As summer comes, the children are also in summer vacation. The Westeros family moved to the East Coast again in June and moved into the Westeros Building in Manhattan.

There have been guests in recent days.

Anthony Johnston's family came from Australia and also moved into the building. Of course, Anthony came for the most important thing, but Anthony's youngest daughter Rebecca, who came with her, was the happiest to be with her cousin again and could be with her cousin every day. Last time Melbourne returned from Australia after the New Year, the little girl was sad for a long time, mainly because she was worried that her cousin would fall in love with other girls.

All right.

There are many people, so breakfast looks very lively.

Simon and Anthony, who were about to talk about things, had to leave the big chattering restaurant and go to the small hall next door to have a meal.

The topic is about the negotiations between the investment representative teams of African countries who recently arrived in New York and Westeros on stock exchange. Africa has only resources to take advantage of. Therefore, Johnston Holdings needs to coordinate in a centralized manner and be responsible for the subsequent management.

"A major problem in Africa is that the political situation of most countries is very unstable. We can cultivate our own power in Africa, and even recommend our spokespersons to the office at critical moments, but there are still variables. This requires the institutionalized model to ensure our interests. State-owned enterprises are a good idea, and external sovereign investments, and it is best for us to be responsible for the management. In this way, no matter how the local government changes, as long as the winner is not too stupid, and while assisting the other party to take over the relevant assets, our interests can be guaranteed to the greatest extent."

The Kosovo War was earth-shaking, and the world's mainstream media rushed to follow up on the report. However, most people seemed to have forgotten that there was still a big melee in Africa that continued. No one cared about how much damage it caused, and how many casualties were killed or injured.

In fact, until more than ten or twenty years later, the situation in Africa has not changed much, and news of a coup will appear every few days.

Therefore, if you want to gain a foothold in Africa, it is definitely not enough to do business honestly. At least, the cost will be very high. Investments that cost hundreds of millions and billions of yuan may be gone because of a regime change. If you are not rich enough and do not use money as money, you need to have enough means to ensure your own interests.

What Simon and Anthony were talking about at this time was just one of the ideas, and it was not an innovation, but a common method of Western consortiums.

Anthony knew that this was a cooperation tone set by Simon for the replacement transaction of the investment representative teams in seven countries including Angola, Rwanda, etc. He nodded and agreed, and said: "What about South Africa, Simon, the private capital that plans to withdraw from South Africa has reached the level of tens of billions of dollars. We cannot use the same method for them?"

Nelson Mandela has been in office for five years and has completed the democratization process in South Africa very, very thoroughly, and will successfully end its first term in the middle of this month and no longer pursue re-election.

I won’t say much about South Africa, but the huge amount of capital that has been flowing out from South Africa in recent years is definitely a piece of fat that countries are competing for.

Most of the people who can leave lightly have already run away, and now the rest are less easy to withdraw. Just so happens that the stock exchange plan launched by Westeros has given some people a way to escape.

Simon thought about it and there was no good idea, so he could only say, "You can discuss this with Jim. The key is that as long as we have the best assets, the price will be suppressed more severely, and the risk will be minimized."

Anthony nodded, that's all.

After all, doing business is risky, and if it is foolproof, no one will take it out for exchange.

Simon remembered one thing and explained: "In addition, Australia can accept more high-quality immigrants from South Africa. We should take the initiative to do this, otherwise, they will definitely be more inclined to the United Kingdom and the United States."

"I know."

Anthony agreed again, chatted a few more details, and then talked about another thing: "Simon, I read the document related to sodium ion batteries you transferred. If sodium ion batteries are really expected to become mainstream in the future, do we still need to continuously reserve lithium mineral resources?"

"Of course," Simon said decisively: "Lithium batteries will be mainstream in the next ten years, or even twenty years."

"I understand this, too," Anthony said. "The problem is, if we bet too deeply in the lithium battery industry, it may not be easy to turn in the future?"

"It won't be too difficult," Simon didn't think so: "We are players now, not chess pieces that cannot be controlled. Even if we put a heavy bet now and turn, we can leave enough time for ourselves to reduce holdings and cash out related industries and transfer risks. In addition, I have always believed that instead of being eliminated by others, it is better to eliminate ourselves by ourselves. Therefore, if we have to turn in the future, even if we fail to achieve enough cash out, we should still abandon what we should abandon, otherwise we are more likely to be abandoned by the times. Finally, put aside the future industrial trends, for resources, I will never dislike what we possess more. Even if lithium-ion batteries are eliminated in the future, scarce lithium mineral resources will have other uses. Tony, for this, you are very clear about my layout ideas."

Of course Anthony knew it.

Simon has two very clear and complementary ideas about the future development of the Westeros system. Simply put, one is to occupy more resources, and the other is to build a global production system controlled by the Westeros system.

About resources, land, fresh water, forests, minerals, etc., it's all.

The resources that human society can use on this planet are definitely not as abundant as the people living in a safe and prosperous country imagined, and are actually never enough.

Occupying more resources is equivalent to occupying the future of mankind.

Secondly, build a global production system that is absolutely controlled by the Westeros system, which is set based on the shortcomings of the US economic development.

For the United States, hollowing out manufacturing is an increasingly serious problem that this seemingly powerful country will face after the new century. Or, more accurately, all developed countries that tend to have high-end services often have similar problems.

The world is currently in a relatively peaceful period that has been rare for thousands of years in human society. Therefore, all aspects do not pay much attention to the issue of material production. They subconsciously feel that there is a lack of demand and a demand, and they just spend money to buy it.

However, throughout human history, true peace times have always been short-lived.

Therefore, we must prepare for the future.

For the Westeros system, we have mastered enough basic resources and also mastered a production system that can convert these basic resources into modern social finished products such as food, clothing, housing and transportation. If we are combined with enough self-protection, it is not an exaggeration to say that in the future, it is basically equivalent to controlling the world.

What if it is otherwise?

After all, if you take a little bit of a science fiction movie in the apocalypse, it is not difficult to find that those with power often only control the most common food or fuel power that seems to be.

This is actually the essence of the power structure of this society.

For a person, if he has mastered enough resources and controlled everyone's job, then this person is the king of the world.

Very simple.

After breakfast, everyone was busy with their own affairs. Simon did not go to the Westeros headquarters in Midtown with Anthony, but the Daenerys East Coast headquarters on 66th Street in the Upper West Side.

Today's work is mainly about media and entertainment.

This is June 9th.

Wednesday.

In the summer season in North America, the highly anticipated and disappointed "Star Wars Prequel: The Ghost Threat" has entered its third week of release. The film earned $82.67 million in the previous week from May 28 to June 3, a year-on-year decline of only 17%, with a cumulative box office of $222.86 million.

In the past weekend, the year-on-year decline of the film increased by 36% compared with the previous week's three days. Such a decline is basically certain that it will not pose too much threat to the upcoming new box office Zhou Daenerys's first blockbuster "Godzilla" this year.

On the west coast, the world-renowned monster movie led by Daenerys will hold its global premiere this afternoon local time, and its reputation is expected to be lifted tomorrow.

This is also the expression of Daenerys' confidence in this new version of "Godzilla".

Compared to the Emmeric version of the King of Monsters that once made the King of Monsters into a mutant Tyrannosaurus Rex, the new "Godzilla" first, the monster image basically refers to the prototype of the Japanese Toho series, and there will be no major modifications. Secondly, in terms of the plot, Simon also put aside the Emmeric version of the past and adopted more of the version of Warner in memory in 2014.

In short, it is to learn from strengths and weaknesses.

Settings often deviate from reality, but after investing a huge amount of $120 million higher than the first episode of this Star Wars Prequel, even with Simon's two-person eye, he can score 8 points for the upcoming new version of "Godzilla", so everyone is full of confidence.

In addition to the upcoming "Godzilla", Simon is also paying more attention to several Asian projects.

First of all, after "The Life and Death Transformation" at the beginning of the year, the second $10 million investment-level blockbuster "Common Guard Zone" that also confronts South Korea and North Korea, which was also a confrontation between South Korea and North Korea, was painted on June 4 before.

It's a rush.

Going forward, "Star Wars Prequel: The Ghost Threat" was synchronized in South Korea and also started painting on May 19. However, even though South Korea's westernization is serious, the influence of the Star Wars series is not too great. Judging from the market feedback in the previous two weeks, the total number of viewers in South Korea's films is about 2 million. Although it is still a hit, it is far lower than the 8 million annual championship level of "Life and Death Transformation" at the beginning of the year.

The Star Wars prequel cannot reach the phenomenon in South Korea, so it will not put too much pressure on "Common Guard Zone".

Speaking of which, the pressure is mainly afterwards.

But Daenerys' three super bombshells, "Godzilla", "The Peerless Heavenly Tribulation" and "The Matrix", with the penetration of Westeros system into South Korea and the support of sufficient publicity and distribution resources, the three films can basically lock in the top ten South Korea's box office in 1999.

Because the three blockbusters span the entire summer, although there is no shortage of big scenes, they can only be considered a regular action drama film, and they can only choose to be released first.

In order to give up enough market space for "Common Guard Zone", Daenerys also took the initiative to postpone "Godzilla", which could have been synchronized by one week, which ensured that "Common Guard Zone" can play at least two weeks.

The "Common Guard Zone" publicity and distribution team, which has accurately grasped the current mentality of the Koreans, did a very good job this time. In the past three days of the first weekend, the film has won 1.53 million viewers nationwide in South Korea, and it is expected that the number of viewers in the entire first week will reach about 2.3 million.

In addition to the excellent reputation, based on the decline of about 30% in the next week, the cumulative number of viewers in "Common Guard Zone" is expected to be around 4 million in two weeks.

Further down the road, it depends on the specific performance.

Considering the fierce competition in the summer season, this "blockbuster" that is a huge investment based on the size of the Korean market, the local box office in South Korea is expected to be guaranteed to be around 6 million, which is not as good as the "Life and Death Transformation" in the new year. The local theaters still suffer losses in the release stage, but they can still easily achieve profits in the future.

In general, the current film market in South Korea is more suitable for making big profits with small profits.

The three planned bombs are necessary to activate the market, but the relevant film and television companies controlled by the Westeros system will continue to focus on small and medium-sized investment films.

Then there is China.

One of the main things recently is that Simon's "Tianlong Ba Mo" produced by his personal interests has entered the release stage.

At the beginning, Simon gave a budget of US$15 million, equivalent to more than 120 million yuan. In addition to the resources provided by Hong Kong TVB and Mainland CCTV, the total investment was 150 million yuan.

So the problem arose.

The TV series with 40 episodes was finally confirmed, but Jinshu wanted to lengthen it, but Simon directly interfered and severely rejected it, so it was still 40 episodes.

In short, you need to sell 3.75 million per episode to be considered a return.

However, in the entire market, the average price per episode is only 80,000 yuan. Although there is no shortage of TV series transactions, which can be sold at a sky-high price of hundreds of thousands or even millions, no one can afford it for 3.75 million yuan per episode.

The final solution is to explore a long-term operation model.

This is actually Simon's expectation for the Chinese TV drama market. After all, one of the reasons why the TV drama market was so impetuous and completely ignored the subsequent exorbitant destruction of various destruction was also because of the fact that it was a business deal.

If a "Friends" could be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars in many years, like Hollywood, the industry might have produced several more fine works.

Let’s talk about the release. Although CCTV participated in this time, even if it was Dad, the whole family still couldn’t afford it. Therefore, they cooperated with several other satellite TV stations again. The first round of biennial broadcast rights was jointly offered by the five companies, and the price was 1 million yuan per episode.

This is also the limit.

After calculation, only 40 million yuan of investment was recovered initially, and there was still a difference of 110 million yuan.

Outside the mainland, because it was a cooperative project, Hong Kong's TVB directly took away the local permanent broadcast rights, which was the original condition. As for the markets in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and other regions, they would recover at most 10 or 20 million. Therefore, Jinshu also focused on North America.

Simon also made the decision himself again.

US$1 million, and omni-channel copyrights are obtained in Europe and the United States.

Blockbuster and DHO can be jointly released, one makes videotapes and the other makes late-night dramas. After all, after "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero", martial arts films and TV series are still in a small market in the West.

Moreover, I have to say that Robert Shay, who is a new line, is a very thoughtful person. He confirmed that the boss personally decided on the project and would definitely not agree. So he took the initiative to propose that several versions of the TV movie can be cut. After all, a martial arts drama produced at the top level may be too long, but there are many action scenes that make Western audiences feel amazing. If you spend some time editing, it will definitely have more potential than releasing the full version. If you operate properly, you may be able to earn back several times.

Simon also agreed and approved another $1 million in late-stage expenses, and asked Xinshi to contact Jinshu to find Chinese screenwriters as staff, or to conduct late-stage activities directly in China. In short, don't be fooled by yourself.

Next, "To Our Youth That Will Fall" has also been scheduled for the Chinese schedule and will be released on July 9th.

After the success of "Party A and Party B" and "Flash Girl" in the New Year's Eve, this film was also a new type of campus youth film that was once again created by Jinshu and China Film and other teams, and was also highly expected.
Chapter completed!