A $4 billion deal is far from something Elizabeth can decide, and even Murdoch needs to think carefully, and although News Corp. has always been firmly in the hands of the Murdoch family, this is mainly because Murdoch's excellent management ability has continuously generated profits for shareholders, and if Murdoch insists on going his way, shareholders will definitely turn to his opposite.

Murdoch flew from New York to Los Angeles and spent a whole day discussing the matter with Eric, but the results were not satisfactory, News Corp. has been focused on the media industry and has not been involved in other fields for decades, but Hasbro is a toy company that has little to do with the media.

Although Eric's prospect is very tempting, Murdoch is not a time-traveler like Eric who has seen the box office miracle of "Transformers" with his own eyes, and the old man still chose to refuse very cautiously with only a depicted "big pie", and the final result of the negotiation was that Fox would buy the copyright of "Transformers" first, and Firefly could start the acquisition of Hasbro on its own in the next few years, and then the two sides would jointly develop a big movie.

In the evening, Eric and Murdoch walked out of the Sharp Corner Manor House side by side, followed by Katzenberg, Elizabeth, and Kelly. Murdoch waited for a plane to fly back to New York, Elizabeth made a phone call to Eric on the other side of Murdoch's luxury car, and followed in, as a filial daughter, of course, to send her father to the airport in person.

Watching Murdoch's car leave, Katzenberg, who was standing next to him, said to Eric: "If Fox can make Transformers play the kind of profit prospects you described, I guess Murdoch will definitely not hesitate to acquire Hasbro, or even cooperate with us, but unfortunately he doesn't have that confidence." Eric. I don't think there's any need to make that much trouble, we can buy Hasbro separately now, and we have enough money in our Firefly account. ”

"Jeffrey, dismiss this for now, I've already told you what I've been thinking about the last few years," Eric laughed and shook his head. He added: "Moreover, Firefly is now a giant far ahead of other media groups in Hollywood, and we should slow down." ”

Katzenberg didn't seem to have any intention of arguing with Eric, and he knew in his heart that it was time for the Firefly to slow down.

In recent days, Firefly's 1994 annual financial report has been released, and Firefly's film, television, peripherals, amusement parks and other business segments have achieved a total of $18.7 billion in operating income, although unfortunately failed to exceed $20 billion. At the same time, the group achieved a net profit of $1.67 billion for the year, up 62 percent and 40 percent respectively from 1993, thanks to last year's acquisition of ABC television, which added $7.5 billion to Firefly's operating income.

After nearly a year of business consolidation and redundant layoffs, Firefly expects revenue and net profit to exceed $20 billion and $2 billion respectively in 1995. Such strong revenues and profitability have left Hollywood's other rivals far behind. The most obvious contrast is that Time Warner, which has steadily suppressed fireflies in previous years. Although Time Warner has not publicly announced the financial information for 1994, Eric has seen the relevant information for the first time.

In 1994, Time Warner's film business brought in only $3.3 billion in revenue for the group, a full 40% decrease from 1993, and Warner Bros. Entertainment's highest-grossing film of the year, "The Final Witness," earned only $105 million, far lower than Firefly's North American grossing "The Lion King" with $310 million. The global box office share is far from comparable to that of Firefly.

Dragged down by the sluggish film business, the entire Time Warner Group, with annual revenue of only $8.3 billion in 1994, was far behind by Fireflies by a full $10.4 billion. Compared with the good times when Steve Ross was alive and kept a steady profit, Time Warner lost money for the first time in years last year, although the loss was only $91 million, which is not worth mentioning compared to the revenue figure of $8.3 billion, but this is already a very dangerous signal, indicating that Time Warner has begun to decline without Steve Ross.

In addition to Time Warner, Paramount's parent company Viacom, Fox's parent company News Corp., and Universal's parent company MCA are far from being compared with Firefly, and Columbia's parent company Sony is much stronger than Firefly, but Columbia's market value has slipped to less than $3 billion after the $2.1 billion asset write-down incident at the end of last year, which is even less than one-tenth of the media's valuation of Firefly, and as for MGM, it has no sense of existence.

It can be said that Fireflies are completely unbeatable in Hollywood at this time.

Thinking back to these exciting data in his mind, Katzenberg couldn't help but look at Eric beside him, everything about Firefly today stems from the young man in front of him who has a keen eye in film and television media, although Eric is letting go of the management of the Firefly Group more and more, but everyone in the Firefly Group understands in their hearts that Eric is the soul of Firefly, and without him, there will definitely be no miraculous rise of Firefly today.

Although he served as the CEO of the Firefly Group, Katzenberg has always been very clear that he is better at micromanagement, judgment and control in the general direction of the group's development, he is definitely inferior to Eric, whether it was the acquisition of Disney or the merger of ABC last year, during which Eric's crazy acquisitions have been questioned by a series of questions, many people speculate that the shallow Firefly is likely to collapse because of this too violent expansion, but in the end, Firefly not only swallowed these two industry giants, but also successfully integrated these two companies into the Firefly system。

At this time, Eric made the decision to suspend expansion, not only because his investment in high-tech industries such as the Internet absorbed a large amount of money from the Firefly Group, although he successfully completed two large mergers and acquisitions and initially digested them, but the two large-scale mergers still caused some problems within Firefly that would take several years to solve, and the reason why these problems did not break out was entirely because Firefly's strong profitability temporarily offset various contradictions.

After Murdoch left, Katzenberg did not rush to leave, and returned to the villa with Eric, and talked about a recent headache within ABC.

"After the three-hour prime time from 8 to 11 o'clock, NBC and CBS are both nightly talk shows, NBC's "Jay Renault Tonight Show" can bring in $150 million a year, CBS's "David Letterman Late Show" also makes 50 million a year, but ABC's 11 o'clock news program "Nightline" can only make an average of $10 million a year. We didn't have any good options in the past, but recently, David Letterman's contract with CBS was about to expire, and Robert suggested poaching him to ABC, and David Letterman was very excited about this suggestion, and our primetime ratings are very strong, which can be a very good precursor to his talk show. But no sooner had Robert suggested this suggestion than David Westin, the president of the Department of Public Information, broke into his office and quarreled with him, and the two almost got into a fight. (To be continued.) )