The imagination is full of possibilities. They can even use their imagination to cram the entire universe into a small room in the ideation stage, and the same is true for creating a company, but in the actual execution phase, things are full of uncertainties, and it took Netflix two decades of stumbling and breaking through to evolve into one of the top giants in the industry, which is no easy task.

Lan Li is the shopkeeper who is in charge of the sky, and he draws a big pie casually.

André can't do that, he needs to think about the practical feasibility, and even if it is really feasible, there are a thousand different possibilities for failure in the implementation process.

As for the establishment of distribution channels, Andre's thinking direction has always focused on the traditional cinema chain, and now it has suddenly opened up the situation, and the whole idea must be overturned, which is a huge project, and he let out a long breath, temporarily suppressing those chaotic thoughts, and asking the simplest and most direct question.

"Relying on your own ability to fill the content library, you know, this is a long-term process, it is impossible to become a big fat man in one bite, so what should we do with the accumulation of subscribers in the early stage? It took Netflix thirteen years to accumulate less than 20 million paid subscribers through video cassette rentals and TV boxes. In just a few words, Andre directly pointed to the core of the problem.

Despite the great success of "House of Cards", Netflix's plan to fill the content library with original works has only just begun, and leaving this aside for the time being, and forgetting for the moment the difficulty of finding a 10 billion investment, it must be noted that there are prerequisites behind the success of "House of Cards":

Thirteen years of subscriber accumulation, which provided a solid platform, and then "House of Cards" won the attention through solid and excellent content of the work, completing the leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. This is an era of "the smell of wine is also afraid of deep alleys", and it is definitely not so simple to stand out in the ocean of network information.

"I don't have any ideas. Lan Li didn't panic at all, and the natural answer made Andre choke in his throat in one breath, glaring at Lan Li with a depressed face, and then grinding his teeth secretly, "Sebastian! You almost made me swear, you know, it's very, very rude." ”

Lan Li shrugged his shoulders and didn't care, "All I can say is that Sony Columbia has the second largest film library in the industry, and they don't run their own streaming platform properly. ”

Andrei's expression paused slightly, and then his eyes brightened.

As of 2017, as of 2017, there are three streaming services in North America, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Netflix is dominant, with 50 million users in North America and 120 million users worldwide, opening up the situation with excellent TV series such as "House of Cards", "Breaking Bad", "Stranger Things", etc., and the market value has even begun to catch up with Disney in 2017 Disney with the Marvel series and Star Wars series, showing unparalleled dominance in the entire film market, but it still can't stop Netflix's catch-up, which shows the trend of the times, which also prompts Disney to follow up a series of actions.

Amazon has 90 million priority users in North America, and as of 2017, nearly 30 million of them have begun to subscribe to Amazon's online streaming, and the Emmy Award-winning "Transparent Family" and the Oscar-winning "Manchester by the Sea" are Amazon's works, and began to produce the "Lord of the Rings" TV series.

Founded in 2007 and jointly funded by NBC-Universal, Disney and News Corp., the online on-demand platform represents the vast libraries of Universal Pictures, Disney and Twentieth Century Fox, which makes Hulu's content library far ahead of its competitors, and the original series "The Handmaid's Tale" has also swept the Emmys, but they only have 16 million subscribers, which is seriously out of line with their rich family background.

To put it simply, the Hulu original drama model still refers to HBO's classic routines, and it is more of a dark, adult, and high-quality main route, but it ignores the rapid younger trend of audiences in the Internet era;At the same time, the lack of expansion in overseas markets also makes Hulu's follow-up financial support lag behind Netflix and Amazon, in 2017, the three giants invested in Hulu's original works, only one-third of Netflix, and half of Amazon.

Specifically, when it comes to Hollywood's six major studios, Disney's acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox gives them a 60 percent stake in Hulu, and they are also preparing to catch up with Netflix by establishing an online streaming of sports content through ESPN.

Warner Bros. later owned 10% of Hulu's rights through Time Warner's investment, and in 2014, Time Warner created its own streaming platform, HBO-Now, where all HBO episodes can be watched, and "Rights & Games" and "Westworld" are still their flagship series, in addition, they have reached a partnership agreement with Apple's "Apple TV".

Universal Pictures owns 30 percent of Hulu's shares, and also has its own streaming platform, Seeso, but it hasn't put much thought into its operations and hasn't made any further moves for the time being.

Paramount's parent company, Viacom, competed with Disney to acquire Twentieth Century Fox, and Hulu's stake was one of the important reasons, but then Viacom beat Disney to successfully acquire Sky TV in Europe, and they also owned CBS TV in the United States, and the streaming platform also rose in full swing.

Finally, there's Sony Columbia Pictures.

Sony Colombia's streaming service has never been able to open up the situation, in fact, they have their own free streaming platform Crackle, but the popularity and number of subscriptions have always been low, one is because the applicable regions and applicable platforms are very limited, only limited to specific regions of LG and Samsung products, and the other is that the parent group itself has never spent too much effort to operate.

It wasn't until 2017 that Sony belatedly established its own new streaming platform, "Funimation-Now", through a series of acquisitions, and landed in North America.

To put it simply, among the six major Hollywood studios, Disney and Warner Bros. are still the leaders in the industry, with frequent moves, Paramount and Universal Pictures continue to compete in different ways, Twentieth Century Fox has simply withdrawn from the group, and finally Sony Columbia Pictures is long overdue.

In any era and any society, if you can't accurately grasp the context of the times, it is very easy for a company to fall behind or even collapse, and there are countless giant crocodiles who have been crushed by the tide of the times.

In 2013, Warner Bros. replaced Barry Meyer with Kevin Hara, in fact, it was because Kevin Hara had the foresight and ability to be in the TV field, because the parent company Time Warner had sensed that the power of the big screen was flowing to the small screen, and they needed a leader who was more familiar with the TV field.

Obviously, the Sony Group was not able to make adjustments in time.

As Andrei said, it is definitely not that easy to build a streaming platform, and in some cases, even if you can find a huge financial chain to support it, it will take time to produce works, launch works, and accumulate subscribers, and time will require more financial support.

Even on paper you know the difficulties.

But what if we can complete the negotiation of copyright cooperation with the film company? Just like Netflix did back then, first use the content library of other film companies to support, and then take the route of its own original film to strive for more development time, which is ...... This is almost the best development template for Sisyphus Pictures right now.

Lan Li now put forward a key point: among the six major Hollywood studios, Sony Columbia Pictures' film library resources are second only to Disney, but they have never spent time on their own streaming platform, even if the copyright use rights are taken back from Netflix, they still do not take it seriously, and they have no intention of digging and using Baoshan This is a mistake in the leadership's grasp of the context of the times.

Look at Disney, refusing to be confined to the success of the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, actively starting to remake all the classic cartoons in its hands into live-action films, tapping into the potential of copyrights, and at the same time catching up with Netflix on streaming platforms, while Sony Columbia Pictures is still repeatedly conceiving its own "Spider-Man Universe".

Sisyphus Pictures is in discussions with Sony Classic and has basically closed the coffin, so what if Sisyphus Pictures further explores cooperation with Sony Columbia Pictures at this time? Or Sisyphus Pictures directly acquires the "crackle" platform and creates its own streaming platform based on it?

It is obviously impractical to muddy the waters between Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, but it is not necessarily so difficult to acquire cracks.

Andrei's thoughts began to diverge.

Lan Li then added, "Didn't you raise the first amount of money from Sisyphus before, how much?" He vaguely remembered that it should be 300 million US dollars, the exact number is not clear, but this is not the point.

Without waiting for Andre to answer, Lan Li continued, "Our current cooperation with Sony Classics is stipulated in the contract for an investment of less than 100 million US dollars, and we can create up to three crews at the same time, which is the limit, but beyond that, we can start preparing to shoot our own original series. I've heard Joel and Ethan mention before that they're thinking about filming a series, and then David Fincher, and David Lynch, they're both interested in the TV series. ”

This is the advantage of Lanli, the industry network!