Easter had just passed, and Eric was too busy to go back to New York to spend Easter with the children, but promised the women that they would be back in East Hampton by April 10th, and the two little ones would soon be four years old. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In a restaurant at Firefly Studios, Eric and Katzenberg have breakfast together on a new Monday, discussing the recent topic of three animated films for the summer season.

"The Lion King 2" is a film that was launched at the same time as Paramount's "Pocahonta" released last year, and although it has been three years, the influence of "The Lion King" is still there. Roger Arrows spent three years crafting the film, and the animation quality must not be much inferior to the first one, and the only thing we could do was to create an obstacle for Paramount in terms of publicity. ”

Katzenberg introduced the recent situation, took a sip of juice, and continued: "I have spoken to Mr. Murdoch on the phone several times, and in the next two months of promotion, all TV platforms such as Firefly's ABC TV network and Disney Channel will not have any trailer advertisements for "The Lion King 2", and the audience will only see the information of "Finding Nemo" and "Ice Age". On the News Corp side, the same goes for platforms like Fox Network and Fox Family Channel. We will also compete for trailer advertising space on NBC and CBS as much as possible. According to the propaganda department, when these deployments are fully implemented, Paramount will only spend half of its usual publicity budget at most. ”

Commercial competition has never been warm, and during the promotion of "Titanic" at the end of last year, Viacom's MTV TV station, which mainly caters to young audiences, once refused to release a trailer for "Titanic" on the grounds of tight advertising space. As the way of full distribution becomes more common, the importance of film publicity to the box office is becoming more and more obvious, as can be seen from the increasing proportion of the film publicity budget in the total investment cost.

This time, whether it is a counterattack against Viacom's behavior a few months ago, or out of competition needs, it is very necessary to completely ban "The Lion King 2" in the Firefly system.

Viacom's most high-quality TV asset at this time was only MTV, and as for Nickelodeon, which is positioned in line with Disney Channel, the number of subscribers is not at all an order of magnitude higher than that of Disney Channel. Since the Internet has only emerged in recent years, the current mainstream methods of film promotion are still TV trailers, paper media advertisements and posters in a large number of public advertising spaces, among which the role of TV trailers is undoubtedly the most important, especially for animated films, after all, a large proportion of the audience of animated films is not read newspapers or magazines.

The joint blockade of ABC and FOX will mean that "The Lion King 2" will lose at least half of the TV advertising platforms in North America, Viacom's own TV resources are quite limited, and there is also competition from Fireflies and Fox to obtain advertising space on external platforms such as CBS and NBC.

Eric had finished his breakfast in front of him, drank a glass of hot milk slowly, listened to Katzenberg, and asked, "Have you considered that Viacom might provoke the ban of "The Lion King 2" in the media?"

"Of course, the way to deal with it is simple, and we try to ignore it as much as possible unless necessary. This also prevents Paramount from using the topic for hype. This matter was discussed at last week's meeting, and if Viacom made similar remarks in the media, no part of Firefly would have responded publicly. And there's nothing wrong with that, and if anyone questions it, we can show enough evidence that all of our TV stations have sold out," Katzenberg said, smiling a little wilted Totoro, and making a vivid analogy: "If there is no opponent to take the call, a person who punches the air will only make people feel funny." ”

Eric also laughed and said, "I guess after this incident, Lei Shidong will definitely make up his mind to attack CBS or NBC again." ”

"GE won't sell NBC at all in recent years, and as for CBS, based on its current market value, Viacom could now spend more than $30 billion to buy. With public television networks constantly being eroded by cable television, I don't think it's worth it even if the price is cut by half for $30 billion. When we bought Met/ABC, if it weren't for the stakes in ESPN and AE TV Network, it would have been a bad deal now. ”

Eric said: "But Lei Shidong definitely doesn't think so, his concept is still stuck in the heyday of public television twenty years ago. ”

In my memory, Viacom spent $46 billion to annex the CBS network, but after the deal was completed, CBS began to fall into a long period of losses due to the impact of the cable industry. Many years later, in order to avoid being dragged down by the CBS network, Viacom had to spin off CBS from its profitable cable businesses, such as MTV.

Lei Shidong is a very enterprising person, there is no doubt about that. However, perhaps affected by the limitations of the times, his vision has always been a little worse, although in the tide of integration of media groups, Viacom has developed more and more hugely, but it turned out that whether it is the acquisition of the Blockbuster video cassette chain, or the acquisition of CBS TV network, it is an extremely failed business, Viacom has gradually fallen from a first-tier media giant to a second-tier media group after the new century.

The two then talked about the distribution of several other films in the summer file, and at the end, Katzenberg hesitated, but said, "Eric, Barry Weiss talked to me about the recent digital music distribution rights, and he was very uneasy. I also think that your digital distribution strategy for Firefly Records is a little too aggressive. ”

Barry Weiss was a high-ranking official recruited by Firefly from JIVE Music, a subsidiary of Sony Records, and is currently the president of Firefly Records.

In the past two years, Barry Weiss's own backstreet boy group has also quickly become a first-line pop singer, and last year created the first album to surpass 20 million global sales.

In addition to the backstreet boys, the other singers under Firefly Records rely on the rich media resources of the Firefly Group, and their development is also quite stable. Former MMC members such as Christina, Britney, and Justin Timberlake, after several years of training, have released singles to test the waters last year, and have received good market feedback, and Firefly Records has launched plans to tailor albums for them.

Eric is therefore very pleased with the success of Barry Weiss's work in the last two years.

At this time, hearing Katzenberg's relay, Eric was not surprised, but said, "Jeffrey, you should have seen the digital distribution plan I gave Firefly Records, right?"

Katzenberg nodded, "It feels a lot like the phased release of the movie." A three-month physical album release cycle, followed by a three-month release on the Yahoo Music Store for digital album release. The three-month window is a bit shorter, but it's acceptable. But then, six months after the album's release, it will be split into singles for separate sales, which Barry says is the biggest blow to record sales. ”

For a lot of albums, unless you're a die-hard music fan, most people tend to like only one or two of the best songs in it.

In fact, this is also a deliberate attempt by record companies to save resources and maximize profits, and it is certainly much easier to produce a mediocre song than to create a classic music, and it can also cost less money and energy. If the records were to be split, it would directly lead to a large number of mediocre songs that would go unattended, which would certainly threaten the survival of the record company for many years.

"Jeffrey, let's not mention the pros and cons of this solution for now," Eric said, pulling out a Fireflyer from his pocket that he has been carrying a lot lately, and said, "You must already know this player very well, so let's make a hypothesis, if this player was developed entirely by your own company, and you don't have any interests with the record industry, then what would you do to promote this machine as much as possible?"

In recent days, Katzenberg has also realized that the Fireflyer has the potential to replace the traditional portable music player market.

In the current portable music player market, Sony's Walkman still occupies the mainstream, with annual sales of about 15 million units, and the sales figures of other CD players, MD Walkmans and other devices are about this order of magnitude. In other words, the market capacity of portable music players is around 30 million units per year. If it can fully dominate this market, the net profit of the Fireflyer, which is priced at $299, is about $45, based on the net profit margin of about 15% for electronic devices. The annual sales of 30 million units will bring a net profit of 1.35 billion US dollars, which is enough to squeeze into the top 100 of the global corporate profit list.

Katzenberg is also not a person with a particularly strong sense of morality, and in the case of empathy, considering the terrifying business opportunities contained in this player, he will naturally choose the most beneficial promotion and sales method for himself at all costs, and even secretly deliberately connived at the spread of pirated music on the Internet, as for the life and death of the record company, what does it have to do with him.

According to this line of thinking, if he is now in charge of Firefly Electronics, then he will not hesitate to completely abandon the interests of Firefly Records, although Firefly Records has developed well in recent years, it provides less than $100 million in profits for the group every year, even if it grows to the scale of the five major record companies, it is still not enough to compare the profits that Fireflyer may create. After all, the output value of the music industry is far from being comparable to that of movies, and none of the world's top five record companies can make an annual profit of more than 1 billion.

After working together for so long, Eric knows Katzenberg's personality well, and after seeing his brief thinking expression, he just grinned and didn't speak, Eric could roughly guess what he was thinking, and said: "There has never been a shortage of smart people in this world, and the MP3 audio format was initially launched five years ago, and during these five years, I can safely guess that traditional music equipment manufacturers must have had the idea of a similar Fireflyer player." However, in order to protect their own existing player products and the huge vested interests of peripheral industries such as CDs and tapes, they will instinctively block such projects. But that's not the worst of all, as I just assumed, if a similar player product is produced by an electronics manufacturer that has nothing to do with the record industry, they will definitely ignore the interests of the record company as much as possible in order to make more profits, let alone go to great lengths to bring the record company in, as I am doing now. They just need a high-sounding excuse, like, that our players can only copy music from genuine CDs, and then they can make a big deal about it, and you think they care where the hell is getting the music from?"

"What about you," Katzenberg asked suddenly, "Eric, do you care?"

Eric smiled, leaned back in his chair relaxedly, and said honestly, "No, I don't care. ”

Katzenberg said, "Then why are you doing this?"

Eric thought for a moment and said, "Because I want to take the initiative, or, to put it more bluntly, I just want to be the one who makes the rules." Instead of resting on your laurels, waiting for someone else to make the rules, or even be eliminated. So, Jeffrey, if you pay more attention to Yahoo Network, you should find that Yahoo is already further developing the MP4 video format on top of the MP3 audio format. The IT industry continues to develop according to Moore's Law, and in less than ten years, Hollywood will face a similar situation to the record industry at this time. At that time, the easiest way to survive was to be a rule-maker, rather than vainly blaming others or blindly resisting emerging technologies. ”

Katzenberg has always admired his young boss's vision for the film and television industry and investment, but he has always felt that Eric's personality lacks the control that a superior person should have, and even is too gentle and unaggressive in many things.

But now, in the small restaurant of Firefly Studios, Katzenberg suddenly discovers that Eric has a pattern many times wider than him, and he not only has the present, but even intends to control the future.

Katzenberg even realizes that perhaps he is just a pawn in Eric's ambitious layout for the future, and that the pawn cannot see the entire layout of the board after all, and can only observe everything within the area of its own established route, and self-righteously point fingers at a certain move of the player.

Would you like to be a pawn?

Katzenberg couldn't help but ask himself, but his heart quickly gave an answer, why not?

How many people in this world dare to say that they are not chess pieces? But there are too many people, perhaps in their lifetime, who do not even have the opportunity to meet chess players. Now, not only does he have the opportunity, but he can even consciously create the future with a chess player, which is much luckier than those who have spent their lives without knowing what to do.

"Eric, I have a good relationship with Geffen, maybe I can make a phone call and invite him to the Fireflyer launch event in San Francisco on April 2nd, what do you think?"

David Geffen's record label was once a major subsidiary of Warner Music Group, and its music rights were almost equal to those of Firefly Records. Katzenberg and David Geffen have always been very good friends, and when David Geffen first left Time Warner, Katzenberg also suggested that Eric buy David Geffen's record label, but Eric did not agree.

Eric didn't know how Katzenberg's state of mind had changed in such a short period of time, but he was willing to take the initiative to match, and Eric naturally wouldn't refuse.

"Of course, if he wants to, well, when the time comes, we can get together. ”

After breakfast had been eaten and a few more casual conversations, Katzenberg was about to rush to the Burbank headquarters for the weekly meeting, and the two parted.

Eric has a very busy work schedule today.

In the morning, I'll check out the samples of Jurassic Park 3 that have just been roughly cut, and discuss the next post-production special effects work with director Joe Johnston and the digital post-production team. At noon, I had dinner with Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay to discuss the "The Day After Tomorrow" project in the disaster film series. After all, this project can't be dragged on like this, Eric doesn't plan to direct it personally, and the company can't wait forever, it just so happens that after Michael Bay finished producing "Jedi Men 2", he didn't want to shoot "Jedi Men 3" anymore, but wanted to try the special effects theme, and Jerry Bruckheimer proposed to hand over "The Day After Tomorrow" to Michael Bay's direction. In the afternoon, he had to rush to the Fox set to participate in the final round of auditions for the heroine of "The End ******of the World", and Eric was no longer interested in appreciating or even hunting for beautiful women through auditions, and he didn't need such a complicated routine to see what woman he wanted now. But since he took the initiative to take over this errand, he had to symbolically show it.

Because the box office performance of "Jurassic Park 2" is almost on par with the first part, although the option contract was signed in advance, Joe Johnston still proposed to get more pay in "Jurassic Park 3", and it took three months for the two sides to reach an agreement in negotiations, and the script writing and team formation of the third part were not as smooth as the second part, so the planned two-year production cycle was extended to two and a half years, and "Jurassic Park 3" could only miss the summer file and was scheduled for Christmas at the end of the year.

"Jurassic Park 3" has just finished on the eve of the Oscars, Jerry Bruckheimer is still the producer, originally made an appointment at noon, but in order to understand some special effects production process, Michael Bay came to Firefly Studios with Jerry Bruckheimer in the morning to listen to the post-production plan discussion of "Jurassic Park 3". Everyone's success will not be a fluke, Eric is also very satisfied with Michael Bay's attitude, after finishing the morning's work, he has already let go of his hesitation, and decided to hand over "The Day After Tomorrow" to him to produce, and at noon everyone in the restaurant, very simply and directly discussed the production plan of "The Day After Tomorrow". (To be continued.) )