In the summer of June 1994, Disney released the pinnacle of 2D animation, "The Lion King", which brought more than $1 billion in revenue to the entire Disney Studios at a production cost of $45 million.

In the original time and space, after the success of "Toy Story", it directly announced the decline of Disney's hand-drawn animation, except for "The Lion King", Disney has never appeared in a 2D hand-drawn animated movie on the box office charts. Before "Toy Story", Hollywood's animated films have been monopolized by Disney, and this year, the first feature-length 3D animated film in human history will be released, and Wang Jie wants to break up and sell Disney's animation division before the whole Hollywood wakes up.

On January 5th, Wang Jie summoned Michael Eisner at Disney headquarters, Michael Eisner has had a hard time these years, because Wang Jie has always held the shares of the Disney Group over the ninth floor, occupying absolute dominance, coupled with the super ability of several women around Wang Jie, Michael Eisner has always been in the role of a senior worker, plus he did not lead the acquisition of ABC in this life, and the historical status of the original time and space is simply incomparable. Michael Eisner has privately contacted Wall Street capital predators more than once, wanting to make these Wall Street elites pay for his ambitions, but unfortunately no one is a fool and will not take advantage of the fire, after all, Wang Jie's capital power is known to these elites. Michael Eisner didn't want to jump to other companies, but he never took action, one is that the other eight major Hollywood companies will not give him such a high status, and the other is that Wang Jie is very decentralised in management after all, giving him a lot of support, plus Disney's achievements today have his sweat and hard work, so he did not seek another career for ambition.

Wang Jie's first words scared Michael Eisner, Wang Jie said: "I am ready to split and sell Disney's animation division." ”

"Mr. William, The Lion King has just hit a box office and surrounding miracle, you made a hasty decision, right?" questioned Michael Eisner.

"I'm going to reorganize the hand-drawn animation department into a 3D computer animation department, and I'm going to ask Pixar to send someone over to guide me on the technical side. ”

"You're saying it's all about 3D animation, but now Disney has more than 800 hand-drawn animators, and if it is reformed, these people will be ......"

Wang Jie shrugged: "Michael, if any industry can't follow the trend, it can only face elimination, I give them three years, they have enough time to be trained, if they can't adapt in the end, then I can only say regret." Of course, if there are hand-drawn people who don't want to change careers, they can follow the animation department that was split and sold to other companies, and we don't force it. ”

Most of Disney's hand-drawn animators are not too old, coupled with very skilled painting skills, it is not too difficult to complete the training of computer animation production software, in order to avoid causing a backlash from hundreds of hand-drawn animators, Wang Jie also promised to give these people enough time to learn and adapt, and fully bear the expenses required during the training.

The next day, after many newspapers reported that Wang Jie was about to split the auction of Disney's hand-drawn animation department, this news once again detonated the media in North America and even around the world.

Because "The Lion King", as the first animated film in the history of the North American box office to exceed $300 million, let the whole Hollywood know about the amazing profits of animated films, and in this case, Wang Jie insisted on splitting Disney's hand-drawn animation division into auction, which immediately caused a series of violent chain reactions.

In the days that followed, the offices and private phones of Michael Eisner and all other Disney executives were flooded with calls from shareholders, creditors and the media.

Agitated minority shareholders even openly put pressure on Disney's top management in the newspapers, and the topic of splitting up the Disney animation division for auction attracted worldwide attention in just a few days, and later there was even ridiculous talk that Disney was about to go bankrupt. Wang Jie asked Audrey Hepburn to come forward and took the opportunity to buy the shares in the hands of minority shareholders, and after this operation, Disney almost became Wang Jie's private property.

When Disney threw out the news of a package sale of the animation division, after confirming that it was not fake news, Universal's CEO Soffenberg's first thought was to take it at all costs, even if it was not a box office hit of "The Lion King", Soffenberg felt that he should do the same.

However, the reaction of Panasonic Group, the parent company of Global Japan, poured cold water on Sofenberg's head. Panasonic's desire to enter the entertainment industry has never been so eager, and when Sony bought Universal, it was completely worried about being left behind by competitors in the electronics industry.

In recent years, Panasonic has found that the promotion of buying Hollywood studios for its electronic products is not so obvious, and the islanders have also realized that they have been severely cheated by Hollywood from the beginning. Compared with Sony, which still has some fantasies, Panasonic no longer has much intention of continuing to run Universal, let alone taking out another ten or two billion dollars in cash for an animation department.

The unwilling Sofenberg has flown three times in a row to the island country in the past month, but has not been able to get any support from Panasonic, but things soon took a turn for the better. Panasonic intends to take off the gloves of the world, and the Seagram Group from Canada has also expressed its intention to enter Hollywood, and the two sides soon entered the stage of secret negotiations.

As the helmsman of Universal, Sofenberg was of course also in the negotiations, and in the process, Sofenberger realized that Seagram Group CEO Edgar Bronfman had a strong interest in the media industry, so he took the opportunity to lobby Edgar Bronfman to buy Disney's animation division in advance before taking Universal. Encouraged by the success of The Lion King, Edgar Bronfman agreed without much hesitation.

In the original time and space, a few years after Seagram bought Universal, he sold Universal again to the French Vivendi Group because of various problems, and Vitrio played for a few years, but still couldn't play it, and then sold it to General Electric. However, although it did not make any outstanding achievements, Universal did not fall into the dilapidated situation of MGM at that time.

Time passed unconsciously, and soon it was time for the auction hand-drawn animation department, and in a conference room in the Hilton Hotel, Michael Eisner, who was about to host the auction himself, was holding a document and reading words, and when he saw Wang Jie and Monica Bellucci coming in, he just nodded and said hello.

Wang Jie chatted with several other executives for a while, and the time was close to ten o'clock. Wang Jie and everyone left the conference room and walked into the auction hall, although the media reporters were blocked out of the auction hall, but the hall with hundreds of seats still had more than half of the people.

Wang Jie greeted the Hollywood giants who came to participate in the auction or just join in the fun, and took Monica Bellucci to the back row.

At ten o'clock, Michael Eisner walked to the auction table in high spirits, and when the whispers in the audience quieted down, Michael Eisner said into the microphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's auction. As we all know, the 2D animated film "The Lion King", which was released on June 24 last year, has achieved an astonishing global box office of $700 million, which is a very exciting news for the entire Hollywood, which means that Hollywood's animated film market will once again usher in a new era. However, due to the strategic development considerations within the Disney Group, we still regretfully decided to sell our hand-drawn animation division as a whole. ”

After a brief opening speech, Michael Eisner continued: "Although you have already obtained a detailed inventory of assets, I would like to briefly introduce to you here, in addition to the assets that have been listed to be auctioned, the Disney Group has also temporarily decided that in order to reduce the financial pressure on the buyer in the short term, we will include the sequel rights of The Lion King in the auction. ”

As soon as Michael Eisner's words fell, the originally quiet hall immediately buzzed.

The news was so sudden that none of the bidders expected Disney to do it. Of course, Disney's purpose in doing this is not difficult to guess, leaving buyers with the most profitable "The Lion King" series, which means that these buyers will likely offer a higher price.

An older voice quickly drowned out all the whispers and rang out at the auction: "Michael, I ask that the auction be suspended, I need to discuss it with my team." ”

Everyone turned their heads together and found that the speaker was Viacom's CEO, Summer, Lei Shidong.

Michael Eisner did not refuse, and said with an unchanged smile: "Of course there is no problem, Mr. Lei Shidong, then, the bidding time is delayed by half an hour, and everyone can do their own if they need to discuss urgently." ”