Chapter 683 The next target HBO (12,000 daily changes~)
It has not been long since Wu Jianye left North America.
The release date of "Jurassic Park" has been determined. It will be released simultaneously all over the world except China on June 11!
During the movie's release, Wu Jianye will return to China, and during this period, he will completely determine the development direction of Phantom Media. Only in this way can he feel at ease before leaving!
Linda looked at Wu Jianye in surprise. In her opinion, the development of Phantom Media has been fast enough. Ever since Wu Jianye arrived in North America, Phantom Entertainment has been like a plane with wings, soaring into the sky.
From a simple production company at the beginning, it has developed into the leading media group in North America. This is something that many companies cannot accomplish in their lifetime.
Now Wu Jianye actually said that the acquisition of ABC TV network is just the beginning, and there are bigger plans later?
"What's your plan?" Linda no longer dared to guess Wu Jianye's follow-up plan at this time.
"Although Phantom Media now has its own TV network, it is still not perfect enough. Phantom Entertainment still lacks a paid channel with sufficient influence!" Wu Jianye directly told Linda his plan.
Wu Jianye's plan made Linda a little confused. It was not that his plan was too big, but that in Linda's opinion, this plan was a bit too important. Now in North America, public channels are the only TV industry.
As for premium channels, although there are already TV channels such as HBO, MTV, and Showtime, their operating conditions have not been very good.
"The development of paid channels is not very good now, and we already have paid channels like ESPN..." Linda expressed her concerns.
Wu Jianye smiled and nodded. For Linda, what he saw was now, or even the development in two or three years. But Wu Jianye was different. The advantage of rebirth allowed him to know that ten years later, twenty years later
After that, the development situation thirty years later.
Now it seems that North American TV networks are still dominated by the three major TV stations, but in the future, with the rise of pay TV stations such as HBO, they will still be the ones who really make money and have influence.
For example, in later generations, HBO has more than 100 million paying users worldwide, and more than 50 million paying users in North America!
It can be said that in the future, pay channels will be the leaders in the global TV industry!
"ESPN is different. As a sports channel, its achievements are unquestionable. However, what we want to do is not just a sports channel, but a full range of paid channels!"
"The core business of Phantom Media is movies. If we have our own paid channel, we can truly complete our own internal ecological closed-loop chain!" Wu Jianye said.
The reason why I talked so much with Linda is because Linda will be the helmsman of Phantom Media for a long time in the future. Wu Jianye's own ideals are destined to prevent him from staying in the United States for a long time.
If it weren't for having to deal with the situation in China last year, Wu Jianye might not even come to North America to direct a movie this time. As he told Wu Tianming and others, the roots of their movies are in China, and Wu Jianye
The film roots of Ye are also in China!
However, unlike Wu Tianming and others, Wu Jianye can actually mix well anywhere.
But now that Wu Jianye has a chance to be reborn, he will naturally do something he thinks is interesting and meaningful.
His roots are different from those of Wu Tianming and others. No matter how successful and good Wu Tianming and others are, they are only in China. What about Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and others?
Without the emergence of Wu Jianye, they would be regarded as the best directors in China in the next twenty years, but their international influence is still limited, and they still have not truly come out with Chinese films.
When Wu Jianye was reborn, China's film industry was booming, but what could be done?
It’s still a mess inside, and the outside world still has nothing to do with Chinese movies!
What Wu Jianye wants to do is to let Chinese filmmakers see the outside world in advance, so that Chinese films can truly go global!
What Wu Jianye wants to do is to be the towering tree of Chinese movies, while others see the world and go to the world under his protection!
Since it was destined to return to China, Wu Jianye naturally had to arrange things in the United States as much as possible. As the head of Linda, Phantom Media, Wu Jianye naturally had more tolerance for her.
In Wu Jianye's plan, Phantom Media's core business should be movies, at least in the next thirty years, and everything else will serve Phantom Pictures and Marvel Pictures.
"I can understand this, but it is not easy to win an influential paid channel now, especially now that Phantom Media has just been established and has become a thorn in the side of several other media groups.
Nail, it’s not easy to win a pay channel from them!” Linda also had her own worries.
Now that Phantom Media has been established, its competitors have changed from the first few major production companies to international media groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, and News Corporation. In Linda's view, the current expansion of Phantom Media has almost reached its peak.
, you can definitely wait a while before expanding on your own.
Although mergers and acquisitions and expansion are powerful tools to expand the group's influence, they may also become unsettling factors that can destroy the city!
Wu Jianye said: "We can't stop moving forward just because we have opponents. There are always opponents. There is a saying in China that one force can defeat ten societies. As long as we are strong enough, we don't have to worry about the machinations of our opponents."
Got it!"
Seeing Wu Jianye being so determined, Linda had to ask: "Then which premium channel is your acquisition target?"
Linda knew Wu Jianye quite well. Now that Wu Jianye is so determined to continue to expand, it means that he already has a target to acquire. Since the path of expansion is unavoidable, he has no choice but to follow
Wu Jianye's footsteps continued to move forward.
Fortunately, Wu Jianye has never made any mistakes so far!
Wu Jianye then showed a satisfied smile: "HBO!"
The influence of HBO in the future has just been discussed. When Wu Jianye was reborn, the only one that could compete with HBO overseas was Netflix. However, Netflix has not yet been established, and Wu Jianye has no time to wait for him.
If it is established, then we have no choice but to win over HBO!
Linda smiled bitterly: "You are posing a problem for me. HBO is a cable television station owned by Time Warner. Even if Time Warner does not attach much importance to this TV station now, it is still very difficult to acquire them.
!”
Wu Jianye still smiled and said: "It is because Time Warner does not value HBO now that it is our best opportunity to take action. The current North American TV market does not have high recognition of paid channels. You can
Let’s just let it out and say that Phantom Media is extremely optimistic about the future development prospects of paid channels, and at the same time, in order to make up for ABC’s shortcomings in paid channels, it is willing to acquire HBO at a high price. In this case, Time Warner will not be without ideas!”
Linda was stunned for a moment and asked: "Aren't we making our acquisition more difficult?"
Wu Jianye had no choice but to continue explaining: "Let me ask you, if no one agrees with pay channels now, but we say that pay channels are the future development direction of the TV industry, what will these people think of us?"
"Idiot!" Linda said directly, but after saying that, she felt something was wrong and seemed a little embarrassed.
Wu Jianye laughed, and did not care about Linda's attitude, and continued: "Then what if this idiot also said that he would invest a lot of money to prepare for this project?"
Only then did Linda seriously think about Wu Jianye's statement.
After a long time, Linda's eyes slowly glowed and she said: "If I were our opponent, I would sell this hot potato to my opponent at a high price so that he can focus more on it.
aspect, and then use it to consume the other party's cash flow..."
Wu Jianye nodded, "This is just the outline of a plan. If you want to do it well and make the other party believe that you are a fool, and at the same time make the other party willing to jump into this trap, this is the task I leave you.
, I hope you can complete this task before "Jurassic Park" is released!"
Although Linda often doubts Wu Jianye's decisions, one advantage is that as long as Wu Jianye decides to do something, she will conscientiously complete the tasks assigned by Wu Jianye.
This is also the reason why Wu Jianye always lets Linda be his spokesperson in North America!
"I understand, I will handle this matter!" Linda said, but then Linda also revealed an important problem in completing this acquisition: "If you want to acquire HBO, you will have to spend a lot of money.
Cash, now the group has used a large part of the cash to acquire the ABC TV network, and now the group only has US$1.5 billion in liquidity left. If we acquire HBO again, in terms of funds..."
Wu Jianye waved his hand and said: "Funding is not a problem. Hasn't the group already acquired the ABC TV Network? By then, we can use the ABC TV Network as collateral to get bank loans!"
Phantom is different from Wu Jianye's other industries. It has the most complex equity distribution among all Wu Jianye's industries. Although compared with other companies, it can be considered a clean slate...
Since Wu Jianye will not stay in North America for a long time, he cannot inject unlimited capital into Phantom. Although this will dilute the shares of other shareholders, it will also easily prevent these people from having a greater sense of belonging to the group.
Therefore, in the future development of Phantom Media, Wu Jianye will make more use of bank loans!
Linda thought for a moment and said: "If this is the case, the company's loan ratio will reach an alarming level. Have you ever thought about the consequences?"
Phantom Media's current loans are as high as 6.2 billion U.S. dollars, and the annual interest alone is nearly 220 million U.S. dollars. Although these interests are not a large amount for Phantom, if the principal to be repaid is added, for Phantom
The pressure is already quite high.
Now if a loan is required to acquire HBO, the loan that Phantom will have to repay every year will be a very astonishing figure!
Wu Jianye is not worried about this. ABC's profit last year was close to 1 billion US dollars, and Phantom's profit last year was even more astonishing. Coupled with the income of several other subsidiaries, these loans are not of much significance to Phantom Media.
Not a huge number.
"Okay, since you have a comprehensive plan, I will handle this matter personally!" Seeing that Wu Jianye had considered all the issues clearly, Linda naturally followed Wu Jianye's instructions.
Asked to do it!
The meeting between the two lasted for a very long time, from about nine o'clock in the morning to now after three o'clock in the afternoon.
But I still haven't finished what I want to say.
"This year's Academy Awards will be held soon. Will you attend then?"
This year's Academy Awards have announced the time and location, and will be held on March 25 this year at the Sacred Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles.
As a film that was shortlisted for five nominations and was the highest-grossing film last year, "The Last Days" naturally attracted much attention!
Although Wu Jianye knew that the honor of best picture would not be with "The Love of Ghosts", but as the director of this movie, Wu Jianye still had to cheer for others.
"Come on, just remember to remind me when the time comes!" Wu Jianye said.
This year, Phantom Entertainment's two films, "The Last Day", were nominated for five awards, and "Dances with Wolves" was Phantom's most nominated film for the Academy Awards this year. "Dances with Wolves" was nominated in total.
Won 12 awards!
Phantom Entertainment even spent 15 million in public relations expenses for the movie "Dances with Wolves" this year. In addition to 10 million in the competition for the best picture, the public relations expenses for other awards were related to
shared among the nominated persons.
In fact, Wu Jianye did not gain anything at this Oscar. The Best Original Screenplay nominated for the movie "The Last Days" was jointly nominated by Wu Jianye and the original screenwriter Bruce Robin!
At the same time, Phantom Entertainment also has a movie that was shortlisted for this year's Academy Awards. However, this movie was not produced by Phantom, but the Chinese film "Ju Dou" which was invested and distributed by Phantom!
Lao Mouzi finally started his own journey to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but Wu Jianye knew that for Lao Mouzi, this road was destined to be a journey without a successful end.
Of course, Phantom will still do the public relations it needs to do, but the likelihood of success for "Ju Dou" is no less difficult than the difficulty of winning Best Picture for "The Last Days!"
But it’s still February, and Lao Mouzi won’t come to Los Angeles until mid-March!
After saying the last thing, the conversation between the two ended.
Linda finally stood up and said goodbye. When Linda left the manor, Wu Jianye said to Lauren Donnell who was waiting outside: "The three young people I asked you to date and Aniston have all made appointments.
?"
Lauren Donnell immediately replied: "We have made an appointment. Those three young people are scheduled to meet tomorrow morning, and Aniston is scheduled to meet tomorrow night!"