Eric raised his eyebrows slightly, did not answer, but asked rhetorically: "What do you think is the purpose of a company going public?"

"Financing funds allows enterprises to achieve better development. ”

"So, Firefly is not short of funds now, and the development status is obvious to all, so do you think Firefly is still necessary to go public?"

The reporter was not discouraged, and immediately asked, "Mr. Williams, are you already satisfied with the status quo and do not plan to continue to expand the territory of Firefly Pictures?"

"Of course not, but if you want to expand the territory of Firefly Pictures, there are many ways to get funds, and you don't have to go public. I have my own complete plan for the development of Firefly, and some development ideas may even cause a lot of controversy, I don't want to waste my tongue explaining the reason to those old men on Wall Street every time I make a decision after going public, everyone is in the news, and I should know very well how difficult those people are. Okay, that's the end of the question, let's get back to the topic of today's press conference. ”

Listening to Eric's slightly mocking tone, the reporters present all chuckled.

They are very clear about the meaning of Eric's words, although the relationship between Hollywood and Wall Street is quite close, but in fact, the game between the two sides is more than cooperation, Wall Street pursues a high growth rate and high rate of return on various business indicators of a company, most investors often do not pay attention to long-term development, only want to see beautiful financial reports, speculation is very large. The managers of companies tend to pay more attention to long-term development, and often sacrifice short-term interests for such purposes, which is at odds with Wall Street's perception.

If a company is not listed. Wall Street, of course, is a dog biting a hedgehog with nowhere to go. I don't want your funds. Don't try to meddle in my turf. And if you choose to go public, even if the control is still in the hands of the business operator, once the company's development footprint is out of the orbit envisaged by Wall Street, it will still be pointed at by Wall Street investors all the time. Don't even think about stopping.

The most extreme example is, of course, the Marvel Entertainment Group, which Eric has been quietly following, and the Marvel Comics have been doing so well in the 80s that they almost swallowed DC Comics in the hands of Warner. But since the end of the 80s, the comic book company fell into the hands of Wall Street investor Ron Pereman, ushered in his own troubled life, Ron Perreman is only keen on capital operation, no intention to operate, until now, Ron Perreman from the Marvel Entertainment Company to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, but Marvel Entertainment's operating conditions have been declining, almost on the verge of bankruptcy.

Wall Street is full of speculators like Ron Pereman. In some memories of Eric's past life, MGM Pictures finally got rid of casino tycoon Kirk Cockrian after 2005. But soon after, it became a 'toy' in the hands of another Wall Street speculative tycoon, Carl Icahn, and in the following years, MGM faced repeated bankruptcy crises, and his business situation did not improve at all, but Carl Icahn made a lot of money.

All this information makes Eric have a deep fear of Wall Street, Firefly Pictures is the foundation of Eric's career, and it is also the business he is most passionate about, so Eric has never planned to let Firefly Pictures go public.

And some of the high-tech companies that Chris helped him run are the capital that Eric has prepared to expand his territory in Hollywood. The development prospects of Yahoo and other companies, if Firefly Pictures needs a large amount of money to expand in the future, Eric can completely sell the shares of Cisco and other companies or go public to Yahoo and other companies to obtain a large amount of development funds, and even if it loses control of these companies in the future, Eric does not care too much, the Internet as a sunrise industry, the bubble component is very large, and it is the wisest choice to cash out in time, and there are still countless investment opportunities in the Internet in the next 20 years.

After Eric said these words, he directly handed the microphone to Ed Carmore on the other side, and after Eric's reminder just now, the next reporter did not continue to ask about "Jurassic Park" and Firefly Pictures, but focused on Firefly Software.

The launch quickly reverberated in the media inside and outside of Hollywood, and it was clear to many that it was the digital space's first response to the recent poaching in order to prevent Autodesk from entering the VFX software market and maintain its leading position in the digital space.

After the press conference, Carol Butz, chairman and CEO of Autodesk, said in an interview with reporters that Autodesk would not give up the pace of entering film and television special effects software, but in the next few days, news came out that Autodesk's board of directors has been divided on the strategy of entering the film and television special effects software market. Because the lethality of this trick used by Fireflies is too great, although it only takes half a year for Autodesk to launch mature special effects software, it is estimated that Firefly software has occupied 90% of the market in this half year.

And Firefly Software also has the advantage that Autodesk does not have, that is, the digital field of the special effects industry giant, the cost and technical advantages generated by the close cooperation between the two companies, is definitely Autodesk, which can only produce "tools" but does not have its own "test field" The company cannot be compared, although Autodesk has reached some cooperation intentions with Industrial Light and Magic, but the two sides are two companies after all, and it is impossible to cooperate as closely as Firefly Software and the digital field.

Later, ILM's approach also confirmed Autodesk's concerns, just a week after the Firefly Software press conference, ILM announced its decision to use Firefly Software products, and the day of the news was accompanied by a handshake photo by George Lucas and Firefly Software CEO Ed Carmore.

George Lucas's approach is of course a helpless move, although ILM also has a set of software tools developed by itself before this, but the performance is completely incomparable with ILM. If this time abandon the cooperation with Firefly Software. Then ILM's CG special effects production level is likely to be inferior to those third-rate special effects studios that use tools such as Maya. In that case, ILM will definitely decline rapidly.

When the news of the partnership between ILM and Firefly Software broke, Autodesk's board of directors rejected management's proposal to establish a film and television special effects software division.

At the same time as the establishment of Firefly Software, Eric and Firefly's management also began to make efforts to retain employees in the digital field, taking a series of measures to increase compensation and benefits. The promise that these studios will not only get special effects software at a good price, but also receive a certain number of outsourcing projects from the digital field, which can keep these people in the camp of the digital field in disguise, and weaken the competitiveness of their competitors in another way.

This measure is very attractive to many people, how can they go to other companies to continue to be employees and be their own bosses, even if it is just a small boss of a studio. After the implementation of this measure, some micro and small special effects companies that had nothing to do with the digital field also expressed their desire to join the affiliated camp of the digital field, in anticipation of receiving corresponding discounts, and the digital field also selectively accepted a batch.

Because these small and micro special effects companies attached to the camp of the digital field rely too much on the digital domain headquarters in technology and projects, Eric is not worried that there will be another behemoth that threatens the digital field. In turn, this approach has accelerated the expansion of firefly software tools.

More than a week later, the resignation in the digital field has finally subsided. Stimulated by this incident, in order to ensure that similar incidents will not occur in the company in the future, Eric began to brew an equity incentive plan among all members of Firefly Pictures, and deepened the sense of belonging and cohesion of Firefly Pictures' employees to Firefly through the equity incentive plan covering the entire company.

In this process, Pixar Pictures' second 3D animation "Bug Crisis" was also officially released on more than 2,500 screens in North America, this insect-themed cartoon attracted a large number of audiences of all ages with its interesting characters and plot suitable for all ages, and it got $33 million at the box office in the first three days of the first weekend, and the box office is expected to reach about $50 million in the first week, although it cannot be compared with the first week box office of "Jurassic Park", but "Bug Crisis" This achievement has been fully able to rank among the best-selling blockbusters.

And the cost of this 3D animation is only about 70 million US dollars, according to the North American box office trend, relying on the release of the North American market, the cost can basically be recovered, and as an animated film, "Bug Crisis" peripheral licensing profit is the largest profit, the movie was released in just three days, and the peripheral products on the shelves of hundreds of Disney stores across the United States generated a turnover of nearly 12 million US dollars.

By the way, the peripheral products of "Jurassic Park" also began to be distributed at the same time as the release of the movie through the Disney store channel, and in nearly a month, the turnover of the peripherals also successfully exceeded 100 million US dollars, and Eric deliberately imitated the original version in the movie to give the peripheral products of "Jurassic Park" a few clear close-ups, and the history seems to be strikingly similar, because of a series of pig teammates in the movie by Dr. Hardmond's granddaughter Lex, the girl's figure figure became "Jurassic Park" The most popular product in the merchandise. Eric forgot to warn about this, which led to Disney's toy foundry producing a batch of Lex's character dolls ahead of schedule, and as a result, the dolls of other characters were out of stock several times, but Lex's character dolls were not even sold half of the original batch.

Staying in Los Angeles means being busy, and often other things are coming in before the things at hand are done.

Of course, most of the things are in the film industry, although the direct profit generated by Firefly in the film business in the company's total profit share is getting lower and lower, but no one can take this part lightly, the film business is like the engine of the film company, only the horsepower of the engine is strong enough, can guide other businesses to develop rapidly.

After deciding to abandon the acquisition of Miramax, Firefly Pictures reactivated its Black Ant label and set up a special art film investment department.

Quentin Tarantino became famous in one fell swoop after "Reservoir Dogs", happily played soy sauce in many B-grade movies for two years, and finally remembered that he still had something to do, and after Eric's urging and pointing, Quentin came up with the script of "Pulp Fiction", and Eric also gave some suggestions according to the original memory, such as the choice of the hero and heroine, and the twisting dance that is called a classic.

Maybe many people don't understand what the classic writhing dance that John Travolta danced with Uma Thurman after watching "Pulp Fiction" is, but when the movie was first released in North America, many North American audiences will have a feeling of tears in their eyes when they see this picture.

It all started in 1978, when Paramount Pictures released a very iconoclastic musical and dance film "Hot Prodigal Son", the actor of the movie was John Travolta in "Pulp Fiction", and the movie immediately caused a sensation among North American teenagers as soon as it was released, winning the North American box office of $170 million at half the ticket price of the nineties at the time, and won the box office championship that year without any suspense. Moreover, the film also led to a popular disco trend and set a sales record for movie soundtracks that could not be broken for many years.

"The Hot Prodigal" happens to have a lot of scenes of John Travolta's male protagonist fighting and dancing in a discotheque, and many years later, "Pulp Fiction" recreates the classic scene from "The Hot Prodigal" more than ten years ago through John Travolta and Uma Thurman participating in a twist dance competition in a dance hall, and the effect is as emotional as Fa Ge's appearance on the screen again in a trench coat and a toothpick after many years in "The True Color of Heroes". If you use a vulgar word to describe it, this feeling is called 'feelings'. (To be continued......)