Before Christmas, to be exact, before the two-week North American legal holiday on December 20, Eric left East Hampton only once, mainly to attend Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" in New York 's premiere.
As Quentin's work that has established himself as a talented director in Hollywood, "Pulp Fiction" has already received overwhelming praise from North American film critics during the trial screening stage, and it has aroused strong reactions among movie fans after its release.
Although Firefly Pictures only gave the film 1,300 yuan for its premiere due to the limitation of the subject matter of "Pulp Fiction", the box office of "Pulp Fiction" was close to 17 million US dollars in the first week, with a single box office of more than 13,000 US dollars. It easily broke through the $10,000 movie standard for a single movie, and even surpassed the comedy movies promoted by other film companies in the Christmas file. After the announcement of the nominations for the American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards on December 23, "Pulp Fiction", which was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, did not fall but rose in the second week, reaching 21 million US dollars. and
Because the series of "Pulp Fiction" starring Bruce Willis, John Travolta and other Hollywood superstars stared at Quentin's fame created by "Reservoir Dogs" and lowered their pay, the cost of "Pulp Fiction" was not high. To 10 million US dollars, although Firefly has invested more than 10 million US dollars in publicity and distribution costs in order to make "Pulp Fiction" a popular film in the awards season, the two-week box office performance of "Pulp Fiction" has allowed Firefly to recover all costs. Partially profitable.
"Interview with the Vampire", which was released a week after "Pulp Fiction", also achieved impressive box office results. The box office results of more than 47 million US dollars in the first week once again proved that Tom Cruise's box office appeal is still good.
However, after the release of "Interview with the Vampire", Amy Pascal, who had been negotiating with Cruise on the leading role of "Mission: Impossible", regrettably called East Hampton, saying that Tom Cruise In the end, he refused to cooperate with Huahua Pictures, and was personally recruited by Shirley Lansing, the CEO of Paramount Pictures, who had just taken office, and took Cruise-Wagner Production Company to defect to his old club Paramount again.
Because of the Hollywood tough guy movie trend led by Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s, Hollywood may lack other types of stars in the 1990s, but there is no shortage of action stars. Eric can think of a series of candidates who are currently comparable to Cruise and very suitable for the actor of "Mission: Impossible", Kevin Costner, Liam Neeson, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Riley Weiss and so on. Hence the rejection for Cruise. Eric didn't have much emotion, but just ordered Amy Pascal to contact other stars at will. The only thing Eric was curious about was the strength of that irascible old man Redstone. This time, the two sides will be able to cooperate for a few years. Moreover, without "Mission: Impossible", the ace series that makes Paramount unable to stop, Eric is also very curious about whether Cruise can make a comeback once Cruise and Paramount have a stalemate again.
Of course, this curiosity was quickly thrown away by Eric. While enjoying the joy and warmth of Christmas with the women and children, all kinds of news came from Los Angeles non-stop.
Warren Buffett stayed in Los Angeles until December 27th. During this period, he negotiated many times with Katzenberg. In the end, the two sides still failed to reach any agreement. Although Buffett made some concessions, the conditions offered were still very difficult. It is acceptable that on December 27th, Eric had a two-hour phone conversation with Buffett in Los Angeles in East Hampton. The film industry carried out a replacement, but the proportion of equity that Firefly needed to pay was reduced to 40%. According to the market value of the ABC TV network at this time, it is equivalent to exchanging 7 billion US dollars for 40% of the shares of Firefly Films. Of course, Eric could not accept it. , Firefly Pictures also began to officially prepare for the public acquisition.
The New Year holiday has just passed, and Chris, who has been preparing for several months, formally requested to join the LTD board of directors with his shares in LTD, and publicly initiated the acquisition of LTD with Brighton fashion company as the main body.
Although LTD's CEO Leslie Wexner had realized the abnormality of LTD's stock price years ago, Chris was very careful throughout the process. It wasn't until the news became public that Leslie Wexner realized the seriousness of the matter. At this time, Chris already owned 12% of LTD company's shares, and he had become Leslie Wexner's partner without knowing it. outside the second largest shareholder. Although it is still far away from Leslie Wexner's 35% shareholding, Leslie Wexner knows very well that once Chris successfully enters the LTD board of directors and wins other shareholders to join his camp, then Leslie Wexner is likely to lose control of LTD.
So Leslie Wexner immediately launched the poison pill. Publicly stated that if Chris's shareholding exceeds 15%, LTD will issue additional shares to major shareholders at a price far below the public stock price to dilute Chris's shares.
Chris, who had been prepared for a long time, made a counterattack immediately. The lawyer representative of Brighton Fashion Company stated at the press conference that Leslie Wexner's actions have damaged the majority of shareholders' right to freely decide whether to sell the company's shares. , and it is a 'barbaric plunder' to other LTD shareholders who cannot accept low-price additional issuance, so the federal regulatory agency is required to stop the behavior of LTD management.
Leslie Wexner, while denouncing the hostile takeover of Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investment, decided to hold an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders at the LTD headquarters on January 20 in order to show the public the legitimacy of his actions, so that the shareholder representatives could freely Vote on whether to launch a poison pill.
But then, Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investment published in the famous financial magazine "Business Weekly" the company's detailed development plan after completing the acquisition of LTD, stating that their acquisitions belonged to normal commercial mergers and acquisitions, not hostile acquisitions.
After Chris submitted a series of materials prepared in advance to the SEC, before the holding of LTD's extraordinary shareholders' meeting, the SEC announced that LTD's 'poison pill plan' would be invalid even if it passed the vote of the extraordinary shareholders' meeting.
Subsequently, Chris, as the joint representative of Brighton Fashion Company and Firefly Investment, proposed to LTD for the first time a purchase price of US$19 per share, and at the same time that he announced Brighton Fashion Company's annual financial report last year, he announced that A series of financing plans for the acquisition.
And Leslie Wexner simply quoted a high price of 35 US dollars per share. It was more than twice as high as LTD's share price. Leslie Wexner was immediately evaluated as 'losing his mind' by a business magazine when the offer came out.
All of a sudden, the acquirer and the acquired party come and go. Good show again and again.
Although this business is not too big under the wave of mergers and acquisitions in the past two years, since the junk bond king Michael Milken was imprisoned and the corporate sniper Ron Perelman put away his minions and kept a low profile, this business It is also the first leveraged buyout case on Wall Street in recent times, because it is not clear how much bargaining chips Firefly Investment and Brighton Fashion Company have in private. Some people even compare it to another Revlon acquisition. years ago. Ron Perelman acquired Revlon with a market value of US$1 billion with a capital of 150 million.
In order to cooperate with Firefly Films' plan, Eric chose to attend the Golden Globe Awards Ceremony this year, so he returned to Los Angeles in mid-January. However, Eric, like many people, always pays attention to Chris and Rice Leigh Wexner made a series of back and forth moves. Although he was an amateur, Eric also clearly realized that Leslie Wexner had fallen into a disadvantage.
However, Firefly Pictures is also making intense preparations for the public acquisition of ABC. Eric didn't think too much about these things.
After the New Year's holiday, Firefly Pictures immediately released the company's 1994 film list, in addition to "Saving Private Ryan", "The Lion King", "True Lies" and other flagship films, it also includes New Line label Reboots of some of its classic horror films. At the same time, the TV drama department of Firefly Pictures officially released the news, saying that after the fifth season of "Friends", Firefly Pictures will terminate the contract with Fox Television Network. While continuing to produce "Friends", the Firefly TV drama department will develop several other TV series. and reality shows to 'expand their own TV network business'.
Although the layer of window paper was not publicly pierced. But at this time, everyone in North America who pays attention to the news knows that it is only a matter of time before Firefly Pictures launches a public acquisition of ABC Television Network.
After Firefly Pictures released the 1994 film list, the latest issue of "Variety Show" magazine was published in early February. It was immediately announced that it was out of stock, and the magazine had to urgently print 100,000 copies of the magazine for emergency use.
The reason why this movie magazine, which is only of interest to Hollywood professionals, is suddenly out of stock is because Firefly Pictures publicly released the 1993 financial report of Firefly Pictures in the "Variety Show" magazine for the first time.
Throughout 1993, Firefly Pictures released a total of 28 films, an average of more than two films per month. And Firefly Pictures finally made an astonishing box office of 447 million US dollars in North America this year because of "Jurassic Park", as well as "Clash of Heaven and Earth", "A Bug's Life" and "Aeroplane 2", "Aeroplane 2" and "Planet 2", which were still released at the end of the year Pulp Fiction" and "Interview with the Vampire" were box office successes. Once again, it won 29% of the box office share, and the annual North American box office is expected to reach 1.74 billion U.S. dollars. In 1993, because of the stimulation of the blockbuster "event movie" "Jurassic Park", the box office exceeded 6 billion for the first time in North America. Dollar.
Because of the strong locomotive effect caused by the success of films such as "Jurassic Park", Firefly Pictures hit a new high in net profit in 1993, reaching US$1.19 billion, an increase of US$200 million over last year, and compared to last year's Firefly. Net profit is only a slight advantage of 30 million US dollars more than Time Warner. Last year, due to the huge impact of the death of Steve Ross, who had been in charge of Warner for decades, the net profit of Time Warner Group did not rise but fell, only 870 million US dollars. Firefly Pictures fully surpassed Time Warner in terms of profit by 320 million US dollars.
After Time Warner, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Columbia, and MGM have a total profit of less than two billion US dollars, because under Peter Guber's tossing, although "Broken" which cooperated with Firefly at the end of the year "Arrow" did well at the box office, but other Columbia films seldom made a profit. Sony Columbia was still losing money overall. Although MGM Pictures recovered some vitality under the leadership of John Carley and others, it was still not as good as some prosperous second films. The total number of films produced and distributed by third-tier film companies and MGM in 1993 is less than a fraction of that of Firefly Pictures.
When the entire capital market was studying the 1993 annual financial report of Firefly Films, Firefly Films also officially submitted an acquisition application to the board of directors of ABC Television Network in early February. In a confrontation, ABC's response was much milder.
As if in response to Firefly's 1993 annual financial report, the ABC Television Network also released the network's 1993 profit in advance.
Although it is not as good as Firefly Pictures' huge profit of US$1.19 billion, ABC TV Network also achieved a net profit of US$520 million in 1993, ranking first among the four major North American TV networks, accounting for 23% of the market share . You should know that although there are only four national public TV networks in North America, since the emergence of premium cable TV in the 1980s, a large number of premium cable TV programs have joined the prime-time viewing competition, and the market share of several major TV networks has continued to decline. , ABC TV network can achieve 23% market share, has surpassed NBC, CBS and Fox TV network a lot.
After Firefly Pictures publicly announced the acquisition offer, ABC Television Network also responded quickly. Tom Murphy, the board member and CEO of ABC Television Network, personally called Eric and said that if Eric planned to pay in cash If the ABC TV network is acquired by adding stocks, then, based on the stock price of the ABC TV network at this time, Firefly Pictures will first bear the 35% capital gains tax arising from the cash transaction. The cash acquisition shall not be lower than 1.35 times the stock price of ABC TV Network at this time.
After the continuous stock price rise during this period, the stock price of ABC Television Network has reached a new high, and its market value has reached an astonishing 11.2 billion US dollars, which is nearly 2 billion US dollars higher than in the middle of last year. However, Eric also knew that this was inevitable, so he agreed on the spot. Right now, the most important thing is to acquire ABC as soon as possible. If this acquisition becomes a long-term tug-of-war, then Eric Prefer to forego the ABC diversion target. (To be continued.)