Top of the Great Era

Chapter 1439 Economic crisis is an advantage

Among the six Hollywood giants, Sony Entertainment is the weakest in terms of model and business.

According to the traditional Hollywood thinking, investing in movies is very risky, so it is necessary to find investors to share the risks together, that is, a platter investment plan.

But that's not enough. The more a company's performance is affected by the box office, the more unstable its performance will be.Public companies in particular don't like this.

In order to reduce the performance impact caused by the ups and downs of the movie box office, film companies have turned to TV giants in the past few years to reduce the investment risk of the film business through the "movie content + TV channel" model.

But Sony is a foreign company, so it is a bit troublesome, and there are great restrictions on doing TV business.

This also led to the fact that Sony Entertainment's ability to withstand pressure is not too strong, and life is very difficult under the background of the economic crisis.

Coincidentally, Ziwei Star Global is very similar to Sony Entertainment in terms of structure. The business structure of both parties is very weak, and Sun Zhengyi is in the middle to support it, so it is easy to promote the cooperation strategy of "uniting Wu against Cao".

Zhou Buqi intends to start from this angle and ask Sun Zhengyi for help to see if he can reach a cooperation with Sony Entertainment in terms of copyright!

In the previous life, after Disney acquired Marvel, they had a lot of money and began to buy back the copyrights of superhero characters who had been living outside in the past few years.

But not fast enough.

Most of the equity has been withdrawn, leaving "Spider-Man" in the hands of Sony Pictures and "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" in the hands of [-]th Century Fox.

Then, "Iron Man 2" was released!
As soon as this film was released, it completely changed the market roles of DC and Marvel. Marvel became the most popular comic book company, and the market voice became louder and louder.

Sony Pictures moved upon hearing the news, and immediately started the "Spider-Man 4" project.Later, after some internal argumentation, I felt that the reputation of "Spider-Man 07" released in 3 was too bad, which disappointed a large part of the audience.If this series continues, I am afraid it will be thankless.

How about restarting the "Spider-Man" trilogy!

This idea was pushed forward, and Sony Pictures then launched the "Amazing Spider-Man" trilogy.

It will take at least 6-8 years to complete the filming of these trilogy.

At that time, Marvel's "Avengers" series had long been popular all over the world and became the most popular superhero movie ever, even changing the production philosophy of Hollywood movies in the past century.

It will be very difficult to take back the cash cow of "Spider-Man".

However, difficult does not mean impossible.

Under Disney's hard pursuit, Sony Entertainment Lions opened their mouths, saying that 100 billion US dollars can redeem the copyright of "Spider-Man"!
Of course Disney disagrees, they only spent $42.5 billion to acquire Marvel.

Later, under the streaming media transformation strategy, Disney wanted to make efforts in the content industry, and acquired 714th Century Fox for US$[-] billion, and finally successfully recovered the copyrights of "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four".

Zhou Buqi wants to take this opportunity to see if it can be done once and for all.

Now, the market is turbulent, and Disney is under pressure from the stock price, and clarifies that it has no idea of ​​​​acquiring Marvel.But they are still in contact with Marvel in private.

If you want to compete with Disney and hold Marvel in your own hands, the copyright of "Spider-Man" is the biggest attraction.

"Iron Man" is only a second-rate character in Marvel comics. The only Marvel superhero who is truly loved by comic fans across the United States and can compete with "Superman" and "Batman" is "Spiderman"!
For Marvel's board of directors composed of cartoonists, the biggest expectation is to be able to take back all the copyrights of "Spider-Man".

The next day, Zhou Buqi took his family out to sea and went to Catalina Island near Los Angeles.

The yacht was borrowed from Masayoshi Son.

Brand new!
It is more than 140 meters long. The hull design and interior decoration are full of simple and low-key Japanese aesthetics, but there is no lack of luxury and delicacy.It's just that the color is a bit dull and monotonous, not bright and lively enough, and the atmosphere of art is very strong.

There are too many super-rich people in California. From time to time, there will be super-yachts going out to sea. Tourists in this area are used to it.

Zhou Buqi was wearing shorts, lying on a deck chair on the deck, admiring the graceful figures of the girls in bikinis, while talking on the phone with Sun Zhengyi.

"How is it? MGM, is it going to work?"

"almost."

"Damn! What do you mean soon? I managed to get the creditor right, so don't make any mistakes on the equity side."

Zhou Buqi complained angrily.

Sun Zhengyi laughed, "No, you can rest assured, but the handling fee is a little higher."

The MGM deal is now largely two-way.

First, Ziwei Star Global bought all of MGM's debt worth US$26.5 billion at a price of US$37 billion.The matter has been settled.The next step is to force MGM to go bankrupt, to restructure, and to forcibly complete the debt-to-equity swap.

If you really want to do this, it will be laborious.

It is not bad to be able to complete the entire process in one or two years.

There is another way, which is to deal directly with the equity party and buy the negative equity in their hands-the shares of MGM at a price of 0 yuan.With the equity in the left hand and the debt in the right hand, MGM has completely taken over.

This path is beneficial to all parties.

First of all, the process is simple, and it may be completed within 3 months.

In addition, there is less business consumption, and there is no need to spend too much money to hire investment banks, consultants, accountants and lawyers for services.The third is to be able to help MGM shareholders to produce a shining performance under the economic crisis.

Sony holds a 20% stake in MGM. Logically speaking, Sony will bear MGM's $20 million in debt because of this 7.4% stake.

Being able to get rid of the burden without spending a penny is of course happy to see it.

What worries them is the insatiable greed of the capitalists. Seeing that Ziweixing Universal is almost completing the MGM case, they want to take advantage of it and take advantage of it.

Sure enough, when he heard the handling fee, Zhou Buqi's head became dizzy, "Handling fee? What kind of handling fee?"

Sun Zhengyi coughed lightly, "It's the transaction cost of equity transfer."

Zhou Buqi said: "Don't come here to set up a name, don't you just have to spend a fortune to convince the shareholders of MGM? Damn! I was worried that I would be ripped off, did it really happen?"

Sun Zhengyi said: "There are two hedge funds among the main shareholders of MGM. It is more troublesome to operate. But the cost is not big, it will not exceed 2 million U.S. dollars."

"How can there be such a business?" Zhou Buqi didn't seem very happy, "I was going on vacation on your yacht, and I'm not in the mood anymore."

Sun Zhengyi comforted him, "It's okay, I can lend you the yacht for as long as it takes. I have already re-ordered one, so there is no rush."

Zhou Buqi felt much better, and sighed, "Then let's forget about it, anyway, I just have one request, the total cost of the MGM case should not exceed 30 billion US dollars."

"It's not that much, it won't exceed 5000 million U.S. dollars, mainly because of the handling fee." Sun Zhengyi smiled, "By the way, I told you before that Sony Entertainment has a request and hopes that Ziweixing Universal's DVD will be released. able to support their Blu-ray HD standard."

Zhou Buqi said angrily: "Obviously Ziwei Star Global helped them get rid of their debt burden, and the result is good. They need to give money and cooperate."

"Blu-ray DVD is indeed better than HD-DVD. I think we can still agree to it. Sign a three-year contract first. Sony will have a large subsidy."

"Oh? Subsidy money?"

"Yes, in the past few years, the Sony standard and the HD standard launched by Toshiba and Microsoft have been vying for the market, mainly relying on market subsidies. For example, Warner, their film and television works are promoted on Blu-ray DVD, and the annual subsidy of this business alone can get more than $500 million.”

"Oh..." Zhou Buqi curled his lips. After seeing the big wind and waves burning money on the Internet, he felt that the annual subsidy of 500 million US dollars was really not worth mentioning. Question. There is one thing that you have to discuss in person, you tell them that Ziwei Star Global intends to acquire Marvel."

Sun Zhengyi didn't quite understand, "What's the matter?"

Zhou Buqi hummed: "The most popular superhero in Marvel is Spider-Man, but the film and television copyright of Spider-Man is in the hands of Sony!"

"Uh...isn't this difficult?"

Sun Zhengyi also knows the "Spider-Man" movie series, which really opened an era and created a precedent for the trilogy of superhero movies.

Zhou Buqi said firmly: "We must take back this copyright! Mr. Sun, this is not a business, but a strategy!"

Sun Zhengyi felt very embarrassed, "I don't think this can be done."

Zhou Buqi also knew that it would be very difficult to make this happen, but he couldn't show it, and said lightly: "What can't be done? The word of mouth of "Spider-Man 3" is over, they have given this brand to It's ruined, and it's impossible to make a sequel. Besides, it's an economic crisis, and Sony can't survive, let alone Sony Entertainment under Sony? What they need now is cash flow to solve their difficulties!"

This was his casual mention, but what he didn't know was that such a strategy hit the nail on the head!
Sony Entertainment is short on money!
Indeed, it also made an article on the copyright of "Spider-Man".

In the previous life, after Disney successfully acquired Marvel in 09, it took back the copyrights of superheroes such as Captain America, Thor, Humanoid, and Black Panther.

Spider-Man's offer was too high to make the trip.

However, Sony Entertainment is also short of money, what should I do?
Sony Entertainment split up the rights and interests of "Spider-Man film and television adaptation rights". In 09, it first sold the TV adaptation rights to Disney, and then sold all the product rights back to Marvel two years later.

In other words, no matter how good the "Spider-Man" movie is, the Spider-Man toys and all derivative copyrights will belong to Disney.

Later, Sony licensed the copyright of "Spider-Man" to Marvel for free, and the two parties cooperated in the development.Marvel's team is responsible for the development of the Spider-Man series of movies, and Sony takes 95% of the box office profits and Marvel gets 5%.But all the benefits generated by Spider-Man peripherals belong to Disney Marvel.

Because of the economic crisis, the equity transactions in the past few years have brought huge economic losses to Sony Entertainment.

But there is no way, the living can't let the bird suffocate!
Right now they are short of money, whoever gives the money is the master!
An economic crisis is one to take advantage of.

(End of this chapter)