I am Hollywood

[Chapter 1083: Some Are Happy, Some Are Sad]

Eric hadn't even had a chance to say anything more when Aniston reached out and snatched the girl's laptop away. In a few swift movements, she deleted the audition video, warning Eric, "You are not allowed to have any thoughts about that woman."

Eric looked at the nervous expression on the girl's face, chuckled, and wrapped his arms around her waist, reassuring her, "I promise, I'm serious; she's not as pretty as our Jenny."

Aniston felt Eric's warm hand gently caressing her waist, and just as she was about to relax, she caught a teasing glance from Drew on the other side. Instantly, she warned, "You're not allowed to bring her in front of Eric. If you do, we're not done."

Drew, of course, didn't care about the little threat and cheerfully replied, "Well, that might not be true. Maybe I can make her more famous than you!"

Even though MGM was wholly under Eric's control, Drew, being the company's nominal largest shareholder, could easily make one or two actors famous.

The thought of that possibility made Aniston's competitive spirit flare up again. While still in Eric's arms, her two little hands began to scratch at Drew, who quickly retaliated.

Eric had no choice but to separate the two little girls fighting. He saw Aniston's determined look as she was clearly not going to back down easily. To diffuse the situation, he had to use his big move: he tugged at a few thin pieces of fabric on her outfit and pulled her into his embrace.

Just as he reached for the girl's swimsuit tie, Aniston's eyes widened, and she began to wiggle, making little sounds. Then, she softly fell against the edge of the pool, pouting, "Eric, you... uh, you're such a jerk."

...

After spending the weekend in San Simeon, Eric took the two girls back to Los Angeles. The box office numbers for The Phantom Menace officially came out for its second weekend.

Compared to its opening weekend, the film's box office only fell by 31% during the second weekend, raking in $56.9 million. After ten days, the total box office reached $193.08 million, and it was already easy to foresee that this Star Wars blockbuster would easily surpass $200 million during the upcoming weekdays.

Thanks to The Phantom Menace, the North American movie market's total weekly box office exceeded $270 million last week. Although this week might show a slight decline, it was still expected to stay comfortably above $200 million.

Thus, while The Phantom Menace took a significant portion of the box office, the overall audience numbers had greatly increased due to the Star Wars series, enabling other films in the market to perform quite well over the recent weeks.

New Line Cinema's The Waterboy debuted with an impressive $53.26 million over its opening week. Despite suffering a 53% drop the following week due to the Star Wars impact, bringing in only $25.03 million, its total box office over two weeks still reached $78.29 million. As it entered its third week, with Star Wars sentiments starting to wane, The Waterboy's drop softened to 37%, earning another $11.02 million, with its total nearing $89.31 million, just shy of breaking $100 million.

Mulan, a 2D animated film released by Paramount Pictures at the same time as The Waterboy, also experienced a significant drop under the pressure of Star Wars. However, this weekend, its box office decline began to narrow as well.

Still, Mulan's weekend box office numbers sank below the $10 million mark at $8.29 million, and its total box office over two weeks stood at only $63.56 million, far below Paramount's expectations. The estimate for the upcoming weeks put its North American total box office between $80 million and $90 million.

While relying on overseas releases and future merchandising, Paramount would still achieve profitability. However, compared to the 3D animated films that typically enjoyed more significant hits at the box office, 2D animated films aimed at children and accumulating box office over time had clearly struggled to adapt to the market trends in recent years.

Additionally, two other new films were released this week: Columbia Pictures' heartwarming family comedy, Stepmother, and Universal Pictures' fantasy horror, The Sixth Sense. Both films reached respective openings of $19.14 million and $15.01 million over their first weekends. While still lagging behind The Phantom Menace, they can be considered decent openings given their genres.

...

At Firefly Cinema, in a small screening room, Eric sat with Katzenberg, Frank Wells, and the director of Iron Man, Joss Whedon, all watching the big screen in front of them.

As the Firefly Films logo flashed across the screen, the scene shifted to Eric portraying Tony Stark, building his armor in a cave. With the familiar sound of comic pages turning from Marvel Studios, the camera cut to Tony Stark's technologically advanced workshop, accompanied by Colonel Rhodes' voiceover: "Tony, what in the world are you making?"

With Rhodes' line, the energetic rock music kicked in, and the edit started to pick up its pace, culminating with Tony Stark soaring into the sky clad in his silver Mark II armor. The 30-second clip ended abruptly, leaving a strong sense of anticipation.

Iron Man was officially set to hit theaters on May 7 of the following year.

Although there were still some final details to work out, the promotional campaign had already begun. The most significant upcoming event was, of course, the annual Super Bowl. Since Eric used Super Bowl advertising to run the Twister trailer and received unexpected promotional results, over the years, Super Bowl ads had become a battleground for the seven major film studios.

What everyone was viewing at that moment was the Iron Man Super Bowl commercial.

Following New Line's dazzling box office achievements this year through a series of mid-to-low-budget productions, next year was set to be another big year for Firefly Studios.

From next Easter through the end of the year, Firefly would line up five heavyweight films under its banner, including Enemy of the State, Iron Man, Cars, Gravity, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, each offering diverse genres.

However, after various considerations, only Iron Man and The Lord of the Rings would have trailers debut during the Super Bowl. Iron Man's teaser was set to be 30 seconds, whereas The Lord of the Rings' was 15 seconds long.

Eric and a few senior executives, including Katzenberg, focused on reviewing the trailers for both films today.

They had already discussed The Lord of the Rings' teaser in the morning. Since it was nearly a year until the release, its Super Bowl spot leaned more toward a conceptual teaser, featuring grand panoramic views with minimal dialogue. It revealed very little information, maintaining suspense, and was capped at 15 seconds.

In comparison, the Iron Man teaser conveyed a wealth of information.

This was mainly because the Super Bowl was scheduled for January 31, leaving just three months before Iron Man's May 7 release. Immediately after the Super Bowl, Iron Man would enter its last major promotional phase, and therefore, it didn't need to try to be as guarded as The Lord of the Rings -- it aimed to maximize advertising effect as much as possible.

After playing the highly acclaimed teaser several times, everyone compared and discussed other edited versions in detail, finalizing their plan. By the time they finished, it was already 5 PM.

...

As everyone else started to leave work, Eric and Katzenberg headed to the neighboring conference room together.

"Eric, the total value of stocks for the Clover Fund has exceeded $27 billion, and I've heard from friends on Wall Street that many investment firms have confirmed they're clearing out tech stocks before the NASDAQ hits 3,000. Shouldn't we... um, at least realize the initial investment?"

Eric took a sip of the coffee Merissa Mayer handed him and sensed a hint of unease in Katzenberg's tone, chuckling, "Are you scared too?"

Katzenberg awkwardly rubbed his shaven head but nodded earnestly.

He wasn't just scared; he was more concerned.

According to Eric's initial promise, if they could cash out all the stocks held by the Clover Fund right now, he would personally receive dividends exceeding $400 million.

Four hundred million dollars!

Even at Katzenberg's current salary level, it was hard for him to remain indifferent to an almost miraculous $400 million. Moreover, the precarious state of the NASDAQ had him on edge daily, worrying that someday he'd wake up to news of a market crash.

It's worth knowing that the North American stock market has no limits on price fluctuations, and if the NASDAQ crashed, that $400 million could vanish in mere days.

Leaning against his leather chair with a coffee mug in hand, Eric remarked, "Jeffrey, do you remember what I said when we first invested in tech stocks?"

Katzenberg replied with a laugh, "Seems like we've had a lot of discussions about this, haven't we?"

"Well," Eric said, "I remember saying that most of the stocks we bought through the Clover Fund have long-term holding value -- like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Verizon, etc. Even if the NASDAQ crashes, these companies have established solid market positions and their stocks will surely rise again. If we hold them long-term, we can still earn substantial dividends each year. So, if the NASDAQ crashes before we liquidate the Clover Fund stocks, we only suffer short-term losses on paper. Yes, some stocks with inflated bubbles might bring us some losses, but in the long run, we can still maintain substantial profits."

Though Katzenberg understood Eric's logic, he still expressed concern, "But if that's the case, the $7 billion our company initially invested will be stuck in those stocks. That's $7 billion; think of everything we could do with that!"

"Firefly isn't short on cash, right? What I'm describing is just a worst-case scenario. In fact, I'm highly confident in my personal judgement. Wall Street may think that 3,000 on the NASDAQ is the end point, but I believe it's just the start."

Seeing that Katzenberg still looked doubtful, he continued with a grin, "Alright, Jeffrey, I know you're worried about your share of the earnings. But you're not short on cash either, are you? Let's do the math -- if you sell now, you'll only get around $400 million. But if the NASDAQ goes beyond 3,000, even hits 4,000 or 5,000, one day you might wake up to find you're a billionaire."

Katzenberg briefly entertained the idea of Eric's scenario, shaking his head reflexively, "Eric, that's insane."

Eric shrugged playfully, "Since the NASDAQ hit 2,000, there haven't been many sane people on Wall Street. Now that everyone's gone crazy, what's the harm in being a little crazier?"

The Clover Fund's trading team was fully accountable only to Eric. While Katzenberg could see some data on the fund, he had no authority to manage those assets. With his attempts to persuade falling flat, Katzenberg shifted to another topic.

"Eric, speaking of which, weren't you planning to acquire Hasbro?"

Eric nodded, "Yeah, but it doesn't seem like a good time. We need to wait until this round of the stock market bubble passes."

The frenzy in the tech stock market had similarly driven the entire North American market, and while Hasbro had no direct ties to tech companies, its stock price had also nearly doubled in recent years.

Eric recalled some data he had casually scanned recently, noting that Hasbro's market value surpassed $5 billion. Three years ago, when Firefly secured the licensing for Transformers, Hasbro's valuation was only around $2 billion. Over those three years, Hasbro's annual profit hovered around $200 million, so such a dramatic surge in its market value couldn't have stemmed from performance increases.

Katzenberg replied, "That's true. However, Hasbro has already begun to encounter turmoil, and it's significant trouble."

Eric pondered for a moment, a realization striking him. "You're talking about Star Wars?"

Katzenberg didn't expect Eric to respond so swiftly and accurately, his face showing surprise before he nodded. "Exactly. The company's team has been negotiating product licensing for next year at Hasbro's Rhode Island headquarters. They sent word last Friday that during the opening week of Star Wars, Hasbro's licensed toy sales only reached $23 million, not even half of what was expected. Hasbro initially paid $100 million for the toy licensing rights for the Star Wars prequel series, hoping to bring in $300 million in toy sales within three months and over $500 million for the year. But given the current situation, the opening week, which should have seen the highest toy sales, only brought in $23 million -- a total of $200 million seems highly unlikely within three months. Because of their optimism in the Star Wars merchandise, Hasbro heavily stocked initially, and if the toys become unsold, those products would have to be returned and destroyed. Coupled with the huge licensing fees already paid, Hasbro will certainly face a huge loss this year."

Firefly Studios operated a similarly large merchandising department, so Eric understood clearly the challenges Hasbro was about to face.

Moreover, the situation could become even grimmer if Hasbro faced major losses alongside this year's stock market bubble bursting. It was a scenario that seemed unbearable to contemplate.

*****

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