Celia Miller came to Los Angeles this time mainly to discuss various details about forming the Wei Furniture Army with Simon.

The plan started at the beginning of the year, and the planning has been planned for more than half a year, and has been quietly implemented recently. The training base is mainly in Ukraine. Simon did not plan to select too many Ukrainians this time, but instead expanded the recruitment scope to Eastern Europe, North America, Africa, and Latin America, which is basically a global net.

There are many benefits to avoid soldiers coming from a relatively concentrated area.

Maintain loyalty to the greatest extent, reduce the possibility of infiltration, and eliminate the hidden dangers of gangs and gangs. All of this is the case.

The recruitment conditions are for 16-year-old teenage males, and orphans are preferred. After meeting the background check and physical examination test, they will first receive two years of cultural course training and preliminary preparation training.

This process is mainly to develop language skills, as well.

The most important thing is brainwashing.

Two years later, another group was eliminated, and after the age of 18, formal military training was started, and the time was still two years, 20 years old. In addition to being eliminated again in this process or a small number of advanced higher-level training, others began to join the Weijia Private Army and signed a formal employment contract, with a term of 20 years and retired at the age of 40.

Raising private troops is not a taboo in Western countries. The Rockefeller family had their own private troops back then, and many mercenary companies are actually private troops now.

Last year's Rwanda War had already made the existence of the U.S. furniture army an established fact.

This time, as long as the operation is done properly, even if it is exposed, there is no need to worry about anything. Simon did not intend to train tens of thousands of troops, nor did he think about cultivating thousands of private troops at one time. Instead, he still adopted the strategy of breaking the whole into pieces. Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, and Africa will put some of them.

Even if there are only one or two hundred people in a group, there are only one or two thousand people in ten years.

This cycle goes on and on.

The most important thing is to form a sustainable cultivation mechanism.

During this period, ordinary mercenaries recruited through other channels are enough to ensure that the Westeros family has a powerful violent machine when they need it.

After talking to Celia, it was already ten o'clock in the evening.

The guest room arranged for the woman was in the cliff villa next door. Simon personally sent Celia away from the Shell Villa and came to the master bedroom upstairs. Janet, who had never been able to stand up late, was already asleep. Jennifer was still sitting at the head of the bed while flipping through magazines while waiting for Simon.

After washing up, Simon went to bed and came to the middle of the two women. Janet, who felt Simon's breath, came over naturally, and hummed and pulled the man down as a pillow for himself.

The female assistant reached out and turned off the bedside lamp, lay down and walked over, and said softly to Simon: "The two little babies' rooms are ready, you can take a look after you wake up tomorrow."

Simon agreed and reached out to bring the female assistant over.

Jennifer put Simon's arm on her back and said, "Sophie really wants to bring two little babies here?"

"That's what I said, but it may be like you did in the past." Simon said, asking again: "Do you feel you can't take care of me?"

"No, I'm just worried about not taking good care of it."

"How is it possible? You have taken good care of all three little guys and taught them well. To be honest, it would be hard to say what Jenny and I would have taught our children without you. You know, neither of us has the talent to raise children."

Jennifer remembered that Janet had always snatched the little ducklings from Melbourne recently and chuckled, then said, "So you two can get together, they are all the same people at heart."

"Oh, what about you?"

"I, just like what I said in that book, big girl."

"To be precise, it's the big girl who warms the bed."

“Los Angeles is not cold.”

"It seems that you still haven't learned the essence of Chinese."

"Haha, it's too difficult and there's not so much time. By the way, Mel will start entering kindergarten next month. Do you think you want to add Chinese courses?"

Melbourne was born in December 1991 and was 4 years old at the end of the year. She is already at school.

In recent years, the female assistant has been personally in charge of opening schools for the little ones in Malibu. Private schools dedicated to senior children of the Westeros system have started operations last year and are planning to provide a full set of education from kindergarten to middle school. The little one will officially enroll next month.

In fact, starting with Melbourne's dentistry, both Veronica and Jennifer began to educate the little guys early, and Simon once considered completely family education for his children.

In the end, I gave up this idea.

When letting children enter school, learning knowledge is actually second-hand, mainly contacting the outside world and mastering various skills in dealing with people.

Because of Simon, the little guy has been receiving Chinese education in recent years. When he heard from the female assistant ask about it, Simon said: "No, joining Chinese courses may make other parents feel uncomfortable, but of course they still have to learn it. As before, they still hire a tutor for Mel."

Over the years, people around you have felt too many special things about Simon and have become accustomed to them.

However, for the outside world, even if it already has great fame, power and wealth, Simon will try not to show too much if necessary.

Chinese is one of them.

The two chatted in a low voice for a while, and noticed that Jennifer's little hands were slashing around his chest. Simon understood and smiled and took off Janet on the other side, reached out to her assistant's slender and soft body, and leaned into her ear and whispered: "You can do it yourself, don't wake Jennie."

As August begins, the North American summer season comes to the second half of the end.

A box office week spanning July and August, the most eye-catching thing is the box office comparison between two new films "Future Water World" and "The King of Fighting" on July 28.

The $175 million "Future Water World" was finally earned only $25.19 million in the first seven-day box office from July 28 to August 3, and unexpectedly lost to "The King of Fighting" produced by MGM.

The production cost of the action movie "King of Fighting" adapted from the video game "Mortal Kombat" is only US$18 million. At this stage, it is not even a medium cost and it also has a strong B-level film style. However, it is such a movie that unexpectedly won US$32.75 million in the first week of the painting, which exceeded the opening score of "Future Water World" as much as 7 million.

According to the step-sharing agreement signed by MGM and theaters, the studio was able to obtain 90% of the box office share after removing the basic expenses of theaters in the first week, which is actually about 75% of the total box office in the first week. Calculated, MGM recovered a total of US$25 million in production and promotion investment in the first week of painting.

This kind of success is not accidental.

Simon began to pay attention to fighting games when he developed the "Terror of the Turtle" electronic game earlier, and it was successful. Therefore, Daenerys Entertainment's game department has paid special attention to the production and distribution of such games over the years. With the advantage of the prophet, after completing the complete merger and acquisition of EA at the end of 1991, the game department took over Midway, a game production company in Chicago in early 1992.

This happens to be the developer of Mortal Kombat.

In 1992, the first part of "Mortal Kombat" was released, and 900,000 sets were sold in a year, which was not as high-selling series as Daenerys's gaming department, but it was also a good success.

However, this is actually far lower than the past history.

Simon doesn't remember how much "Mortal Kombat" sold in the original time and space, but it must be more than one million, and even later competed with the "Street Fighter" series.

After Simon personally followed, the game department became more attentive to the sequel, which took two years. Midway finally released "Mortal Kombat 2" three months ago, and Daenerys Entertainment also spared no effort to promote it. It was launched in the summer vacation in early May, and as of the release of "King of Fighting", in three months, the sales of "Mortal Kombat 2" have exceeded 500,000 sets.

The sales curve of electronic games is different from the box office of movies, but is more like music records, often still selling hot sales in one or two years.

Sales have exceeded 500,000 units in three months after it was launched. The game department predicts that the total sales of "Mortal Kombat 2" will reach about 3 million units in the next two years.

Another hit game has been born.

MGM's movie adaptation of this game is actually a linkage, and it has successfully benefited from the release of "Mortal Kombat 2", but it only invested a $7 million promotion budget, which achieved no less than the advertising investment of other films of $10 or 20 million.

Simon has always been very cautious about adapting movies into games.

Because there are too many cases of tragic failures, few successes are the ones.

Therefore, for the adaptation of "Mortal Kombat", he actually gave it to MGM with the idea of ​​diverting risks. Otherwise, Daenerys's New World Pictures could have produced it itself, but he did not expect that it would become a dark horse.

With a $32.75 million start, even if the subsequent trend of the popcorn video will not be too strong, the local $70 million will definitely not be able to escape, and it can also be sold overseas.

Compared with Warner Bros., who is deeply trapped in "The Future Water World" and Disney, who fell into the trap of "SWAT" in Stallone, it is just a "King of Fighting". MGM has a huge income this summer, not to mention "The Leader" with a budget of $12 million in the first week, both of which are standard to make a big fortune with a small profit.

For Daenerys, handing over the adaptation rights of "Mortal Kombat" to MGM is definitely a mistake. However, it can be considered as a waste of money and no one can escape from outsiders.

Like last year's "The Alien", with the release of the first week's box office results, MGM immediately announced the launch of the sequel to "The King of Fighting" and publicly stated that it would still adhere to the low- and medium-cost strategy.

In addition to the two new films, among the old films, the most important "Jurassic Park 2" this summer, was released in the 9th week and received another $8.07 million in box office. The single-week box office officially fell into the range of tens of millions of dollars. The cumulative box office of the film reached $381.76 million, continuing to steadily move towards the 400 million threshold.

"Apollo 13", which was released during the single-day holiday, has closed at $56.31 million in the first week, and the trend has been quite stable in recent times.

In the fifth week of the release from July 28 to August 3, "Apollo 13" fell by 29% in a single week, and it closed at another $12.78 million, with a cumulative box office of $143.57 million. Up to now, it can be roughly confirmed that "Apollo 13"'s local box office is between $170 million and $180 million.

"Anti-Witness 3", which was completely painted in June, ended up with a local box office of US$176 million, and the local box office of "Apollo 13" is basically the same as this big comedy in the Easter period.

If there were other films sold by studios on the annual box office list last year, Daenerys Entertainment has completely shown its dominant attitude since 1995.

Up to now, four movies that have reached the box office of 100 million yuan, "Jurassic Park 2", "This Man from Earth", "Anti-Wisdom 3" and "Apollo 13" all come from Daenerys Entertainment, and this time they are all sole proprietorship projects that are not foreign cooperation.

In addition to Daenerys, although films such as "Die Hard 3" and "The Elf" temporarily entered the top ten of the annual list, these movies combined in the box office are not as good as one of "Jurassic Park 2". This situation is just like Simon's memory many years later, other studios' movies that rushed into the top ten are not as good as those of the Dibao family's "Star Wars" or "Avengers".

The oligarchy was completely formed.

On August 4, a new box office week will be launched in the second half of the summer season.

Just like MGM's release strategy, in order to avoid a series of blockbusters in the early stage of the summer season, many other studio projects were placed in this period.

On this day, a total of 4 movies with more than 1,000 screens were released, namely "Dangerous Game" produced by Disney, "The Magic of Love" produced by Julia Roberts produced by Warner Bros., "The Warrior of Time" produced by Denzel Washington, and the low-cost family comedy "The Cursed Lawn" produced by Fox.

The production cost of the four new films is no more than US$30 million. Although it inevitably impacted a number of old films after it was released, no hits appeared.

The best-selling Julia Roberts love movie "The Magic of Love" in the first week had a box office of only $16.61 million in seven days. "The King of Fighting", which opened the first week, fell by 54% in the next week, and the expected deep drop was ranked second on the list with $15.21 million, with a cumulative box office of $47.96 million in both weeks.

Warner Bros.'s "Future Water World" fell by 43% the next week, and closed at another $14.35 million, with a cumulative box office of $39.54 million. It is expected that the total box office of about $60 million is about $20 million lower than in history.

Friday, August 11.

Another box office week has begun, with the number of new films that have been released to two, namely "Internet Shock" produced by MGM and "Walk in the Clouds" produced by Fox.

Simon set off at noon that day to Europe and accompanied Sophia to give birth.

The direct flight from Los Angeles to Rome reaches 10,000 kilometers, which takes about 12 hours. It is expected to arrive at the destination at 9 am tomorrow local time.

Girl A is still with her.

In the front cabin of Boeing 767, after the plane was stable, Alison handed over some documents he had just received before leaving to Simon.

This is a stack of real estate materials.

Girl A brief introduction, this batch of properties was mainly collected from Asia by the private real estate agency team of the Westeros family.

It's still Simon's daily routine of buying a house.

I heard that there were several properties from South Korea, Simon opened them directly to find the target. There were three properties in the Yongsan District, downtown Seoul, South Korea, which is like the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York.

Simon looked through the information in his hand and thought of something else.

In recent years, I have forgotten South Korea.

As one of the four Asian dragons, South Korea will have direct competition with the Westeros system in many industries in the future, such as the electronics industry, game industry, and even movies and music fields. If it cannot be controlled, it is best to suppress it, and the earlier it is necessary to make the layout, the better.

However, it's not too late now.

To be precise, the most suitable time to layout in South Korea should be 1997.
Chapter completed!