In the past January, the theme of the world film industry was called "Avatar", and in February, the theme remained unchanged, and the North American box office of "Avatar" officially crossed the threshold of $700 million, and the global box office exceeded the $2.5 billion mark!

Although the film's daily box office figures from around the world have dropped to more than $10 million, it is still making steady progress, and some optimistic organizations predict that "Avatar" will eventually come close to or exceed the terrifying figure of $3 billion.

At the Golden Globe Awards held in January, "Avatar" was also the biggest winner, winning two awards: Best Director and Best Feature Film.

This is related to Disney's operational planning, last month was a critical moment to promote the box office of "Avatar", Disney took all the means it could to promote the film, and even earned James? On the premise that Cameron agreed, he also hyped up the five marriages of truck drivers one by one......

As for the issue of weather vanes, in fact, everyone knows that there is a huge gap between the Golden Globe Awards and the Oscars, and there is not much correlation between the two, and under all favorable conditions, the possibility of "Bomb Disposal Unit" missing is very small.

On February 2nd, the 82nd Academy Awards nominees luncheon at Samuel in Beverly Hills? Goldwin Theatre, "Avatar" and "Bomb Disposal Unit" became the biggest nominated winners.

The former received nine nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score.

The latter also received nine nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound Effects.

The two films are destined to have a battle at the Oscars.

After getting the box office of "Avatar" on the right track, Ryan's attention shifted, George? Lucas seems to be really planning to retire, and after a period of secret contact between Disney's negotiating team and Lucasfilm, the two sides have entered the substantive negotiation stage, starting a long-term price tug-of-war.

Overall, it's a little smoother than Ryan imagined.

Viacom and Time Warner were busy with their own internal affairs and had no intention of meddling. NBCUniversal and Kongscart are also calm, and News Corp., which is most worried, doesn't seem to have changed much.

If this continues, Lucasfilm will definitely become a wholly owned subsidiary of Walt Disney, and the obstacle now is nothing more than the price.

Lucasfilm's current market value is about $3.3 billion, Disney wants to complete this goodwill acquisition, must take a premium approach, in the first round of formal negotiations, Disney quoted an overall purchase price of $3.515 billion, but was named George? The management, led by Lucas, refused.

Ryan didn't have a relationship with George? Lucas privately touched the meaning of this kind of deal involving billions of dollars. Favors hardly play any role.

Negotiations were still under wraps, and at the end of January, Disney submitted a second offer of up to $3.65 billion to Lucasfilm, which was again rejected.

After the Oscar nominations were announced, Walt Disney held a special board meeting for this purpose to discuss the next offer.

"Lucasfilm is on the active side." Robert? "If it weren't for the financial crisis that caused the major groups and banks to shrink their monetary base, they wouldn't have lacked a family at all. Lucas said it was for sale. But if they can't sell it, they can continue to operate. ”

"We can raise the offer again."

Another executive director said, "He's Crete?" Disney, Roy? Disney's son. In Roy? After Disney's death, he became the only representative of the Disney family at Walt Disney.

However, his reputation and abilities are not the same as Roy's? Disney is too much worse, and is notoriously eye-catching.

"My psychological bottom line is $4 billion." Ryan said slowly.

Lucasfilm is totally worth the price. Unlike other companies, Lucasfilm doesn't have a penny of debt, and Disney doesn't have to worry about post-acquisition debt and bad debts at all.

This allows for the acquisition of high-quality resources. It's almost impossible to find in Hollywood.

"Robert, specific pricing ......"

There was a knock on the door of the conference room, and a secretary went over to open the door, and George walked briskly towards Ryan.

Many people, including Nicole, looked at it strangely, they all knew George, the special assistant to the chairman, this is a calm and even silent person, and he also has a certain decision-making power in his hands, if it were not for a particularly serious incident, he would definitely not break into the board of directors?

What happened?

Seeing the encrypted phone handed over by George, Ryan put it to his ear, and after just listening to a few words, his brows wrinkled together unconsciously, and his blue eyes narrowed into a line.

Hanging up the phone, Ryan looked at the other directors who were focused on him, exhaled slowly, and said calmly, "The topic we are discussing now is going to be interrupted. ”

"What happened?" Nicole asked.

"I just got the message." Ryan stood up and took a few steps, then said, "The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice have received complaints from several companies at the same time, and have decided to launch an antitrust investigation into Disney's video website business and computer animation business, and their representatives will soon appear in Burbank." ”

The venue was silent for a moment, and for any commercial group company, the anti-monopoly investigation was a very headache.

"Robert ......," Ryan looked at the CEO, "the negotiations with Lucasfilm are up to you for the time being. ”

"No problem."

After the other party nodded, Ryan continued, "Next, we will discuss how to deal with this antitrust investigation. ”

Strictly speaking, Disney does have an absolute advantage in online videos and animated films, and it seems normal to be complained about monopoly, but Ryan always feels that things will not be so simple, Robert? Iger and Cook? Dick agrees.

In particular, the timing of this antitrust investigation is too sensitive, and if the scale of the investigation is expanded, it will completely disrupt the rhythm of Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.

Regardless of whether Disney's business practices constitute a monopoly or not, since someone has pushed for this antitrust investigation, it must be dealt with seriously.

As the largest and most developed economy in the world, the anti-monopoly system and practice in the United States have undergone more than 100 years of evolution and improvement, and have always maintained a certain degree of crackdown on monopolistic behaviors, and the crackdown methods have also kept pace with the changes in economic and social conditions, forming a pattern of coexistence of monopoly and competition dynamics.

After the 90s of the last century, with the increasingly fierce competition in international technological innovation, the goal of the federal government's anti-monopoly is no longer simply to prevent market monopoly, price manipulation, etc., but to focus on how to prevent technology monopolies other than patent protection, just like the anti-monopoly investigations against Microsoft and Apple, to strictly prevent the emergence of knowledge-based network oligopoly.

In particular, after the Obama administration took office, it changed the Bush administration's lenient policy toward the monopolistic behavior of large companies and returned to the Clinton administration's strong antitrust campaign with the goal of encouraging innovation and technological change.

According to the federal antitrust law, once a company is found to be suspected of monopoly, it may face fines, imprisonment, compensation, civil sanctions, forced dissolution, spin-offs and other penalties, and the Department of Justice can directly file civil and criminal proceedings against the suspected monopoly.

The FTC can also directly adjudicate or file a civil lawsuit, and the injured business or ordinary consumer can also file a civil lawsuit directly against the suspected monopoly and demand three times the damages.

In short, antitrust investigations are a very big hassle for a company.

It has almost become an international practice for large companies to get rid of anti-monopoly investigations by paying huge fines to "spend money to eliminate disasters".

But Ryan realized that the antitrust investigation might not be so simple, and Disney might not be dragged into a quagmire as long as the Microsoft lawsuit.

Just as he had guessed, just after noon, the Wall Street Journal, an authoritative financial media outlet owned by News Corp., disclosed the news on its official website, saying that the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice were going to investigate whether Disney had abused its dominant advantage in the Internet market to unfairly transfer Internet users to Disney's growing network of services and suppress its competitors.

As soon as the news came out, Walt Disney's stock price fell in response, and by the end of the afternoon, the stock price had fallen by nearly three percent!

The next day, representatives of the Federal Trade Commission were the first to arrive in Burbank, and the gossip website of the New York Post, a subsidiary of News Corporation, immediately posted pictures of antitrust representatives walking into Walt Disney's headquarters on the Internet, completely confirming the news that Disney was about to be subject to an antitrust investigation.

Disney's stock price continued to slide, and in just two days, Disney lost four percent of its market value, totaling $3.5 billion!

Denial was certainly not a wise choice, and Disney simply posted on its blog that the FTC had launched an investigation into the company's business, but Disney said it was "not clear what the Commission is specifically focused on."

"This will be the biggest crisis Walt Disney has faced in more than 90 years since it was founded!"

"If the antitrust is established, Disney may face a sky-high fine of more than $3 billion!"

"The Department of Justice may file a formal antitrust lawsuit against Disney, and Disney will be split into two parts: film and television entertainment and online media!"

In just three days, from the Fox television network and the Wall Street Journal in North America to Sky TV and The Times in the United Kingdom, they are frantically hyping up the Disney antitrust incident, and even some media outlets of other media groups have joined in.

After all, if Disney is really broken up, other media groups will have one less strong competitor, and even if they can't be split, it is in their interest to take the opportunity to weaken Disney. (To be continued......)