For MGM's acquisition, Flora Pictures initially offered $1.5 billion, but Crédit Lyonnais hopes to sell its stake for $1.8 billion. Crédit Lyon has made up its mind to get rid of Hollywood completely, and there will be no more entanglements with Hollywood after the deal is over, so the main point of negotiation between the two sides has been focused on the final transaction price.

The two sides began negotiations at the beginning of June and until the end of July, but they were unable to reach an agreement, mainly because Crédit Lyonnais was waiting for the box office results of "007: GoldenEye", which had the participation of Eric, and they were still very much looking forward to the box office of the film. It's just that although "007: GoldenEye" received unanimous praise after its release, the box office did not show a big hit trend, especially compared with "Wonderful Night at the Museum", which made Crédit Lyon not have much confidence.

After the box office of "007: GoldenEye" was released in the first weekend, the two sides each took a step back and reached a final intention of $1.6 billion, and of course, after the completion of the deal, Flower Pictures will assume the $1.7 billion debt left by MGM, bringing the total transaction value to $3.3 billion.

The day after the deal was finalized, an interesting cartoon appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

An anthropomorphic giant firefly, wearing a small flower on its head, traverses the streets emblazoned with the 'Hollywood' logo like the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park 2, and the collapsed buildings on both sides of the street are adorned with the eye-catching logos of Warner, Paramount, Universal, Columbia and more.

Under this cartoon, the Los Angeles Times gave the striking title of "Fireflies Dominate Hollywood".

"Seven years ago, Home Alone was born, with an ultra-low cost of $1 million, and more than $500 million at the box office worldwide, the whole of Hollywood was eye-catching. ”

"But maybe no one would have thought of it. Today, seven years later, the young man who single-handedly created "Home Alone" has built his own media empire at an amazing speed. At the same time, the territory of this emerging empire expanded wildly at an almost visible rate, after successive annexations of New Line, Disney, ABC. This firefly, which seems to never be forever, has 'planted' a brilliant flower outside of its own system. ”

"Before the MGM acquisition, we could see that at the end of last year, Flower Pictures' first film "Mission Impossible" won nearly $500 million worldwide at a cost of $70 million. ”

"This summer, the two films produced by Flower Pictures are "Forrest Gump" and "Wonderful Night at the Museum". So far, it has received $190 million and $130 million respectively at the North American box office, although the box office potential of the two films is far more than that, but from the start of the summer season on May 26 to the present, the total box office of the North American summer season has accumulated $1.68 billion in the past ten weeks, and Flower Pictures, a newborn beast, has unknowingly devoured 19% of the market share. ”

"If we look a little bigger, we can see that the three films released by Firefly Group, "Jurassic Park 2", "Solo Day" and "Toy Story 2". It has also accumulated $690 million at the domestic box office, and the box office potential of these films has not been fully exploited. But the combined box office of the two companies has accounted for 61% of the box office in the entire summer ten weeks. Leaving less than 40% of the market share of all other Hollywood peers, it is breathtaking. ”

It is not difficult to imagine that when Eric Williams personally raised this flower, he completed the merger and acquisition of MGM and DreamWorks, and with a large number of lucrative film projects such as the "Mission Impossible" series, the "007" series, the "Thunderbolt" series, the "Night at the Museum" series, and the "Resident Evil" series, at least, it will soon be in the film business. Reaching the point where we can almost see the dismal situation of other Hollywood studios in the coming years. ”

Although the article in the Los Angeles Times is slightly exaggerated, it still attracts a lot of attention.

Hollywood's seven major studios all have their own film production and distribution systems. Moreover, many resources are unique to these studios. For example, Paramount's cinema resources. Therefore, if Firefly and Flower Pictures wants to completely monopolize the entire Hollywood film market, unless all seven major film companies are eaten, it is absolutely impossible to reach such an astonishing market share every year. The reason why the two film companies will get 60% of the market share this year, in the eyes of many people, can only be attributed to luck, Firefly and Flower Pictures are too lucky, and Warner and other companies are too bad luck to have no box office hits.

However, despite this, Flower Pictures' acquisition of MGM has aroused the vigilance of several other major film companies. The executives of Warner, Universal, Paramount, and Columbia all understood that the best way to stop the expansion of Flower Pictures was to disrupt the deal at all costs.

However, the wish is good, but the reality is that among the other majors, none of them are willing to be this bird.

After all, if you want to mess up this deal, you will not only need to pay a high price, but also completely offend the fireflies to death, although everyone knows that this is 'sacrificing the present and investing in the future', but there is no Hollywood executive who has the courage to sacrifice the present.

As for the union, forget it. When several companies with different minds negotiate the conditions of the union, perhaps Flower Pictures has grown into a towering tree.

Although in private, some people use the resources in their hands to play some small tricks, intending to make Flower Pictures pay more price even if they can't stop the acquisition, but these little tricks are often easily resolved by the other party. After all, in this capitalist society, capital is the ultimate power, and Firefly is now undoubtedly the media group with the most abundant capital in Hollywood.

Los Angeles.

In Drew's Beverly mansion, the girl stood in the living room by a hanger full of small dresses and changed her clothes, and her little mouth kept chattering: "I really don't know what they think, they actually let people check my taxes, ha, this method has long been old-fashioned, my tax bill is whiter than Natasha, where will I find out what the problem is." Hum. If I let me know who did it behind it, I will definitely teach him a hard lesson. ”

It's the end of July, and Flower Pictures has signed acquisition agreements with Crédit Lyon and DreamWorks Productions in the past two weeks. The shares of MGM in the hands of Crédit Lyon were acquired in cash, and under the strong promotion of Eric, the acquisition of DreamWorks was in the form of cash and stock. The deal was priced at $1 billion, with Prestige, who had previously been involved in MGM's acquisition, paying 300 million yuan for a 30 percent stake in Fireflies, and the shares held by other European shareholders of DreamWorks were exchanged for equity in the combined company.

After the completion of the integration, in order to facilitate the equity operation, the new company will still be dominated by MGM Group, Flower Pictures and DreamWorks, as well as Luen Mei, which owns the copyright of 007, will be gradually integrated into the production department of MGM in the coming months, and MGM's label will be mainly used for film distribution in the future.

The new MGM Group. As the largest shareholder, Drew holds 40% of the shares, Vivendi Group holds 20% of the shares, LTD Group holds 10% of the shares, the original European shareholders of DreamWorks hold 18% of the shares, and the remaining 12% are outstanding shares.

Eric sat on the living room couch, waiting for Drew to change his clothes before rushing to the first press conference of New MGM.

Eric listened to Drew's chatter with a smile on his lips. Flipping through the balance sheet of the new company.

After the integration is completed, in Eric's opinion. The most valuable thing about the new MGM is undoubtedly the copyright of those blockbusters, and in addition, it is MGM's huge film library.

Although MGM lost the pre-1948 film rights in the Cockrian's deal with Ted Turner in the '80s, the remaining post-1948 film library still has more than 4,000 films. It is also one of the best in the whole of Hollywood, in the original time and space, in order to fight for MGM film library to promote its own high-definition Blu-ray format, Sony made a big mistake again in 2004, and paid $5 billion for this. It can be seen that the gold content of MGM film library.

It's just that MGM has been struggling with difficulties all these years, and does not have enough energy to monetize these library resources, so it can only be widely licensed to external video distributors and cable TV stations, which has to be said to be a pity, and now that he has accepted this resource, Eric will certainly not let this situation continue.

Eric was thinking about how to manage MGM's huge library of films, and when he heard the girl say that his tax bill was whiter than Natasha's, he couldn't help but look up, the twins were wearing simple black T-shirts and washed jeans, quietly helping Drew pick out the clothes, revealing faces and arms with the amazing whiteness unique to Slavic beauties.

Noticing Eric's eyes, Drew grinned the corners of his lips and said, "Eric, they're whiter when they're not wearing clothes." ”

As Drew spoke, the twins' cheeks flushed crimson, and they glanced at Eric with some embarrassment.

Eric smiled, and turned his gaze to Drew's small body wearing only Neiyi, although it has passed his twentieth birthday, but over the years, because of the quitting of those vices, the figure of the girl has hardly changed, the little man of 1.63 meters, smooth and white skin, petite with a sense of flesh, full of temptation.

Feeling Eric's eyes falling on her, the girl threw a small look at Eric, hinting, "Eric, there's still time." ”

"Let's change our clothes, don't bother any more, we have to get there sooner. ”

"That's in the car. ”

"Don't make a fuss. ”

"Hehe......"

"Let's get down to business," Eric said with a more serious expression, "Although you don't have any financial problems, your stake in the new company is always too conspicuous. I plan to issue another 20% of MGM's shares, well, about 70 million shares, at the current stock price, you can raise about $1 billion in funds, and when the time comes, you and LTD's holdings together will remain at about 40%, we will not lose control of the company, and we can also make the company have more funds for the development of the next few years, what do you think?"

The girl finally chose a small pink dress, and after putting it on, she pounced like a butterfly, rubbed it on Eric, and said in a greasy voice: "Eric, you don't have to ask me about these things at all, everything about me is yours, you decide." ”

"Well, I'm not very good at making decisions for others," Eric said, putting his arm around the girl's waist.

"But I'm none other than I, Eric, and I might be dead by now if it weren't for you. ”

Eric felt the small body attached to his body, and joked, "Well, why is this line more and more like a soap opera, oops, neck, don't be too tight, I don't have your name in my will." ”

"Well, I'll die with you. ”

"Is this the start of the second episode of the soap opera?"

"Wow, I'm serious. ”

"Okay, okay, the time is up, let's get over it. ”

MGM's headquarters are located in Century City, although the original studio has been sold by Corkrian in the 80s, but MGM's headquarters building is still retained, as a more than half a century old film company, although it has begun to decline, but the headquarters building is still much more magnificent than the office building of Flower Pictures in Venice Beach.

Flowers Pictures and DreamWorks haven't moved their offices here at this point, but the press conference is held in one of the most spacious conference halls at MGM's headquarters.

When Eric and Drew arrived at MGM's headquarters by car, the plaza outside the building was already crowded with reporters, who noticed their cars and rushed up. The company's security team also hurriedly opened the way for the two.

"Mr. Williams, will Firefly buy MGM in the future?"

"Eric, Drew, do you have any plans to get married?"

"Eric, why did you completely spin MGM out of the Firefly system, did you take into account monopoly restrictions?"

"Will MGM expand like the fireflies?"

"Eric, what are you going to do with MGM's debt?"

Amid the glare of flashing lights and the frantic questions of reporters, Eric put his arm around the girl's waist and disappeared into the building with difficulty under the escort of security.

Walking into the building, Amy Pascal, Frank Makazoc and other company executives and some superstars who were about to attend the conference were greeted one after another, but under Eric's orders, the executives of the Firefly Group did not attend the conference.

After greeting everyone, everyone came to the press conference site together, and the staff was still carrying out some final equipment debugging. In the conference hall of more than 200 square meters, a small stage is installed, and the stage background is the posters of the company's series of movies such as "007", "Breaking Baby" and "Wonderful Night at the Museum".

PS: I accidentally marked the chapter number wrong, but the content is correct, so I'll ask the editor to help me change it when the time comes. (To be continued.) )