Chapter 583

Before Christmas, December 20, the two-week holiday in North America, Eric left East Hampton only once, mainly for the New York premiere of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

As Quentin's work that established himself as a talented director in Hollywood, "Pulp Fiction" has already caused one-sided praise in the North American film critics during the preview stage, and it has caused a strong response among fans after its release.

Although Firefly Pictures only gave the film 1,300 premiere screens because of the subject matter restrictions of "Pulp Fiction", the box office of "Pulp Fiction" in the first week was close to $17 million, easily breaking the single-theater $10,000 blockbuster movie standard with a single-theater box office of more than $13,000, and even surpassing the comedy movies promoted by other film companies in the Christmas file. After the nominations for the Golden Globe Awards were announced on December 23, "Pulp Fiction", which received six Golden Globe nominations, rose at the box office in the second week, reaching $21 million. whereas

Because of the "Pulp Fiction" series of starring Bruce Willis, John Travolta and other Hollywood superstars in the face of Quentin's "Reservoir Dogs" to create fame and self-depreciation of their salaries, the cost of "Pulp Fiction" is less than $10 million, although Firefly has invested more than $10 million in publicity and distribution expenses in order to make "Pulp Fiction" a popular film in the awards season, but the two-week box office results of "Pulp Fiction" have allowed Firefly to recover all its costs and achieve partial profitability.

Released a week after "Pulp Fiction," "Interview with the Vampire" also did a great job at the box office, with a first-week box office of more than $47 million, proving once again that Tom Cruise's box office appeal is still good.

It's just that after the release of "Interview with the Vampire". Amy Pascal, who had been negotiating with Cruise about the lead actor in "Mission Impossible", regretfully called East Hampton. Indicates that Tom Cruise finally refused to cooperate with Flower Pictures. Personally recruited by Shirley Lansing, the newly appointed CEO of Paramount Pictures, he took Cruise Wagner Productions to his old club Paramount again.

Because of the Hollywood tough-guy movie trend led by Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 80s, Hollywood may have lacked other types of stars in the 90s, but there was no shortage of action stars. Eric could have thought of a list of candidates who were now on par with Cruise and would be a perfect fit for the actor in "Mission Impossible", Kevin Costner, Liam Neeson, Nicolas Cage, Keanu Reeves, and so on. Therefore, Eric didn't feel much about Cruise's refusal, but just casually told Amy Pascal to contact other stars, and Eric was only curious. It is with the strength of Lei Shidong's irascible old man that the two sides will be able to cooperate for a few years this time. Moreover, without "Mission Impossible", the ace series that Paramount can't stop, once Cruise and Paramount fall out again, Eric is also very curious about whether Cruise can make a comeback.

Of course, this curiosity was quickly lost to Eric, and while he enjoyed the excitement of Christmas with the women and children, all kinds of news continued to come from Los Angeles.

Warren Buffett stayed in Los Angeles until December 27, during which time he negotiated with Katzenberg several times, but in the end the two sides did not reach any agreement. Although Buffett made some concessions, the conditions offered were still difficult to accept. On December 27th, Eric also deliberately talked with Buffett in Los Angeles on the phone in East Hampton for two hours, and Buffett still insisted on replacing 70% of ABC's equity with Firefly Pictures, but the proportion of equity that Firefly needs to pay has been reduced to 40%, according to the market value of ABC TV network at this time, which is equivalent to exchanging $7 billion for 40% of Firefly Pictures Of course, Eric could not accept it, and the two sides had no intention of talking further, Buffett returned to Omaha on the same day, and Firefly Pictures began to officially prepare for a public acquisition.

Just after the New Year's holiday, Chris, who had been preparing for several months, officially asked to join the board of directors of LTD with the shares in his hand, and publicly launched an acquisition of LTD with Brighton Decoration Company as the main body.

Although Leslie Wexnay, the CEO of LTD, was aware of the abnormality of LTD's stock price years ago, Chris was very careful throughout the whole process, and it was not until the news was made public that Leslie Wexnay realized the seriousness of the matter, at this time Chris already owned 12% of the shares of LTD company, and unknowingly became the second largest shareholder in addition to Leslie Wexnay, although 35% away from Leslie Wexney 's shareholding is still far off, but Leslie Wexnay is well aware that once Chris is successfully elected to the board of directors of LTD and other shareholders are recruited to join him, then Leslie Wexnay is likely to lose control of LTD.

As a result, Leslie Wexner immediately launched the poison pill plan, publicly claiming that if Chris's stake exceeded 15%, LTD would issue additional shares to major shareholders at a price much lower than the public share price to dilute Chris's shares.

Chris, who had been prepared, immediately countered, and the lawyer representative of Brighton Outfit said at the press conference that Leslie Wexner's actions had undermined the freedom of the majority of shareholders to make a say on whether to sell the company's shares, and was a 'brutal plunder' of other LTD shareholders who could not accept the low price offering, so he asked federal regulators to stop the actions of LTD's management.

While denouncing the hostile takeover of Brighton Outfits and Firefly Investment, Leslie Wexnay decided to hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting at LTD's headquarters on January 20 to allow shareholder representatives to freely vote on whether to launch the poison pill program, in order to show the public the legitimacy of his actions.

However, Brighton Decoration Company and Firefly Investment published a detailed development plan of the company after the completion of the acquisition of LTD in the famous financial magazine "Business Week", saying that their acquisition was a normal commercial merger and acquisition, not a hostile takeover.

After Chris filed a series of documents prepared in advance with the SEC. Before the LTD Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. The SEC announced LTD's 'poison pill plan' even though it was voted on by an extraordinary general meeting. It will also be invalidated.

Subsequently, Chris made the first offer of $19 per share to LTD as co-representative of Brighton Decorations and Firefly Investments, and announced a series of financing plans for the acquisition by colleagues who released Brighton Decorations' annual financial results last year.

Leslie Wexnay, on the other hand, simply quoted a high price of $35 per share, more than twice the price of LTD's shares, and Leslie Wexnay was immediately described as 'out of his mind' by a business magazine.

Time. The two sides of the acquisition and the acquired are back and forth, and there are many good shows.

Although this business is not too big under the wave of mergers and acquisitions in the last two years, since the jail of Michael Milken, the king of junk bonds, and the low-key life of corporate sniper Ron Perelman, this is the first large-scale leveraged buyout case on Wall Street in recent times, because it is not clear how much leverage Firefly Investments and Brighton Outfit have in private, and some have even compared it to another Revlon takeover. A few years ago, Ron Perelman swallowed Revlon, which has a market value of $1 billion, for $150 million.

In keeping with Firefly Pictures' plans, Eric chose to attend the Golden Globes this year, so he returned to Los Angeles in mid-January, though. Eric, like many people, keeps an eye on Chris and Leslie Wexnay's back-and-forth. Despite being a layman, Eric is well aware that Leslie Wexnay has fallen behind.

It's just that Firefly Pictures is also making intense preparations for the public acquisition of ABC, and Eric doesn't have much to think about these things.

After the New Year's holiday, Firefly Pictures released the company's 1994 film list for the first time, in addition to the main films such as "Saving Private Ryan", "The Lion King" and "True Lies", it also included the reboot of some classic horror films under the New Line label. At the same time, Firefly Pictures' TV drama department officially announced that after the fifth season of "Friends", Firefly Pictures will terminate its contract with Fox TV Network, and after continuing to produce "Friends", Firefly TV series department will develop several other TV series and reality shows to "expand its own TV network business".

Although the window paper was not publicly pierced, anyone who paid a little attention to the news throughout North America at this time knew that it was only a matter of time before Firefly Pictures launched a public takeover of ABC Network.

After Firefly Pictures released the 1994 film list, in early February, as soon as the latest issue of "Variety" magazine was published, it was immediately announced that it was out of stock, and the magazine had to urgently print 100,000 copies of the magazine for emergency purposes.

And the reason why this film magazine, which is only of interest to Hollywood professionals, suddenly went out of stock was because Firefly Pictures publicly released the 1993 annual financial report of Firefly Pictures in "Variety" magazine for the first time.

Throughout 1993, Firefly Pictures released a total of 28 films, an average of more than two per month. Firefly Pictures because of this year's "Jurassic Park" in North America finally achieved an astonishing box office of 447 million US dollars, as well as "Heaven and Earth Collision", "Bug Crisis" and the box office success of "Detective Plane 2", "Pulp Fiction", "Night Interview with Vampire" and other films that were still released at the end of the year, once again won 29% of the box office share, and the annual North American box office is expected to reach $1.74 billion, and the entire North American 1993 year because of the blockbuster "Jurassic Park" Event Films' excitement, the box office exceeded $6 billion for the first time.

Because of "Jurassic Park" and other films caused by the success of the strong locomotive effect, Firefly Pictures' net profit in 1993 hit a new high, reaching $1.19 billion, an increase of $200 million over last year, and compared with last year's Firefly net profit was only $30 million more than Time Warner's slight advantage, last year because of the huge impact caused by the death of Steve Ross, who had been in charge of Warner for decades, Time Warner Group's net profit did not rise but fell, only $870 million, and Firefly Pictures surpassed Time Warner by $320 million in terms of profits.

The total profit of the five companies after Time Warner, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Columbia and MGM is less than $2 billion, because under the toss of Peter Cooper, although at the end of the year with Firefly "Broken Arrow" The box office is good, but other Colombian films are rarely profitable, Sony Columbia is still losing money overall, MGM Pictures, although it has regained some vitality under the leadership of John Cali and others, is still not as good as some thriving second- and third-tier film companies, and the total number of films produced and distributed by MGM in 1993 is less than a fraction of that of Firefly Pictures.

While the entire capital market was studying Firefly Pictures' 1993 annual financial report, Firefly Pictures also formally submitted an acquisition application to the board of directors of ABC Television Network in early February, and the response of ABC was much milder than the fierce confrontation caused by Chris's acquisition of LTD.

In what appears to be a response to Firefly Pictures' release of its 1993 financial report, ABC Television Network also disclosed the network's 1993 profits in advance.

Although it was not as big as Firefly Pictures' huge profit of $1.19 billion, ABC TV Network also achieved a net profit of $520 million in 1993, ranking first among the four major television networks in North America, accounting for 23% of the market share. You know, although there are only four national public television networks in North America, since the advent of pay cable television in the 80s, a large number of paid cable television programs have joined the prime-time viewing competition, and the market share of several major television networks has been declining, and ABC TV network can achieve a market share of 23%, which has surpassed NBC, CBS and Fox TV networks by a lot.

After Firefly Pictures publicly announced the takeover offer, ABC Television Network also quickly responded, and Tom Murphy, the board of directors and CEO of ABC Television Network, personally called Eric, saying that if Eric intends to acquire ABC Television Network in a cash-and-stock manner, then Firefly Pictures will first bear 35% of the cash transaction on the basis of ABC Television Network's stock price at this time The capital gains tax, that is, the cash acquisition of Firefly Pictures, must not be less than 1.35 times the share price of ABC TV at this time.

After a period of continuous stock price gains, ABC Network's stock price has reached a new high, reaching a staggering $11.2 billion market capitalization, nearly $2 billion higher than it was in the middle of last year. However, Eric also knew that this was inevitable, so he agreed on the spot, at the moment, the most important thing is, of course, to acquire ABC as soon as possible, if this acquisition becomes a long tug-of-war, then Eric would rather give up ABC transfer target. (To be continued.) )