Wanda's acquisition talks with AMC have been going on in secret for more than two years. Wang Jianlin knows very well that if the takeover is made public, the entire acquisition may become a bidding, just like the acquisition of Motorola by the Summit of the Century, and the acquisition war will evolve into hand-to-hand combat, spending a lot of unjust money.

It's just that due to the relatively large psychological price gap between the two sides, and AMC shareholders are running for listing, the desire to sell the company is not strong, and the two sides have never been able to negotiate. It wasn't until the end of last year, when AMC's IPO failed, that the whole negotiation entered the fast lane.

Wang Jianlin didn't expect that when Wanda and AMC were talking about the same, the peak of the century would actually insert a lever.

In response to the acquisition of Century Peak, Wang Jianlin held an emergency meeting with Wanda's senior management to discuss the acquisition.

The company's senior management believes that the peak of the century does not really want to acquire AMC, the cinema chain in North America is a sunset industry with almost no room for growth, not to mention AMC in the loss, the No. 1 Emperor Entertainment has more than 500 theaters, more than 7,000 screens, and the profit in 2011 was only 40 million, which is quite meager. Except for Paramount's boss Lei Shidong, the six major film companies have a cinema chain, and the other five have not set foot in the cinema business, but the cinema chain is not very profitable. Zhang Ran has the pinnacle entertainment that is not inferior to the Big Six, and he can have an equal dialogue with the Big Six, and it is impossible to look at the cinema business. The reason why Century Summit made a move to AMC was simply to prevent Wanda's acquisition, and it may even be to raise the price and make Wanda spend more money in vain.

Wanda is genuinely interested in acquiring AMC, and according to Wang Jianlin's transformation plan for Wanda, the proportion of Wanda's commercial real estate revenue will drop to less than 50% by 2020. In order to achieve this goal, Wanda has been actively exploring overseas markets in the past two years, and the acquisition of AMC will pave the way for Wanda Group to explore overseas film distribution markets.

Now Wanda Cinemas is second only to Golden Harvest Cinemas under Century Summit in China, and if it can acquire AMC, the second largest cinema chain in the United States, and add the two, Wanda will be the world's largest cinema chain.

With the world's No. 1 cinema chain in hand, Wanda has the right to dialogue with the six Hollywood companies on an equal footing; and can rely on the cinema chain to let MGM rebuild the distribution system; the most important thing is that Wang Jianlin received internal information that the Chinese government has reached an agreement with the United States to relax restrictions on Hollywood, and this agreement proposes to increase the opportunities for private enterprises to release imported films, which means that it is very likely to issue a third imported film distribution license. If it has the world's largest cinema chain, Wanda is in a good position when it comes to competing for a third license.

After discussion, Wang Jianlin and Wanda's top management believed that as long as Wanda won AMC, the peak of the century would definitely retreat, but if the purchase price exceeded $3.5 billion, Wanda would abandon the acquisition and turn to other theaters.

After the meeting, Wanda's acquisition team quickly adjusted the offer, raising the purchase price from $2.6 billion to $3.2 billion, which is $200 million higher than the offer at the peak of the century.

After Wanda raised the offer, Century Summit did not quote again and chose to give up. Their original intention was to raise the price and make Wanda spend more money in vain.

Wang Jianlin breathed a sigh of relief, it was the most ideal choice to win AMC, if he went to acquire other theaters, it would take another year or two, and he really didn't want to waste time. Now the peak of the century chooses to give up, which is the most ideal outcome.

However, in addition to rejoicing, Wang Jianlin was a little depressed, originally 2.6 billion could get AMC, but the current situation is to spend 3.2 billion to acquire. It cost an extra $600 million, almost 4 billion yuan. You must know that the profit of the entire Wanda Group last year was only 9 billion yuan, which is equivalent to half of Wanda's profit last year.

After Century Peak withdrew, Wanda's acquisition of AMC did not encounter any obstacles, and the specific terms of the acquisition were quickly negotiated, but Wanda was not in a hurry to hold a press conference or announce the news. At the beginning of January, Wang Jianlin received an invitation from the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, and in February, there will be national leaders to visit the United States, and some well-known domestic entrepreneurs will form a business delegation to follow up, hoping that he will also be able to visit the United States with the leaders. Wang Jianlin naturally couldn't ask for it, so Wanda did not rush to announce the news of the acquisition of AMC, and was ready to release a big satellite when the leader visited the United States.

The time soon came to February 16th, and after a 2-month ultra-long release cycle, "Dragon Gate Flying Armor" and "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" were drawn offline from cinemas across the country. The final box office of "Dragon Gate Flying Armor" was 515 million, while the box office of "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" was 864 million, although the box office was good, but it was only half way away from Zhang Weiping's slogan of "1.5 billion box office".

At the same time, "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" has also been offline overseas. With Tom Cruise's appeal and the strong publicity and distribution ability of the peak of the century, "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" performed well overseas, with $53.25 million in North America, $12.54 million in the United Kingdom, and $1.53 million in South Korea......

When "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" went offline, the total global box office reached $295 million. The cost of the movie is 50 million US dollars, and the total box office is close to 300 million, it sounds like "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling" should make a lot of money. However, due to the fact that the movie burned $70 million in publicity around the world, and Tom Cruise wants to take a 15% share, just looking at the box office "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" is still in a state of loss. When revenues such as DVDs and pay-per-demand come out, movies should be able to make money, but not much.

On the same day, under the chairmanship of Zhang Ran, the 2011 work summary meeting was held at the summit of the century to summarize last year's work and arrange the work for the coming year.

Zhang Ran smiled and concluded: "In 2011, with the joint efforts of the executive team led by President Wu Ruide and all employees, the results of Century Summit were very gratifying. The Group's total assets reached $122.7 billion and revenue was $29.4 billion. Net profit of $2.3 billion after repayment of part of the maturing debt......"

After hearing this data, the company burst into thunderous applause.

Next, Zhang Ran released more detailed data.

In 2011, Summit Entertainment released 23 films that grossed $1.76 billion in North America and $2.95 billion overseas, for a total of $4.71 billion. Summit Entertainment accounted for 17.2 percent of the $10.2 billion gross, the second largest among the six major studios, behind Warner Bros., thanks to the company's releases of "Twilight 4: On Dawn," "Thor" and "Edge of Tomorrow," which grossed $281 million, $187 million and $181 million, respectively.

The industry as a whole believes that Summit Entertainment will surpass Hollywood's Big Six in 2012 and become the top box office revenue in North America. Because in 2012, Summit Entertainment not only had box office bombs such as "The Avengers" and "Twilight 4: Under Dawn", but also Zhang Ran's super blockbuster "Future Apocalypse".

In China, Summit Pictures has released 15 films with a total box office of 3.5 billion yuan, of which "Jinling Thirteen Hairpins" performed the best, reaching 864 million yuan, and "Three Color World" directed by Ding Sheng achieved a box office of 640 million yuan in the summer file.

Summit Entertainment and the domestic Summit Pictures, the entire Century Summit Group achieved a total box office of 5.23 billion US dollars worldwide in 2011, surpassing the six major Hollywood companies and becoming the king of the box office in 2011.

In the Internet sector, Netflix's annual revenue last year was $5.5 billion, and Blockbuster Online's revenue last year was $8.3 billion, and in addition to the income of domestic Weibo, Century Summit Online and other websites, the revenue of the entire Internet sector reached $15.3 billion, but the profit of the entire Internet sector was not high, only $350 million. This is also something that cannot be helped, the Internet business is still in the expansion period, and it is still desperately collecting money, and the profits are naturally meager before the harvest is reached.

In the fashion segment, Prada and several other brands have annual revenues of $8.5 billion and profits of $1.33 billion, while derivatives, including merchandising, publishing and retail, have reached $2.9 billion in revenue and 760 million in profits due to Marvel's strong popularity and the development of "Twilight".

The entire management of the company is very satisfied with last year's results and is looking forward to 2012.

For Century Peak, the most important thing in 2012 is undoubtedly the promotion of the mobile phone system, which determines whether Century Summit can become a world-class company in the future. If it doesn't take enough shares in one to two years, and when the Android ecosystem is fully established, then Zhang Ran's plan will be completely bankrupt. Therefore, after the work summary meeting, Zhang Ran called the top executives of the century, Hastings, the head of Motorola, and Rubinstein, the head of EBOS, together for a small meeting.

Rubinstein was originally Apple's senior vice president of hardware technology business, participated in the development of the iPod, and is known as the "father of the iPod". After retiring from Apple in 2005, Rubinstein joined Plam to head ebOS, and in April 2010, HP acquired Plam, and Rubinstein joined HP to continue to be responsible for ebOS. After the completion of the acquisition of ebOS last year, he joined Century Summit and continues to be responsible for the development of ebOS.

Zhang Ran looked at Rubinstein and asked, "How is EBOS developing?"

Rubinstein smiled and nodded: "Very good, ebos has had a lot of flaws since birth, especially there are many problems in the architecture, after Fly and the engineers of the peak of the century joined, we redesigned the architecture and patched many flaws of ebos." By the end of March, we will be able to roll out the latest open source system. This new system is no longer called EBOS, it has a Chinese name called Phoenix!"

Zhang Ran felt that the name was good, Phoenix Nirvana, reborn from the ashes, but there was no optimism on his face, and said seriously: "The Chinese market is the market where we are most likely to succeed, and now the mainstream operating system of the Chinese smartphone market accounts for 32.3%, iOS accounts for 11.7%, and Android has soared to 47.3%, which has accounted for half of the country." Therefore, we must act quickly, and the Palm mobile phone, which focuses on cost performance and seizes the end market by the end of the year, must be launched, and the high-end Motorola flagship must also be launched. The Android ecosystem has been initially established, and to change this situation, it is impossible for us to succeed on our own, and we must work together with as many mobile phone manufacturers as soon as possible. We must bring Huawei, ZTE, Huawei and other mobile phone manufacturers to our camp and let them promote the system with us!"

Rubinstein finds it difficult: "Aren't these phone manufacturers worried about not getting us stuck?"

Zhang Ran smiled and said: "We now hold 70% of the shares of the system, Fly holds 30%, we can take 30% of the shares out, distribute them to them, and let them do it with us." If we can put the system in place, then everyone will benefit, and everyone will benefit. ”

Everyone present nodded slightly, feeling that it was feasible. Rubinstein asked, "What if they still don't say yes?"

Zhang Ran smiled coldly: "Kill chickens and make an example of monkeys." Next, we will file a lawsuit against HTC for infringing Motorola's patents and banning the sale of HTC phones in North America. As long as they join us, we can provide patent protection and open a channel for their mobile phones to go abroad, and if they don't join us, then weigh it yourself!"

After the meeting, Zhang Ran did not stop and flew to Los Angeles as soon as possible. He also received an invitation to follow up with the leaders, and knew that this visit to the United States would sign the "Memorandum of Understanding between China and the United States on Resolving Issues Related to TO Films", which will have an important impact on the future of Chinese films.