Around noon.

At an Italian restaurant near Santa Monica Beach, Terry Semel had arrived early when Simon arrived, sitting at the table flipping through a newspaper. Seeing Simon appear, Terry Semel got up and shook his hand, and the two sat down together.

Simon took the menu from the eager tall waitress beside him, opened it and asked Semel on the other side, "Is there any news today?"

Because he has been so busy lately, it's hard for Simon to find much time to focus on the news.

Terry Semel also opened his menu and said with a smile: "The two presidential candidates spoke at the same time in an interview, saying that once elected, they will formulate stricter regulatory measures for the financial derivatives market to avoid a recurrence of the 'Westeros incident'." ”

Simon quickly ordered a lunch, handed the menu to the waitress, and said, "It's none of my business, they're only offending their Wall Street patrons by doing this." ”

Terry Semel looked up at Simon from the menu, tentatively, "You're not going to tell me you'll never set foot in the futures market again, are you?"

Simon was noncommittal about Semel's question, saying: "Stricter regulations will only affect those who want to make huge profits through unconventional means such as insider speculation." At least not one of the top 10 on the Forbes list has relied on those means to squeeze into the list, and I certainly don't either. ”

Terry Semel couldn't help but think of some rumors in the circle that the Southern District Court of New York and several other major regulators have not completely given up on Simon's covert investigation. It's just that, so far, there is still no news unfavorable to Simon.

Over time, those investigations are doomed to fail.

After ordering the meal and sending away the waitress who had been glancing at Simon, Terry Semel said, "Simon, we recently acquired Lorimar, we must know about this, right?"

Simon nodded, probably understanding why Semel brought it up.

Founded in the sixties, Lorimar Productions was the largest television studio of the era, rising in the seventies and peaking in the previous years, before rapidly declining with last year's stock market crash and this year's writers' strike.

A few months ago, Simon and Amy had also gone to see the MGM set in Culver City, where Lorimar wanted to sell.

Hearing the news of Warner's acquisition of Lorimar at the beginning of the month, Simon also realized that this was probably the basis for Warner's television division to produce many hit American dramas such as "Friends" and "ER" in the 90s. Before that, Warner's TV business wasn't great.

Terry Semel saw Simon nodding and continued, "I heard you're interested in the MGM set in Culver City, and we're planning to sell this part of the property, do you want it now?" ”

Warner Bros. had a very large production base in Burbank, and there was obviously no need for a second set.

However, Simon didn't hesitate, just shook his head and said, "Terry, that set is so dilapidated that instead of buying it for a large-scale renovation, I might as well pick a new piece of land to build the studio from scratch, which is cheaper." ”

Terry Semel: "But, Simon, unless it's a suburb, you're going to have a hard time finding another 50-acre plot in downtown Los Angeles. ”

Simon doesn't care: "It's nothing in the suburbs, these sets were in the suburbs when they were first built, but the city has grown to enclose them in the city. ”

Terry Semel thought that he could firmly push the MGM set to Simon, but he didn't expect him to look like he was lacking interest, so he had to give up and said: "So, Simon, about the matter we discussed last time, you have obtained Marvel Entertainment and mastered the superhero rights of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and X-Men." I'm curious, why would you still be interested in DC's superheroes, and if there's no good reason, it's hard for Warner to hand over Wonder Woman to you again?"

"Marvel's superhero movies are too difficult to make, such as Spider-Man, with current technology, it's very difficult for us to achieve the scene of Peter Parker flying between the walls," Simon replied without thinking too much, "Compared to it, DC's superhero is very likely to be cinematicized." As for my purpose, Terry, obviously, I want to accumulate more rights, and Hollywood studios do that, and there's nothing to hide about it. Before me, Canon Pictures bought the filming rights of Marvel's hottest Spider-Man and DC's Superman at the same time. Of course, the rights to both superheroes are now in the hands of Daenerys Entertainment. ”

"You're different from them," Terry Semel shook his head, "I remember at the Oscars party at the beginning of the year, you told me that you were going to make Superman and Batman team up, well, Batman v Superman, that's what you said, right? Now, you want Wonder Woman again." ”

"Terry, I don't want to waste my time on these useless tongues, you can just be Warner's terms?"

Terry Semel no longer beat around the bush and said: "Simon, Warner can give you both "Spy" and "Wonder Woman", and we can completely let go of "Spy", but "Wonder Woman", Warner must retain 50% of the investment rights, however, unlike "Superman" and "Batman", Daenerys Entertainment can retain the distribution rights of "Wonder Woman". In exchange, Daenerys and Warners need to collaborate on a project that has a box office of more than 100 million, whether it is your personal script or other projects selected by Daenerys Entertainment, our "Instinct" profit sharing model. However, if the local box office of the project we cooperate with does not exceed 100 million, the contract will be automatically extended until it exceeds 100 million. ”

Simon quickly considered the conditions offered by Terry Semel in his mind, and quickly said: "In this case, I can't give the distribution rights to Warner, it's hard to make a movie break 100 million at the North American box office, but it's too easy to make it fail to achieve this." ”

"Of course I understand that," Terry Semel said, with a smile on his face, "So, the distribution rights can go to Daenerys Entertainment." ”

Simon thought for a moment and suddenly realized that doing so seemed to be even more detrimental to Daenerys Entertainment.

Because Daenerys Entertainment's distribution ability is definitely not as strong as Warner's, and the profit sharing model of "Instinct" means that Daenerys Entertainment cannot adopt means such as Hollywood books, but needs to spare no effort to invest in publicity.

After weighing it back and forth for a moment, Simon still made a decision, stretched out his hand to Semel, and said, "Deal." ”