Before Eric could say anything more, Aniston reached out and snatched the girl's laptop, deleted the audition video in two clicks, and warned Eric while turning it off: "Don't think anything about this woman." Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info"

Eric looked at the chick with a nervous look, smiled and hugged her waist, and soothed, "I promise, seriously, she's not as pretty as my Jenny." ”

Aniston felt Eric's warm big hand caressing the skin on her waist, and was just about to relax, noticing the playful eyes of the girl on the other side, and immediately said, "You are not allowed to bring her to Eric, otherwise I will not be finished with you." ”

The girl naturally couldn't care about the threat of the chick, but said with a smile: "This is not necessarily, maybe I can still hold her to be more popular than you." ”

Although MGM's actual control is completely in Eric's hands, it is still the nominal largest shareholder of the company, and it is really easy for a girl to become popular with one or two actors.

Aniston thought of this possibility, and was instantly picked up again, her body was still in Eric's arms, but her two small hands had already scratched towards Drew, and the girl naturally began to fight back.

Eric had to helplessly separate the two kittens from the fight, looking at Aniston in his arms with a posture of not wanting to give up and fight with the girl, he had to make a big move, reached out and tore off a few thin pieces of fabric on the chick's body, and took it towards his arms.

The chick who was about to pull the strap of the girl's swimsuit suddenly widened her eyes, struggled slightly and babbled twice, and lay on the edge of the pool softly, her mouth still unforgiving: "Eric, you, well, you are such a bastard." ”

After spending the weekend in San Simon, Eric returned to Los Angeles with his two Niko, and the box office for the second weekend of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was officially released.

Compared with the first weekend, the box office of the film fell by only 31% in the next three days, collecting another $56.9 million, and the cumulative box office reached $193.08 million in ten days.

Spurred on by "Star Wars Prequel 1: The Phantom Menace," the North American film market surpassed $270 million in a single week last week, and although it will fall slightly this week, it can easily remain above $200 million.

Therefore, although "Star Wars Prequel 1: The Phantom Menace" took a large part of the box office, because of the significant increase in the overall moviegoing driven by the Star Wars series, other films in the market have performed very well at the box office in the last two weeks.

New Line Pictures' "Tea Boy" finally earned $53.26 million at the box office in the first week, and although it was hit by Star Wars in the second week, the box office fell by 53% to only $25.03 million, but the box office still reached $78.29 million in two weeks. Entering the third week, as the momentum of Star Wars began to slow down, the decline of "Tea Boy" also narrowed to 37%, collecting another $11.02 million, and the total box office reached $89.31 million, breaking 100 million is just around the corner.

The 2D animated film "Mulan", which was released at the same time as Paramount Pictures and "The Tea Boy", also suffered a big drop under the impact of the Star Wars prequel last week, and the box office decline this weekend also began to narrow.

However, the three-day weekend box office of "Mulan" has also slipped to within the $8.29 million area, and the total box office of the film in two and a half weeks is only $63.56 million, far less than Paramount's expectations, and the total box office in North America is expected to only be between $80 million and $90 million in the next few weeks.

Although Paramount has still been able to make a profit by relying on overseas distribution and future peripheral operations, compared to 3D animated films, which usually get out of the blockbuster box office curve, 2D animated films, which are mainly aimed at children and rely on long-term screenings to gradually accumulate box office, are clearly no longer suitable for the market format of recent years.

In addition, the other two new films released this week, Columbia Pictures' heartwarming family comedy "Kiss Mom" and Universal's fantasy romance "The Sixth Sense of Life and Death", also earned more than $19.14 million and $15.01 million respectively in the first three days of the opening weekend, although they are still far behind "Star Wars Prequel 1: The Phantom Menace" and cannot compare with "Tea Boy" two weeks ago. But judging from the genre of the two films, this kind of box office start is not bad.

Firefly Studios.

In a small screening room, Eric is staring at the big screen with Katzenberg, Frank Wells, and Joss Wheddon, the director of "Iron Man."

The opening credits of Firefly Pictures flash to the scene of Eric's Tony Stark building armor in a cave, accompanied by the sound of Marvel Studios' iconic comic book page turn, and then cut to Tony Stark's high-tech studio and Colonel Roddy's voiceover: Tony, what the hell are you making?

Colonel Roddy's voice fell, and the tempo of the screen switches began to increase in the dynamic rock soundtrack, until Tony Stark soared into the sky in a silver Mark 2 armor, and the 30-second short film came to an abrupt end, giving a strong sense of unfinished business.

"Iron Man" has been officially set for May 7 next year.

Although there are still some finishing details to be taken care of, the warm-up campaign has already begun. In the next period of time, the most important thing is naturally the annual Super Bowl in the United States. Ever since Eric used the Super Bowl to promote "Tornado" to amazing effect, Super Bowl commercials have become a must-have for the Big Seven studios over the years.

At this time, what everyone watched was the Super Bowl commercial of "Iron Man".

After relying on a series of low-to-medium budget productions to achieve amazing box office results this year, New Line Pictures will once again enter the blockbuster year of Firefly Group next year.

From Easter next year to the end of the year, the Firefly Group's "Public Enemy of the People", "Iron Man", "Cars", "Gravity", and "Lord of the Rings 1: The Lord of the Rings" will be lined up.

However, after all considerations, only "Iron Man" and "Lord of the Rings 1" will be released in the Super Bowl trailer this year, the trailer of "Iron Man" is 30 seconds, and the trailer of "The Lord of the Rings 1: The Lord of the Rings" is 15 seconds.

Several executives, such as Eric and Katzenberg, were working today to review the trailers for the two films.

The trailer for "The Lord of the Rings 1: The Lord of the Rings" has already been discussed in the morning, and since there is still about a year before the release, the Super Bowl trailer for "The Lord of the Rings 1: The Lord of the Rings" is more inclined to a concept trailer, mainly a large panoramic shot of the film, accompanied by a small amount of dialogue. The whole trailer reveals very little information, is full of suspense, and the duration is also limited to 15 seconds.

Relatively speaking, the trailer of "Iron Man" revealed a lot of information.

This is mainly because this year's Super Bowl will be held on January 31, which is only three months away from the release of "Iron Man" on May 7. Immediately after the Super Bowl, "Iron Man" will enter the final stage of mass promotion, so there is no need to half-hide like "The Lord of the Rings", but try to maximize the advertising effect as much as possible.

This most recognized trailer was played several times, and everyone also took out several other edited versions for a detailed comparison and discussion, and finalized the final plan, which was already five o'clock in the afternoon.

Everyone was leaving work, but Eric and Katzenberg went to the next room together.

"Eric, the total value of the shares in the Clover Fund has exceeded $27 billion, and I heard from my friends on Wall Street that many investment institutions have confirmed that they will liquidate all the technology stocks before 3,000 points.

Eric took a sip of the coffee Mayer handed over, felt the trace of apprehension that rarely appeared in Katzenberg's tone, and smiled, "Are you scared too?"

Katzenberg touched his bald head slightly awkwardly, but nodded honestly.

In fact, he was not only afraid, but more worried.

According to Eric's original promise, if he can cash out all the shares held by Clover Fund at this time, he will personally receive more than $400 million in profit dividends.

$400 million.

Even at Katzenberg's current salary level, it's hard for him to remain indifferent to the $400 million that almost fell from the sky. Moreover, the current crumbling state of the Nasdaq index also makes him worry about gains and losses every day, for fear of waking up one morning and hearing the news of the collapse of the Nasdaq index.

You must know that there is no limit to the rise and fall of the North American stock market, and once the Nasdaq collapses, the $400 million is likely to evaporate in just a few days.

Eric leaned back in his leather chair with his coffee cup in his hand and said, "Jeffrey, do you remember what I said when I first invested in tech stocks?"

Katzenberg laughed, "We seem to have a lot of conversations about this, huh?"

"Well," Eric said, "yes, I remember saying that most of the stocks that Clover Fund buys are long-term valuable, such as Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Verizon, and so on." Even if the Nasdaq crashes, because these companies have formed a very solid market position, their stocks will definitely rise again in the future. If we hold it for a long time, we can also get a very generous dividend income every year. So, if the Nasdaq crashes before Clover liquidates, we only lose some paper gains in the short term, or some of the stocks with a big bubble do cause us some losses, but we can still maintain a very decent profit in the long run. ”

Although he understood that what Eric said was very reasonable, Katzenberg still said: "However, Eric, if this is the case, the $7 billion that the company has invested from the beginning will be locked in these stocks, $7 billion, but it can do a lot of things." ”

"Fireflies aren't short of money right now, are they? And what I've just said is just a worst-case scenario. Actually, I'm pretty confident in my personal judgment. Wall Street may think that the NASDAQ 3,000 is the end, but I think that the NASDAQ 3,000 is just the beginning. Eric said, seeing that Katzenberg still didn't look very approving, and smiled, "Okay, Jeffrey, I know you're worried about your part of the gains." But you're not short of money right now, are you? If you do the math, if you sell now, you're only going to get about $400 million. But if the Nasdaq exceeds 3,000 points, or even, 4,000 points, or 5,000 points, maybe one day, you suddenly find that you have become a billionaire. ”

Katzenberg looked forward to the scene depicted by Eric for a moment, and subconsciously shook his head: "Eric, this is crazy. ”

Eric stretched his hands slightly and joked: "Since the NASDAQ 2000 points, there are few normal people on Wall Street, since everyone has become crazy, what is impossible to be crazy?"

The Clover Fund's trading team is solely responsible to Eric personally, and although he can see some of the Clover's data, he has no authority to dispose of this part of the assets at all. Seeing that persuasion had failed, Katzenberg had no choice but to give up and move on to another topic.

"Eric, there happens to be another thing, didn't you plan to buy Hasbro in the first place?"

Eric nodded and said, "Yes, but now shouldn't be a good time, and we must wait for this wave of stock market bubble to pass." ”

The frenzy of the Nasdaq tech stock market has also driven the entire North American stock market, and while it is completely independent of technology companies, Hasbro's share price has also nearly doubled in recent years.

Eric remembers the data that he accidentally swept the other day, and the market value of Hasbro has exceeded five billion dollars. Three years ago, when Firefly won the rights to "Transformers", Hasbro's market value was just over $2 billion. In three years, Hasbro's annual profit level is still fluctuating around $200 million, and the skyrocketing market value cannot be the result of increased performance.

"That's true, but Hasbro is starting to get into trouble right now, and it's definitely a big one," Katzenberg said. ”

Eric was puzzled for a moment, then suddenly a thought flashed, and said, "You mean, Star Wars?"

Katzenberg didn't expect Eric's reaction to be so quick and accurate, and a look of surprise flashed across his face, explaining, "That's right, the company's team happened to be at Hasbro's headquarters in Rhode Island during this time to negotiate with the other party about the licensing of merchandise for next year. According to a news report that in the first week of Star Wars' release, Hasbro's sales of licensed toys were only $23 million, not even half of what was expected. Hasbro paid $100 million for the toy licensing of the Star Wars prequel series, and they originally hoped to generate $300 million in toy sales revenue for the company within three months of its release, and more than $500 million in sales revenue for the whole year. But judging from the current situation, the first week should have been the hottest moment for toys, but it only sold 23 million US dollars, and in three months, let alone 300 million, even 200 million US dollars is unlikely. Because of the optimism about the Star Wars periphery, Hasbro's early distribution efforts are very large, once the toys are unsalable, these products can only be recovered and destroyed in the future, coupled with the huge licensing fees paid in the early stage, Hasbro will definitely lose a lot this year. ”

Firefly Group's Peripherals Division, which also operates a large scale, certainly understands what kind of situation Hasbro is about to face after all these years.

And, even more seriously, if Hasbro's huge losses catch up with the bursting of the stock market bubble this year, that situation, tsk, it makes people feel sour to think about it.