Rebirth In Hollywood

In the past January, the theme of the world film industry was called "Avatar", and in February, this theme remained unchanged. The North American box office of "Avatar" officially passed the threshold of 700 million US dollars, and the global box office exceeded 2.5 billion US dollars Mark!

Although the daily box office figures of the film from all over the world have dropped to more than 10 million US dollars, they are still advancing steadily. Some optimistic agencies predict that the final box office of "Avatar" will be close to or even exceed the terrifying figure of 3 billion US dollars.

At the Golden Globe Awards held in January, "Avatar" was also the biggest winner, winning two awards for best director and best feature film.

This has something to do with Disney's operational planning. Last month was the critical moment to boost the box office of "Avatar". Disney used all available methods to promote the film, even with the consent of James Cameron. , and hyped up the five marriages of truck drivers one by one...

As for the weathervane issue, in fact, everyone knows that there is a huge gap between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and there is not much connection between the two. Under all favorable conditions, the possibility of "The Hurt Locker" missing is very small.

On February 2, the 82nd Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. "Avatar" and "The Hurt Locker" became the biggest nomination winners.

The former received nine nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction and Best Original Score.

The latter also received nine nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound Effects.

The two films are destined to start a battle at the Oscars.

With Ryan's focus diverted from Avatar's box-office success, it appears George Lucas is really planning to retire, after Disney's negotiating team had been in secret contact with Lucasfilm for a while. The two parties have entered the substantive negotiation stage and started a long-term price tug-of-war.

In general. It was smoother than Ryan imagined.

Viacom and Time Warner are busy with their own internal affairs and have no intention of interfering. Universal and Comcast are also very calm. News Corp., which is most worried, does not seem to have changed much.

If things go as they are, Lucasfilm will surely become a wholly owned subsidiary of Walt Disney. Now the obstacle is nothing more than the price issue.

The current market value of Lucasfilm is about 3.3 billion US dollars. If Disney wants to complete this goodwill acquisition, it must adopt a premium method.

In the first round of formal negotiations, Disney reported an overall purchase price of US$3.515 billion, but was rejected by the management headed by George Lucas.

Ryan has no intention of contacting George Lucas in private. In this kind of transaction involving billions of dollars, favors can hardly play any role.

Negotiations are still in the confidential stage. At the end of January, Disney submitted a second offer of up to $3.65 billion to Lucasfilm, which was rejected again.

After the Oscar nominations were announced, Walt Disney held a board meeting to discuss the next offer.

"Lucasfilm is the active party." Robert Iger said, "If it weren't for the financial crisis that made the major groups and banks shrink their money, they would not be short of buyers. Now, although George Lucas has revealed that he is selling It means, but if they can’t sell it, they can continue to operate.”

"We can increase the offer again."

said another executive director. He was Crete Disney, Roy Disney's son, after Roy Disney died. Became the only representative of the Disney family in Walt Disney.

However, his reputation and ability are far from those of Roy Disney.

"My psychological bottom line is $4 billion." Ryan said slowly.

Lucasfilm is totally worth the price, and unlike other companies, Lucasfilm doesn't have a penny of debt, and Disney doesn't have to worry about post-acquisition debt and bad debts.

Such high-quality resources that can be acquired are almost impossible to find in Hollywood.

"Robert, the specific pricing..."

Suddenly there was a knock on the door of the conference room, and a secretary went to open the door. George walked quickly towards Ryan.

Many people, including Nicole, looked over strangely. They knew George, the special assistant to the chairman, very well. This is a calm and even silent person, and he also holds a certain amount of decision-making power in his hands. If it wasn't for a particularly important incident, would you never break into the boardroom?

what happened?

Seeing the encrypted phone that George handed over, Ryan put it next to his ear, and after listening to a few words, his brows knit together unconsciously, and his blue eyes narrowed into a line.

After hanging up the phone, Ryan looked at the other directors who were focusing on him, exhaled slowly, and said calmly, "The topic we are discussing now will be interrupted."

"What happened?" Nicole asked.

"I just received the news." Ryan stood up and took a few steps, and then said, "The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice have received complaints from several companies at the same time, and have decided to sue Disney's video website business and computer animation. The business is launching an antitrust investigation, and their representatives will be in Burbank shortly."

The venue was silent for a moment. For any commercial group company, the anti-monopoly investigation would be a very troublesome thing.

"Robert..." Ryan looked at the CEO, "The negotiations with Lucasfilm are temporarily in your charge."

"no problem."

After the other party nodded, Ryan continued, "Let's discuss how to deal with this antitrust investigation."

Strictly speaking, Disney does have an absolute advantage in online video and animated films, and it seems normal to be complained about its monopoly, but Ryan always feels that things are not that simple, and Robert Iger and Cook Dick agree with him the opinion of.

In particular, the timing of this antitrust investigation is too sensitive. If the scale of the investigation is expanded, it will completely disrupt the rhythm of Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.

Regardless of whether Disney's business practices constitute a monopoly or not, since someone has promoted this anti-monopoly investigation, it must be dealt with seriously.

As the largest and most developed economy in the world, the anti-monopoly system and practice in the United States has undergone more than 100 years of evolution and improvement. It has always maintained a certain degree of crackdown on monopoly behavior, and the crackdown method is also consistent with changes in economic and social conditions. pace, forming a pattern of coexistence of monopoly and competitive dynamics.

After the 1990s, with the increasingly fierce international technological innovation competition, the federal government's anti-monopoly goal is no longer simply to prevent market monopoly and price manipulation, but to focus on how to prevent technology monopoly other than patent protection, just like targeting Microsoft, like Apple's antitrust investigations, strictly guards against the emergence of knowledge-based online oligopolies.

Especially after the Obama administration came to power, it changed the Bush administration’s tolerant policy of large companies’ monopoly behavior, and returned to the Clinton administration to implement strong anti-monopoly based on the goal of encouraging innovation and technological change. It is not easy to withdraw.

According to the federal anti-monopoly law, once a company is found to be suspected of monopolizing, it may face various penalties such as fines, imprisonment, compensation, civil sanctions, forced dissolution, and splitting. litigation.

The Federal Trade Commission can also directly make a ruling or file a civil lawsuit. In addition, damaged companies or ordinary consumers can also directly file a civil lawsuit against the suspected monopolistic company and demand triple damages.

In short, antitrust investigations are very troublesome for a company.

The usual way for large companies to get rid of antitrust investigations is to pay huge fines to "spend money to eliminate disasters". This has almost become an international practice.

But Ryan realized that this antitrust investigation might not be so simple, and Disney might be dragged into a quagmire of investigation as long as the Microsoft lawsuit.

As he had guessed, just after noon, the Wall Street Journal, an authoritative financial media under News Corporation, disclosed the news on its official website, saying that the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice would investigate whether Disney Abusing its dominance in the Internet market to unfairly divert Internet users to Disney's growing network of services and suppress its competitors.

As soon as the news leaked out, Walt Disney's share price plummeted. By the end of the afternoon, the single share price had fallen by nearly 3%!

On the second day, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission arrived in Burbank first, and the gossip website of the "New York Post" under News Corporation immediately posted pictures of antitrust representatives walking into the Walt Disney headquarters on the Internet. The news that Disney is about to accept an antitrust investigation.

Disney's stock price continued to decline. In just two days, Disney lost 4% of its market value, totaling as high as 3.5 billion US dollars!

Denial is definitely not a wise choice. Disney simply posted on the blog, saying that the Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation into the company's business, but Disney stated that "it is not clear what issues the Commission is specifically concerned about."

"This will be the biggest crisis Walt Disney has faced in its 90-year history!"

"If the antitrust is established, Disney may face a sky-high fine of more than three billion U.S. dollars!"

"The Ministry of Justice may file a formal antitrust lawsuit against Disney, and Disney will be split into two parts, film and television entertainment and online media!"

In just three days, Fox Network and the Wall Street Journal in North America, as well as Sky and The Times in the UK, were frantically hyping and reporting on the Disney antitrust incident, and even some media from other media groups also joined in. into it.

After all, if Disney is really split, other media groups will lose a strong competitor. Even if they cannot be split, it is in their interest to take the opportunity to weaken Disney. (to be continued)

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