Huayu since 1980

Chapter 681 The next target is HBO ([-] daily updates, please subscribe~)

It was not long before Wu Jianye left North America.

The release time of "Jurassic Park" has been confirmed. On June 6, it will be released simultaneously all over the world except China!
During the film'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 leave with peace of mind!
Linda looked at Wu Jianye in surprise. In her opinion, the development of Phantom Media is fast enough. Ever since Wu Jianye arrived in North America, Phantom Entertainment wanted to get on a plane with wings and soared into the sky.

From a simple production company at the beginning to the current 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 the ABC TV network is just the beginning, and there are bigger plans in the future?
"What's your plan?" Linda didn't dare 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. Now Phantom Entertainment still lacks a premium channel with sufficient influence!" Wu Jianye directly told Linda about his plan.

And Wu Jianye's plan is to make Linda feel a little confused. It's not that his plan is too big, but in Linda's opinion, this plan is not serious. Now the public channels in North America are the TV industry. As for premium channels, although there are 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 the present, or even two or three years later, but Wu Jianye was different. The advantage of rebirth let him know that ten years later, twenty years later , the development status after 20 years.

Now it seems that the 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, it will be their world that really makes money and has influence.

For example, in later generations, HBO has over 5000 million paying subscribers worldwide, and over [-] million paying subscribers in North America!
It can be said that in the future, premium channels will be the best in the global TV industry!
"ESPN is different. As a sports channel, his achievements are beyond doubt, but 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 helm 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.

This time, if it wasn't because he had to deal with the situation in China the year before last, Wu Jianye might not even come to North America to direct a movie. Just like what he told Wu Tianming and others, the roots of their movies are in China, and Wu Jianye Ye's movie roots are also in Huaxia!
However, unlike Wu Tianming and others, Wu Jianye can actually get along well anywhere.

But since Wu Jianye had the chance to be reborn, he naturally wanted to do something that he thought was interesting and meaningful.

His roots are different from those of Wu Tianming and others. No matter how successful Wu Tianming and others are, they are only in China. How about Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and others?
If Wu Jianye hadn't appeared, they would have been the best directors in China in the next 20 years, but their international influence is still limited, and they still haven't really come out with Chinese films.

When Wu Jianye was reborn, Huaxia's movie business was booming, but so what?

Still in the nest, the outside world still has nothing to do with Huaxia movies!
What Wu Jianye has to do is to let Chinese filmmakers see the outside world in advance, so that Huaxia's films can truly go to the world!
What Wu Jianye wants to do is to be a towering tree of Chinese movies, while others are to see the world and go to the world under his protection!

Since he was destined to return to China, Wu Jianye naturally had to make arrangements for the affairs of the United States as much as possible. As Linda was at the helm of 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 for the next 30 years, it must be movies, and everything else is for Phantom Pictures and Marvel Pictures.

"I can understand this, but now it is not easy to win an influential paid channel, especially now that Phantom Media has just been established, and it has become the thorn in the eyes of several other media groups. Nail, it is not an easy task to win a paid channel in their hands!" Linda also has her own worries.

Now that Phantom Media is established, the opponents have changed from the first few major production companies to international media groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, and News Corporation. In Linda's opinion, the expansion of Phantom Media is almost the same now. Now, it is completely possible to take a while and then carry out your own expansion.

Although mergers and acquisitions and expansion are powerful weapons to expand the group's influence, they may also become uneasy factors that will self-destruct the city!

Wu Jianye said: "You can't stop moving forward just because you have an opponent. There are opponents at any time. There is a saying in China, which is called one force and ten meetings. As long as we are strong enough, then we don't have to worry about the opponent's tricks. Already!"

Seeing that Wu Jianye was so determined, Linda had no choice but to ask, "Then which premium channel is your acquisition target?"

Linda is quite familiar with Wu Jianye. Now that Wu Jianye is so determined to let him continue to expand, it means that he already has someone he wants to acquire. Since the road to expansion is unavoidable, he has no choice but to follow Wu Jianye continued to move forward.

Fortunately, up to now, Wu Jianye has never made a mistake!
Only then did Wu Jianye show a satisfied smile: "HBO!"

HBO's influence in the future has just been mentioned. When Wu Jianye was reborn, the only overseas company that could compete with HBO was Netflix, but now Netflix has not yet been established, and Wu Jianye has no time to wait for him If it is established, it will have to win HBO!
Linda smiled wryly: "You have created a problem for me. HBO is a cable TV station owned by Time Warner. Even if Time Warner doesn't value this TV station too much 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 chance to make a move. In the current North American TV market, the recognition of premium channels is not high. You can To spread the word, 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, so Time Warner will not be out of ideas!"

Linda was slightly taken aback, and asked, "Didn't we make it more difficult for us to acquire?"

Wu Jianye had no choice but to continue to explain: "Let me ask you, if everyone doesn't recognize pay channels now, and we just 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 she finished speaking, she felt something was wrong and seemed a little embarrassed.

Wu Jianye chuckled, and didn't care about Linda's attitude, and continued to talk: "Then what if this idiot still says that he will invest a lot of money in preparation for this project?"

At this moment, Linda thought seriously about what Wu Jianye said.

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 energy on it." side, 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, let the other party believe that you are a fool, and at the same time make the other party willing to jump into this trick, this is the task I left for you , I hope you can complete this task before "Jurassic Park" is released!"

Although Linda often doubts Wu Jianye's decision on weekdays, she has an advantage, that is, as long as Wu Jianye decides to do it, then she will earnestly complete the task that Wu Jianye gave.

This is also the reason why Wu Jianye always let Linda be his North American spokesperson!

"I understand, I will take care of this matter!" Linda said, but then Linda also mentioned 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 in order to acquire the ABC TV network, and now the group only has 15 billion US dollars in liquidity, if we buy 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? At that time, we can use the ABC TV network as collateral to get a loan from the bank!"

Phantom is different from Wu Jianye's other industries. He has the most complicated equity allocation among all Wu Jianye's industries, although compared with other companies, it can be regarded as a clean stream.
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 is also easy for these people to have no more sense of belonging to the group.

So in the future development of Phantom Media, Wu Jianye will make more use of bank loans!
Linda thought for a while and said, "If this is the case, the company's loan ratio will reach an astonishing level. Have you ever thought about the consequences?"

Now Phantom Media's loan is as high as 62 billion US dollars, and the annual interest alone is nearly 2.2 million US dollars. Although these interests are not a large amount for Phantom, if you add the principal to be repaid, for Phantom The pressure is not small.

Now if the acquisition of HBO requires a loan, the loan that Phantom has to repay every year will be a very astonishing number!

Wu Jianye is not worried about this. ABC's profit last year was close to 10 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 a problem for Phantom Media. Not a huge number.

"Well, since you have already made a comprehensive plan, I will handle this matter myself!" Seeing that Wu Jianye had already considered all the issues, Linda naturally followed Wu Jianye's plan. Asked to do it!

The meeting between the two of them took a very long time, from around nine o'clock in the morning to more than three o'clock in the afternoon.

But the things to say are still not finished.

"This year's Oscars will be held soon, will you participate then?"

This year's Academy Awards has announced the time and venue, and will be held on March 3 this year at the Holy Citizen Auditorium in Los Angeles.

As a movie with five nominations and the highest-grossing movie last year, "Ghost Love" is naturally attracting attention!
Although Wu Jianye knew the honor of the best film and had no chance with "The Love of Ghosts", but as the director of this movie, Wu Jianye still wanted to cheer for others.

"Participate, just remember to remind me when the time comes!" Wu Jianye said.

Phantom Entertainment's two films this year, "Ghost Love" was shortlisted for five awards, and "Dances with Wolves" is the film with the most Oscar nominations this year. "Dancing with Wolves" was nominated in total Won 12 awards!
For the movie "Dances with Wolves", Phantom Entertainment even spent 1500 million in public relations expenses this year. Apart from the 1000 million for the competition for the best film, the other awards and public relations expenses are all related to winning shared by nominated persons.

In this year's Oscar awards, Wu Jianye is actually not in vain. The best original screenplay nominated for the movie "The Love of Ghosts" is jointly nominated by Wu Jianye and the original screenwriter Bruce Robin!
At the same time, Phantom Entertainment also has a film shortlisted for this year's Academy Awards, but this movie is not produced by Phantom, but the Chinese movie "Ju Dou" invested and distributed by Phantom!
Lao Mouzi finally embarked on his own road to the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but Wu Jianye knew that this road was destined to be a journey without a successful end for Lao Mouzi.

Of course, Phantom will still do the public relations that Phantom should do, but the possibility of success of "Ju Dou" is no less difficult than that of "Ghost Love" won the best picture!

But it's still February, and Lao Mouzi won't come to Los Angeles until mid-March!

After the last thing was said, the conversation between the two was over.

Linda finally got up to leave, and when Linda left the manor, Wu Jianye said to Lauren Donner who was waiting outside: "The three young people I asked you to date and Aniston have all made appointments. ?"

Lauren Downer immediately replied: "All appointments are made. The three young people are scheduled to meet tomorrow morning, and Aniston is tomorrow night!"

(End of this chapter)