Dreams of the Fragrant River

Kang Jianfei stared at the stock prices of several Hollywood giants, naturally, to make a move at the right time.

Among the giants, MGM_Lianmei Film Company was the first to be excluded by Kang Jianfei. This unfortunate Hollywood giant has been tossed by three buyers since the 1970s, and various departments and subsidiaries have been split and sold, and now it has become a major film company.

MGM was already a mess at the hands of its former owner, Turner Broadcasting, who took away the last of MGM's valuables after discovering it couldn't pay for the mess - the world's largest video library.

Now MGM is in the hands of an Italian consortium, and the only valuable thing is the copyright of the 007 series of movies, which was what the Italian consortium insisted on keeping when it bought MGM.

Kang Jianfei didn't want to spend a lot of money to buy a ** film company that was heavily indebted.

Next up was 20th Century Fox, which was bought by media mogul Murdoch two years ago. Murdoch is now building an ambitious media empire, and 20th Century Fox is an important part of his empire. Kang Jianfei can only buy it unless he makes a hostile takeover with Murdoch.

Then among the major Hollywood movie giants, there are still Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Columbia_Samsung Films, Warner Bros. Pictures and Walt Disney Company.

Among them, the Disney company has been very prosperous in recent years. It is also acquiring small film companies and forming its own TV network. Kang Jianfei can't easily win it.

Universal Pictures is in a similar situation to Disney. The movie giant has been in the hands of American music companies for more than 20 years. It is not only profitable at the box office, but also operates well in TV movies, movie music and movie tourism. .

What Kang Jianfei really liked and tried to buy were Paramount Pictures and Columbia_Samsung Studios, as well as Turner Broadcasting Company, which bought the MGM film library (the MGM film library includes another Hollywood film company). The rights to all the early films of the giant Warner Bros.).

Paramount is now in the hands of Gulf Western Industries. Its boss is a businessman who doesn't understand movies at all, but under his unreserved delegation of power, Paramount has made good movies frequently in the past two decades, and its profitability has been very good. Really running Paramount. It was Barry Diller and his two assistants, Michael Eisner and Jeff Katzenberg. The trio brought the once troubled Paramount back to the top Hollywood throne.

But Barry Diller, aiming to build a new network, was poached three years ago by Murdoch, who wanted to build a media empire. Paramount was left with only two assistants to Barry Diller. His two assistants are not ordinary people, Michael? Eisner is the head of the future Disney, and Gerefer? Katzenberg is the head of the future DreamWorks.

But now neither of the two future greats is in power, and Paramount is run by a conservative after Barry Diller left. Paramount has been going downhill for the past three years. This kind of performance is not good, but it has strong strength and unlimited potential, and there are two companies with great talents in the future. In Kang Jianfei's eyes, it is simply a piece of fat.

As for Columbia_Samsung, this company is now owned by the famous Coca-Cola, and its operating conditions are neither good nor bad. in another time and space. Two years later, a wealthy Japanese tyrant bought Columbia Samsung for $6 billion, and then changed its name to Sony Pictures.

If Kang Jianfei insisted on buying it, it is now in the midst of a major stock market crash in the United States. Shares in Columbia Samsung and its parent company Coca-Cola have plummeted, and Kang Jianfei can buy more than 60 percent of Columbia Samsung — including several of its subsidiaries — for up to $2 billion.

Kang Jianfei has not yet decided which company to buy. He has now remitted the funds to the National Bank of America and organized a professional team through a headhunting company. In the next period of time, Kang Jianfei's acquisition team will negotiate with Gulf Western and Coca-Cola at the same time, and after determining the target, choose the right time to cooperate with the means of dark disk acquisition to win one of the movie giants.

The most troublesome thing is Turner Broadcasting Company. When Kang Jianfei wanted to buy this company, he not only valued the film library of MGM, but also valued the TV network of this company.

Under the care of the US anti-monopoly law, US film companies cannot operate theaters vertically. In order to become a Hollywood giant, in addition to making good films, there is also a very important media network. The parent companies of several Hollywood giants are either TV, newspapers, or records. After Coca-Cola acquired Columbia-Samsung, it also acquired the shares of other related media companies, so that it can make movies steadily.

After MGM was resold several times, it lost the resource advantage of this promotion and distribution, so that it has now become a ** film company that no one wants.

Kang Jianfei's acquisition of a Hollywood movie giant was not for the purpose of pretending to be classy. In addition to making money, he had to use this company to distribute Hong Kong films. If you can own a newspaper or a TV network, you can get twice the result with half the effort when it comes to publishing publicity in the future.

Turner Broadcasting has purchased the world's largest film library from MGM, and has a complete TV network. Kang Jianfei's determination to buy it is even firmer than buying a film company.

…

Black Monday.

The U.S. stock market plummeted, the European stock market plummeted, and Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore...all plummeted.

Kang Jianfei is not in a hurry about the acquisition plan. The US stock market will continue to fall for at least a month or two before rising again after a period of downturn. Kang Jianfei has time to wait patiently.

While directing "My Sassy Girlfriend", Kang Jianfei dictated the plot outline, and then the "Big Times" created by the screenwriters has completed the framework. Several senior securities traders and economists were invited by Dongshi Company as consultants. With the help of these professionals, the screenwriters began to revise and improve the script of "The Great Times" slowly.

The stock market crash has only two impacts on Hong Kong movies: first, the box office of movies may shrink for a certain period of time in the next period of time, because the social and economic downturn will bring many movie audiences back to the TV; second At least in the next six months, overseas hot money in the Hong Kong film industry will decrease, and the output of Hong Kong films will drop slightly.

But this won't last long. Hong Kong, Singapore and Southeast Asian countries may suffer heavy losses from this stock market crash, but Taiwan will definitely recover quickly.

Due to the continuous appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar and the Japanese yen, coupled with the extremely prosperous industries in the two places, this stock market crash is a trivial matter for Taiwan and Japan. Not only can it recover in about half a year. The stock markets of the two places will continue to rise on a rocket.

In the late 1980s, Japanese and Taiwanese businessmen had too much money to know where to invest. So they frantically invested and built factories in Southeast Asia and mainland China.

Taiwanese people call these years "money flooding the feet", which means that Taiwan's money is so much that the ankles are submerged. At that time, Taiwan's attending doctors earned more than NT$300,000 a month, much higher than 20 years later. Taiwan counterpart.

The original time and space port film flourished to the extreme around 90 years ago. To a large extent, Taiwan's hot money is blindly investing in Hong Kong films.

It was not until the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990 that Taiwan's so-called "great prosperity" ended. The weighted index plummeted from 12,495 points to 2,485 points, and Taiwan's economy has never recovered.

The same is true in Japan, and at the moment Japan and Taiwan are still in a carnival, and even the US stock market crash has not dampened the confidence of investors in the two places.

What Kang Jianfei can do is to release the movie in Japan as an audition. Anyway, the Japanese people have too much money to spend, and Japanese businessmen are still clamoring to buy the entire United States.

"Fang Fang" directed by Kang Jianfei will be released in Japan at the end of October. Due to the fame accumulated over the years, many Japanese fans are rushing to Kang Jianfei to enter the cinema. As a result, he fell in love with Liang Jiahui and Sophie Marceau. "Fang Fang" finally took away a box office of 10.76 million US dollars in Japan. This box office is not very high, equivalent to less than 2 billion yen, but it is very rare as a literary love film.

"Fang Fang" was also well-received when it was released in various European countries, and Liang Jiahui and Sophie Marceau took this fame to skyrocket, but when it was screened in North America, it was coldly received.

Maybe the American people are really not interested in this kind of film. After a lot of lively publicity, the North American box office only got a pitiful $2.15 million.

On the contrary, after "Mrs. & Mrs. Smith" landed in Europe, the couple's killer action movie was quite popular among European audiences, adding nearly 10 million US dollars to the film's global box office.

Kang Jianfei rushed to finish "My Sassy Girlfriend" in November, and then proceeded intensively to do the post-production work.

Time is passing by. Facing the upcoming Christmas, businesses in Hong Kong have begun to prepare holiday promotions, and major film companies are also busy doing Christmas movie promotions.

However, since the end of October, the film market in Hong Kong has been in a downturn. Whether it is DreamWorks or Golden Harvest, they have already made preparations for the unsatisfactory box office.

The acquisition team hired by Kang Jianfei finally set its sights on Paramount Pictures after several contacts and negotiations with Paramount and Columbia.

This decision was concluded after data evaluation. Coca-Cola has no plans to sell Columbia Samsung at all. Even if Kang Jianfei can only get a maximum of 20% of the shares of the film company through black market transactions, it will cost a lot of money to forcefully buy it.

As for Paramount Pictures, the film company's owner, Gulf Western Industries, has suffered setbacks in the past few years due to the U.S. economic recession, and it has also suffered a lot from this stock market crash. In addition, Paramount Pictures has been in decline since three years ago, and until now there has been no improvement, Martin Davis, the owner of Gulf Western, has already planned to make a move.

But after a series of contacts and negotiations, Martin Davis did not want to sell all his Paramount shares. This guy is a very interesting person. He doesn't understand movies at all, but he likes to invest in the cultural industry. He is not only the boss of Paramount, but also a major shareholder of the American publishing giant Simon & Schuster Publishing Company.

If Japan's Sony went to buy Paramount, Martin Davis, who is not bad money, would not dump Sony at all. The reason why he agrees to sell a part of Paramount shares now is just because the buyer is Kang Jianfei.

Martin Davis didn't even know who Kang Jianfei was before, and only got the information about Kang Jianfei after contacting Kang Jianfei's acquisition team. The result was startled, Kang Jianfei's performance in the film field was really good, which made Martin Davis interested in Kang Jianfei. His wishful thinking was to sell a part of Paramount shares to Kang Jianfei, and then let Kang Jianfei, a film professional, reverse the decline of Paramount in the past three years.

Paramount is now nominally owned by Gulf Western Industries. Martin Davis personally owns only 42% of the shares. He is only willing to sell 10% of the shares in his hand. purchased from other shareholders of the company. ()