Chapter 401

The wma headquarters at Beverly Hills.

Courtney Cox and Jonathan Friedman are about to leave after talking about a script they have just received. Remembering the investigation progress of the attack several years ago in the newspaper yesterday, Courtney can't help sitting down again and saying to Jonathan, "Joe, do you know about Kristi Swanson?"

Jonathan Friedman paused and nodded, "I know."

The Santa Monica police department has been investigating the attack four years ago in the summer.

Yesterday, the media suddenly exposed further news of the case, Hollywood actress Christie Swanson involved. It is said that before Matthew Broderick went to intercept Simon westero that night, it was Christie Swanson who revealed to them where westero was working.

This evidence has further shifted the situation to Simon's side.

In fact, since the investigation, no one has believed Matthew Broderick's words when he first held the press conference. It is very clear. However, the Santa Monica police department must give the media and the public an undoubted investigation result of the case, so as to continue to dig out everything related to the original attack.

Although it's easy for the public to sympathize with the weak, they don't have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Once they find that they have been cheated, their anger will only be more turbulent.

At the beginning, the six people who held the press conference in an attempt to "pre empt" were already in existence. Even most of them want to settle down and get rid of this incident, but Simon doesn't mean to let go.

Courtney Cox thought a little bit about the wording, then suddenly changed the subject and said, "Joe, Simon's birthday party, did our company get the invitation this time?"

Simon himself and danielis entertainment used to send a batch of invitation letters to wma for them to distribute.

Courtney's purpose was obvious.

Jonathan shook his head and said, "curt, Simon is not going to hold a big birthday party this time. He'll probably only invite some company executives and friends."

So finish saying, two people suddenly some silence.

Today is February 19, only three days before Simon's birthday. In theory, Simon's birthday party is a party that many people attach great importance to. The invitation will be sent out a week in advance.

Jonathan naturally got his own invitation.

However, Courtney, whom Simon met as soon as he arrived in Los Angeles, was excluded from what he just called "family and friends.".

The ups and downs of life, sometimes really unpredictable.

Jonathan also remembered Sandra Bullock, a client in his own name. As Simon's closest heterosexual friend, Sandra Bullock almost developed into a lover at the beginning. Sandra's career development in recent years has been smooth sailing.

In contrast, as the heroine of scream series, Courtney is also a front-line actress, but after the end of this year's scream 3, she may face a situation of uncertain future.

The transformation of horror movie stars is very difficult.

After all, Hollywood has few opportunities for female stars, but the competition is very fierce.

At present, in Hollywood, there are many famous actresses, such as Meryl Streep, Gotty Han, Cher, Melanie Griffith, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts and so on. These actresses are very powerful. In the selection of suitable roles, major studios tend to give high-quality projects to these people .

Jonathan was able to understand Courtney's mind.

The actress who had the best chance to rise with Simon has now been excluded from Simon's social circle. The two things that I just mentioned suddenly are that Courtney wants to explain the attack to Simon personally through the next chance of Simon's birthday party, and at the same time, pull in the relationship between the two sides.

However, Jonathan knows that Simon doesn't care much about the attack at all. It's just that Janet is clinging to it.

So women are the most vengeful.

Christie Swanson, who "guided" Matthew Broderick and others to attack Simon, is still a customer of wma.

It's just that in recent years, this little actor has only been mixed with some supporting roles in youth horror films. Simon didn't even mention it after the news came to light. Although wma doesn't deliberately block each other to avoid causing any public opinion trouble, it is impossible for wma to obtain any resources in the future.

A moment later, Courtney finally plucked up her courage and said, "Joe, can you help me get an invitation?"

Jonathan could only shake his head.

As far as he knows, the size of this birthday party will be limited to 100 people and 100 party places. For other social parties in Hollywood, the size of this birthday party is not small, but for Simon westero's birthday party, every invitation place needs to be carefully selected.In recent days, it's not just Courtney, many of wma's stars, or countless people in Hollywood, who are trying to get an invitation to Simon westero's birthday party.

Simon doesn't care about the birthday party list. Janet is in charge of it.

Jonathan did rely on his relationship with Simon to get several invitation letters from Janet for his contacts, but the party list has been basically finalized, and Courtney is not enough to let him consume his own human feelings.

Seeing Courtney Cox off, Jonathan sighed again, and soon turned his energy to other things.

Last time I talked to Simon, he was planning to train some 30-year-old male stars suitable for action movies.

Hollywood is not without action stars at this stage, such as Duff longer, Steven siger and so on, but they are not too front-line. Under the name of wma, several new generations, such as jinu Reeves, are still slightly immature. As for Mel Gibson, who is now the hottest, he is a little older.

Jonathan actually thought of Tom Cruise. If he is about 30 years old, there is no more suitable actor in Hollywood.

However, Simon is not interested in the actor who is on the front line and has a good box office appeal.

Being disliked by such a Hollywood tycoon, with the deepening cooperation between Denise entertainment and paramount, Tom Cruise's resources in Hollywood will only be further reduced. It is likely that it will gradually decline in a few years.

Daniels studios.

While Jonathan is thinking about the action actor, Simon is also discussing the next cooperation with Paramount's top management.

Simon is a person who attaches great importance to commitment. In order to get paramount to give up blocking danielis Entertainment's acquisition of MCA, he didn't intend to violate the paper contract or verbal agreement.

The next major cooperation between the two sides is, on the one hand, three films, and on the other hand, USA TV station, which is 50% owned by each of the two companies.

Among the three films, the key project that has been finalized is mission impossible, which can be made into a long-term series. However, since he does not intend to use the original Tom Cruise, Simon is not in a hurry to develop the project for the moment, because there is no suitable actor in the short term.

Moreover, although three films have been agreed, the cooperation time is very relaxed, and both sides will not be too anxious.

What you are discussing at this time is the development of USA.

As a basic cable station, USA was founded in 1977, initially by MCA, paramount and Warner. Later, for some reasons, Warner withdrew its shares and became MCA and paramount holding 50% of shares respectively.

More than ten years after its establishment, USA is also a basic cable station with very old qualification. However, compared with ESPN, CNN, MTV and other basic cable stations born in the same era and becoming more and more popular, USA has never found its own position. The development process of these years is like a pot of stew. It has tried sports style, done children's programs, played original dramas, and produced TV programs In recent years, with the rise of reality TV, we have also developed some low-cost variety game programs.

In Simon's memory, ESPN, CNN and MTV have been regarded as the dominators in their respective fields. Although USA has always existed, it has always been lukewarm. In the end, its style tends to be similar to that of several major public television networks, relying only on the original gathering of crime police and bandits to prop up the audience rating. However, because of the pattern of basic cable stations, these dramas, whether in terms of their own quality or audience rating, It's doomed to be unmatched by public television networks.

Now, the only thing that Simon is satisfied with in USA is the number of 21 million access users.

According to the average number of 3 users per user, USA has more than 60 million basic audience, close to one third of the total population of the United States.

Of course, because the four major public TV networks are still in a monopolistic state for the time being, ESPN, MTV, CNN and even HBO, which are the most distinctive basic cable stations, have taken away most of the cable TV users. Although they have a very considerable number of access users, the program packing situation of USA has been very poor.

Because there is no TV program that can be called the pillar, it is difficult to catch the audience's attention. USA belongs to the kind of existence that is basically difficult to remember the TV station number on the remote control.

The main revenue sources of basic cable stations are operators' share and their own advertising.

Operators pay a certain amount of share of the basic cable station monthly according to the ratings and number of users of the cable station. For the basic cable station with high attention such as CNN, each user can contribute as much as 70 cents a month to the TV station, and the advertising revenue is also rich.

The average carrier share of USA is only 15 cents, less than a quarter of CNN's, and the number of users is also less than half of CNN's.

Therefore, although it has 21 million access users, the monthly revenue shared by the operators is only more than $3 million, and the annual revenue, which is roughly equivalent to the advertising revenue shared by the operators, is only more than $60 million.Simon understands that the main reason for this situation is that the positioning of USA TV network is not clear enough. He always wants to make it big and complete. As a result, it is like a bear breaking a stick and doing nothing well. ESPN, MTV and CNN, which only focus on sports, music and news, have achieved success.

Before the acquisition of MCA, Simon began to consider the next development of USA.

Cable TV stations can focus on music, sports, news and even movies, which have been taken the lead. Then, USA can only start from the segmentation of the audience.

With such an IP as Beverly's wife, Simon finally decided to build USA into a women's TV station and target a very large number of housewives in the United States.

You know, although the United States is the most developed country in the world and has experienced several feminist movements to liberate women in recent decades, in the early 1990s, more than 40% of American women chose to give up their jobs as full-time housewives after marriage. Undoubtedly, TV is the biggest pastime for these women when they do housework.

USA is a 24-hour basic cable station that is very suitable for housewives.

After many years of continuous operation, he has been displeased. After Simon proposed to keep the ownership structure unchanged but ask for the absolute control of USA, paramount chairman Martin Davis did not insist too much.

The two sides had an afternoon's discussion and basically finalized the budget and program plan of USA for the next year.

In the next year, Denise entertainment and paramount communications will jointly inject US $100 million for drama development, copyright purchase and advertising marketing.

In terms of TV programs, when "Beverly's wife" is restarted, another "New York's wife" series will usually be launched. While focusing on the reality TV series, danielis entertainment will continue to develop and purchase a number of TV programs specifically for women.

At five o'clock, the meeting ended on time.

Others left one after another, but paramount chairman Martin Davis didn't rush to leave. He offered to walk with Simon in the danelis studio Park, and Simon didn't refuse.

"In fact, Simon, can't Tom have a try on mission impossible? I think he is very suitable

When they were walking along the tarmac corridor in the park, Simon heard Martin Davis mention it. He just shook his head and said, "Martin, it's a matter of principle."

When necessary, Simon will make some compromises, such as cooperation with paramount, and lifting the ban on Meg Ryan. All these are to avoid the twists and turns in the MCA acquisition, and Simon will not lose big things for small things. However, Tom Cruise has no bargaining chip to compromise. Simon also needs to insist on expressing an attitude that the studio is the controller of Hollywood.

Moreover, with too many high-quality IP reserves, danilisi entertainment will not mind the failure of one or two projects, even the former "mission impossible" series.

Feeling Simon's insistence, Martin Davis didn't force himself to turn the topic to other places.

Martin Davis is not Simon after all. It's impossible for him to know the relationship between Tom Cruise and the spy series. As I just mentioned, it's just because Tom Cruise's cooperation with paramount has been quite pleasant over the years, with some personal friendship in it.

Moreover, with Paramount's performance turning to the doldrums in the past two years, Martin Davis's control over the company is also rapidly weakening. He has a premonition that paramount is likely to encounter the same fate as MCA in the next few years. Once so, the company has nothing to do with him, at this time, it will not be too fussy.

In fact, this is also the main reason why it is easy to give up the control of USA in the afternoon meeting.