"Is this true?" a middle-aged female director looked at Carl Icahn suspiciously, "How can you be sure that someone is willing to come out...... , $2 billion for DC Comics?"

Her question was also in the minds of the directors present.

Although the director of DC Comics once asked his own network department for hundreds of billions of dollars in copyright royalties for comic characters, anyone with a discerning eye knows that the entire package of DC Comics is not worth so much money.

Although the movies of "Superman" and "Batman" were once all the rage, with the fiasco of "Batman and Robin", these have become yesterday's obsolete, and with only those DC comics and animations, even if you give it another ten years, DC is not worth $2 billion!

After all, in addition to movies, it is actually difficult for DC's character copyrights to be truly converted into real money benefits.

Otherwise, you can't see Time Warner's acquisition of DC for decades, how much profit has it really made from it?

In addition, after that, the current comic movie is still a standard street mouse, not to mention the Marvel Universe, even when Sid's "Spider-Man" has not yet come out, with Fox's "X-Men", no one takes the comic movie seriously at all.

In order to successfully win DC, Sid not only conducted a small-scale test screening of "Spider-Man" on Shoest, but also issued a gag order to all participating theater companies, and postponed the release time of "Spider-Man" from the original May and June to July.

At the same time, Sid also asked Philheimer to hire gunmen, spread gossip about "Spider-Man" in magazines, and even said that the postponement of the release of the film was due to the mixed reviews and uncertain reviews of "Spider-Man" within the Fire Lion, so the release time was postponed, waiting for Sid to return to Los Angeles from Canada to make a decision.

Although these news were only published by some low-profile gossip magazines, the gunmen hired by Philheimer were of a good level, and he was stunned by his nose and face for a non-existent thing.

Among them, Gregorz, the owner of AMC Cinemas, called Sid and strongly questioned the process of the postponement of "Spider-Man", which was vividly described by the gunman, and even Sid couldn't help but sigh when he saw it.

Although these reports did not make too many waves in a short period of time, they attracted the attention of some industry insiders who had long been unhappy with the fire lion, and for a time slowly promoted some people with ulterior motives in the undercurrent.

While Carl Icahn and Steve Case's new headquarters were flexing their talents and trying to convince the directors with real money and eloquence, a lobbying team in Washington, D.C., not far from New York, had begun to make frequent contact with some Senate members.

In particular, senators who hold positions on the Federal Trade Committee, whether Republicans or Democrats, are frequently contacted, but such contacts between lobbying teams and lawmakers are so common in Washington that they do not attract much attention.

————————————————————

On June 17th, Apple launched the second generation of iPod less than a year after the launch of the iPod, and the new version of the iPod is based on the first generation, and can be better compatible with the indos system in software and hardware.

At the same time, Apple also launched the 20G version of the iPod, which further expanded the storage capacity of the iPod, and the launch of the new version of the iPod also further accelerated the sales of the iPod under the temptation of increasing the amount without increasing the price.

and with the newly released, Sid's new "silhouette advertisement".

The craze of the iPod has changed from a spark to a raging fire! The entire market has been burned red, and competitors such as Sony have certainly been burned to the death, and the entire record industry has also been shattered.

Although the digital music store has not yet been officially launched, the CD burning function alone has already "devastated the physical record industry".

Both Sid and Jobs believe that it won't be long before the record companies that were still hard-mouthed before will have to kneel down and sing conquest for us and obediently join the digital music store.

————————————————————

A few days later, on June 21, the much-anticipated Spielberg's new film, "Minority Report" starring Tom Cruise, was finally released!

This sci-fi masterpiece, which brings together the top directors and the most well-known stars in Hollywood, has been attracting attention since the beginning of its promotion, and the distribution company Fox has also regarded it as a blockbuster in this year's summer file and spent a lot of money on publicity.

And Tom Cruise, in order to promote the film, even tried to compress the filming time of "The Departed" as much as possible, and in order to accommodate his schedule, Sid and the crew also specially adjusted the filming plans of others.

For this, even Will Smith, who has just entered the 20 million club, also expressed his understanding with both hands, in fact, this is also because the current Tom Cruise is taking advantage of the east wind of "Mission Impossible", and the limelight is unparalleled for a while, which is really too strong.

Therefore, everyone does not want to offend him plainly.

And Sid has used the bait of the Oscar to successfully push Tom Cruise's salary to $5 million, so he adheres to the principle of making a lot of money in a muffled voice, and no longer makes more trouble in these small things.

But fortunately, the crew of "The Departed" is such a difficult uncle, the old man De Niro and the old man Pacino, who are already a little outdated, are fine, but the new A coffee Will Smith is very low-key in the crew, which is unexpected by Sid.

Speaking of "Minority Report", it won $11 million at the box office on the first day of the 21st, although it is not a hit, but it is already very good. The next day, Saturday, he continued his efforts to win $13 million, and on Sunday it slipped slightly to close at $10 million.

With a score of $35 million in the first three days of the opening weekend, it successfully landed the North American box office champion.

In the next few weeks, although the box office declined slightly, the film's audience and critics' reputation were good, which allowed the film to successfully maintain a fairly strong performance, and finally broke the $100 million mark in the fourth week.

As a sci-fi action commercial film, "Minority Report" has a cost of 100 million, and the North American box office finally received 130 million, plus 220 million overseas, it can only be regarded as a loss.

It was difficult to break 100 million after four weeks at the box office, which is really far from M. Shyamalan's "Omen" later.

Of course, this is not to say that Spielberg is inferior to M. Shyamalan.

It's just that in Sid's opinion, Spielberg chose the wrong theme!

In terms of plot design alone, the dizzying tense rhythm of "Minority Report", the action scene when the protagonist escapes from pursuit with the prophet, and the prophet's prophetic advice fulfilled one by one, etc., all fully demonstrate the solid script of this film, which is definitely not much better than "Omen".