China Entertainment King of Science Fiction

Chapter 453 Busy June

Throughout June, Chen Jingxing was extremely busy.

"Inception" has entered post-production. Although Mo has a special effects team that is second to none in the country and even close to the world's, Chen Jingxing must always follow up.

After the project of "Once Upon a Time on Earth" was officially approved, due to the bold appointment of a new director, Chen Jingxing, as a producer, could not just be a hands-off boss. He had to participate in almost every step of the preparation process.

After all, director Wen Zhian had only been responsible for the filming of "Black Mirror II: Prometheus" before, and that was a "science fiction sketch" with only four actors and almost all the drama.

The science fiction drama "Once Upon a Time on Earth: Overture" is not a project of the same level from the perspective of the film and television industry.

Judging from the script, although the scenes of the TV series "Once Upon a Time on Earth: Overture" are definitely not as big as those of the subsequent main movies, it also involves a lot of military, action and special effects plots, and the budget investment is estimated to be at least 240 million.

In addition, the follow-up movies of "Once Upon a Time on Earth" will mainly be directed by Chen Jingxing himself, so he must strictly control the drama "Prelude".

Handing such an important project directly to a new director also made people inside the company and the outside world, whether it was the media or fans, a little puzzled and dumbfounded. They could only lament that Chen Jingxing was brave. It is a tradition for DreamWorks to recruit and train new talents.

In fact, this is why Chen Jingxing, Ning Hao, Chen Sicheng and the others only have a brief friendship as classmates. Except for DreamWorks' involvement in the investment of "Tang Detective", there is no close intersection - in fact, from "Tang Detective Ⅱ"

At the beginning, Chen Sicheng consciously reduced DreamWorks' investment share and eliminated DreamWorks' power. Therefore, DreamWorks only received less than 30% of the investment share for "Tang Detective III".

But Zhao Jianbo could have imagined that Station C could survive the pain of transformation under his leadership and Nasdaq would ring the bell, but he never imagined that DreamWorks' development in recent years would far exceed his imagination.

In the end, Zhao Jianbo gritted his teeth and chose DreamWorks among two investors with unequal status, Penguin Group and DreamWorks, which surprised the outside world.

Even after listing, it will be diluted to 19%, and it will still be the largest shareholder.

Someone has to resist the loss, and it won't work without someone to give blood. In his eyes, Chen Jingxing is already the cash machine of the future.

Moreover, the biggest shortcoming of DreamWorks, a high-quality shareholder, in Zhao Jianbo's eyes has been made up for in recent years - cash flow.

It's just a pity that they don't have Chen Jingxing's plug-in, so they can't frantically invest resources like DreamWorks, so it doesn't seem to be as effective as DreamWorks' support.

In terms of supporting young directors, Ning Hao and Chen Sicheng are more crazy and bold than Chen Jingxing. After all, Tian Xinye also filmed two online dramas on Penguin Video before filming the drama version of "Signal", and Guo Fan also had "

Movies like "My Deskmate" were successful at the box office.

The root cause is that DreamWorks, as the country's leading high-quality content creation company and the No. 1 animation company in the country, not only supports Station C in terms of business, but also has greater symbolic significance.

Typical assets are small and yield high returns.

Because they actually have some ideas in common.

Regardless of whether there are any problems with these people's personal ethics or other aspects, it is undeniable that in Chen Jingxing's eyes, these people are indeed like-minded fellow travelers and filmmakers who share some of the same ideals.

Station C CEO Zhao Jianbo strongly requested Chen Jingxing to attend the bell-ringing ceremony, and also asked Chen Jingxing and Zhao Jianbo to ring it together.

Compared with the boldness of DreamWorks in supporting directors, Ning Hao, Xu Zheng and Chen Sicheng are actually even more bold in supporting directors.

A very important part of DreamWorks' market value of 100 billion is that it is the major shareholder of Station C.

He has a clear view on the future development of Station C. Listing is not the end. Station C has not established a stable and high-growth profit model so far. Burning money and losses are unavoidable in the future.

At the critical junction of station C's transformation, when Zhao Jianbo launched the fourth round of financing, Huanshi.com did not want to continue to be a half-competitor in the same field in their eyes because of internal road disputes and the intensification of money-burning in streaming media.

I want to burn more money by standing still, but I don’t want to give up this position, let alone let penguins enter and attract wolves into the house.

Just four movies including "Fang II" and "The Martian" in the second half of last year, as well as "Kung Fu Panda" and "Operation Red Sea" during the Spring Festival this year, have turned DreamWorks into a money printing machine.

Even though DreamWorks is working hard to invest in heavier assets, such as theater chains, until now it is still an asset-light weirdo that looks like an Internet company, but does not need to burn money to acquire land like Internet companies.

Two people with different dreams together rang the bell for C Station to be listed on the Nasdaq. Perhaps it was because of Chen Jingxing's attendance and ringing the bell that it not only attracted a lot of reports and attention from North American and Hollywood entertainment media, but also made people who have never heard of it.

Station C, which reversed its losses, did not break the stock price on its first day of listing.

Therefore, Zhao Jianbo's positioning of DreamWorks is to help him get out of the temporary difficulties. When the time comes, before or after the listing, other wealthy and powerful investors will be introduced, and it will not be difficult to kick DreamWorks away. Even DreamWorks itself

They will give up after getting a return on their investment.

Therefore, DreamWorks was pushed to the front. It happened that Chen Jingxing was also interested in entering. He felt that this was a rare opportunity, so he gritted his teeth and obtained credit support from the China Development Bank as one of the "Top 30 National Cultural Enterprises" and a "National Copyright Demonstration Unit".

Hong Kong stocks are dominated by institutional investors, and no rational institutional investor would pin their valuation imagination on the talent of an individual.

We also had a great conversation at the party after the Shanghai Film Festival.

A content creator from a different track, not as big as an Internet giant, not interfering in the company's operations, not competing for power with Zhao Jianbo, the largest individual shareholder, with a high-quality image and an internationally renowned content creator is simply the perfect major shareholder.

Among them, Ke Wenli was even immediately confirmed by Chen Sicheng to shoot his first movie "Manslaughter" after directing the TV series "Tang Detective".

Of course, all of this relies on DreamWorks' incomprehensible creative capabilities, leaving colleagues who want to learn nothing but despair.

The status of the major shareholder of Station C is a pillar that supports the status of DreamWorks. Chen Jingxing will naturally not abandon it casually. Of course, this does not mean that Chen Jingxing is willing to act as a blood transfusion bag to make up for the losses of Station C.

The capital market is full of imagination. DreamWorks' status as the largest shareholder in Station C can give Station C imagination, which is what Zhao Jianbo values ​​most.

But Zhao Jianbo doesn’t want to learn from DreamWorks, nor is he a track player. What Zhao Jianbo likes is DreamWorks’ money.

In addition to being busy with the preparation and casting of "Once Upon a Time on Earth", Station C is finally going to be listed on Nasdaq. Before the Spring Festival of 2015, Huanshi.com, as the largest institutional shareholder at the time, invested in Station C's D round.

The financing was introduced to DreamWorks. After this round of financing, DreamWorks invested 550 million through the credit support of China Development Bank, and in one fell swoop it owned 24% of the equity of Station C and became the major shareholder of Station C.

The same is true for Dai Mo, who signed a contract with Chen Sicheng. This young man is an actor and has never directed any film, TV series or even short films before. Chen Sicheng is also willing to let him be in charge of filming the TV series "Tang Detective", and also shoot "Tang Detective" with him.

The other three young directors of the TV series "Detective" are all newcomers to the directing industry.

The eye-catching revenue performance and net profit figures are the flesh and blood that fills the skeleton. The flesh and blood may collapse at any time due to Chen Jingxing's personal "exhaustion of talents", but the skeleton will not be dissolved due to the abnormal performance of one or two people.

.

DreamWorks' current free cash flow has exceeded 4 billion.

Even Chen Sicheng's Chengya Pictures only has four signed artists: Chen Sicheng, his wife, Liu Haoran and Dai Mo. In fact, Chengya doesn't do much artist management business. Chen Sicheng and Dai Mo are both directors.

Neither Bad Monkey nor Huanxi Media has artist management business. Instead, they have gathered a group of directors and only sign contracts with directors.

This is why Chen Jingxing readily accepted Ning Hao's invitation to attend the party after the seminar.

Of course, Chen Jingxing is not unaware that he has become an ATM machine in Zhao Jianbo's eyes, but the asset of Station C is still quite important to DreamWorks.

According to the annual report for fiscal year 2017-18, DreamWorks’ revenue exceeded 6.5 billion and net profit was 2.09 billion. This is based on the fact that it has invested in a considerable number of projects and its subsidiary Mexico continues to expand.

This is very similar to DreamWorks, that is, they put their bets on directors, but do not do or do less artist business, and only act as creators of resources.

But Chen Jingxing and this group of people are still vaguely classified as a large circle by the media or netizens, and they also feel that they are relatively in tune with each other, and they even feel a bit like friends of Jianghu.

The issue price was US$11.5 and the closing price was US$11.52, basically unchanged.

The film and television copyrights held by DreamWorks, the strongest special effects technology and animation capabilities in Asia owned by Mo, the equity of Station C, and the investment in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain after DreamWorks went public, these are the skeleton that supports the market value.

At that time, it may have been Zhao Jianbo's personal ambition that led him to make the decision to exclude Penguin, but Zhao Jianbo himself was not without worries about DreamWorks. At that time, DreamWorks was not only a newly emerging film and television company that produced several high-quality content.

Outside the company, they are not qualified donors at all.

Wen Muye was a director who had only made short films before being signed by Ning Hao and had never directed a full-length feature film. Ning Hao dared to hand over "The God of Medicine", a project that they had always liked very much, into his hands.

Zhao Jianbo was a little disappointed, but Chen Jingxing breathed a sigh of relief. Today, the halo of Chinese concept stocks has gradually dissipated, and he is extremely lucky not to have a break.

He still remembered how in his previous life, the largest barrage website in the country was listed twice and broke twice.

The listing of Station C is also equivalent to the staged results of a long-term investment by DreamWorks, so the Hong Kong stock market has responded again, and the market value of DreamWorks has increased slightly.

After Chen Jingxing returned from the United States, he worked non-stop with the assembled creative team to promote "The Matrix II".

(End of chapter)