Compared with the lively Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood in January, Eric pays the most attention to the Sundance Film Festival, which has been gaining popularity in recent years.

David Fincher's debut "The Seven Deadly Sins" made its first public appearance at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the film's promotional efforts ahead of the Easter schedule.

Brad Pitt is still continuing the role of Agent Muller in "The X-Files", and the actor chosen by the crew is Matthew McConaughey, who has begun to emerge in recent years, Eric does not like this actor too much, and always thinks that his face is too frivolous, but this image just fits the young and impatient personality of David Smith, the actor of "Seven Deadly Sins", so it was finally decided. Except for Matthew McKenna and Diane Kruger, who was stuffed into the crew to play soy sauce, the other two supporting actors, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey, have not changed.

Compared with those homicidal films that slash all the way to the end and even cause aesthetic fatigue to the audience, the exquisite and shocking crime plot setting of "Seven Deadly Sins" pushes this film theme to unprecedented heights. The impatience, calm and frantic personalities of the three male characters also impressed the press and film critics, and the film was immediately launched at the Sundance Film Festival.

“…… Most serial crime movies almost cliché a Sherlock Holmes-esque character unravels everything at the end. The plot setting of "Seven Deadly Sins", which allows criminals to show up and continue to complete their crazy deeds, is undoubtedly subversive, and the ending of the film is shocking, and the gloomy city that is always raining also gives people a gothic dark religious atmosphere, which secretly echoes the religious theme of "Seven Deadly Sins". ”

“…… Compared with the chaotic and mediocre "Alien 3", "The Seven Deadly Sins" is undoubtedly a reborn work of director David Fincher. ”

“…… Kevin Spacey's brief appearance portrays a genius, aloof, and insane murderer who is reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Matthew McConaughey and Morgan Morgan Freeman also gave very good performances. In addition, although many people are slandered by Victoria's Secret supermodels for frequently messing around in Hollywood, Diane Kruger's performance this time has also reached the passing line, and we can't ask for more from this group of beautiful babes with beautiful faces and devilish bodies, can we?"

While there was no shortage of criticism for any film, the critical acclaim for "The Seven Deadly Sins" far outnumbered the few negative reviews in the media, and the movie-related topic quickly spread from Christmas to all of North America.

Although the Sundance Film Festival has the purpose of supporting independent films, after years of development, in order to better survive, it has also begun to compromise with several major Hollywood studios.

Among the 17 jury awards for best feature films, more than one-third of the films from the seven or their subsidiaries have been nominated, and "The Seven Deadly Sins" has been nominated without suspense, and under the operation of the new line, it has successfully won the jury award, which is a good start for the film's promotional work.

As January passed, the atmosphere of the holiday season gradually disappeared, people's lives gradually entered the normal, and the film market also fell into a cold period in the spring, and the total box office of Hollywood Week fell from a high of $170 million in the New Year to about 60 million. Correspondingly, entering February, the spring file of TV dramas began to come.

"Seven Deadly Sins" started with the good start of the Sundance Film Festival, and at the same time that another action movie "Red Fan Zone" with a new line opened the Easter schedule in April, the major TV stations such as ABC TV Network, AE TV Network, Disney Channel, and ESPN under the Firefly Group also began to launch new spring programs one after another.

Among them, the most notable of these, in addition to ESPN, which has just signed a $9 billion broadcast rights contract with the National Football League, is the lifetime TV station of AE TV Network, which specializes in urban elite fashion women.

Before last year's winter break, Lifetime's two reality shows, "America's Top Model Contest" and "Flyover's Pride," both achieved more than 6 million viewership in their final episodes, and the final viewership of the first season of "America's Top Model" reached 6.8 million, with ratings once approaching 4.0, which is simply amazing compared to most cable channels.

With the phenomenal ratings trend brought about by the two reality shows, the subscribers of Lifetime TV have skyrocketed, from 3,000 at the beginning of 1995 to 76 million at present, and several major cable operators have begun to prepare for the inevitable price increase of Lifetime TV in the broadcast rights contract in April and May this year.

According to industry expectations, as long as the programs released by Lifetime TV in the spring season can meet the average level of last year's autumn slot, Lifetime TV will be able to increase the average subscriber subscription fee to more than 25 cents in the negotiation of a new contract.

That alone would generate more than $200 million in subscription revenue from cable operators each year, more than the industry's overall valuation of $150 million a year ago, and with the popularity of Lifetime, the station's advertising revenue, as well as syndicate distribution and DVD sales of hit shows, will bring more than just a subscription share, and Wall Street media industry analysts have even raised the valuation of Lifetime to $1.1 billion.

While Lifetime viewers don't pay much attention to these industry figures, their interest in Lifetime's two ace reality shows hasn't waned in the slightest.

Although the second season of "America's Top Model Contest" will not be broadcast until early March, the new drama "Lust City" launched by the TV station will also have to wait until the end of February.

But with the arrival of New York Fashion Week, according to the rules originally drafted, the first season of "The Pride of the Bridge" did not completely end, but put the final at New York Fashion Week.

After a winter break, the final three finalists will present their finalists at Bryant Park in Manhattan.

In order to gather more attention, before the final broadcast of the final, "The Pride of the Flyover" deliberately made two special episodes, which were broadcast two weeks before and after New York Fashion Week, because all the popular reality show contestants in the series returned at the same time, although there was no previous competition, more just a review of last year's program and interviews with the contestants, but the two special programs still achieved more than 500 viewers, which once again showed the media and the industry the strong popularity of "The Pride of the Flyover".

Although Linda extended an invitation to Eric to appear as a special guest on the final episode of "The Pride of the Flyover" for the final episode, Eric had to return to Los Angeles in a hurry after AOL's IPO.

The initial budget for "007: Casino Royale" has been released, and the film's worldwide scaffolding and auditions for some important supporting roles have started at the same time, all of which are inseparable from Eric's participation.

At the same time, Firefly, MGM and Fox also began negotiations on cooperating to set up a toll cable station.

In the original time and space, HBO almost monopolized more than 90% of the market share of paid cable TV stations, and its annual profit revenue was even close to $2 billion at its peak, which can squeeze into the world's top 500 companies even after more than a decade. Other major media companies, although they have tried many times to catch up with HBO's market position, have been as stable as Mount Tai because HBO has formed a market monopoly pattern early on, coupled with its own excellent operating methods.

In my memory, Twentieth Century Fox even launched an offer to buy the entire Time Warner Group in order to get an HBO, but of course it didn't work out.

However, at this time, the entire cable TV market in the United States, after a long period of gestation from the 80s, was just in the early stages of the explosion, and although HBO was already small, it was far less dazzling than later, which also gave other premium cable stations the opportunity to catch up.

Early in the morning, Eric rushed to Preavista to have breakfast with Katzenberg in the café in the studio, and discussed the progress of the work in the recent period.

"We picked a few targets, the most suitable of which was a paid cable station owned by Telecommunications, which currently has about 1.5 million subscribers and mainly broadcasts old movies from the early days. Although the number of subscriptions is small, it has a user base of 40 million for remote communication, and as long as it can provide enough high-quality film and television resources, the growth of subscribers will be very rapid. ”

Katzenberg reported on the paid cable station, took a sip of coffee, and continued: "However, Telecommunications is not willing to let go of this TV station, they want to be able to leave 20% of the shares, I think, if we finally decide to buy this TV station, we should be able to reduce the shareholding of Remote Communications to 10%, after all, without our content support, the remote communication of this paid cable station will not be able to grow." ”

Long-range communications, Comcast, Time Warner, is the three giants of traditional cable TV operators in this era, in addition, there are more small and medium-sized cable operators and emerging satellite TV operators in North America, and even News Corporation actually has cable TV operation business, but the business scope is mainly concentrated in Europe and Australia.

In the early eighties, these cable operators were not allowed to own television stations due to antitrust concerns, but as media regulations became more and more open, this restriction was gradually broken. When Barry Diller left Fox, he ran the QVC TV shopping channel, which was a television station jointly invested by Telecommunications and Comcast.

After the new century, the largest cable TV operator in the United States changed from remote communication to Comcast, Eric is not very clear about the reason, but he can roughly guess that remote communication either went bankrupt after the Internet wave burst, like many high-tech companies, or was merged, if it is the latter, this merger, it is obvious that it should be Comcast.

"Try to fight for it, it is best to press it to 10%, and at the same time, we should also tilt towards remote communication in advance to strive for more channel resources," Eric thought for a moment and said.

He had never thought of monopolizing the station from the outset, keeping a stake in the operator, and allowing them to provide more resources and convenience for the station's expansion, and Katzenberg suggested that Fox be excluded from the collaborators, but Eric did not take this advice. If it's just North America, there's no need to bring Fox with you, after all, Firefly and MGM are already able to provide enough programming for the TV station.

But taking a more long-term view, the international media channel resources in the hands of News Corp. can help this paid cable station go overseas more easily, just like the Disney channel in the hands of Firefly, it is because of the good relationship between Firefly and Fox that it has successfully entered the TV market in Europe and Australia with Sky Media's channel resources in the first two years.

At the end of last year, with the popularity of "America's Top Model Contest" and "Flyover", Firefly has also begun to cooperate with News Corp. on the transfer of Lifetime TV to overseas markets, and News Corp's Australian TV station has even bought the production rights of the Australian version of "Supermodel Contest". 、

Even ignoring Eric's relationship with Elizabeth and pulling Fawkes into this collaboration will definitely do more pros than cons.

After discussing the matter of the toll cable station, the two of them finished breakfast slowly, and Eric handed a prepared document to Katzenberg, and said, "This is some information about IMAX and 3D film and television technology that I asked Kelly to collect recently, you can take it back and take a look, and you can also give Frank and them a few copies." ”

Katzenberg was a little unfamiliar with the concept of IMAX, but he knew 3D technology, so he took the information and pressed it to his hand, and said, "Eric, are you going to make a 3D movie?"

Eric shook his head and said: "There is no such plan now, you can take a look at the information first, according to the future production strategy of Firefly, we will take the boutique route of large-scale production, most of these special effects-based movies are very focused on visual experience, you can imagine, if we can popularize 3D film technology into these films, we can not only improve the competitiveness of the film itself, but also on the basis of 2D, to a certain extent, increase the ticket price of the movie." In recent years, although the size of the moviegoer has been growing and the world film market is expanding, there will always be a saturation day. At that time, 3D film technology may become a very important entry point for us to maintain continuous performance growth. Oh, and the same goes for IMAX technology, I don't know if there's an IMAX theater in Los Angeles, you can look it up and try it out first. ”

Katzenberg listened carefully, nodded solemnly, and said, "I will read the materials as soon as possible, and at the same time ask the Strategic Planning Department to come up with an evaluation." (To be continued.) )