Chapter 762

"I just got the news this morning..."

Seeing Murphy sitting on the sofa, Bill rosis said succinctly, "at the meeting of Sony entertainment executives, many people re mentioned the plan to spin off Sony Columbia Pictures and package it for sale."

Murphy nodded. Since the news of Sony Columbia Pictures' divestiture for the first time, he has made people keep an eye on Sony entertainment. Naturally, he also got such information. Moreover, considering the situation of Sony Columbia Pictures and the whole Sony Group, he is also ready to make a decision to try to buy Columbia pictures.

So, Murphy said directly to bill Rossi, "I'm going to buy Sony Columbia Pictures."

Bill rosis had known Murphy's plan for a long time, and was not surprised.

"What can I do for you?" He asked.

Today, Murphy and Stanton are his most important clients. Without their support, his partner status in CAA will be unstable.

"Of course." Murphy was not polite to bill Rossi at all. "Bill, I need you to convince CAA's partners that CAA can help me complete this acquisition."

Although after so many years of directing career and film investment, we have accumulated a lot of wealth and billions of dollars in various assets, it is absolutely very difficult to acquire Columbia Pictures, one of the six traditional Hollywood companies.

If you agree to buy a few billion dollars, it's not a simple matter.

It's either fantasy, it's a kid's house, it's a bunch of psychos

Among other things, financing alone is quite troublesome.

Murphy is not ready to complete the acquisition by "sole proprietorship". Only a fool can throw all his capital into a project. To the extent that he is now, of course, the capital can not be pressed on a project. Just like all acquisitions in this country, financing or loan is the most reasonable way.

Even like Shanghai Disneyland, which takes the future ticket revenue as a mortgage to obtain loans, if it really reaches an agreement with Sony entertainment, it can take the film copyright in Columbia Pictures Film Library as a mortgage to finance.

Of course, we can also bring in several promising partners.

Although there may be troubles in this way, it is normal for him to cheat in business circles. He is not afraid of these.

As for the choice of CAA, on the one hand, he is now the number one customer in CAA, and the two sides have cooperated for more than ten years. As long as they have the same interests, CAA will certainly launch forces to help him complete the acquisition; on the other hand, CAA has experience in this field. When Sony entertainment acquired Columbia Pictures, the middleman or the one who facilitated the transaction was the CAA created by Michael owitz.

Although Michael owitz is no longer here, the strength of CAA is only better than that of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Bill rosis, one of the CAA partners, also knew what Murphy thought. After a little consideration, he nodded his head and said, "no problem. I can take your words directly to the CAA partner meeting."

"That's good." Murphy is very clear that the purpose of business cooperation is profit, so he added, "if CAA can assist Stanton studio to acquire Sony Columbia Pictures at a reasonable price, I will give 3% of the transaction amount as CAA's reward."

"Three percent?" Bill - Rossi immediately widened his eyes, Sony Columbia Pictures, even if the situation is not good, the purchase price is not likely to drop $5 billion.

This 3% can be equal to the profits of CAA in the first half of the year.

"In that case..." Bill rosis was confident and said to Murphy, "I have 90% confidence in persuading the company to participate in this acquisition."

Murphy nodded her head gently. A commercial company is not a charity. If you want a horse to run, you have to feed it.

The two exchanged views again. After all, the acquisition is not a trivial matter. This is just the initial intention. If Stanton studio really wants to cooperate with CAA, there will be a lot of things to be discussed and dealt with in the future.

After chatting for a while, Bill rosis reminded Murphy, "although Sony Columbia Pictures is in a bad situation, the inside information is still there after all. You should be prepared for failure."

"I know." Of course, Murphy understood that he didn't want to sell if he wanted to buy.

Even if Sony Columbia Pictures is in a bad situation, there are voices from Sony entertainment to Sony group that want to sell Sony Columbia Pictures, but the sale of Sony Columbia Pictures did not happen when he was.

But Murphy also knows that this is the best chance to win Sony Columbia Pictures.

In the past two years, Sony Columbia Pictures has invested heavily in the production and distribution of films. Except for "Spider Man", most of the other films are facing a loss situation. The projects that can recover the cost only account for a very small proportion.If it wasn't for the fact that a considerable part of the cost of these films came from multi-party financing, coupled with another sacrifice of Spiderman, Sony Columbia Pictures would not have been able to hold on.

However, the magic weapon to save lives will always be exhausted. The Spider Man series can save Sony Columbia Pictures once, twice, three times But it can't be saved forever.

This summer, Spiderman 2 was released in North America. The production cost of the film alone is as high as 230 million US dollars. It can be said that Sony Columbia Pictures has high hopes for this film and is looking forward to reappearing the glory of Spiderman 2.

But a lot of things will not develop according to people's expectations, and movies with huge investment may not have good results.

Up to now, "Spider Man 2" has been out of the North American market. The total box office in North America is a little more than $200 million, which is far from the $350 million expected by Sony Columbia Pictures in North America.

Such a result is certainly what Sony Columbia Pictures does not want to see.

Although the overseas box office of the film is still good, and the global box office is close to $700 million, it can't make Sony Columbia's executives laugh at all.

With the huge production cost of "Spider Man 2" and the expensive publicity and distribution expenses, even if the global box office exceeds $700 million, I'm afraid it's hard to recover the original.

What makes them even more crazy is that countless spider man fans are very angry about the death of Gwen Stacey in the film. Coupled with word-of-mouth and other adverse factors, the sales of peripheral products in the film are extremely poor, and the income is extremely limited. Moreover, a considerable part of this limited income is owned by Marvel comics, the creator of spider man.

According to Murphy's information, "Spider Man 2" is far from a successful performance. Although it will not bankrupt Sony Columbia Pictures, it will also lead to an extremely tight capital chain, which may break at any time.

As a result, Sony's internal voice of stripping and selling Sony Columbia Pictures appeared again.

In fact, when Murphy lived on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Sony Columbia Pictures had a similar situation. However, Sony Columbia Pictures finally survived by virtue of its six major Hollywood companies.

Murphy's eyes are not only on Sony Columbia Pictures, but also on Sony electronics and Sony entertainment.

Sony electronics, needless to say, is Sony's core business. However, in recent years, its development has been very difficult. Many departments have been mismanaged and sold by Sony's management. The situation of Sony entertainment is not much better. Many subsidiaries of the whole entertainment group, except Sony records, can bring more stable profits every year Companies such as Sony Columbia Pictures have been losing money one after another.

Of course, from a certain level, the Sony Group is very strong, and there are more powerful consortia behind it. But people who know a little bit about business know that companies such as Sony entertainment or Sony Columbia Pictures have separate financial accounting. At the beginning, they acquired these companies to make profits. These companies can not generate profits, but will drag down the group The best way is to spin off the company and sell it.

This is also the reason why Sony entertainment intends to sell Sony Columbia Pictures.

Presumably, in the eyes of many Sony executives, Sony Columbia Pictures, which ranks the bottom of Hollywood's six largest film companies for years, is not a profit weapon, but a drag on them.

However, as Bill rossis said, even if Sony entertainment wants to sell, the acquisition of Sony Columbia Pictures is a time-consuming and labor-consuming project.

Because there are also people who don't want to sell Sony Columbia Pictures. After all, Sony Columbia Pictures still has a huge film library. As long as the library is still there, Sony Columbia Pictures will have great value.

These are the troubles facing Murphy and Stanton studios, and they are also the problems that must be faced squarely. This kind of acquisition is not that Sony entertainment will hand over Sony Columbia Pictures if he wants to buy and throw enough money.

Sony Columbia Pictures is not at a dead end.

Murphy is very clear about this. As long as a big commercial film can be super sold, Sony Columbia Pictures will get rid of this decline and rebuild its confidence in the film market.

Is there such an opportunity? Sony Pictures is not only in the process of investigation, but also in the process of investigation.

It's not just Murphy, it's bill Rossi.

"One more thing, I want to remind you."

In the office, Bill Rossi said to Murphy seriously, "Sony Columbia Pictures is contacting Marvel pictures, trying to get Peter Parker back to Avengers!"

"I know." Of course Murphy remembers these things. "I'm already working on it."