Many years later, when I recalled the summer of 1998, a series of blockbusters such as "Breaking Bad 3", "The Matrix 2", "The Day After Tomorrow" and so on may be topics that cannot be avoided, but for most people, the first thought that comes to their minds is almost always the footage of the terrifying resentful spirit crawling out of the TV. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The box office of "Midnight Bell" in its first three days of weekend was not too impressive, with only $26.68 million.

However, as the word-of-mouth of this classic horror film spread rapidly, the box office of the film reached $43.88 million in the first seven days of the film.

On the surface, the figure of $43.88 million does not seem to be comparable to most of the popular films in the summer season. But don't forget, the film also cost only $30 million to make, far less than any of the summer blockbusters.

Moreover, comparing the three days of the first weekend, it is not difficult to find that the box office figure of the first four days of "Midnight Bell" is $17.2 million, equivalent to 39% of the first week box office, far exceeding the average proportion of most films that account for about 30% of the week. Combined with this, coupled with the feedback from a large number of media and fans, New Line Pictures keenly judged that the reputation of "Midnight Bell" was continuing to ferment, so it decisively increased the number of screens released from 2,161 to 2,395.

Then, in the first week of August, "Midnight Bells" fell unexpectedly, by a very modest 9.7%, to another $39.65 million. "The X-Files," which was released in the same week, only outperformed "Midnight Bells" by less than $2 million at the box office in its first week, barely getting the top spot at the box office that week.

Under such circumstances, the new line once again greatly increased the screening scale of "Midnight Bell", bringing the number of screens released in North America to 2,775. At the same time, after half a month of fermentation, the reputation and popularity of "Midnight Bell" have also reached a peak, and there has even been a trend among young people to watch "Midnight Bell" as a challenge, and more passers-by and audiences have also begun to enter the cinema under the influence of the media and the public.

In the third week, "Midnight Bell", which had been suppressed by "The Scorpion King" and "The X-Files" for two consecutive weeks, finally won the top spot in the weekly box office charts, with a single-week box office decline of only 11.2%, and another $35.19 million.

Unknowingly, many people suddenly discovered that the cumulative box office of a medium-budget horror film, which was originally inconspicuous, had reached $118.75 million in three weeks, even exceeding the total North American box office of big-budget movies such as "Lethal Weapon 4", "Patriot", and "Truman's World" at the beginning of the summer, and, judging from the current situation, the box office potential of "Midnight Bell" is far more than that.

Fueled by the Firefly Group, the fan group of "Midnight Bells", which has gradually taken shape, began to pay more attention to the box office of this film. The growing popularity and a new wave of publicity campaigns have once again attracted new audiences.

As a result, in the fourth week, the box office decline of "Midnight Bell" ended up being only a paltry 1.7%, yes, 1.7%, not 17%.

The box office of $34.59 million in a single week also pushed the film's total North American box office to $146.97 million, a box office figure that directly made "Midnight Bell" rush to the sixth place in the North American box office list as of August 1998, following "Breaking Bad 3", "The Day After Tomorrow", "The Matrix 2", "Scorpion King" and "Ace Cheap Spy 2" in the Easter schedule. Moreover, on the top 10 box office lists, all the other films cost at least twice as much as "Midnight Bell".

At this time, all the media that originally predicted that the Firefly Group would have a silent summer file were dumbfounded, and even Eric himself did not expect that "Midnight Bell" would burst out with such a strong box office potential.

According to the current box office trend, "Midnight Bell" is likely to have a box office potential of no less than 100 million US dollars, and the total box office of the film in North America will even exceed that of Firefly's summer blockbuster "The Day After Tomorrow". In the face of such an excellent North American box office, the overseas box office of the film will naturally not be inferior, especially in this book, considering various reasons, just this overseas box office is enough to bring Firefly no less than 100 million US dollars in overseas box office.

With two works in a summer file that are enough to break into the top five of the annual box office list in North America, who would dare to say that this is the trough period of Firefly Group's film business?

At the same time, almost the same week that "Midnight Bell" was released, on the other side of the world, Russia's economic crisis finally broke out.

Unlike the long tug-of-war between Southeast Asian countries, Russia's fragile economy is almost defenseless in the face of attacks by major hedge funds, and the country's foreign exchange reserves of more than $10 billion are not enough to repay even the huge foreign debt, let alone effectively intervene in the currency exchange rate.

As a result, in just two weeks, the Central Bank of Russia, which basically did little effective resistance, announced that it had completely abandoned the protection of the ruble exchange rate.

The ruble, which had just been stable for less than three years, plummeted, depreciating by more than 50% in just one week.

However, the opponent will lie down completely before the fight has started, and the attacker who has gathered enough strength to punch will not have a good result.

Russia's complete laissez-faire depreciation of the ruble has also brought huge losses to international financial speculators.

After all, foreign exchange futures are a zero-sum game, someone takes over, and the two sides of the bet can make both profits and losses. In the early stage, the international financial speculators who bought a large number of rubles and were ready to establish shorts aimed at Russia's foreign exchange reserves, and now Russia is not taking the call, and the rubles in the hands of international financial speculators not only depreciate sharply, but also have to pay high short-term interest costs, which can be described as heavy losses.

In addition, such as Soros's Quantum Fund, which is optimistic about Russia's economic recovery in the early stage and therefore invests heavily in its stock market and bonds, is also trapped in the economic quagmire of Russia.

I have to say that compared with those countries in Southeast Asia that have been shaved twice in a row, although the economy is also collapsing, Russia's fighting national momentum is undoubtedly revealed if you want me to finish playing together.

The rapid collapse of Russia, an emerging economy, accurately confirms the speculation given by Morgan Stanley more than a month ago. Under the further advocacy and guidance of Morgan Stanley, more and more capital has begun to pay more attention to the NASDAQ technology stock market.

In a month, the Nasdaq index was not only unaffected by the Russian economic crisis, but broke through the 2,100-point high firmly, and almost all mainstream technology stocks were in the red.

On Saturday, August 22, Eric departed from Los Angeles early in the morning to fly to New York.

Today is the day when Firefly Investment signed an equity transfer agreement with several other major shareholders of AOL, although Saturday is not a working day, "Gravity" is in a tense filming period, and Eric will only have time on weekends, so New York can only cooperate with his schedule.

In the past month, AOL's stock price has rushed to $49.6 billion without the pressure of Firefly Investment, and the company's market value has rushed to $49.6 billion, and it is just around the corner to break through the $50 billion mark.

Although AOL's stock price has risen nearly 20% in a month, in order to avoid further waves, Eric has not made any further adjustments to the agreed transfer price.

Many times, it is necessary to give up the idea of greed in order to get more. If Eric sits on the ground at this time, the confidence that investors have just built up in AOL will definitely be hit hard again, and Firefly Investment's plan to reduce the first phase of AOL stocks will also be sideways.

Since Eric gave the same price for the other 15% of the shares that Firefly Investments was about to reduce through Morgan Stanley, at this time, Morgan Stanley's underwriting plan had not yet begun, and a large number of investors had already frequently contacted Firefly Investments and Morgan Stanley to try to get more subscription shares.

Although according to the agreement and SEC regulations, there will be a six-month lock-up period for the shares bought at this time, even if AOL's stock price remains unchanged for the next six months, they will be able to make a 20% profit by then.

In the good economic situation of the NASDAQ market, AOL's own performance growth rate is very bright, so most investment institutions have gradually changed their initial cautious attitude, believing that the possibility of losing money in this transaction is very small.

On the plane to New York, Eric sat on the couch with a box office analysis report of "Midnight Bells" in his hand, while Caroline and Mayer sat next to him, reporting on something else.

"Last month, Warner Records, Sony Records, BMG and EMI Records released their second-quarter earnings reports one after another, with a decline of 27%, 33%, 29% and 26% respectively compared with the same period last year. Universal Music, which is still integrating with PolyGram, has a 36% decline in performance, with a loss of $320 million in a single quarter. ”

Mayer gave a general overview of the current situation, looked at Eric's expression, and continued: "According to the statistics of major record companies and media during this period, the revenue plummeting of the five major record companies is mainly caused by a batch of free MP3 music sharing websites that appeared at the end of last year. Among them, there is only a music sharing website called Napster, which has more than 7 million registered users in just over half a year, and the number of free music on this website has reached more than 1.6 million. Napster was also a registered member of the Yahoo Advertising Network in its early days. However, in March, as Napster grew rapidly, Yahoo terminated its cooperation with Napster and another batch of pirated music sites in a timely manner, considering the legal risks involved. But this time, Yahoo was also included in a group of lawsuits filed by the big five record companies, which they sued on the grounds that Yahoo had contributed to the growth and spread of Napster, so the big five record companies claimed $100 million from Yahoo and demanded that Yahoo's search engine actively block websites that distribute pirated music content. ”

Yahoo's IPO is approaching, and the large-scale lawsuit of the five major record companies has piggybacked on Yahoo, apparently trying to demand sufficient cooperation from Yahoo, the No. 1 Internet portal platform, in the fight against online music piracy.

In order to avoid extraneous complications, Yahoo also had to make a compromise and settle out of court with the five major record companies as soon as possible. Just like the conditions that the big five record companies proposed to Napster for $100,000 in compensation for each pirated piece of music, the $100 million compensation against Yahoo must not be thought of, but Yahoo will definitely need to agree to more conditions from the five major record companies in the out-of-court settlement process.

"They're smart this time, and they'll save the enemy," Eric just smiled, after hearing Madonna's reminder in the UK a few months ago, he asked several companies to make preparations in this regard, and now he is not worried that Yahoo will not be able to deal with it, and continues to ask: "What about Firefly Electronics?" ”

Mayer shook his head and said, "The five major record companies have not targeted Firefly Electronics for the time being. However, they should next file a lawsuit asking Firefly to tighten restrictions on audio copying. ”

After Sony Records' lawsuit against several others was dismissed in San Francisco federal court last year, it became clear that the big five labels knew that their continued attempts to ban MP3 players would not succeed, and that this time they had to start elsewhere.

"After this time, record companies should be able to see some of the situation, the trend of digital music is inevitable, and the Yahoo Music Store can just get more legitimate music licenses." Eric said, not wanting to bother too much, looked up at Caroline and Mayer and ordered: "Send an email to remind Yahoo to pay attention to this aspect and build momentum, if anyone still can't see the situation clearly, we will help them see clearly." ”

For several months, the global monthly sales of Fireflyer players have remained above 2 million units, and there is a trend of steady growth, and the trend of portable digital music players replacing traditional music players has become unstoppable. In this case, if the record company continues to maintain its resistance and resistance to digital music players, it will only lead to the emergence of more pirated music resources on the Internet.

Chatting about these things, the private jet has arrived on the East Coast before you know it.

The signing ceremony was scheduled for two p.m. Eastern time, close to one o'clock in the afternoon, and instead of flying to MacArthur Airport in central Long Island, the private jet landed at JFK Airport, which is very close to New York City.

As soon as Eric got off the plane, Chris, John Mark and others greeted him, including several AOL executives including Steve Case, although the two sides almost completely tore their faces some time ago, but at this time, in the face of Eric, AOL did not dare to ignore the etiquette.

After everyone left the airport together, Eric and Chris got into the car sent by the Firefly Group, and when the car was running smoothly, remembering the expression of John Mark who took the initiative to invite him to get into his car just now, he obviously had something to say, and asked Chris next to him: "What's wrong with John's side?" ”

Chris glanced at the BMW sedan that was following nearby, and said, "He should have wanted to explain to you in advance, you were on the plane, and I didn't have time to tell you yet." At the lunchtime, Philip Purcell told me that Morgan Stanley had confirmed that the 15% of AOL shares were subscribed for more than 70%. However, perhaps out of credit or something else, John Mark withheld the news from us. In addition, Philip Purcell should have forcibly intervened in this project, you know, Dean Witt was originally mainly engaged in the stock distribution retail business, and their resources and channels in this area are much stronger than the original Morgan Stanley. ”

Eric was not very interested in the fighting methods of the CEO and president of Morgan Stanley, but only advised: "You should think more about it, if their infighting affects our interests, we need to be cautious in future cooperation." ”

Chris nodded seriously and said, "I understand, by the way, on your side, the box office of "Midnight Bell" is really surprising." ”

The topic became lighter, and Eric also smiled: "This is really an accident, I didn't expect this horror film to be so successful." ”