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Arriving at the Gucci theme party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with Sophia, it was almost ten o'clock.

Walking through the party crowd to congratulate tonight's winners, Simon soon came to a middle-aged man who was chatting with John Lasseter and Ed Catmull.

The middle-aged man's name is Roger Allers, an animated film director and screenwriter hired by Pixar Animation Studios from Disney. He has participated in Disney's "The Adventures of Oliver" and other films before, and is also the award-winning 3D animated short film tonight. Director of "Little Lion".

In the original time and space, Roger Allers happened to be the director of Disney's 2D version of "The Lion King" movie.

From the end of 1988 to the present, for more than two years, Pixar has been developing animation technology related to "The Lion King" while producing "Toy Story".

"Little Lion", which won the statuette tonight, is a concentrated expression of Pixar's technological development achievements in the past two years.

In just 5 minutes, through the brief adventure of a little lion living in the prairie, it fully demonstrates the magnificent African prairie scene in 3D animation mode and animal hair rendering technology.

Now, successfully winning the Oscar for the best short film is enough to prove that Pixar's technology has reached the level that can produce a 3D version of "The Lion King", and the film will be officially launched in the near future.

After Simon congratulated Roger Ailes for winning the award, he said again: "I will take time to watch the story version of "The Lion King" demo in the next few days, Roger, this is my gift to Jenny, if you screw up My wife will be very angry."

Although it was only an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, Roger Allers was still very excited tonight, and immediately nodded confidently after hearing the words: "Simon, I assure you, this will definitely be a very exciting story. "

Simon smiled, turned to John Lasseter again, and said, "John, how long will it take for "Toy Story" to be completed, and you have already exceeded the budget by a lot?"

In the original plan, Simon hoped to complete "Toy Story" with $3000 million.

However, perhaps due to the natural perfectionism of any artist, "Toy Story" is estimated to be months away, but the team led by John Lasseter has already spent $3300 million.

Although Simon had a smile on his face, John Lasseter was still quite nervous.

Pixar animation is definitely the most "free rice" department under Daenerys Entertainment.

From being bought by Simon in 1988 to the present, in more than two years, other departments of the company can be described as flourishing, but Pixar animation has always only spent money but has no output.

So, it's clear to all that Toy Story is the Pixar team's last stand.Once it fails, even if there is another "Lion King" comeback opportunity in hand, the life of the Pixar team in the next two years will definitely not be too easy.

After a moment of careful consideration, John Lasseter said, "Two months, Simon, give us another two months."

"Toy Story" is scheduled for November at the end of this year, and there is actually plenty of time.However, if the project lasts for one more month, it will definitely be an extra large sum of expenditure. Naturally, the sooner it is completed, the better.

Simon pays attention to Pixar's work progress every month. He is still very satisfied with the completed "Toy Story" samples, so he is not in a hurry.

This is the first 3D animation film, and it is inevitable that there will be various problems.Considering the profit prospects of the project, Simon can barely tolerate the overspending behavior of the Pixar team.

However, Simon would not show this kind of connivance, and he still slapped his lips.

After continuing to chat with John Lasseter and others for a while, Simon looked at Jennifer beside him, confirmed that everyone who should greet had already greeted, and planned to leave.

As soon as I arrived at the door of the party hall with the female assistant, Ella Deutschman walked over, accompanied by several men and women with Asian faces.

Coming to Simon, Ella Deutschman explained: "Simon, they want to say hello to you."

Among the many nominations from Daenerys Entertainment tonight, there is also "Ju Dou", which was nominated for best foreign language film. This is also the first time across the ocean to be nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars.

At the beginning, Simon signaled Deutschman to increase his attention and introduction to Asian films, but he did not express too much extra attention to "Ju Dou".

Therefore, the film did not receive a statuette.

Looking at the big names in front of him who he could only look up to in his previous life, Simon smiled, and shook hands with them one by one: "Hello, Mr. Zhang. Also, Miss Gong, your performance in "Ju Dou" is very wonderful .”

During this greeting, Simon directly used Chinese.

The few people in front of them all showed surprised expressions when they heard Simon's fluent Mandarin, even Ella Deutschman had a strange expression.

After all, they are people from two worlds, and they just said a few polite words, saying that they will cooperate again if they have a chance next time, so Simon left the Beverly Hilton Hotel with his female assistant.

I still have to go back to Cape Dume Manor tonight.

Janet had just been pregnant, and even if a woman didn't mind, Simon cared about her emotions in these small details, so she never spent the night out during this time.

Leaving with the female assistant was just taking her home on the way.

Driving through downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night, Jennifer keenly sensed some subtle changes in Simon's mood after he greeted those Orientals just now. , just holding the man's arm and gently leaning over.

In fact, there have always been many secrets about her man.

It's just that if he doesn't say anything, she won't deliberately pursue it.

Sending the female assistant back to her uncle George Norman's house, Simon didn't stop and continued to return to Malibu.

The next day, as usual, was about the Oscars.

Daenerys Entertainment won half of the statuettes and naturally became the focus of heated discussions in the media.

Fortunately, although there are some politically correct factors in it, "Dances with Wolves", which won seven awards, did not cause too much controversy. On the contrary, many media still noticed some other works produced by Daenerys Entertainment. There is no fact that a good film is nominated.

Also, the 'absence' of Simon himself at this year's Oscars has been noted.

It's not just the absence of the Oscars, but Simon didn't receive any nominations related to him at this year's Oscars. For a while, some media began to speculate whether Simon planned to take a break.

After all, with Simon's current wealth, there is really no need to shoot movies by himself.

Facing the media's questioning, Daenerys Entertainment denied the media's speculation, but also said that Simon may not be able to pick up the guide tube in person for a long time in the future.

Due to the Oscars and the Easter schedule, the box office of "Dances with Wolves" rebounded again. From March 3 to March 22, during the week of the Oscars, the decline reached 3%. 28 million US dollars, the cumulative box office of the film also reached 59 million US dollars.

On March 3, the second week of the Easter schedule begins.

Two other films related to Daenerys Entertainment, "The Kid in the Corn Field 3" and Universal Pictures' "One Night Crazy" were released.

New World Pictures invested a budget of 3 million U.S. dollars for "Kids in the Cornfield 1000", and also adopted a lot of the latest CG special effects, trying to make the box office of this horror film series hit the height of "A Nightmare on Elm Street".

However, after three days of painting, the North American box office of "Kids in the Cornfield 3" is only 673 million U.S. dollars. It is expected that the box office in the first week will be between 900 million and 1000 million.

Making money is certain, and there is still some gap between the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series.

Of course, compared to the $1500 million box office of the first two films, "Kids in the Cornfield 3" is expected to double the box office growth is still very obvious, so the fourth part of the series will still maintain a production budget of tens of millions of dollars.

"One Night of Crazy" produced by John Hughes only had a box office of 402 million U.S. dollars in the first three days of painting.

The production budget of this romantic comedy film is 1100 million US dollars, and the total North American box office is expected to be within 1500 million US dollars. It only relies on North American theater distribution, and it is unlikely to recover the cost.

After the box office of "A Night of Madness" was released, the other studios that were chasing John Hughes because of the success of "Home Alone" were a little calmer, and involuntarily transferred more factors for the success of "Home Alone" to Simon .

After Easter on March 3, the time enters April 31.

AOL's three-month free trial program is just coming to an end.

In the past March, the number of AOL subscription users still reached 3 million, and a total of 150 million free trial users were connected again.

Among the 2 trial users in February, 97 were finally converted to official users, which is 56% higher than the conversion rate of official users in January.

Relying on the data of the first two months, AOL predicts that among the 3 million free trial users in March, the number of regular users will reach more than 109.

In this way, only in the first quarter, AOL will gain more than 150 million new users.

Counting the accumulation of users before 1991, it is estimated that by the end of April, the number of official paying users of AOL will reach more than 4 million.

With such a strong growth momentum, because a large number of users who pre-ordered free trials in the past few months failed to access, AOL officials soon announced that the free trial activities will continue until the remaining 250 million reserved users have all obtained Until the free trial opportunity.

The remaining 250 million reservation users, even if the conversion rate is 50%, can bring about 125 million formal paying users to AOL again.

Therefore, after the free trial activities are completely over, the number of AOL users will be able to reach more than 350 million.

Based on the average monthly consumption of a single user of US$30, it is estimated that starting from the second half of 1991, AOL's monthly revenue will reach more than US$1 million.

Whether it is solid revenue data or a high growth rate visible to the naked eye, it is constantly stimulating the IPO valuation of AOL.

Morgan Stanley, which officially signed the contract to win the underwriting rights of AOL's IPO, finally confirmed the valuation of AOL's IPO at US$25 billion after several consecutive adjustments.

With a valuation of US$25 billion, AOL plans to raise US$15 million based on the planned 3.75% share issuance ratio.

Taking into account the rapid growth of AOL's own revenue, after the completion of the IPO, the company will completely get rid of the financial troubles that have been entangled before.

On the other hand, with the efforts of America Online and other regional Internet service providers in North America, it is estimated that in the first half of 1991, the number of users of the World Wide Web platform in North America will exceed 500 million, and the number of users of the World Wide Web platform will hit 1000 million throughout the year. It looks very relaxed.

This growth rate far exceeds Simon's initial expectations.

No wonder Jeff Bezos in his memory quickly switched from the financial industry to invest in it after seeing the 2300% annual growth figure of the Internet industry.

As the most important content platform of the World Wide Web system, Eaglet Portal has gradually received more and more attention with the explosive growth of the World Wide Web user scale.

You know, in this era, the newspaper with the largest circulation in North America has an average sales volume of just over 200 million copies.

During this period of time, relying on the Igret portal, which quickly became famous for its reports on the Gulf War, the total number of users in North America has exceeded 300 million.

Although the user base of the Igret Portal is too scattered, no one dares to ignore this rapidly growing new media platform at this time.

Therefore, in the new quarter advertising sales campaign of Igret Portal in late March, Igret received a total of more than 3 million US dollars in advertising orders from IBM, Intel, Microsoft and other technology giants.

Although it is still difficult for traditional daily necessities advertisements to gain much effect on the Internet platform, it is obvious that as an emerging new technology media platform, Eaglet Portal is suitable for technology giants such as IBM to promote their products.

Jeff Bezos has accurately grasped this point and specially customized a series of advertising programs for various technology companies. The advertising order of 1200 million US dollars may be insignificant compared to traditional media giants, but it is a leap forward for Igret's portal.

Prior to this, Eaglet's main source of income was the sales of IE browser software.

Therefore, after the quarterly advertising sales event at the end of March, advertising business income has officially become a revenue focus of Eaglet Portal.

At the same time, the industry is generally aware of the strong monopoly advantage of Eaglet Portal on the World Wide Web content platform again.

You know, a portal website that only provides news information may not be too difficult technically, but it is not so easy to integrate e-mail, personal homepage, online forums, online games and other functions in addition to news information thing.

More importantly, Eaglet has also mastered a very strong patent barrier.

This is the fundamental obstacle for other technology companies to copy the portal business.

On the World Wide Web platform, even the webpage pictures that many people think are very simple are actually professional format pictures specially developed and registered by Eaglet.Not to mention the JavaScript scripting language and other technologies related to the underlying application.

Although Daenerys Entertainment maintains a very open attitude towards authorization, more and more other websites joining the World Wide Web platform can easily obtain authorization as long as they apply, and it is free authorization.However, it is not difficult to imagine that if someone intends to build a commercial website similar to the Eaglet Portal and can successfully obtain the technical authorization from Eaglet, that would be hell.

Simon hopes that Internet content sites can flourish, so he does not intend to limit the emergence of other content platforms. Doing so will not do any good for the expansion of the World Wide Web platform itself.

However, if it is only the patent authorization of open content, it will not be able to access the patent authorization of related technologies such as e-mail, online games, and future online payment.

Chapter 409 Funding Issues (Revised)

Entering April, Simon began to turn more energy to the film business under Daenerys Entertainment.

The most important DC movie universe project, "Batman: The Dark Knight" completed the final cut at the end of March and successfully obtained a PG 3 rating, and the schedule is June 13. In the first week of April, the film began a large-scale sprint promotion in the last two months before its release.

In the past January, "The Flash", which is wholly owned by Warner Bros. and is still produced by Simon, quietly started in Melbourne, Australia. The filming period is expected to be 1 to 3 months, and the release date is December 4, Christmas schedule.

Daenerys Entertainment has scheduled "Wonder Woman" for next summer, which will probably start in June.

In addition to the DC movie universe plan, because Simon delayed the production plan of "Superman", the original project director Martin Campbell was borrowed by MGM to film "007 Golden Eye".

Under the insistence of the Blockley family, which jointly holds the copyright of 007 with United Artists, Timothy Dalton is still the leading actor in "007: GoldenEye".However, Martin Campbell was the original director of Brosnan's version of "007's Golden Eye".

Of course, Famke Janssen, who has been determined to play Wonder Woman, will not play the Russian female agent who uses her long legs to kill people this time.

Not knowing whether it was intentional or unintentional, Shirley Lansing put an 'old man killer' into the final candidate list of Russian female agents, and asked Simon for his opinion.

Simon doesn't think Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is biased towards the sweet sister type, can perform the crazy bloodthirsty temperament of Famke Janssen in the original "007 Golden Eye".Given that MGM would soon become a Johnston family business, he didn't take Lansing's suggestion that it might have had some 'good intentions'.

Regarding the role of the film project in hand, Simon's attitude has always been that if the role is suitable, he is very happy to give a few favors, but if it is not suitable, he will never joke about the investment of tens of millions of dollars.

Speaking of it, there are actually many failures in Hollywood projects, all of which are caused by improper casting due to factors such as favor transactions. This proportion accounts for a very high proportion of Hollywood failed films.

The Hollywood film industry system has its very strong side, and in many cases, it will appear very unprofessional.It is only because of the strong gambling nature of film investment that winning or losing seems to have a lot of luck, which conceals many unprofessional factors.

In the final analysis, Hollywood filmmakers are used to spending other people's money, and they only earn labor fees.

If you spend other people's money, you won't be too distressed if you lose it.

Daenerys entertains, but Simon spends his own money.

Because we are responsible for our own profits and losses, each project means a huge investment ranging from a few million to tens of millions of dollars. Of course, we need to be cautious and cautious.

Not just "Batman: The Dark Knight", Daenerys Entertainment is about to start other films in the summer, whether it is "Terminator 2", "Desperate World" and "Few Good Men", which are external cooperation, or from Universal Pictures. Films such as "Backfire", "Jungle Fever", "Problem Boy 2" and "Cosmopolitan", which the industry took over, all started the final stage of promotional work for the summer vacation after entering April.

After the Oscars, it was confirmed that Pixar had accumulated enough technology, and the 3D version of "The Lion King" officially started production.

At the same time, another most important project in 1992, "Jurassic Park", also successfully completed the script with Simon's personal intervention.Entering April, the project officially started the pre-casting work, and it is expected to start up at the end of the year, and the schedule will be determined at the end of next year.

Taken together, Daenerys Entertainment's self-published key projects in 1992 have reached four, namely "Wonder Woman" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2" in the summer and "Home Alone 2" and "Jurassic garden".

Simon previously re-extended the development cycle of the DC movie universe plan, not without benefits.

If the rhythm of two films per year is maintained, projects such as "Jurassic Park" are likely to form direct competition with DC movie universe blockbusters, which will often result in losses for both sides.

As for another project that Simon promised to Spielberg, "Schindler's List", because this time there is more time, Spielberg is not in a hurry to shoot back-to-back with "Jurassic Park", and the film is expected to be released next year. Filming started in the second half of the year and was released in 1993.

In addition, Daenerys Entertainment's other external cooperation projects are also on Simon's recent key work schedule.

Of the original 10-movie plan, 4 have been released so far, and 3 more will be released this summer, namely "Terminator 2", "The Fugitive" and "A Few Good Men".

Of the remaining three, one belongs to MGM and the other two belong to Warner Bros.