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December 24, Christmas Eve.

The highly anticipated "Steel Bone" officially landed in North American theaters on this day, with the number of screens being opened to 3,106.

The strength of the DC movie universe has been confirmed by five consecutive movies, so "Cylinder" can almost be said to be dominant. The other three movies released on the same day are small-scale preview projects with only a few or dozens of screens.

Christmas Eve is the day when Westerners reunite, and it is usually not the best time to start a movie.

However, under the promotion of Warner Bros., a large number of movie fans still regarded watching "Cylinder" as a holiday celebration and chose to enter the theater to watch the movies as soon as possible.

Compared with DC superheroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other DC superheroes, Cyborg was born in 1980, and it is also a black man, with a very obvious disadvantage. If this project is launched alone, Warner will have 100% no confidence. Fortunately, this is a continuation of the cross-fusion of the DC movie universe. The story plot is closely related to the summer "Superman" and it leads to the past and the future, so it largely offsets the film's disadvantages in popularity and race.

Especially the reputation of the movie.

The film once again uses many new technologies in special effects, making the effect of steel bones more outstanding than the robots in "Terminator". The plot of the film has been repeatedly polished. Although it is not amazing, it is also completed in one go. It not only tells the origin of the superhero steel bones, but also lays enough foreshadowing for the subsequent development of the DC movie universe. In addition, the black protagonist needs to maintain political correctness. The comprehensive media score after the word-of-mouth of "Cyberbones" has reached 9.1 points, which is completely excellent.

After all, it was because of Christmas Eve. Warner Bros.'s marketing could not withstand the deep-rooted festive traditions of Westerners. The box office of "Cyborg" on the first day of its large-scale painting was only $14.16 million, which ranked last in the DC Film Universe project.

Before the media could exaggerate the failure of the video, the single-day box office of the film soared by 39% on Saturday, earning $19.73 million.

On Sunday, the box office of "Cylinder" also reached $17.37 million.

When the first weekend screening ended, the cumulative box office of "Cyborg" in three days was US$51.26 million, surpassing the box office of "The Flash", which was also a Christmas-time show, which was also a Christmas-time show, was $49.31 million in the first weekend.

Although it is still ranked second to last among the six DC movies, Warner's reference to "Cyborg" happens to be "The Flash". The film's promotional and distribution team's box office expectations for "Cyborg" are only comparable to "The Flash". Now, this superhero movie with many disadvantages has a trend of surpassing the old and popular superhero Flash under the aura of DC movie universe, which completely made Warner overjoyed.

After the first weekend, from December 24 to December 30, "Cyborg" had a cumulative box office of US$76.21 million in the first seven days of the first week, without any suspense.

With the addition of "Cyborg", the total box office scale of the last full box office week in 1993 soared to US$193 million. However, the strong "Cyborg" inevitably suppressed other films during the same period.

Affected by the release of "Cylinder Bones", the most popular and most suitable for the whole family to watch at the end of the year, the box office of the Lion King failed to fall again during the Christmas week, but the film fell only a slight 3% this week, and it closed at another $27.61 million, with a cumulative box office of $237.29 million in six weeks of release.

Mission: Impossible, which ranked third on the list, did not have such good luck. The box office fell by 19% in Christmas week, earning $20.52 million, and the cumulative box office was $143.73 million.

Other films rose and fell in unison during the same period, but they were not comparable to those in the top three films on the list.

December 31, the last day of 1993, another box office week began.

In order to avoid the edge of "Cyborg", Fox's science fiction thriller "Mechanical Ghost" chose to release this week, with 1,031 screens, probably with a certain mentality of trying to get a bargain. What if "Cyborg" fails at the box office? What if the film unexpectedly dark horse?

After all, there is not that much if there is anything in this world.

The box office of only $730,000 on the first day also confirms that "Mechanical Ghost" is just a cannon fodder-level existence at the end of this year's end.

New Year's Day on January 1 happened to be Saturday. From December 31 to January 6, the box office week did not show any sharp declines in box office after holidays in previous years.

The second week of release, "Cyborg", fell by only 26% the next week, and it closed at $56.39 million, with a cumulative box office of $132.6 million in two weeks. Whether the total box office of the film in North America can reach 300 million depends on the subsequent trend, which is more than enough to surpass the original $253 million local box office of "The Flash".

The phenomenal 3D animated film "The Lion King" is still ranked second.

The box office fell by only 33% in the seventh week of the release, and continued to earn US$18.36 million, with a cumulative box office of US$255.65 million, which is less than US$45 million away from the 300 million mark.

"Mission: Impossible", among the three giants, saw a box office drop of 36% this week, which is the most serious box office decline on the list. It earned $13.1 million in a single week, and the cumulative box office increased to $156.83 million.

Although the decline is deep, the overall box office trend of "Mission Impossible" still breaks through the initial sniping of "The Lion King" and caused the low box office opening. The local box office expectation of about $180 million in North America is calculated based on the share ratio of about 55%, which is enough for Daenerys and Paramount to recover all $100 million in production and promotional investments by relying on the North American box office. The overseas box office revenue can basically be regarded as profit.

Even if it is not possible to compare with the DC Movie Universe Project or the hits such as "Jurassic Park" and "The Lion King", Paramount is satisfied with the market performance of "Mission Impossible", and the sequel of the series is officially launched recently.

She spent more than a week with the women and the children on Christmas. Simon started working again on January 3 after New Year's Day. Janet also flew to New York on the first working day after New Year, leaving only her female assistant to take care of the three children at Dumei Point Manor.

Veronica flew to Australia during Christmas and brought Melbourne back to North America after the festival.

After Janet gave birth to Nicholas, Veronica mentioned letting go of her work again, but was surrounded by Simon and his wife. During this period, Janet also added a burden to supervise the Black Rock Asset Management Company.

Black Rock Asset Management has the most conservative investment strategy among the three core subsidiaries of Cersei Capital. It cannot withstand the company's capital is really huge. It has reached a total asset size of US$170 billion. Once there is a problem, it will inevitably involve the entire Westeros system.

In order to avoid the hindrance of the rapid expansion of the Westeros system in order to avoid the limitation of personal energy, the Simon and his wife have been delegating power to the management as much as possible. On the other hand, supervision of financial, personnel and legal aspects of various subsidiaries in the system is also continuing to strengthen.

Veronica is undoubtedly one of the people Simons trust most and happens to be suitable for the relevant jobs.

At the beginning of the new year, Daenerys Entertainment's first large-scale business move was to take up half of the remaining shares of USA TV from the Canadian Seagram Group.

After successfully acquiring Paramount Communications in October last year, due to restrictions on relevant federal regulations, Seagram Group, as a foreign investor, was unable to continue to hold USA TV and had to choose to sell it.

USA TV was originally jointly held by Paramount Communications and MCA, and the shareholding ratios of both parties were equal, both of which were 50%. Daenerys Entertainment merged with MCA, and half of the shares of the former fell into the hands of Daenerys Entertainment, and Simon also obtained absolute control of USA TV.

In recent years, USA TV has developed rapidly through popular programs such as the Beautiful Wife Series and "Desperate Housewives". In less than three years, the number of subscribers has increased from the initial 21 million to the current 43 million, and its annual revenue has also increased from the initial 60 million US dollars to the initial 330 million US dollars in 1993.

The preliminary estimate of the TV network's annual net profit in 1993 also reached about US$40 million.

If it weren't for the restrictions of federal media regulations, the Seagram Group would definitely not agree to take over such a basic wired network that is still growing rapidly.

As the major shareholder, although Daenerys Entertainment has the right to purchase the other half of USA shares first, it is unrealistic to take over at a low price after other federal media groups expressed interest in this part of the shares.

After more than two months of negotiations, the Sigram Group finally agreed to transfer its shares in USA TV Network for US$700 million in cash. Based on the profit scale in 1993, it is equivalent to a price-to-earnings ratio of 35 times. Although this price is not outrageous, it is already very expensive.

Even so, if it weren't for Mission Impossible's success that made Seagram realize that it needed to maintain a good partnership with Daenerys Entertainment, the agreement might have been going on for a while.

After successfully taking over USA TV, Daenerys Entertainment announced the group's second major move in mid-January, reorganizing its gaming business.

After four years of entrepreneurship and two years of full acquisition, the company's development is not bad. In conjunction with Blizzard Studio, which originally mainly engaged in console games, Daenerys Entertainment's electronic game business, the annual revenue of Daenerys Entertainment's electronic game business in 1993 was initially counted at US$1.16 billion, and the net profit is expected to be around US$230 million, which is approximately one-tenth of the group's annual net profit.

The total output value of the global video game market in 1993 was approximately US$13 billion.

Daenerys Entertainment's electronic game department's revenue accounts for nearly 9% of the total global game revenue. If it were other companies, it would be very rare to have such achievements in just a few years, but this did not satisfy Simon.

The most typical point is that for several consecutive years, although the game business department has launched a series of top-notch PC and console games, none of them have ever seen the super hits like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". In recent years, the popularity of the sequel to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game has inevitably dropped.

With the development of Daenerys Entertainment, its core film business has reached its peak. The growth point in the future is TV on the one hand and games on the other.

Simon's music business, which he also likes, will continue to decline in the next 20 or 30 years, but the game is different.

At this stage, the total output value of each platform game is equivalent to the global movie box office scale. In Simon's memory, this number will increase tenfold in the next 20 to 30 years, reaching the 100 billion level.

According to the current development status of Daenerys Entertainment’s gaming business, in ten or twenty years, as long as the current market share can still be maintained, it will still be the giant in the industry.

No company can last forever. Simon will not be blindly optimistic because of his current achievements. Moreover, he also hopes that the group's gaming business can go further.

If you want to do this, it is inevitable to reorganize your existing game business.

Because Simon and Tripp Hawkins, the head of the group's gaming business, have serious differences in business philosophy.

According to the group management structure, Nancy Brill is responsible for the game business. Tripp Hawkins, former EA founder, chairman and CEO, usually only needs to report to Nancy.

After Nancy successfully opened up the Daenerys entertainment game business, her work focus in the past two years has been on Blockbuster Entertainment and the Daenerys Entertainment peripheral product business that has become increasingly prosperous with DC Cinema Universe, "Jurassic Park", "Toy Story", and "The Lion King", which inevitably neglects the management of the game business department.

Trip Hawkins' business philosophy for EA is, on the one hand, to produce the top quality games, which is probably the principle that any game company adheres to, but on the other hand, to strictly control the game production and avoid uncontrollable risks in the game development process as much as possible.

It was this latter point that Simon couldn't recognize it.

Like movies, music, and books, electronic games are also part of the creative industry. Creativity is crucial for any game that wants to succeed.

Tripp Hawkins strictly controls game dominance and develops games completely based on purely commodity positions, which directly damages the creativity of the game development team.

Although it has maintained its position as a giant in the industry for a long time, because of the business philosophy inherited from the founder of Tripp Hawkins, EA always interferes with the development of games by its studios, resulting in many excellent studios gradually disappearing after being acquired by EA, leaving users with only sequels that are increasingly inclined to commercialize.

EA is therefore called the "industry cancer".

In comparison, Blizzard Entertainment, which attaches great importance to game quality, although the total number of games developed for decades can be counted by both hands, the market value of this company with a small number of games has been higher than that of EAs with a large number of game categories.

Simon has always attached great importance to the budget control of Daenerys Entertainment's film projects. However, if you want to choose between the quality of the movie and the budget progress, Simon usually chooses the former. In his heart, he is still a person who attaches more importance to the quality of the movie.

It is precisely because of this that Daenerys Entertainment has collaborated with overspending criminal James Cameron. Some projects in DC's Cinema Universe, two animated films by Pixar, and many other projects under Daenerys Entertainment are actually overspending compared to the initial expectations.

The quality of the movie is mediocre and can also be compensated through promotion and distribution and the company's own channel advantages.

Once the game quality is not satisfactory, there will be no number of users buying and spending. Therefore, in Simon's opinion, game quality is more important than movies.

So, under Simon's personal leadership, EA founder Tripp Hawkins left the company after receiving generous compensation. The brand new Daenerys Entertainment Games business unit was led by EA's former president Larry Probst, and still returned to Nancy Brill.

After the reorganization, the EA production department was separated from the distribution team, and the production team that EA originally directly affiliated was also reorganized into a studio model with strong independence.

In the future, the EA team will be mainly responsible for the game distribution of platforms such as PC and console. For each studio under its jurisdiction, the management team only has the power to supervise personnel and finance, and the creative leadership will be delegated to the heads of each studio as much as possible.

Simon gave a new operating concept that EA only needs high-quality products.

The creative team can overspend, delay tickets, push back and start over, and even cancel unsatisfactory works in the end, and only take out the fine game.

Of course, freedom has always been limited.

The creative team must be responsible for all its actions.

Simon can tolerate failure but will not tolerate continuous failures. The studio's behaviors such as overspending and delaying tickets must also be based on game quality considerations. If it is for other reasons, it will also be punished.

After completing the restructuring of the game department, Simon also personally finalized the acquisition plans of several game studios.

The most important one is from a studio called "Silicon and Neural Bonds" in Los Angeles. This studio has only been established for two years and has not achieved outstanding results. However, a real-time strategy game that the other party is developing recently is the focus of Simon's attention. The game name is "Warcraft".
Chapter completed!