Rebirth of England.

Chapter 737 Copyright Recovery
Although Barron did not directly ask John Smith what he was going to do, he believed that he was not so stupid as to find someone to kill Batlan Rosario, the criminal who was instructed to kill the hospital nurse by injecting an overdose of drugs, directly in the Maryland prison.

This method seems to be the most direct. After all, once Batlán Rosario dies, the prosecution will not be able to link the case to John Smith.

But at the same time, this approach would also be seen as a provocation to the prosecution. And although it is not impossible to carry out murder in a heavily guarded prison, it would require instructing others to do this dirty work. At that time, the prosecution would also easily continue to track down the murderer of Batlán Rosario...

And at the beginning, John Smith was not that stupid. He did not go directly to find Batran Rosario to kill him. Given his class, it was not easy for him to contact such a person.

At that time, he found Batlán Rosario through a broker who was like a "middleman" to kill him.

Therefore, the safest thing for John Smith is to cut off the connection between him and Batlán Rosario, that is, to make the "middleman" shut up forever.

Moreover, this matter itself was not that dangerous for John Smith. After all, the caregiver who had directly tampered with the maintenance equipment of his elder brother David Smith, causing David's accidental death, was dead and could not testify. Even if the prosecution had suspicions about other members of the Sinclair family, even John Smith who had benefited the most, there was not much evidence.

It is even possible that another family member wanted to kill the caregiver in revenge for his eldest brother who died due to the caregiver's mistake.

Then again, didn’t David Smith’s accident at the time make John Smith’s other brothers and sisters suspicious?

It is obvious that the biggest beneficiary of this matter is John Smith. It was because of David's death that John finally gained control of the family trust.

But at that time, there were basically not many such voices. This is the case of the winner being the king and the loser being the bandit. If the other party really had any evidence, then that would be another matter. There was no strong evidence pointing to John Smith in this matter itself. Suspicion alone was not convincing and would instead offend John, who currently held power. Why bother?

For this reason, Barron did not pay too much attention to this matter afterwards and let John Smith solve it on his own.

There is no need for him to get too involved in such matters.

……

"Don't worry, dear. I will try my best to persuade my sister."

Lydia Hearst has been accompanying Barron these two days. Among Barron's women, only Amanda Hearst took the child away from him after giving birth to his child.

Lydia also knew that Barron had always been concerned about this, so she comforted him from time to time.

It's not that Lydia is really selfless - of course, in this respect, Lydia is much better than her cousin Amanda.

But Lydia also has her own little thoughts. In terms of all aspects, Lydia was born into the Hearst family, and both her appearance and figure are extremely outstanding. With these conditions combined, she is very competitive among American socialites.

But these are all for other men. When facing Barron, Lydia Hearst is not so confident.

Barron was too attractive to her, making it difficult for Lydia to let go. Therefore, she thought that if she chose to stay with Barron, the combination of her and her cousin Amanda would be the most ideal result in competing with other women.

This is why during this period, Lydia always tried her best to mediate and help Barron ease the relationship between him and Amanda.

In fact, if Amanda Hearst could be more ambitious like Ivanta, it would be easier for Barron to handle the relationship with her.

In this case, although Barron cannot give Amanda a nominal marriage, as a partner, Barron can help her better manage the Hearst family business, and even use the Hearst Group as a basis to make it one of the top media groups in the United States again through mergers and acquisitions. There is a lot of room for operation.

But the problem is that although Amanda is the heir to the Hearst family, she does not have much ambition in her career. Instead, she is more ambitious in her love life.

Her only hope is to be able to enter into an open marriage with Barron. But for now, this is the last thing Barron can give her.

Therefore, it is difficult for two people to resolve the conflict under such circumstances.

In Amanda Hearst's view, the only obstacle between her and Barron was Barron's marriage to Bonnie.

But now that Barron has divorced, he still has no intention of giving her a legitimate status. Thinking of the compromises she made for him before, Amanda must feel aggrieved and even resentful, which is understandable.

After all, given her background, if she had chosen anyone else, this situation would not have happened.

But in the final analysis, in terms of external conditions, Barron's background, wealth and power, plus his own conditions - young, handsome, talented, and even his ability to learn knowledge is so strong... Such an ideal lover, if you haven't met him before, it would be okay. But after getting along with him, including Amanda, Lydia and others, compared with other men they have met, it is simply impossible for them to be willing to miss him.

"We are currently in negotiations with Sony to try to recover the Spider-Man rights from them..."

Annika Dawson, CEO of Blue Valley Capital, told Barron’s:

"Sony's situation is not good right now. Their head office is even preparing to sell two headquarters buildings due to financial problems. But it seems that they are still wavering about selling the copyright of Spider-Man. However, our minimum goal is to obtain the image authorization of Spider-Man."

Previously, Marvel-MGM Group had taken back the copyrights of X-Men, Fantastic Four and Mutants from 20th Century Fox, and now they are preparing to shoot the latest "X-Men" movie.

So the most important Marvel superhero still at large is Spider-Man.

Although as Annika said, Sony's current situation is not good due to the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis and the recent economic downturn in Japan and South Korea, as well as the fierce competition in its main business of consumer electronics, and its performance is not as good as before.

But even so, Sony's attitude towards Marvel-MGM's recovery of the copyright of Spider-Man remains very cautious.

After all, the CEO of Sony at that time was Howard Stringer, who was born in Wales, England, later went to the United States, and participated in the Vietnam War. He was the first foreign head of the Sony Empire.

Before becoming the CEO of Sony, Howard Stringer was the CEO of Sony America. It was under his leadership that Sony acquired the copyright of Spider-Man from Marvel.

At the end of the last century, Marvel was in very bad shape and on the verge of bankruptcy.

In order to recover funds as quickly as possible, Marvel put almost all of their superhero copyrights, including X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Hulk, on the negotiation table, and prepared to try to sell these copyrights as a package for US$2500 million.

At that time, Sony Pictures had always been very interested in Spider-Man, so in the negotiations with Marvel, they said that they only wanted Spider-Man and did not want to buy other superhero IPs - after all, at the time, there were very few successful superhero movies adapted from comics and they were not optimistic, and Spider-Man was the most well-known among them.

After a period of negotiation, Marvel lowered the price again and offered Sony $2000 million to package the copyright...

Sony is still unwilling to acquire other Marvel copyrights besides Spider-Man.

In the end, the two sides finally reached an agreement, and Sony acquired the film production rights of Spider-Man for $700 million.

According to the sales agreement, Sony obtained the film rights to Spider-Man and all related characters, and all film revenues belong to Sony.

The condition is that Sony must release a Spider-Man movie every five years, otherwise the copyright will automatically return to Marvel.

(End of this chapter)