The original "Terminator 2" was produced by Hollywood's notoriously wasteful Carlock Films, and Arnold Schwarzenegger not only received Hollywood's first high fixed salary of $15 million for this project, but also became Hollywood's first film with a production cost of more than $100 million.

In my memory, "Terminator 2" just produced more than a million feet of film, and less than 1% of the final footage was used, which is enough to prove how wasteful the film is.

More than a million feet of film means a huge amount of money for the film crew to shoot these shots. Once a film crew starts work, it often spends tens of thousands of dollars every day, and a set of shots that could have been shot in three days took six days, and the budget naturally doubled.

From "The Abyss" to "Terminator 2" to the later famous "Titanic", James Cameron's series of films were never completed on time, which is the fundamental reason why Cameron burns money more to make movies than other directors.

Simon and Joe Ross discussed it, but it was determined that Fox would continue to be in contact with Cameron, and could add to the screenwriter and let the other party be the producer, and Cameron himself directing was the last resort. At the same time, this project will not be included in the 10-film plan for the time being until all aspects are finalized, so as to avoid the main creators waiting for the price to sell.

After talking about things, Simon returned to Santa Monica Daenerys Entertainment headquarters, where Amy Pascal was already waiting for him with another middle-aged man in his forties with glasses.

After receiving Simon's instructions, Amy has been looking for the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment.

Daenerys International has confirmed Mark Belford, who has been promoted from within the company, as president.

Mark Belford is the same age as Amy, a young man in his early thirties who did not go to college, and after graduating from high school at the age of 18, he made his way up in Hollywood with some family connections.

After joining Daenerys Entertainment last year, Mark Belford accidentally caught Simon's attention, and then performed well in the release of many films such as "Scream", so he was quickly promoted.

The Hollywood media has mixed attitudes towards Mark Belford's rocket-like promotion, with some commenting on Simon's daring to hire people, others criticizing Simon for being too rash, and Daenerys Entertainment inevitably complains about this.

However, less than a month after taking office, Mark Belford quickly took over the overseas business of Daenerys Entertainment, and during this time, he basically worked as a trapeze artist in countries around the world.

In the dispute between Daenerys Entertainment and Alista Records, the suspension of the original soundtrack album of "Bodyguard" not only did not affect the overseas distribution of the film, but the box office and popularity of the film in various overseas box office countries increased against the trend, which is not unrelated to Mark Belford's marketing operations in overseas countries in the past month.

That alone confirms Simon's choice.

The head of Daenerys International confirmed that Simon was going to meet with the head of Daenerys Home Entertainment today.

Maurice Coman, who is in his forties, slightly chubby, and wears a pair of rimless glasses, is not related to Roger Coman, the king of Hollywood's B-movies, and has been working at Columbia Pictures as vice president of marketing.

After Sony's acquisition of Columbia Pictures was completed, it was a period of frequent moves, including the purchase of the former MGM Studios in Culver City, the acquisition of Peter Cooper and Jon Peters' Cooper Peters Productions, the buyout of all shares of its subsidiary Samsung Pictures, the partnership with Daenerys Entertainment, the sale of TV station assets, and so on.

At the same time, the original management of Columbia Pictures is also in the ranks of Sony's replacement.

It was in this context that Maurice Corman left the company, and Daenerys Entertainment officially chose to join the company a few weeks after negotiations with Daenerys Entertainment as president of Daenerys Home Entertainment, where he was responsible for the distribution of video tapes and television broadcasts of films produced by Daenerys Entertainment's two major labels, Daenerys Pictures and New World Pictures.

The confirmation of the heads of Daenerys International and Daenerys Home Entertainment also means that the power that originally belonged to Robert Rehm has been divided into three, and Robert Rem will continue to be responsible for the domestic distribution of films produced by Daenerys Pictures and New World Pictures for the next two years.

The estrangement between the two sides is already deep, and Simon does not communicate much with Robert Rem about this matter. The reason why he was not fired is also for the sake of his contribution to Daenerys Entertainment in the past year, Simon is not a person who likes to unload and kill donkeys.

However, this is also on the basis of Robert Rehm's due diligence in his work for the next two years. If he is resentful because of the diversion of power, and even deliberately messes up Daenerys Entertainment's film project, Simon will definitely not be soft when he catches up.

In fact, after confirming the division of Rehm's power into three, Simon told Amy to lean her energy into the company's distribution department.

After the meeting with Maurice Coman, Simon and Amy discussed Ella Deutchman again.

Ella Deutchman's one-year probationary period is coming to an end, and although Gordoor Pictures is directly responsible to Simon personally, it is Amy who has stepped in to discuss the post-employment compensation package with Deutchman.

After several communications, it was roughly confirmed that Ira Deutchman's official contract is for five years and his base salary is $300,000 per year. At the same time, Deutchman can also receive 5% of the annual net profit of Gorgate Pictures as a bonus. Based on Deutschman's performance over the past year, Simon's promise of an onboarding bonus of $2 million last year was also confirmed.

Ella Deutchman's 5% net profit share of Gaomen Pictures seems to be the same as Amy's, but the difference between the two is actually equivalent to the difference between a movie's box office net profit share and omni-channel net profit share. Moreover, there is no equity award in Deutchman's terms.

Before you know it, it's been another busy day.

At six o'clock in the afternoon, Simon was about to leave work when Nancy Brill came to his office.

Placing a box of game cartridges on Simon's desk, Nancy sat down across from him and said, "The game team has made some adjustments to some details, Simon, you try again and see if there is anything that needs to be improved." ”

Blizzard Studios was officially established in February at the beginning of the year, and it has been 8 months now.

The normal development time for a game in this era is 3 to 5 months, and it is completely chaotic to make a game in only 6 weeks like "Alien ET", but Blizzard Studios took 8 months to grind out a game, which also gave Simon a feeling of having the wrong name.

The real Blizzard is famous for bouncing tickets.

Moreover, the game development plan of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", which was originally divided into two, is an action role-playing genre and a combat fighting genre. At this time, Nancy still came up with an action role-playing game similar to Simon's memory of the Konami version, and another battle game took three months to set up in the early stage, and is still in development.

Naturally, a bouncing ticket means a budget overrun.

Both games were originally budgeted at $500,000, but now this one is close to $1 million for the action role-playing genre, and the other fighting game, if released early next year, will have a budget of at least $1.2 million, both of which are more than doubled.

Because it is confirmed that the action role-playing version will be officially released in early November, Nancy Brill is also promoting it in the near future, and plans to launch it in Japan and North America at the same time.

All told, Daenerys Entertainment has invested more than $2 million in the game, not counting the rest of Blizzard's spending.

If it weren't for the fact that the quality of both games was excellent during a few trials, Simon would have just stopped the project.

In recent months, he has been used as a 'guinea pig' for trial work more than once, and seeing that Nancy brought another cartridge that obviously won't change much, Simon quickly shook his head and said, "There are only three weeks left to release, can it be modified now?"

"The first batch of 100,000 cassettes will definitely not be changed, but the follow-up can be improved. ”

Simon casually gestured: "Actually, you should be looking for the consumer group of this game to try it out, not me." ”

"Of course, potential consumers in the 8 to 22 age group are in my testing range, nay, you're 21 years old. ”

Simon interrupted: "How old are you?"

"It's rude," Nancy gave Simon a blank look, got up and pushed the cassette towards Simon, and said, "Anyway, you try again, I'll get off work first." ”

Simon watched Nancy leave, put the cartridge in his briefcase, and left the office.

In the next few days, Simon was still busy with various projects, and the undercurrent of the US junk bond market became more and more turbulent.

Friday, October 13.

At one o'clock in the afternoon, United Airlines held a press conference to announce that due to cash flow constraints, the company could not repay a corporate bond of up to $1.5 billion on time, and the management was urgently negotiating all possible financing options to maximize the interests of investors.

Financial markets, of course, didn't believe United's claims of ensuring the interests of investors, and they rushed to sell United Airlines shares and bonds, setting off a chain reaction.

The long-standing crisis in the U.S. junk bond market has officially erupted.

If you think about it, compared to the sudden Black Monday in 1987, this Black Friday 'little crash' has too many premonitions.

Since the first half of this year, the "king of junk bonds" Michael Milken's former company Dechong Securities has begun to fall into crisis.

The Wall Street financial giant, which has issued more than $80 billion in junk bonds in the past decade, has been devastated by various insider trading scandals involving Milken, and many conglomerates that have been working closely with Dechong Securities can no longer obtain funds to support their operations through repeated junk bond financing.

At the same time, the market's enthusiasm for junk bonds has also cooled sharply after the 87 stock market crash, and the federal government's regulation of junk bond financing has become stricter in the past two years, all of which are driving the eventual collapse of the junk bond market.

After the announcement of United Airlines, the stock prices of a large number of companies in the North American stock market plummeted in the last two hours of trading on Friday, and the Dow Jones index plummeted by 217 points in two hours, creating the second largest one-day decline since 508 points on the day of the stock market crash on October 19, 1987.

The S&P 500 also plunged 32 points in the next two hours as the broader market collapsed, down 11% from 286 at the start of the day. Directly triggered the 10% limit on S&P 500 futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

By the end of the day, the shares of United Airlines, the center of the storm, had plummeted 21 percent in two hours, and the price of United Airlines bonds had fallen by 27 percent.

In addition, the stock prices of many other companies, banks and other institutions that have issued or held a large number of junk bonds have also plummeted.

Dechong Securities Co. bore the brunt of the company's share price, which had been falling continuously for half a year, fell 19% in just two hours, and the shares of Colombian Savings and Credit Bank, which has long maintained a close relationship with Dechong Securities, also fell sharply by 16%.

Gillette Holdings, American Press Group, Integrated Resources Corporation, Uni-President Oil & Gas Company, and Reynolds-Nabisque, Inc., which just set a record for leveraged buyouts earlier this year, have caused countless investors to panic at the plunge in their stock prices.

Everyone felt that another stock market crash had come.

Fortunately, this time it's Friday.

You have two days to discuss coping strategies.

However, compared with two years ago, the federal government's bailout measures this time are obviously not so strong, and the hopes of the top federal officials who originally thought that they would be able to get funds for emergency situations in such a crisis have just been ignited, and they have been extinguished by the statement of the US Treasury Secretary that the federal government will not pay for highly indebted enterprises.

At the same time, over the weekend, more negative news broke out about the junk bond market.

The Wall Street Journal's front page on Saturday was a comprehensive statistical report on the junk bond market. The article points out that the composite yield of junk bonds has increased by only 145% over the past decade, while the yield on North American equities has increased by 207% over the same period, and even the composite yield of US Treasuries has increased by 177% over the past decade.

Not only that, but in the previous decade, 24 of the 100 randomly selected North American companies that had issued junk bonds had gone bankrupt or failed to meet their repayment obligations, like United, a rate five times that of the others.

The article concludes by concluding that Michael Milken's high-risk, high-yield junk bond theory, which he has been proclaiming for the past decade, is fundamentally wrong.

As a result, junk bonds don't actually have investment value, and many companies are just trying to maintain a semblance of prosperity with a repeated financing method similar to a Ponzi scheme. United Airlines' debt default is just the beginning of a collapse in the junk bond market after a decade of prosperity. In the coming months, more businesses and institutions will be dragged down by a barrage of worthless junk bonds.

In addition to the Wall Street Journal's overall bearish view of the market, a lot of negative news has also come to light about some targets that issue or hold large quantities of junk bonds.

The New York Times revealed that the company's cash flow had fallen to less than $300 million from $1.5 billion at the beginning of the year, and that the Wall Street financial giant, which itself holds a large number of junk bonds and needs a high proportion of capital to turn around, could collapse at any time.

The Columbia Savings Credit Bank was also exposed by the New York Post as holding up to $1 billion in United Airlines bonds, making it the largest creditor of United Airlines.

As the United crisis continues, the bond asset is conservatively estimated to shrink by more than 50%, or even completely wiped out in the worst case.

The Washington Post also pointed the finger at Reynolds-Nabiske.

After a record $25 billion merger at the start of the year, Reynolds-Nabiske's share price has not only not risen as sharply as expected, but has fallen 33% in the year compared to the time of the merger. The company's share of the tobacco market has also shrunk sharply, with its market share shrinking by 8% in less than a year.

Moreover, the merger of Reynolds and Nabisco, which were originally all profitable, is expected to lose more than $1 billion this year alone, and the company has laid off a total of 2,300 employees in recent months to save money, and some high-quality assets have to be sold at low prices due to debt pressure.

All in all, the Reynolds-Nabiske merger was a complete disaster, with only the financial companies that had been involved in the first place reap huge gains. The entire transaction paid more than $1.5 billion in commissions to Wall Street firms such as KKR, Dechong Securities, and Merrill Lynch.

While there is no shortage of rhetoric in favor of the junk bond market, all these negative reports are severely undermining the already not-so-firm confidence of countless investors under the intense bombardment of public opinion.

After the weekend, the media was still noisy, and North American stock markets also fell again after the opening of the market on October 16.

Financial markets probably felt the 'spearhead' of the crisis, so the overall situation in the US stock market has stabilized, except for the stock prices and bond prices of companies such as Interbank Airlines, which continue to fall.

As a result, United Airlines, Dechong Securities, Colombian Savings and Credit Bank and other companies are like the old, weak, sick and disabled abandoned from the flock, and Cersei Capital and other follow-up capital forces behind the scenes began to reap the fruits of their hunting after a few months of layout.

Simon knew very well that this small collapse would not last long, so he told Janet to liquidate the stock index futures contracts held by Cersei Capital as soon as possible.

In the following week, the closing of more than 32,000 S&P 500 futures contracts alone generated more than $500 million in profits for Cersei Capital, and $1.1 billion in the closing of a large number of other short positions in stocks and bonds.

Moreover, the size of this group of shorts is less than half of all positions in Cersei Capital.

In the coming months, as the domino effect in the North American junk bond market continues, Cersei Capital will continue to be more profitable.