On September 5, with the release of Warner Bros.'s action film "Must Down", starring Steven Seger, the 1997 summer season officially came to an end.

Overall, the summer season started tragically, and was crushed by two blockbusters with box office potential of "Finding Nemo" and "Casino Royale", which had a box office potential of more than $300 million. Other big-produced films released in June were almost wiped out. Even Paramount Pictures' North American box office barely exceeded $200 million, it is definitely not a success.

However, in July, the chaos in the film market began to ease. Fox's "Ice Age", MGM's "Scream 2", and Universal's "Air Force One" all achieved very good box office results.

Among them, the performance of "Ice Age" is undoubtedly the most eye-catching.

This is not only because "Ice Age" finally earned more than $176 million in North America for a cost of $59 million, but also the 3D animated film is also the first animated feature film of Blue Sky Animation Studio.

Although Blue Sky Studio has received strong technical support from Fireflies, it can earn a lot of praise in North America and a box office of three times the production cost, which still has a great stimulation to other film companies.

You should know that in addition to "Casino Royale", the most impressive box office performance this summer is "The Lion King 2", "Finding Nemo" and "Ice Age" released one after another. Just these three animated films have a total box office of nearly $600 million, which is almost one-quarter of the total box office of the entire summer.

Before "Ice Age", although several major Hollywood film companies began to establish their own animation film departments, due to the idea that 2D animation was monopolized by Disney and 3D animation was monopolized by Pixar, and the long production cycle of animation films, these film companies all felt that it was very difficult to make successful animation films.

But now, whether Blue Sky Studio breaks the traditional thinking influence or is driven by strong interests, several other major Hollywood film companies have begun to increase their investment in their animation departments.

On the other hand, the fierce fighting in June also made Hollywood realize that it could no longer stick to the tradition of focusing on the films before the US's solo day on July 4, which would only cause very serious internal friction.

The box office performance in overseas markets has further attracted the attention of Hollywood.

This year's two billion-dollar box office seeds "Finding Nemo" and "Casino Royale", no matter which one, the overseas box office is significantly higher than that of the United States. While many media are still amazed that "Casino Royale" has once again broken the first-week box office record in North America, the film's overseas first-week box office has easily reached a height of US$13.6 billion.

"Find Nemo", which has a cumulative box office of more than US$3.3 billion in North America, has also reached US$3.9 billion in overseas box office. At the same time, many overseas markets have not yet been released, and there is still at least US$200 million in box office potential to be tapped in the future, which is far from entering the final period like North America.

If we move forward, in September, the Titanic, which began to completely fall off the global market, eventually reached an amazing number of US$1.629.6 billion, and the total global box office of the film eventually exceeded the unprecedented US$200 million.

The Paramount Act of 1948 and the subsequent rise of the TV industry completely ended the American film industry that flourished in Hollywood's golden age.

But in recent years, as Hollywood movies have frequently created box office miracles around the world, the whole Hollywood has gradually realized that for the American film industry, another new golden age is coming. Moreover, this is an era accompanied by the rapid development of high technology and the ever-changing economic globalization. If you cannot catch up with these changes, you are destined to face the fate of being eliminated again.

Among them, the biggest change is undoubtedly the rapid integration of several major media groups in North America.

I have to say that this is actually a very ironic thing.

The Paramount Act was to avoid the negative impact of the monopoly giants on the entire industry. However, the result of this move has severely damaged the American film industry. In recent years, the Paramount Act has been in name only, and several major media giants have even extended their hands to the theater industry that was explicitly prohibited at the time, but Hollywood has shown a rapid recovery and rise.

With the end of this summer season, Hollywood has once again begun major events related to the integration of two major media groups.

Viacom acquires BS TV and Seagram acquires European music giant Polygon Group.

Viacom acquires BS, which is almost well known in Hollywood.

Since the 1980s, Summer Redstone has been expanding the TV business of Viacom Group. Firefly and News Group jointly suppressed the promotion of "The Lion King 2", causing the 2D animated film with a box office potential of $300 million in North America to finally ended in its early 200 million yuan, which further stimulated Redstone and made the other party finally make up its mind to start the acquisition of BS.

Eric is very happy to see Viacom swallowing bs.

Public TV stations in North America have already shown signs of declining, and have been snatching a large number of market share by more and more cable TV stations in recent years. At the same time, due to the influence of the new technology wave, the market value of BS has been inflated several times. It can be said that at this time, Viacom swallowed BS. Even if there is no memory of his previous life, Eric could determine that this public TV network will become a major burden to Viacom Group.

However, Sigram's acquisition of Polygin was beyond Eric's expectations.

This incident was revealed when a reporter from a European newspaper accidentally took a photo of Edgar Bronfman meeting with Polygin senior executives.

When he acquired Universal's parent company A, Sigram already owned Universal Records, which is very powerful in North America. If he acquires Polygon, the largest European record company, Universal Records will have a strength far surpassing that of several other record companies in the world.

"Okay, I'll send a plane to Brisbane to pick you up, but don't be too arrogant. Also, should you kiss... Well, I'm so obedient, but it seems like I've kissed you to the feet, come again... Haha, okay, no trouble," In the conference room of Firefly Cinema, Eric's feet were tilted on the desk, leaning against the boss's chair and talking on the phone with Miranda Kerr who was far away in Australia. The office door was pushed open, and Elizabeth walked in without knocking on the door: "Well, that's it, I'm here, I'm here to hang up first, goodbye."

Elizabeth glanced suspiciously on Eric's face who had hung up the phone quickly, and found nothing unusual. She curled her lips and sat opposite him, holding a bunch of information on Eric's desk into her arms and looking it out.

Putting your phone on the desk, Eric sat upright and looked at Elizabeth, who was flipping through a thick stack of documents across the street: "Are you considered a blatant commercial spy?"

Elizabeth didn't raise her head and said, "Hmph, I won't pursue you and those little foxes talking on the phone, you dare to be so righteous."

"I'm planning to take justice as my motto recently." Eric smiled and took out a pencil from the pen holder, corrected it on a script in front of him, and said.

The script in his hand was "The Desperate Housewife" that he happened to remember a few days ago. Eric spent several hours writing a brief script concept and then threw it to Mark Cerley, the original screenwriter of "The Desperate Housewife".

Now Mark Celley is just a very inconspicuous little character in Hollywood. He naturally worked diligently and quickly wrote the complete story outline of the first season and the script of the first three episodes.

Just as he wrote a few lines of words on the script of "Desperate Housewives", Elizabeth on the opposite side burst into laughter.

Eric looked up and said, "You are so terrifying. What if you scare me into a horror script? You have to worry about writing it out."

Elizabeth threw a stack of documents in her arms back to her desk, leaving only a folder, and raised her face with an uncontrollable smile, saying, "This, the script of "Teddy Bear" is so vulgar. Who wrote it?"

Eric pointed at himself with a pencil: "I can't stop it recently."

Elizabeth subconsciously rolled her eyes, raised the folder in her hand, and said, "I want it."

"Come here and lie on the table, I'll give it to you."

"Ah, you bastard, you don't think of anything good in your mind. No wonder you wrote such a vulgar script," Elizabeth picked up a small ornament next to the monitor and threw it at Eric.

Eric reached out to catch the figure of "Resident Evil" Ada Wang holding a crossbow, carefully placed it, and said, "This is out of print. If you break it, I can only put you on the table as compensation."

Elizabeth snorted again, shook the script of "Teddy Bear" in her hand, no longer mentioned the things she asked for, but said: "Teddy Bear is a plush toy that many children like very much. You just write it randomly. Will the copyright holder like this?"

"I think there are only two reasons for the copyright owner to be unwilling to do so. One is that the money is not enough, and the other is that the money is not enough," Eric explained: "Anyway, Fireflies have signed a copyright agreement with them. How we want to write the script has nothing to do with them."

"Hmph, I don't have to think that they must have been deceived by you. I thought you wanted to make "Teddy Bear" a Disney-style children's feature film. If they knew in advance that the script would be so vulgar, they would probably not sell it even if they beat them to death."

Eric smiled and said, "That may not be necessary, it depends on whether the money is given enough. However, this is a movie made, and it must be R-level. Children cannot watch it at all, so they will not be affected. Okay, if you have something to do, you won't suddenly think that I can't extricate myself and run over. If you remember correctly, we just saw it the night before yesterday?"

"Who would miss you guy?" Elizabeth curled her lips and took out a file bag from her handbag and handed it over: "This is the script of "Monster Shrek" that Chris Wedge and the others have just completed. Please help me see."

Eric reached out to take it, turned it over, and said, "Why don't you send it directly to my email? How convenient is it?"

"Everyone is in a hurry. Who knows when will you send it by email? I won't plan to leave this afternoon. Please read it for me and give me some suggestions for revisions. Well, that's it."

"Okay," Eric nodded with a smile: "Then help me make a cup of coffee first, add a piece of sugar and add more milk."

Elizabeth made another move to grab the Ada King figure before she stood up and walked out of Eric's office.

After a while, she put the coffee in front of Eric, she said, "Didn't you say that Seagram is going to acquire Polygon recently? Do you have no feeling at all?"

Eric turned his pencil in his hand and asked casually: "What does it feel?"

"I said yes, you didn't think about robbing Polykin. Recently, there are more remarks about the irelyer player's indulgence in pirated versions?"

"I only know that Firefly Records' performance will rise by more than 50 this year. Although the revenue of digital music is still only 10%, they are smarter and should know where the future trend is. For new technologies, forcibly blocking them will only perish. Siemens hopes to sell Polygon now, perhaps because of the rise of digital music in the next few years."

"Then Sigram is a fool. Can't they see these?"

"It's not a question of whether it's stupid or not. If Edgar Bronfman can seize the position of Seagram EO from his family, I think he's not too stupid. Of course, I don't think he's too smart. But, just like Redstone, many people will only see the short-term interests in front of them and are not willing to think about it for too long."

Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully and smiled, "You are thinking about it for a long time. Fireflies have not expanded in the past two years. I am afraid that the annual growth rate will soon decline in the next year."

Eric wrote a line of words on the script in his hand and continued: "Even if Firefly Group's performance has stopped growing, it will be enough for other Hollywood film companies to catch up with each other for several years, not to mention whether it will stop growing. You are not unaware of the economic bubble in recent years. Firefly is not a listed company and cannot enjoy too many dividends brought by the bubble. Therefore, it is unwise to expand now. After two years, the bubble bursts, it will be the time for Firefly to show its strength."

"Then what do you think about Seagram's acquisition of Polykin?"
Chapter completed!