Eric was a little puzzled: "Viking director, why do you want to help us get a deal to buy our own record company?"

Katzenberg replied, "Barry said he was also at the top of Viking Records. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info Before EMI acquired Viking in 1992, the development of Viking Records was still very good. It's just that since being acquired by Momoyo, Viking has been going downhill over the years, and he should want to get rid of Momoyo and seek better development space. Barry should know better. ”

Eric thought for a moment and said, "Let's have Barry come over for lunch at noon, and let's discuss it carefully." ”

Sending Katzenberg away, Eric continued to work on his work and did not leave the office until twelve o'clock in the afternoon.

Barry Weiss had already rushed over from the Firefly Group headquarters in Burbank, and because he wanted to talk about business, Eric took him and Katzenberg to the restaurant of the "Titanic" exhibition hall, and specially asked for a private room.

Barry Weiss was clearly well prepared, and soon after he sat down, he began to tell Eric the ins and outs of the matter.

"Viking Records was originally the property of the Virgin Group, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson. In 1992, Virgin Atlantic was in trouble and Richard Branson had to sell Virgin Records in order to raise money to save Virgin Atlantic. In other words, from the beginning, this deal was not actively brokered by EMI Records, they just felt that after acquiring Viking Records, they could expand their own strength.

However, the reality is not as good as imagined. Although the scale of Viking Records is far from being comparable to the world's major record giants, it has a very complete music production and distribution network, and its business scope also involves most singers and record genres, which is almost a mini EMI record. Therefore, EMI Records has no way to split Viking Records and integrate it into its own group system, which will only outweigh the losses.

There was no way to split it, and Momoyo could only let Viking Records continue to operate on its own. But in this way, because most of Viking Records' business coincides with EMI Records, EMI Records will only tend to the business development of the parent company itself, not only will not give Viking Records enough support, but will seize the resources that originally belonged to Viking Records. As a result, Viking records have not only not grown in recent years, but have declined. ”

After listening to Barry Weiss, Eric asked, "What pop singers are there under Viking Records right now?"

"If you talk about the pillars, it's probably only the Rolling Stones, and the other singers are not too good," Barry Weiss shook his head, "However, the Rolling Stones have been one of the most popular bands in the world since their formation in 1962, but they have long passed the peak of their popularity and creativity. Moreover, the band only signed with Viking after the acquisition in 1992. Since their inception, the Rolling Stones have released 40 records, but the Vikings only have the rights to the five records they signed after, and the rest or the most classic ones are all in the hands of other record groups. ”

Eric was a little excited to hear the name of the Rolling Stones, but when he heard Barry Weiss's words, he was immediately disappointed.

The Rolling Stones' place in the history of world music is self-evident, and if Viking Records owns a large number of Rolling Stones' record rights and wins this record label, Yahoo Music Store will add a large amount of classic music content.

However, Eric was still happy that Barry Weiss didn't hide the Rolling Stones' situation from him in order to facilitate the deal, but for that, he had basically agreed to the deal. With the development of the Firefly Group to its current scale, there are more and more businesses that Eric cannot take care of, so in Eric's mind, the professional ethics of department managers are even more important than their own abilities.

Barry Weiss couldn't guess Eric's thoughts, noticing the disappointment on his face, he became nervous, and quickly added: "Eric, I think the biggest help of Viking Records is the music distribution network it has. In addition to its headquarters in the UK, Viking Records has branches in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and other countries in Europe. In addition, it also has branches in North America and Japan. Winning Viking Records, combined with the advantages of Firefly Group's media resources, it is not impossible for Firefly Records to catch up with other major record giants in the future. ”

Eric felt Barry Weiss's ambitious tone, looked at Katzenberg, nodded to each other, and then turned to Barry Weiss and said, "Barry, how much do you think it will cost to buy Vikings?"

Realizing that Eric had agreed to the acquisition, Barry Weiss suppressed the excitement in his heart and said: "$1 billion, Eric, although Viking Records is a dispensable burden for the current Momoyo, and it has been declining in recent years, but its foundation is still there, and Momoyo can't not understand our intention to buy Viking Records." So, although we will shout lower when we make an offer, if we want to impress EMAI to sell Viking Records, I think the final transaction price will need to be at least $1 billion, or maybe higher. ”

Eric smiled helplessly, knowing that Barry Weiss was telling the truth.

Compared with other media giants, the Firefly Group, which has developed at an unparalleled speed in recent years, is simply a local tyrant in the eyes of everyone.

Eric was thinking about this, and Katzenberg interjected: "Eric, after the debt maturity this year is paid off, the amount of Firefly's debt will be reduced to $7.5 billion, and I think that for the acquisition of Viking Records, we can completely raise funds by issuing debt." ”

The $7.5 billion debt is not high even for other major media groups. Compared with the valuation of Firefly Group of $100 billion, the debt ratio of 7.5% is even lower than that of its peers. The interest on the bonds can be used to offset the taxes, and the acquisition was carried out by issuing bonds, and Firefly was almost equivalent to using an interest-free loan for the acquisition.

Eric's concept of the company's debt management has long been less conservative than it was at the beginning, and it is better to be able to spend other people's money to do his own thing without paying too much cost.

Nodding, Eric said, "You guys should get in touch with Momoyo as soon as possible, it would be nice if we could negotiate this deal before the Spice Girls release their first record in April." ”

Although the Firefly Group will need enough time to complete the handover of Viking Records even if the acquisition negotiations are completed before April, as long as the agreement is reached, the first record of the Spice Girls can be licensed to Viking Records for distribution, which is more than half the effort of Firefly Records to do it themselves.

Eric spent a few days reading through the script and budget for "Guillotine Valley" in detail.

The plan is for the film to set up dozens of locations in the UK, including an entire Gothic sleepy hollow town. In addition, a large number of CG special effects are also needed in the film, which is actually the reason why the budget cost of the film reached 100 million US dollars.

Since the money can be used for film shooting, rather than blindly inviting sky-high stars, Eric agreed, and did not even plan to cut the budget.

The project of "Guillotine Valley" turned around a few times in the hands of all Hollywood studios, and was suddenly taken over by the Firefly Group, and it was naturally impossible for other film companies to remain indifferent. Paramount Pictures, which has been negotiating with Tim Burton and others for a long time, and is about to win this project, immediately raised its chips and tried to save the project after hearing the news.

However, in order to help Tim Burton's film project find an owner, Johnny Depp has signed a two-film contract with Firefly in advance.

If Tim Burton repents, "Guillotine Valley" will have to change the actor. The good brother had just stabbed himself in the ribs, and it was obviously impossible for Tim Burton to stab the brother with his backhand, so Paramount's solicitation naturally did not lead to anything.

After the establishment of "Guillotine Valley", because it required a lot of preliminary preparation, it would not start filming until at least the second half of the year, and during this time, Johnny Depp could just complete the filming of "Midnight Bell". The production cycle of "Midnight Bell" is not long, and the schedule has been determined in July.

On the record company's side, EMI also quickly responded to the invitation of the Firefly Group to acquire Viking Records, with the Firefly Group offering $700 million, but EMI offered a sky-high price of $1.5 billion.

If you want to win Viking records, it is almost inevitable that you will be stabbed.

Eric talked to Katzenberg and Barry Weiss a few times, determined that the Firefly Group had a price cap of $1.2 billion, and then handed over the negotiations to Barry Weiss.

After being tossed around for so many years, the actual value of Viking records is actually seven or eight billion US dollars. The $1.2 billion premium is also the upper limit that Eric can afford.

Beyond this price, Eric would rather buy small record companies in various European countries for integration, although it will take a little longer, but the cost will certainly not be even 700 million dollars. The premium offered by Fireflies is actually more development time.

In the process of busy work, January 18, the important film awards of the awards season, the date of the American Film and Television Golden Globe Awards is also coming unconsciously.

Several film companies under the Firefly Group have no major awards this year, and the "Elizabeth" cooperated by New Line with the British Working-title Film Company was just completed at the end of last year and is still in post-production. The new line intends to release "Elizabeth" as an award-winning film by the end of this year.

However, the new line has a "Boogie Night" directed by Paul Anderson, which has been widely praised by the media and filmmakers.

It's just that the film only got two nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globe Awards, and the new line also carried out Oscar nomination PR for the film, and it is expected to get a few more nominations, but if you want to win the award, it is basically impossible.

Because this year, two popular award-winning films have emerged under Miramax, "The English Patient" and "Soul Catcher".

Miramax originally determined that the focus of the award operation was "The English Patient", although the Weinstein brothers were also optimistic about "Soul Catcher", but the film adopted a distribution model that was biased towards commercial films. But the results were quite unexpected.

The release date of "Soul Catcher" was November 7 last year, and after two weeks of small-scale screenings and accumulating enough word-of-mouth, the film's screening scale quickly increased to more than 1,700.

Subsequently, under the influence of commercial films such as "Wonderful Night at the Museum" and "Monsters Films" at the end of the year, although the single-week box office of "Soul Catcher" has remained around 10 million US dollars, and the highest single-week box office is only more than 14 million US dollars, but with the excellent reputation of continuous fermentation, as of the Golden Globe Awards, the cumulative box office of this film with a production cost of only 10 million US dollars has reached more than 81 million US dollars, and the single-week box office still remains at about 7 million US dollars.

This box office result far exceeded Miramax's expectations for "Mindcatcher", and the Weinstein brothers are naturally not people who don't know how to be flexible.

If a literary film is released for ten weeks, the box office in a single week can still be more than 7 million, if it can win the Oscar, the final box office of this low-cost literary film will definitely exceed more than 100 million US dollars, and the later videotape income will be more lucrative.

In contrast, "The English Patient" completely adopts the standard award-winning film distribution model, which began to be released in early December, and the number of theaters in which the film is released has always remained at about 500.

Although it also received praise from the media and became a big hit in the awards season, at the box office, "The British Patient" was too much worse than "Soul Catcher", and the cumulative box office was only more than $25 million in six weeks after its release.

According to this trend, even if it can win multiple Oscars, it is difficult for the North American box office of "The British Patient" to break 100 million, and it is good to reach $80 million, but the production cost of this film is $27 million, almost three times that of "Soul Catcher".

Although it has won a lot of applause, whether it is "Soul Catcher" or "The English Patient", the commercial achievements are still far from being compared with the few commercial films scheduled at the end of the year.

A week before the Golden Globe Awards, Firefly Group's four-week release of "Jurassic Park 3" has reached $173 million at the box office, and the overseas box office has also exceeded $150 million, with a cumulative global box office of 323 million. Even "Rush Hour 2", which did not respond well to the overseas box office market, successfully exceeded 200 million at the box office in the fifth week of its release in North America, reaching $207 million.

Further back, the two films in the Firefly and MGM Thanksgiving schedules, "Monsters, Inc.", have reached a cumulative box office of $251 million. The North American box office of "Wonderful Night at the Museum 2" also reached 175 million, although it fell short of expectations, but the overseas box office easily exceeded 200 million, and the global box office is expected to be close to 500 million US dollars. These are far from being comparable to literary films. (To be continued.) )