The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 453 Busy June

Throughout June, Chen Jingxing was extremely busy.

"Inception" has entered post-production. Although Mo has a special effects team that is second to none in China and even close to the world's first, Chen Jingxing must also follow up from time to time.

After "Once Upon a Time on Earth" was officially established, because of the bold appointment of a new director, Chen Jingxing, as the producer, also could not be a hands-off shopkeeper, and he had to participate in almost every step of the preparatory process.

After all, director Wen Zhian was only responsible for the filming of "Black Mirror II: Prometheus" before, and that was a "science fiction sketch" with only four actors and almost all of it was literary drama.

From the perspective of the film and television industry, the sci-fi drama "Once Upon a Time on Earth: Prelude" is not a project of the same level.

Judging from the script, although the scene of "Once Upon a Time on Earth: Prelude" TV series is definitely not as big as the follow-up main movie, it also involves a lot of military, action and special effects plots, and the budget investment is estimated to be at least 2.4 million.

In addition, the follow-up films of "Once Upon a Time on Earth" are mainly directed by Chen Jingxing himself, so he must strictly control the prelude.

Such an important project was directly handed over to a new director, which made both inside and outside the company, whether it was the media or movie fans, a little puzzled and stunned. They could only lament that Chen Jingxing was so courageous. It is a tradition for DreamWorks to start and train newcomers.

In fact, this is why Chen Jingxing, Ning Hao, and Chen Sicheng have only a short-term friendship as classmates. Apart from Dreamworks' involvement in the investment of "Tang Detective", there is no close intersection-in fact, from "Tang Detective II" At the beginning, Chen Sicheng consciously reduced DreamWorks' investment share and excluded DreamWorks' power, so "Tang Detective III" DreamWorks only got less than [-]% of the investment share.

But Chen Jingxing and this group of people are still faintly classified as a big circle by the media or netizens, and the reason is that they feel more in tune with each other, and even feel a little like friends in the world.

They also talked happily at the party after the Modu Film Festival.

Because they actually have something in common.

Whether it is Bad Monkey or Huanxi Media, there is no artist brokerage business. Instead, they have gathered a group of directors and only signed contracts with directors.

Even for Chen Sicheng's Chengya Films, the only signed artists are Chen Sicheng, his wife, Liu Haoran and Dai Mo. In fact, Chengya doesn't do much in the artist brokerage business. Both Chen Sicheng and Dai Mo are directors.

This is very similar to DreamWorks, that is, they bet on the director, instead of doing or doing less artist business, only as the creator of resources.

Compared with the boldness of DreamWorks' supporting directors, Ning Hao, Xu Zheng and Chen Sicheng's supporting directors are actually more than that.

Wen Muye was a director who had only made short films before being signed by Ning Hao, and had never directed a full-length feature film. Ning Hao dared to entrust him with the project "The God of Medicine", which they have always liked very much.

The same is true for Dai Mo, who was signed by Chen Sicheng. This young man who was born as an actor and has never directed any film and television drama or even a short film before, Chen Sicheng is also willing to let him take charge of the TV series "Tang Detective", and together with him. The other three young directors of the TV series "Detective" are all fledgling directors.

Among them, Ke Wenli was even finalized by Chen Sicheng to make his first film "Manslaughter" immediately after directing the TV series "Tang Detective".

In terms of supporting young directors, Ning Hao and Chen Sicheng are more crazy and bold than Chen Jingxing. At any rate, Tian Xinye filmed two online dramas on Penguin Video before filming the drama version of "Signal". A box-office success movie like "You at the Same Table".

It's just a pity that they don't have Chen Jingxing's cheats, so they can't frantically feed resources like DreamWorks, so it doesn't seem to be as effective as DreamWorks' support.

Regardless of whether these people have any problems with their personal ethics or other aspects, it is undeniable that in Chen Jingxing's eyes, these people are indeed like-minded fellow travelers, and they are filmmakers with the same philosophy.

This is also the reason why Chen Jingxing readily accepted Ning Hao's invitation to attend the party after the seminar.

In addition to being busy with the preparations and casting of "Once Upon a Time on Earth", station C is finally going to be listed on NASDAQ. Before the Spring Festival 15 years ago, Huanshi.com, the largest institutional shareholder at that time, was in the D round of station C. The financing introduced DreamWorks. After this round of financing, DreamWorks at that time invested 5.5 million through the credit support of China Development Bank, and owned 24% of the equity of Station C in one fell swoop, becoming the major shareholder of Station C.

Even after listing, it will be diluted to 19% and it will still be the largest shareholder.

Station C CEO Zhao Jianbo strongly urged Chen Jingxing to attend the bell-ringing ceremony, and asked Chen Jingxing and Zhao Jianbo to ring together.

The root cause is that DreamWorks, as the leading high-quality content creation company in China and the No.1 animation company in China, not only has a lot of support for Station C in terms of business, but also has greater symbolic meaning.

The capital market is full of imagination, and DreamWorks' position as the largest shareholder in Station C can give Station C imagination, which is what Zhao Jianbo values ​​most.

A content creator with a different track, not as big as an Internet giant, who does not interfere with the company's operations, does not compete with Zhao Jianbo, the largest individual shareholder, and is an internationally renowned content creator with a high-quality image is simply the perfect major shareholder.

Moreover, Dreamworks, a high-quality shareholder, had also made up for the biggest shortcoming in Zhao Jianbo's eyes in recent years-cash flow.

At the critical intersection of the transformation of station C, when Zhao Jianbo launched the fourth round of financing, Huanshi.com did not want to continue to belong to half of the competitors on the same track in their eyes because of internal road disputes and the burning of money by streaming media. Stand up and burn money, but don't want to give up this position, let alone let penguins enter the arena and lure wolves into the house.

Therefore, DreamWorks was pushed to the front, and it happened that Chen Jingxing was also interested in entering the venue. He felt that this was a rare opportunity, and he gritted his teeth and won credit support from the CDB as a "Top 30 National Cultural Enterprises" and a "National Copyright Demonstration Unit".

In the end, Zhao Jianbo also gritted his teeth and chose DreamWorks among the two investors with unequal status, Penguin Group and DreamWorks, which surprised the outside world.

At that time, Zhao Jianbo’s personal ambition may have led him to make the decision to reject Penguin, but Zhao Jianbo himself was not without worries about DreamWorks. At that time, DreamWorks was a newly emerging film and television company that produced several high-quality content. Outside the company, they are not qualified funders at all.

Therefore, Zhao Jianbo's positioning of DreamWorks is to help him get rid of temporary difficulties. When the time comes, before or after the listing, other wealthy and powerful financial backers will be brought in. It will not be difficult to kick DreamWorks away, even DreamWorks itself. After grabbing the return on investment, they will retreat in spite of difficulties.

But Zhao Jianbo could have imagined that under his leadership, Station C would be able to survive the pain of transformation, and Nasdaq would ring the bell, but he never expected that the development of DreamWorks in the past few years has far exceeded his imagination.

According to the annual report for the fiscal year 17-18, DreamWorks’ revenue exceeded RMB 65 billion and its net profit was RMB 20.9 billion. This is based on the fact that it has invested in quite a few projects and its subsidiary Mexico has continued to expand.

The current free cash flow of DreamWorks has exceeded 40 billion.

"Spike II" and "The Martian" in the second half of last year alone, and "Kung Fu Panda" and "Operation Red Sea" during the Spring Festival this year, the four films turned DreamWorks into a money printing machine.

Even though DreamWorks is working hard to invest in heavier assets, such as theaters, until now it is still a freak that is light in assets, as if it is an Internet company, but does not need to burn money to enclose land like Internet companies.

Typical assets are small and high-yield.

Of course, all of this relies on the incomprehensible creative ability of DreamWorks, so that colleagues who want to learn can only sigh.

But Zhao Jianbo didn't want to learn from DreamWorks, nor was he a race track. What Zhao Jianbo saw was the money from DreamWorks.

He has a clear view on the future development of Station C. Listing is not the end. So far, Station C has not established a stable and high-growth profit model. In the future, burning money and losses are inevitable.

The loss has to be resisted, and there is no need for blood transfusions. In his eyes, Chen Jingxing is already a cash machine in the future.

Of course, Chen Jingxing is not unaware that he has become an ATM machine in Zhao Jianbo's eyes, but the asset of Station C is still very important to DreamWorks.

A very important part of DreamWorks' [-] billion market value is that it is the major shareholder of Station C.

Hong Kong stocks are dominated by institutional investors, and no rational institutional investor will pin their valuation imagination on an individual's talent.

The film and television copyright in the hands of DreamWorks, the strongest special effects technology and animation strength in Asia owned by Mo, the equity of Station C, and the investment in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain after the listing of DreamWorks, these are the skeletons that support the market value.

The eye-catching revenue results and net profit figures are the flesh and blood that fills the skeleton. The flesh and blood will collapse at any time because of Chen Jingxing's personal "exhaustion of talents", but the skeleton will not be dispelled by one or two people's abnormal performance. .

As the major shareholder of Station C, as a pillar to support the status of DreamWorks, Chen Jingxing naturally would not abandon it at will. Of course, this does not mean that Chen Jingxing is willing to act as a blood transfusion bag to make up for the losses of Station C.

The two people in the same bed and different dreams rang the bell for the NASDAQ listing at Station C. It may be because of Chen Jingxing's presence and ringing the bell, which not only attracted the reports and attention of many North American and Hollywood entertainment media, but also attracted the attention of many entertainment media in North America. Station C, which reversed its losses, did not break the market on the first day of listing.

The issue price was $11.5, and the closing price was $11.52, basically flat.

Zhao Jianbo was a little disappointed, but Chen Jingxing was relieved. Today, the halo of Chinese stocks has gradually dissipated, and it is already extremely lucky that they did not break the lead.

He still remembers how the largest barrage website in the country was listed twice and broke twice in the plane of his previous life.

The listing on station C is also equivalent to the phased results of a long-term investment of DreamWorks, so the Hong Kong stock market has once again responded, and the market value of DreamWorks has risen slightly.

And after Chen Jingxing returned from the United States, he brought the assembled creative team into the promotion work of "Matrix II" non-stop.

(End of this chapter)