WMA headquarters in Beverly Hills.

Courteney Cox and Jonathan Friedman talked about a script he had just received recently and were about to leave. When he remembered the progress of the investigation of the attack case a few years ago in the newspaper yesterday, Courteney couldn't help but sit down again and said to Jonathan: "Joe, do you know about Christy Swanson?"

Jonathan Friedman paused and nodded: "I know."

The Santa Monica Police Department's investigation into the attack four years ago has been underway.

Yesterday the media suddenly exposed further news of the case, and Hollywood actress Christy Swanson was involved. It is said that before Matthew Broderick rushed to intercept Simon Westeros that night, it was Christy Swanson who revealed Westeros’ work location to them.

This evidence further biased the situation towards Simon's side.

In fact, since the investigation has been underway, no one has believed Matthew Broderick's statement when he first held a press conference to launch an attack. The matter is very clear. However, the Santa Monica Police Department must give the media and the public an unquestionable investigation result, and continue to dig into everything related to the attack.

Although the public is prone to sympathizing with the weak, they do not have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Once they find that they have been deceived and fooled, their anger will only be even more turbulent.

The six people who held a press conference to try to "take the initiative" were already considered rats crossing the street at this time. Most of the people even wanted to take the initiative to reconcile and get rid of this incident, but Simon had no intention of letting go.

Courteney Cox thought about his words for a moment, and suddenly changed his mind, saying, "Joe, Simon's birthday party, has our company received an invitation this time?"

Simon and Daenerys Entertainment will send a batch of invitation letters to the WMA for the parties they have organized in the past.

Courteney asked this, the purpose was obvious.

Jonathan shook his head and said, "Curter, Simon does not intend to hold a large-scale birthday party this time. He will probably only invite some senior company executives and relatives and friends."

After saying this, both of them suddenly became silent.

Today is February 19th, and Simon's birthday is only 3 days away. In theory, Simon's birthday party is a party that many people attach great importance to, and the invitation letter will be delivered one week in advance.

Jonathan naturally got his invitation letter.

However, Courteney, who had met Simon as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles, was excluded from the ranks of "family and friends" he just mentioned.

The ups and downs of life are sometimes really unpredictable.

Jonathan remembered Sandra Bullock, who was also his client. As Simon's closest friend of the opposite sex, he almost even developed into a lover. Sandra's career development in recent years has been smooth sailing.

In comparison, as the heroine of the "Scream" series, although Courteney is also a first-line actress, after this year's "Scream 3" is over, she may face a situation where her future is uncertain.

Transformation of horror actresses is very difficult.

After all, Hollywood does not have many opportunities for actresses, but the competition is very fierce.

Currently, Hollywood, the veteran Meryl Streep, Gotty Han, Cher, etc., Melanie Griffith of the Mesozoic generation, Michelle Pfeiffer, etc., the new generation Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, etc., these actresses are very strong. Major studios are more inclined to hand over high-quality projects to these people when selecting suitable roles.

Jonathan could roughly understand Courteney's thoughts at this time.

The actress who had the most chance to rise with Simon at the time has now been excluded from Simon's social circle. The two things that just mentioned were probably that Courteney wanted to explain to him personally the attack through the next opportunity of Simon's birthday party, and at the same time, she also brought the relationship between the two parties into the relationship.

However, Jonathan knew that Simon was actually not very concerned about the attack that year, but Janet was holding on to her.

So women are the most vengeful ones.

As for the Christy Swanson who "guided" Matthew Broderick and others to attack Simon, he is still a WMA client.

However, this young actor who has been able to play in some supporting roles in youth horror movies in recent years, Simon didn't even mention it after the news was exposed. Although WMA would not deliberately ban the other party to avoid causing any public opinion trouble, it would not be possible for him to obtain any resources in the future.

After a moment, Courteney finally plucked up the courage and said, "Joe, can you get me an invitation letter?"

Jonathan could only shake his head.

As far as he knows, the scale of this birthday party will be controlled within 100 people, with 100 party places. For other social gatherings in Hollywood, such birthday parties are not small, but for Simon Westeros’ birthday party, every invitation quota needs to be carefully selected.

Speaking of which, in recent days, not just Courteney, but many stars under WMA, or in other words, countless people in Hollywood have tried every means to get an invitation to Simon Westeros birthday party.

Simon actually doesn't care about the birthday party list, and Janet is responsible for the care.

Jonathan did rely on his relationship with Simon to get several invitations for his connections from Janet, but the party list has been basically finalized, and Courtney has not yet reached the point where he can consume his favors.

After sending Courtney Cox away, Jonathan felt emotion in his heart again, and quickly turned his energy to other things.

When he was talking to Simon for the last time, he was planning to train several male stars who were around 30 years old who were suitable for action movies.

There are also some action stars in Hollywood at this stage, such as Duf Langel, Steven Seiger, etc., but they are not too first-line. Under the name of WMA, Keanu Reeves and other new generations are still a little immature. As for the most popular Mel Gibson, who is a little older, he is a little older.

Jonathan actually thought of Tom Cruise. If there is no more suitable actor in Hollywood than him who is around 30 years old.

However, Simon is not interested in this male star who is on the front line and has good box office appeal.

Not popular with a Hollywood tycoon of such a level, with the deepening of cooperation between Daenerys Entertainment and Paramount, the resources that Tom Cruise can obtain in Hollywood will only be further compressed. It is likely that it will gradually decline in a few years.

Daenerys Cinema.

When Jonathan was considering the action male star, Simon was also discussing the next cooperation between the two sides with senior officials.

Simon is a person who attaches great importance to commitments. In order to make Paramount give up the acquisition of Daenerys Entertainment's MCA, he did not intend to violate it, whether it was a paper contract or a verbal agreement.

The main cooperation between the two parties is on the one hand, on the one hand, three movies, and on the other hand, USA TV stations where the two companies each hold 50% of the shares.

Among the three movies, the key project that has been finalized is "Mission: Impossible", which can be made into a long-term series. However, since the original Tom Cruise is not planned to be launched, Simon is not in a hurry to develop this project for the time being, because there is no suitable candidate for the male lead in the short term.

Moreover, although three movies were agreed, the cooperation time was very relaxed, and neither party would be too anxious.

What everyone is discussing at this time is the issue of USA's development.

As a basic cable channel, USA was established in 1977 and was originally a joint venture between MCA, Paramount and Warner. Later, for some reasons, Warner withdrew from its own shares and became 50% of the shares of MCA and Paramount each.

After more than ten years of establishment, USA is also a very old-fashioned basic cable station. However, compared with ESPN, CNN, MTV and other basic cable stations that were born in the same era and became more popular, USA has never found its own position. The development history over the years is like a hodgepodge. It has tried sports styles, made children's programs, played original dramas, and produced TV movies. In recent years, with the rise of reality shows, it has also developed some low-cost variety show game programs.

In Simon's memory, ESPN, CNN, and MTV were already considered overlords in their respective fields. Although USA has always existed, it has always been lukewarm. In the end, the style has approached several major public TV networks, relying only on the original gathering of some criminal police and gangsters to support the ratings. However, due to the basic cable channel pattern, these dramas are destined to be unable to compare with public TV networks in terms of their own quality or ratings.

The only thing that satisfies Simon at the moment is the number of access users of up to 21 million.

Based on the average of 3 users per user, USA has more than 60 million basic viewers, close to one-third of the total population of the United States.

Of course, because the four major public TV networks are still in a monopoly state, ESPN, MTV, CNN and even HBO have separated most cable TV users. Although they have a very considerable access user base, USA's program cleaning situation has been very bleak.

Because there is no TV program that can be called a pillar, it is difficult to catch the audience's attention. USA belongs to the kind of existence that is basically difficult to remember the number of TV stations on the remote control.

The main source of revenue for basic cable stations is operator sharing and their own advertising.

Operators pay a certain number of basic cable stations per month according to the viewership status and number of users of cable stations. For basic cable stations such as CNN, each user can contribute up to the TV station by as much as 70 cents per month, and the advertising revenue is also rich.

USA's average operator share is only 15 cents, which is only less than a quarter of CNN's, and the number of users is also less than half of CNN's.

Therefore, although it has 21 million access users and the monthly operator's share revenue is only over 3 million US dollars. The annual revenue is roughly equivalent to the operator's share, and it is only more than 60 million US dollars.

Simon understood that this situation was mainly because the USA TV network was not clear enough and always wanted to make it bigger and complete. The result was like a bear who had not done anything well. ESPN, MTV and CNN, which only focused on sports, music and news, were successful.

Before acquiring MCA, Simon had already begun to consider USA's next development issues.

The areas where cable TV stations can focus on, music, sports, news and even movies, have already been taken advantage of. So, USA can only start with the segmentation of the audience.

Because of an IP like "Beverly Wife", Simon finally decided to build USA into a female TV station and lock in a very large group of housewives in the United States.

You should know that although the United States is the most developed country in the world and has experienced many feminist movements to liberate women in recent decades, in the early 1990s, the proportion of American women who chose to give up their jobs as full-time housewives after marriage was still more than 40%. In addition to housework, the biggest pastime of this group of women is undoubtedly television.

USA happens to be another 24-hour basic cable TV station that is very suitable for housewives to watch.

After so many years of continuous operation, Paramount Chairman Martin Davis did not persist too much after Simon proposed to keep the equity structure unchanged but demanded absolute control of USA.

The two sides had an afternoon of discussion and basically finalized the budget plan and program plan for the next year of USA.

In the next year, Daenerys Entertainment and Paramount Communications will jointly inject $100 million into USA for series development, copyright purchases and advertising marketing.

In terms of TV programs, while restarting "Beverly Wife", another "New York Wife" series will usually be launched. While focusing on the reality show of the Wife series, Daenerys Entertainment will continue to develop and purchase a batch of TV programs specifically targeting women.

At five o'clock, the meeting ended on time.

Others left one after another, but Paramount Chairman Martin Davis did not rush to leave and proposed to walk around the Daenerys Cinema with Simon, but Simon did not refuse.

"Actually, Simon, about Mission Impossible, can't Tom really try it? I think he is still very suitable."

The two were walking on the asphalt corridor in the park. Simon heard Martin Davis mention this, just shook his head and said, "Martin, this is a matter of principle."

When necessary, Simon will make some compromises, such as cooperation with Paramount, and the lifting of Meg Ryan. These are all to avoid the ups and downs of the MCA acquisition case, and Simon will not lose the big picture because of a small amount. However, Tom Cruise has no bargaining chips to make him compromise. Simon also needs to insist on expressing an attitude that a studio is the Hollywood controller.

Moreover, Daenerys Entertainment, now has too many high-quality IP reserves, doesn’t mind the failure of one or two projects, even the former Mission: Impossible series.

Feeling Simon's persistence, Martin Davis didn't force himself, and turned the topic elsewhere tactfully.

After all, Martin Davis is not a later generation like Simon. It is impossible to know the relationship between Tom Cruise and the Mission: Impossible series. I just mentioned it, but because Tom Cruise and Paramount have been having a happy cooperation over the years, and there are some personal relationships.

Moreover, as Paramount's performance has begun to decline in the past two years, Martin Davis's control over the company is also rapidly weakening. He foreshadowed that Paramount will likely encounter the same fate as MCA in the next few years. Once this happens, the company will have nothing to do with him, and naturally it will not be too petty at this time.

This is the main reason why the USA's control was easily abandoned at the afternoon meeting.
Chapter completed!