrive at the destination at 9 a.m. local time tomorrow.
Girl A is still accompanying me.
In the front cabin of the Boeing 767, after the plane stabilized, Alison handed Simon some documents she had just received before leaving.
This is a stack of real estate information.
Girl A briefly introduced that these properties were mainly collected from Asia by the private real estate brokerage team of the Westeros family.
It’s still Simon’s daily routine of buying a house.
Hearing that there were several properties from South Korea, Simon opened the page and found the target. There were three properties in total, all in Yongsan District in the center of Seoul, South Korea. This place is like the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York.
Simon looked through the information in his hand, but he thought of something else.
In recent years, I have actually forgotten about Korea.
As one of the Four Asian Tigers, South Korea will directly compete with the Westeros system in many industries in the future, such as the electronics industry, the game industry, and even film and music. If it cannot be controlled, it is best to suppress it, and Definitely the earlier the layout is done, the better.
However, it's not too late.
To be precise, the most appropriate time to deploy in South Korea should be 1997.