Rainbow Media's assets include the wholly-owned Bravo channel, the 70% New York Sports Channel, the 50% Orlando WRBW channel, the 45% FUSE music channel and the 30% Playboy channel, with a total market value of about $1.8 billion through asset evaluation. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 Info Cable has insisted on selling up to a 30% stake in MGM for $600 million, while we will also acquire the rights to operate the Bravo channel. ”

In his office, Amy Pascal, who had traveled from Century City, reported to Eric on the final outcome of the negotiations with Basic Cable.

Eric looked at the preliminary trading plan in his hand, and always had a feeling as if something strange had mixed in, and asked Amy with a smile, "Playboy Channel?"

Amy resisted the urge to give Eric a roll of the eyes, explaining, "This is a pay-per-view cable station created by Basic Cable in 1986 in partnership with Playboy Group, which mainly provides adult programs such as erotic movies. ”

"Heh, okay," Eric nodded, not continuing the topic that was easy to embarrass the lady, "That's it, but forget about the other TV stations, after the deal is completed, you can convince the management of Rainbow Media to sell the equity of Playboy Channel as soon as possible." ”

Amy hesitated and said, "Eric, the profitability of Playboy Channel is still very good. Moreover, Rainbow Media is only holding shares, and the management rights of the TV station have always been in Playboy Group, which will not have any impact on us. ”

"You may be mistaken, Amy, I didn't let you sell your stake in Playboy for the sake of the company's reputation or anything. Now that there are more and more free ******** on the Internet, the physical sex industry will definitely decline in the next few years. ”

"Well, I'll remember this," Amy nodded and continued: "There is also the issue of bonds, we have also reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley, they will assist MGM in issuing $500 million in corporate bonds next month, and many funds, including State Street Globals, have expressed their intention to subscribe, and our financing scale is not large, so it will definitely go well." ”

That being said, Amy's eyes as she looked at Eric were a little more complicated.

MGM's initial planned bond financing was $1 billion. But because Eric took the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the global success of Casino Royale brought MGM a lot of cash flow, and the company only needed to issue half of the bonds to fund the expansion of the television business.

While most of the media applauded MGM's decision to abandon the high-stakes Lord of the Rings trilogy, Amy felt that losing the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as the film and television rights to Thor King's other two films, The Hobbit Adventures and The Pokemon, would be a very heavy loss for MGM.

Amy was even sure that Eric was doing this as a punishment for MGM's vacillating attitude in the Pierce Brosnan affair, from shareholders to management.

It's just that it wasn't until the first part of the "Lord of the Rings" series was released that she understood how severe this punishment really was.

Eric felt some changes in Amy's eyes, but he didn't bother to think about it, closed the transaction plan in his hand, and continued: "Since you won two TV stations at once, have you considered a detailed business strategy?"

"Yes," Amy replied, "There is some overlap between the original market positioning of e! Entertainment and Bravo, and my plan is to clearly distinguish the content positioning of the two stations first. e!Entertainment focuses on entertainment and fashion, and the audience is determined to be teenagers and men around the age of eighteen, so the content needs to be more avant-garde, and in this regard, I think the Beverly Girls reality show idea is very good. In addition, the management has already started to prepare an e-entertainment news station to broadcast gossip news in the entertainment and fashion circles, and we intend to continue this plan. As for Bravo, we intend to focus on the housewife audience, which has already laid a good foundation, and what we need to do is to continue to develop suitable TV programs and strengthen Bravo's market position among this audience. ”

"Housewives," Eric repeated a phrase from Amy's words, and the name of a TV show, "Desperate Housewives," popped up in his mind almost instantly.

For a TV station geared towards housewives, "Desperate Housewives" was simply tailor-made.

The reason why ABC TV is becoming more and more known as a women's station is mainly due to the impact of the high-rated drama series "Desperate Housewives". Now, the Firefly Group already has a lifetime TV station for urban women, and now there is a bravo TV station for housewives, so Eric will definitely not let ABC also develop in the direction of women's channels.

In this case, it is only fitting to put the big killer of "Desperate Housewives" in Bravo.

Amy didn't hear the words coming out of Eric's mouth and asked suspiciously, "Eric, what did you just say?"

Eric came back to his senses and shook his head, not going to say this idea for the time being: "I just came up with some ideas, and I am not mature yet, I will tell you in a few days, you should focus on taking over and integrating the two TV stations first." ”

used to be "Desperate Housewives", he only watched a few episodes intermittently, and it is unrealistic to copy the whole story, all he can do is to rewrite the script according to the general idea of this TV series, but in this case, it is difficult to predict whether it will be popular with the audience in the end. However, this is actually good, after all, it would be a pity to put the original "Desperate Housewives" on a cable station like Bravo, which is far less large than the ABC television network. Now it's equivalent to a remake of a TV series, and it doesn't matter if it succeeds or fails.

Amy nodded, the matter was almost over, she was about to leave, she remembered one more thing, and said, "By the way, Eric, about "Beverly Girls", Ms. Jenner has already picked four girls, and the script is almost finished, do you want to take the time to take a look?"

Eric turned on his computer monitor and looked at his schedule, nodded and said, "I'll have someone call her if I'm free in the last few days." ”

Seeing off Amy, Eric asked Peter Jackson to have dinner at the Titanic's restaurant at noon.

Peter Jackson has been preparing for the "Lord of the Rings" series for so many years, and he is finally about to enter the official production stage, but he didn't expect to suddenly encounter a change in the producer, and he has been very nervous recently, for fear that the project will be inexplicably yellow.

Eric naturally would not allow this to happen, and for this reason, he deliberately stepped forward to appease the other party in person.

Except for the next "Death is Coming 2", there are no other films to be released in the summer file of Firefly Group, and Eric's energy has begun to turn to other projects under the company.

"Iron Man" is scheduled to start filming early next year, and casting has recently begun. Although the preparation for "Spider-Man" is very slow, the casting process has also begun. Although there are no less than ten movies under the Firefly Group that are in various stages of production at the same time, Eric originally needed to pay attention to only the two pioneering masterpieces of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

However, now that the Lord of the Rings trilogy has been taken over, Eric has to devote a large part of his energy to this project.

The former "Lord of the Rings" trilogy leveraged a huge global box office of $3 billion with a production cost of less than $300 million, and the rate of return was even higher than that of "Titanic", and Eric naturally needs to be cautious.

In order to make the whole project run more smoothly, while transferring the production rights to Firefly, Eric simply leveraged the production team that MGM had initially set up, and continued to cooperate with Peter Jackson in the preparation of the film.

The biggest difficulty in the preparation of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is actually casting.

Due to the grand backdrop of the story, the trilogy also features an unusually large number of characters, which meant that the plan to bring in well-known actors was largely unworkable.

Although very optimistic about the project, Eric has no intention of increasing the budget for it. Therefore, most of the characters in the movie will use second- and third-tier newcomers. Although Hollywood has no shortage of actors, it is not so easy to pick the right person in the vast crowd. In addition to asking for the two roles of Queen Elf and Princess Arwen, and planning to hand them over to Nicole and Diane Krueger, Eric did not interfere too much in the casting, but just set a salary budget limit for Peter Jackson, and then handed over these tedious affairs to the other party with confidence.

The casting of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is good to say, the benefits of having many characters mean that even if the casting of one or two characters in the film fails, it will not affect the quality of the whole movie. On his 16th birthday, Stuart Runkel also agreed to sign a six-part contract with Marvel, leaving only "Iron Man" in the end.

After rejecting Tom Cruise, Marvel Entertainment CEO Avi Arad has a crush on Matthew McConaughey again. The actor's bohemian temperament does echo the image of Iron Man Tony Stark, but after starring in "The Seven Deadly Sins" and "Temporal Contact", Matthew McConaughey has been promoted to Hollywood, and he is not willing to sign a long-term contract with Marvel at all, and Eric still doesn't like the actor inexplicably, so he didn't continue to talk to the other party.

As a result, as a large production with a production cost of more than $100 million, the selection of leading actors, which is usually limited to a small circle, eventually became an audition for all Hollywood actors.

Although Firefly's harsh long-term contract conditions were inevitably ridiculed by some media outlets, and even evolved into a pessimism about the prospects of the entire project, as Eric said during the Brosnan incident, those who want to get this role can still be arranged from Malibu to Burbank.

Firefly Studios.

It's the last day of July, and today happens to be Friday.

Chrissy Jenner drove into Firefly Studios, parked the car in the parking lot, but didn't get out of the car in a hurry, took out the makeup mirror and carefully took care of her makeup before pushing the car door. She got the news last Wednesday that Eric would take the time to read the script for "Beverly Girls", but she didn't expect to get the news for more than a week. However, she didn't dare to complain in her heart.

Recently, due to the box office explosion of "Casino Royale", followed by Brosnan's replacement, Eric's personal influence has further climbed to an unattainable point in Hollywood. For such a big person, Chrissy Jenner, who is instinctively in awe of power, feels that even if she waits for a month, it doesn't seem like a big deal, as long as she can maintain some relationship with the other person, it is enough to make her raise her eyebrows in her own small circle.

During this time, her life was indeed very beautiful, she moved back to Los Angeles with her family for the "Beverly Girls" project, originally thought that some old friends would be estranged because of her absence, but when she learned that she would personally take charge of the reality TV project conceived by Eric Williams, those people all pounced one by one, much more eager than when she was in Los Angeles.

All the way to Eric's office door, politely greeted Eric's secretary outside, who asked her to wait a while, and Chrissy Jenner sat honestly in the outside reception room.

"Don't blame me for not reminding you one last time, Bridget, if you get this role, everyone will probably call you Pepper when they see you again in the future," After a while, Eric's office door opened, and a man and a woman walked out of it, the man was naturally Eric, and the girl was Brigitte Fonda, who had played the heroine in "Ghost Love", Chrissy Jenner remembered that since "Ghost Love" After that, the other party doesn't seem to have any works that can be done in recent years, but, listening to Eric's tone faintly, she seems to be getting some important role again, and it is still an important role that is enough to change the impression of an actor in the audience's mind.

can't help but be a little envious, she once fantasized about becoming an actress, but unfortunately she never had this opportunity.

Brigitte Fonda also noticed Chrissy Jenner sitting in the reception room, nodded at her, said a few more words to Eric, and politely left.

Eric watched the other man leave, then waved his hand at Chrissy Jenner, "I'm sorry, Ms. Jenner, I've kept you waiting, please come with me." ”

"It's okay, I've just arrived," Chrissy Jenner quickly chimed in, picking up her satchel and walking over. (To be continued.) )