Chapter 291 Investment for the Next Year

Chapter 291 Investment for the Next Year

Chapter 291 Investments for the Next Decade

Major film and television forums, bulletin boards, and websites on the domestic Internet have all sparked a wave of discussion due to the "Wolf Warrior" materials released by Galaxy Pictures.

Everyone began to try to infer and guess the story content of "Wolf Warrior" or more plots based on the partial information released.

After that, as the National Day holiday for the release of "Wolf Warrior" gets closer, Galaxy Pictures will gradually release relevant movie information, pilot trailers, official trailers every month, and even let crew members participate in various variety shows for pre-promotion and warm-up.

Of course, before that, Wang Hao had to go to the United States first.

On the one hand, it is Sony's "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe". As the chief planner of the project, since he has occupied this position and received the remuneration from Sony, he still has to do some work.

You should know that in order to thank him, Sony Pictures agreed that Wang Hao could get 3% of the profits from all film and television projects of the "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe".

Of course, this commission only includes profit income from movie box office and video tapes.

As for the most important profit of comic book movies - peripheral products, Wang Hao has the memory of later generations and knows that the peripheral income of "Spider-Man" will be taken back by Marvel in the future.
So he didn't force it, but just used it as a condition to bargain with Sony, and only then did he raise the original 1% share offered by the other party to 3%.

It’s just that Sony Pictures gave the money, so naturally they were seeking a bigger return.

So during the time Wang Hao was in China, the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe division specially established by Sony Pictures would send him messages almost every four or five days, asking him various questions about the project and seeking his opinion.

As for this flight to the United States, it was because Sony Pictures' TV series "Hell's Kitchen" had already been filmed and produced, and Wang Hao needed to go over to take a look.

By the way, the first work of the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, "Young Spider-Man", is also about to enter the early project establishment stage.

If the trial effect of "Hell's Kitchen" is good, then "Young Spider-Man" will officially start shooting. At that time, Sony will also officially announce the "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe" and Wang Hao will be able to serve as the producer of this film.

Wang Hao arrived safely in New York and went directly to Sony Pictures as soon as he landed. He first met with Keita Miyamoto to get in touch with him, and then went to watch "Hell's Kitchen".

The whole TV series is centered around the birth of Daredevil, and at the same time, through his perspective, it depicts the power and complexity of the New York underworld overlord Kingpin. This mortal, who originally had no superpowers, was made extremely charming, so much so that after watching the TV series, Wang Hao couldn't help but praise the crew's main creators.

At least in his opinion, this TV series is extremely excellent.

However, he couldn't guarantee the specific ratings. After all, he couldn't really say what kind of TV dramas American audiences liked.

However, the people at Sony Pictures are also very optimistic about "Hell's Kitchen", so they are also very concerned about the project "Young Spider-Man" and have already begun looking for a new candidate for Young Spider-Man.

Sony has quite a few choices in this regard. After all, Hollywood is now the core of the English-speaking world. Not only are there teenage male actors from the United States for them to choose from, but also young actors of the right age from other countries like the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, etc., who rush to Hollywood every year in search of an opportunity to become famous.

So Wang Hao doesn't need to worry about the selection of young Spider-Man, but he does have some concerns.

In order to implement the plan of adding sand, when planning "Young Spider-Man", he added an Asian character living in Hell's Kitchen to the film as Spider-Man's classmate, and also became the cause of the conflict between Spider-Man and Kingpin.

Wang Hao will definitely intervene in the casting of this role and try to choose a young artist from China.

However, he had no idea about the candidate for the time being, so he had to ask the agency to look for a suitable candidate in the country.

After all, there is a strong drama atmosphere in the English-speaking area, and many young children will join drama clubs on campus, providing them with many performance opportunities.

In comparison, in China, there are not many young actors of this era. We have to wait a few more years. After the traffic era and the internet celebrity economy emerge, many young people will rush into the entertainment industry and dream of becoming famous overnight.

After spending a few days discussing the follow-up plans for the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe with Sony Pictures, Wang Hao went to Wall Street again to take stock of his gains.

Wang Hao entered the American economic crisis in the second half of 2008 and invested more than 2 million US dollars over a period of one and a half years.

Today, after being sold over this period of time, the total value of those bargain-hunting stocks has exceeded 3 million U.S. dollars. In total, Wang Hao's capital has skyrocketed 15 times thanks to this financial crisis.

Of course, if you review the situation and the timing is right, it is possible for the principal to increase 40 times.

But the reality cannot be reversed after all, and the stock market is changing rapidly. It is already commendable that Wang Hao's stock manager Ogawa Hehui was able to help Wang Hao obtain such returns while seeking stability. More importantly, it depends on the help of the overall environment.

Faced with this capital of more than 3 million US dollars, Wang Hao also thought about their use.

First of all, Wang Hao will use the US$100 million to set up a fund company here, which will be managed by Ogawa Kazuki and invested in the US stock market to buy stocks of Apple, Microsoft, and emerging Internet companies such as Twitter.

Another 200 million US dollars and 50 million were injected into the film and television company that Wang Hao had previously opened in the United States. In the future, these foreign exchange will be used for film and television investment here, as well as for purchasing various high-end equipment and talent training, and gradually provide blood transfusions to the domestic Galaxy Pictures.

As for the remaining 150 million, it will be transferred to the Cayman Islands overseas to establish an overseas investment company.

Most of them returned to China to invest in Galaxy Pictures, preparing for the subsequent development of the company, the construction of [Galaxy Film Metropolis] and future financing and holding.

As for how to use the extra money, Wang Hao does not have a clear plan yet.

However, after 2010, the mainland market was booming, the Internet economy was thriving, and there were many investment opportunities. With only US$ million, after deducting the funds needed for Galaxy Pictures, there was not much left.

Apart from other things, with the help of Wang Hao's angel round of investment, DJI's drone business is now on the right track, and its first relatively mature helicopter flight system XP3.1 has also been released.

Mainland China's helicopter autonomous hovering technology has made a breakthrough in DJI Technology and immediately exploded the market as soon as it was produced.

DJI Technology is therefore about to usher in the "PreA round", and Wang Hao will definitely invest in it this time.

Then there is the online ticket purchase platform Gewara.com, which has just started. Wang Hao has paid attention to this website since its inception. Online ticket purchase is the general trend of movie ticket sales in the future. Major Internet manufacturers are also relying on this to gradually penetrate and erode the traditional film and television industry, so Wang Hao must not let it go.

Gewara.com was originally just a small website in Shanghai. Its founder Liu Yong was originally a product manager for a foreign company, working on navigation products, and movies were just his business hobby.

It was just that by chance, he discovered that the experience of queuing up to buy tickets at the cinema was very bad, so he and a few like-minded friends created the Guevara Life Network.

The original Gewara Life Network did not sell tickets. Liu Yong's ambition was to turn it into a cinema scheduling website with excellent user experience. However, no investor was interested in this kind of website that was created out of a hobby.

Later, Chen Tianqiao of Shanda had a keen eye for talent and invested in the first angel round of funding for Gewara Life Network, and Liu Yong also received 200 million yuan.

After that, Liu Yong discovered that after users saw the screening schedule, they would think about buying tickets.

Originally, Liu Yong had no intention of selling tickets because he felt that doing so would be like being a scalper.

However, his partners advised him that if he didn't do it, someone else would do it, and that Guevara was created to improve user experience. After some hesitation, he started his career as a "scalper".

However, at the beginning, the people in the cinema simply could not understand how to buy tickets online, so Gewara Life Network had to negotiate with them one by one. After much persuasion, Liu Yong finally negotiated with a cinema. At that time, he could not get any discount, so he bought tickets from the cinema at the original price, and then resold them to users at the original price.

In this way, we gradually opened up the situation and completed the initial dirty work of educating theaters, ticketing system manufacturers and audiences.

But in this way, the 200 million in the angel round was quickly spent.

Just when Liu Yong was worried about the funding issue, Wang Hao's Spark Capital appeared. At the end of last year, it led the "PreA Round" financing of Gewara Life Network and invested 500 million yuan.

Then, in early 2010, "Avatar" landed in China. Chinese people flocked to watch the movie. There was only one cinema in Shanghai that could show the IMAX version of "Avatar", so there was a hundred-meter-long queue outside the door. Scalpers also inflated the ticket prices, and tickets were hard to come by.

This was the time when Gewara Life Network came to the limelight. Because the tickets were sold at the original price, the website sold more than 300 movie tickets at once, which completely made the website famous.

It was during this operation that Liu Yong discovered the advantages of online ticketing and the pain point of ticket distribution. He then took advantage of the situation to promote online reservation services and terminal ticket machines, thus forming a complete business closed loop.

According to the report from Liu Yong before Wang Hao came to the United States, they are going to completely occupy the online ticket purchasing business of theaters in the entire Magic City, and then gradually expand outward.

At this rate, the 500 million in Series A financing will probably not last long, and a new round of financing is probably inevitable.

In addition to DJI Technology and Guevara Life Network, Wang Hao estimates that he will also invest in online novel websites, games, comics, toy peripherals and other areas to expand the boundaries of the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] and build a "moat" for his own company.

Of course, no matter how it expands, with these 300 million US dollars and more than 2 billion Chinese yuan as a foundation, the expansion of the Galaxy Group will undoubtedly be much easier.

Wang Hao then stayed in New York for more than a week, providing guidance to Sony Pictures while busying himself with putting the money in his pocket.

During this period, Wang Hao actually received an invitation.

It was Marvel Studios that sent him an invitation through his shell production company in Hollywood, inviting him to attend as a guest the premiere of "Iron Man 2", the third film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

When Wang Hao received this invitation, he was very surprised at first.

After just a little thought, he understood.

Sony Pictures is not a monolithic entity. There are many white people within the company, and it also has close ties with other Hollywood film and television companies.

So although the big project "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe" has not been officially announced yet, some well-informed people have probably received general information about this project in private.

However, there are only the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] and the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] on the market nowadays. The former is only popular in China, and its response in Hollywood is only mediocre.

As for the latter, he only made three movies, and the third one, "Iron Man 2", is about to be released.

Therefore, although the concept of "cinematic universe" is new, its commercial value has not been sufficiently verified. Even though Sony Pictures is planning its own "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe", several other major Hollywood film and television companies are mostly still in the wait-and-see or project discussion stage.

Even Disney, which just spent $40 billion to acquire Marvel at the end of last year, didn't care about Sony Pictures' operation.

The main reason they acquired Marvel is that they were attracted by the rich content library of Marvel IP and the vast base of comic fans, which can greatly expand Disney's audience and complete the corporate transformation from a low-age group to an all-age group.

As for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although it has some potential, whether it can succeed and how far it can go remains unknown.

I think the only one who would attach great importance to the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe is probably Marvel Studios itself. It is not surprising that they invited Wang Hao, the "Father of the Cinematic Universe" and the creator of the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe, to attend the premiere of Iron Man 2.

Wang Hao also informed Keita Miyamoto about this invitation, but he did not expect that the other party had also received an invitation from Marvel Studios.

It can be seen that the emergence of the "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe" has indeed disrupted the plans of Marvel Studios and Karen Feige.

Come to think of it, it's like you were preparing to launch a big plan for the [Fengshen Universe], but I ended up shooting a movie called "Nezha Conquers the Dragon King" first and released it at the same time as your promotion.

In the eyes of the public who are not aware of the situation, they might think that you two are from the same family and that this is all from the same series. How can this not make Marvel feel upset?

But what can Marvel do? After all, the copyright has been sold in the first place.

Now Marvel Studios can only talk with Sony Pictures again to see if they can come up with a compromise.

(End of this chapter)