new week.
The topic of the major media in North America naturally starts with the Oscars that just passed. However, just like this year’s Oscars, which created a new low ratings, the controversy over "The Horse Whisperer" winning multiple Oscars is not as intense as expected.
Most newspapers, magazines and TV media are still focusing on the increasingly turbulent Nasdaq technology stock market.
Last week, stimulated by Forbes magazine's announcement that Eric's personal assets exceeded the $300 billion mark due to the outbreak of technology stocks, the Nasdaq index rose all the way, causing a large number of hedge funds that shorted the Nasdaq to suffer heavy losses.
I don’t know if I took advantage of the two days of the weekend to lick my wounds. Just after the start of Monday, an obvious bearish Nasdaq theory came back. It seems that I want to go all out and completely wipe out the Nasdaq market that just broke through 3,000 points last week. smashed down.
Among these bearish forces, the biggest one is Tiger Fund, which together with Soros' Quantum Fund two years ago conquered the Southeast Asian economic crisis.
The founder of Tiger Fund, Julian Robertson, even publicly appeared in an interview with NBC's "Today Show" program in the morning, unceremoniously criticizing the serious bubble elements in Nasdaq technology stocks, and even criticizing Yahoo, Cisco, etc. Several listed technology companies of the Firefly system.
Speaking of which, Eric had a chance meeting with Julian Robertson at a party in New York last year. Although he didn't expect any friendship between the two parties because of this small meeting, he didn't expect Julian Robertson Robertson will suddenly point his head at the Firefly system.
It wasn't until Chris called from New York that Eric realized that last week's surge in the Nasdaq directly caused the Tiger Fund, which had established a large number of short positions, to lose US$500 million.
Two years ago, the total size of the Tiger Fund, which had just completed the harvest in the Southeast Asian economic crisis, once exceeded 22 billion U.S. dollars. However, since last year's failure to bet on Russia with Soros, the life of the Tiger Fund has not been very good this year.
Due to the successive failures of two large-scale investments in Russia and American Airlines, the current scale of Tiger Fund has shrunk rapidly to 16 billion US dollars.
Now, Nasdaq's technology stocks are booming all the way, Soros' Quantum Fund is standing still, but Julian Robertson doesn't know what's wrong, and he firmly stands on the side of bearish technology stocks.
In just one week of gains, Tiger Fund lost 500 million US dollars. It is conceivable that Julian Robertson bet on short positions, and it is no wonder that the other party was so anxious that he jumped out and went shirtless.
However, although this sudden blow did send the Nasdaq into a downward swing at the beginning of the new week, it did not affect the overall Nasdaq market at all as a large number of speculative funds continued to pour into the technology stock market. trend.
Then, on Wednesday alone, the Nasdaq rallied back to where it had just opened on Monday. And, the entire time, the Nasdaq didn't even drop below 3,000.
The Nasdaq index broke through 3,000 points several months earlier than in memory, but Eric did not change his original plan, and he didn't even think about slowing down because of the sudden outbreak of this wave of bearishness. Since Monday, Eric has ordered the traders of the Clover Fund without hesitation to gradually sell the stocks they hold.
On the other hand, in the same week, Yahoo Portal also quickly published an article titled "The Merger of AOL and Time Warner Will Seriously Affect the Normal Competition in the Internet Industry." On the contrary, other media in the Firefly system immediately followed up, calling on the Federal Department of Justice to immediately reject the merger application of AOL and Time Warner.
In order to avoid cheating, Eric simply played a full set, completely cut off his private support for the merger of AOL and Time Warner, and did not notify the management of AOL and Time Warner in advance.
Steve Case did not expect that the Firefly system, which had clearly expressed its support for the merger of AOL and Time Warner at the last consultation meeting of the Ministry of Justice, would suddenly turn its face. He was a little frustrated and soon published an open letter on the portal of AOL, He accused the Firefly system of being the culprit of 'affecting the normal competition in the Internet industry', and again quoted the article in the "Washington Post" not long ago, proving the Firefly system's ambition to monopolize the Internet industry.
After such a toss, whether it is the media or the political circles, a large number of voices have emerged to speak for AOL and Time Warner. Of course, the Firefly system, which is already an industry oligarchy but still wants to prevent others from growing, will inevitably be outraged by the public, and it will soon receive a lot of criticism.
However, despite the apparent opposition, Firefly has privately taken no concrete steps to block the AOL-Time Warner merger.
In the days that followed, it may have been the same reaction. Neither Steve Case nor Terry Semel, who is about to leave after the merger case is settled, did not call anyone in the Firefly system to question. , The two sides formed a tacit understanding.
In fact, these large capital-level operations did not take up much of Eric's time, and his main focus was still on Hollywood.
After the third week of screenings, "The Blair Witch" dropped by 53% as expected, but the film still reaped a box office of 28.9 million U.S. dollars, and the cumulative box office reached 111.68 million U.S. dollars in three weeks, continuing to refresh the return on investment at the box office rate of miracles.
Moreover, although the box office decline deepened in the third week, a large number of students will be on vacation because the Easter schedule will be entered next. Therefore, even with multiple new releases expected in the next few weeks, New Line Cinema's distribution department predicts that The Blair Witch's North American gross will easily top $150 million or more.
Due to the box office myth created by "The Blair Witch", during this period, a large number of Hollywood film companies have begun to pay attention to the emerging shooting method of DV photography, and some film companies have even launched a batch of DV film projects quickly.
However, it is obvious that most people only saw the myth of the return on investment of "The Blair Witch", but did not notice that the success of this film has nothing to do with DV photography. In the final analysis, it is still a brand new Internet marketing model victory.
Moreover, even if some people are aware of this, the Internet as a marketing platform has just been 'over-consumed' by "The Blair Witch". In the next few years, those projects that attempt to replicate the miracle of "The Blair Witch" are destined to be reduced For cannon fodder.
"Gravity" is going through a relatively boring and repetitive CG production stage, and Eric doesn't need to keep an eye on it all the time, so he can free up time to focus on other projects of the Firefly system.
For Firefly Group, the first part of "Harry Potter" was officially launched, and a press conference was held this week. The author of the novel, J.K. Rowling, also flew to Los Angeles.
Although the other party did not propose it as before, Eric still took the initiative to promise that the film will use British actors as much as possible and shoot in the UK. In fact, doing so can also restore the scene of the novel more realistically. After all, the unique cool atmosphere of the UK is not easy to find in other countries and regions.
As for MGM, after more than a year of long preparations, "Bond 19" is finally confirmed to be launched in April, and it is initially scheduled for next summer.
In addition, "The Fast and the Furious", which was released at the beginning of the year, has been completely down after three months of screenings. The North American box office finally reached 218.6 million U.S. dollars, compared to MGM's total production and distribution costs of 70 million U.S. dollars. In terms of spending, it is definitely a big success.
Affected by the success of the box office in North America, "Fast and Furious" has been released to the popular summer season in most overseas box office countries. Just judging from the popularity of some overseas box offices that have been released so far, the film's overseas box office There is no problem in surpassing North America, and the global total box office is likely to reach the level of 500 million US dollars.
The success of "Fast and Furious", a derivative series of the secret agent movie universe, also changed the attitude of Kevin Costner, the leading actor of the "Mission: Impossible" series, who was on the sidelines, and finally signed a contract with MGM smoothly. Come down with two secret agent movie universe film appointments.
At the same time, with the success of the "Fast and Furious" series, the "Bourne Shadow" series that MGM is brewing has naturally gained greater attention from the industry.
Century City, MGM headquarters.
Near the end of get off work hours, in a conference room, the well-known Hollywood producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy got up and met with Eric, Amy Pascal, Frank Macasso and other MGM executives Shake hands and say goodbye.
Amy and Frank Marshall were soon approached after Eric suggested at last weekend's Vanity Fair party.
Frank Marshall and his wife have stopped working at Amberlin Films and were already looking for a next home. The conditions offered by MGM are very good. Moreover, as long as the two parties reach a cooperation, the couple can immediately take over the popular projects of MGM's Agents movie universe. The two parties almost hit it off.
As the actual controller of MGM, it is naturally impossible for Eric not to show up for such an important cooperation. Today is the last round of contract negotiations with the couple.
Since both parties have strong cooperation intentions, after a week of contract negotiations, the two parties basically reached an agreement.
A formal signing ceremony will take place next week.
When the couple left, the crowd did not disperse and sat down again.
After chatting a few words about the details of the negotiation just now, Amy took the initiative to raise the issue of the leading actor in the "Bourne Shadow" series.