19RU, New Year's Day, Los Angeles.

Chen Chong woke up from his dream. He opened his eyes, sat up suddenly, and looked at the room with the shimmer light transmitted from the window, then rubbed his head hard, and let out a long breath.

It has been a year since I traveled through time...

There seemed to be countless thoughts in my head, but there seemed to be no thoughts. I hugged the soft quilt and sat blankly for a while. Chen Chong came to his senses and looked at the bedside time. It was 5:00 in the morning, which was more than an hour earlier than usual.

Although this is the best time to sleep, since I woke up, Chen Chong didn't plan to sleep anymore. He just leaned against the head of the bed, silently planning on how to manage the new year in the dark.

After traveling through time, I worked hard for a whole year. All the purposes are to lay the foundation for the film company. Now I have money, some people, companies, market information consulting and audience comments and feedback media. There is only one missing, that is, distribution and screening channels.

Chen Chong did not intend to build cinema chains in Hong Kong and Taiwan. These two places have a small market and fierce competition. He used huge amounts of money to break in. If one is not good, it would destroy the fragile movie living environment in the two places and would not be worth the loss.

If you build a theater chain in the United States, the financial pressure will be very high, and it is meaningless. Your company is too small and has insufficient production, so you can't support it. Moreover, the market is in the territory of the United States, so you must consider their movie viewing tastes and habits when making movies. In this way, it is equivalent to a sheep entering the tiger's mouth and sending yourself to Hollywood alive.

So after thinking about it, Chen Chong decided not to develop cinemas for the time being, but instead focused on the secondary film market.

Around the RU year, the main screening window for movies was the cinema, followed by the TV station, and the videotape was in full swing at this time.

When VCD swept across China and Southeast Asia, it was full of momentum, but it could not open up the North American market at all, because almost every family had a video recorder. Conservatively, there were at least 200 million video recorders in North America. This incident left a deep impression on Chen Chong. Sony invented the Tam recorder as early as 1975, and Cl also invented the VP recorder in 1977. So he had always subconsciously believed that in North America, video recorders had entered thousands of households.

It was not until October that Shen Chong came to the United States and accidentally saw a news that Universal and Disney jointly sued Sony in the District Court of Central District, California, that the consumer used a video recorder to record a film that they enjoyed copyright without permission, which constituted copyright infringement. The two film companies demanded compensation and prohibited the production and sale of such video recorders.

This news surprised Chen Chong. In later generations, everyone knows that videotape or D is the source of revenue for a movie, which can provide more profits than box office. Global and Disney sued video camera manufacturers. What is going to do?

So he immediately commissioned A Nelson to conduct a market survey, and the feedback report surprised him - in 1979, fewer families in the United States had video recorders, and many people had never heard of this product.

This situation made Chen Chong see an opportunity to take advantage of.

After the popularity of video recorders, the video tape market quickly surpassed the box office and became the second largest source of film revenue after TV stations. Chen Chong clearly remembers that in the early 21st century, the annual revenue of video tape and D reached more than $1 billion, while the total box office of North American movies during the same period was only more than $9 billion.

Moreover, according to the survey, the production cost per box of videotape is no more than US$4. If it is rental, the rent is US$5. If it is sales, the price is around US$, and the gross profit is amazing.

Video tapes, software and games are similar, and they are both content-based products. If that's the case, why not sell them in software chain stores?

After thousands of chain stores have opened, occupying most of the video tape distribution market. With strong bargaining power, you can do nothing like the Apple app store in the 21st century, wait for the share of the money and suck blood on several major Hollywood film companies. It's so cool.

In the next twenty years, videotapes will be the only secondary film screening window in addition to TV stations. With chain stores, Hong Kong movies can directly enter the North American videotape market. Anyway, videotapes are low in cost and rental and sale are also a long-term business. There is no need to pay special attention to the tastes and habits of the audience. Hong Kong is the second largest film production site in the world after Hollywood, and there is absolutely no shortage of quantity. At that time, thousands of Hong Kong movies will be created to go to the United States and subtly cultivate Hong Kong film enthusiasts like Tarantino in North America to prepare for the future entry into the North American box office market.

The plan is perfect, but there are two difficulties in operation. One is that you need to expand the chain store outlets as quickly as possible, and the other is that you must have at least a certain number of movie libraries.

Shen Chong's software chain stores have opened more than 0, covering major cities in the United States, but this number is far from enough. The American videotape rental giant Blockbuster Uu, has many RUUU retail stores with annual revenue of more than billions of US dollars. That is a real giant. Only by building such a huge network can you have the ability to influence the market.

However, the real estate market in the United States is very mature, and the rents for opening thousands of retail chains are not small. In this regard, we have to plan slowly.

Movie library is equally important. Only with channels and no content can you be slaughtered by Hollywood. Only when you have certain content resources in your hands can you check and balance Hollywood.

After the Golden Horse Awards, Shen Chong bought all his movies from Huang Zhuohan of First Pictures. This is based on this consideration. Not only the film library of First Pictures, but also all Hong Kong film companies, including Jiahe and Shaw Brothers, he was eyeing them. Since even Hollywood did not see the huge prospects of the video tape market at this time, I believe that Hong Kong film companies are even more ignorant and can take advantage of the situation and buy copyrights at a low price.

However, in the current form, the main function of Hong Kong films is to open up a video tape distribution network in Southeast Asia. If you want to open up the situation in the United States, you must have the support of Hollywood film library. In this regard, Shen Chong's eyes naturally focused on the soon-to-be-unlucked United States film company NITPDARTI.

United Film Company was founded in 1919 by Hollywood big stars such as Chaplin, Van Punk, Bickford, Griffith, etc., and later gradually developed into one of the eight major film companies in Hollywood. However, it has always been the weakest among the eight major film companies. It has no set of its own and the smallest distribution network.

In 19RU, Lianmei invested 400,000 US dollars to film the "disaster blockbuster" "Gate of Heaven". The box office of this movie failed miserably, causing the company to go bankrupt directly. Shen Chong only needs to buy it at that time.

Although Lianmei is the weakest among the eight major film companies, there are many classic and good movies in the Curtain, such as Chaplin's "Gold Rush", "Modern Times", "The Great Dictator", Jack Nicholson's "Flying Over the Crazy Asylum", and Stallone's "Rocky". Of course, the most valuable and famous ones are the ever-lasting "UU" series.

However, Lianmei only has seven or eight hundred movies. Its library is still a bit lacking confidence. In fact, Chen Chong wants to buy MGM's library. MGM has more than 3,000 movies and TV series, and it has a high value, such as "The Wizard of Oz", "The Soul Broken Blue Bridge", "Gone with the Wind", "Cat and the Mouse", etc., which are all immortal masterpieces.

MGM declined as early as the 1960s and changed hands several times. In 1970, it was bought by American gambling tycoon Kirk Kerkellen. Kelcorian was unwilling to run the film industry. He sold all the props and clothing that MGM had accumulated for many years, and then went to Las Vegas to open a casino and hotel...

During his heyday, MGM could produce more than 50 movies every year. In the 1970s, he only produced four or five movies every year, and there was no big production. All of them were low-cost movies worth millions of dollars, and they were just surviving.

However, the lean camel is bigger than a horse. As the former king of Hollywood, MGM is lonely, but the classic movies in its library are very valuable. For example, "Gone with the Wind", the TV station has to pay a screening fee of $1.75 million for every screening of it, which is a long-term and stable money tree. So if you want to buy its library, you can't even talk about it without $300 million to get the foundation.

Chen Chong doesn’t have that much money yet, so he can only settle for the second best. He is going to get Lianmei first, and then set up some independent production companies to support the storefront. As for MGM, it will be a garbage boss anyway, and it will be finished sooner or later.

While thinking, time passed quickly. Before I knew it, it was dawn and the clock's hand also pointed to six o'clock in the morning.

Chen Chong looked at the time, lifted the quilt, turned over and got out of bed, after washing, put on his clothes, walked downstairs lightly, came to the kitchen, planning to cook porridge and make breakfast.

He washed the rice and put it in the rice cooker. When he turned around, he saw Lily walking down the stairs in a sportswear.

"Going to run?" Chen Chong greeted her and said, "Go to run?"

"Yes, let's go together." Lily stood in front of the stairs, made a few very soft stretches, and said, "You stay in the house all day long and have more exercise."

Chen Chong shook his head and said, "You go by yourself. There are guests here. I, the master, should prepare breakfast."

Lily sneered and said, "Come on, your cooking skills can also be eaten with the things you make? Let's go run together first, and I'll do it when I come back later."

"Hey, at least you can live in my house. Would you please give me some face?"

"Okay." Lily said with a smile: "Cousin, the porridge you cooked is pretty good, but it is not the way for Chinese people to treat guests."

Chen Chong was holding a spatula and was about to retort, but he looked up and saw Brigitte Lin wearing a sportswear that was exactly the same as Lily. He walked down. The two stood together, like spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums, which was so beautiful that he was stunned.

"Mr. Chen."
Chapter completed!