Chapter 648 Let the Bullets Fly for a While
Hong Kong entertainment has declined, and domestic entertainment has not yet fully developed. From the perspective of "investors", there are many opportunities to pick up bargains in the market.
Compared with other things, in Fan Wumian's eyes, top artists with higher commercial value are still the most worthy "assets" for investment.
Take Chen Yisen and Liu Yifei for example. Signing them only cost more than 10 million RMB each, but during the contract period, they have the opportunity to bring Fan Wumian dozens of times of direct returns.
In addition, they can also help reduce customer acquisition costs for platforms such as Tudou, Penguin Weibo, and Penguin Music. This part of the intangible value is worth at least hundreds of millions of RMB in the long run.
For example, the online copyrights of "The Return of the Condor Heroes", "The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils" and "The Legend of Sword and Fairy" starring Liu Yifei have now been bought out by Tudou.com. Last year, she also became one of the spokespersons for the online game "Emperor of the Wilderness", and her cosplay character "God Liu" gained extremely high popularity on the Internet.
The role of "The Ruthless Emperor" is played by Zhuang Muxi. His cold and aloof temperament hidden under the mask is so pitiful.
The online game "Emperor of the Wilderness" completed internal testing and then public testing. It had more players than "World of Warcraft" and was as popular as the hit game "Fantasy Westward Journey". In just over two months, it contributed over 100 million yuan in net profit to Fan Wumian and Penguin Group.
The game has just been released and new maps have already been planned and developed. If nothing goes wrong, it should have a chance to be popular for a long time and become another "cash cow" under the Penguin Group.
Except for the artists.
The second high-quality asset that Fan Wumian values is the film library resources accumulated by Hong Kong entertainment over decades.
About two-fifths of the online copyrights of TV dramas and movies accumulated in the mainland over the years have been acquired by Fan Wumian. Previously, the prices of film resources in Hong Kong were relatively high, and he lacked funds, so he had to put them aside for the time being.
Now that he had money, the new plan of cooperating with Hongcheng Entertainment Company was quickly put on the agenda.
Old films produced by Shaw Brothers Film Company, although of varying quality, number in the hundreds and have long been bought out by Malaysia's Celestial Pictures.
This time, faced with the minimum offer of HK$6000 million from Celestial Pictures, Fan Wumian considered it for a few minutes and readily decided to buy it all.
At that time, the films that pass the review will be brought to the mainland, and those that fail the review will be broadcast on the international version of Tudou. At the same time, we are also preparing to contact film and television companies in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and other places, and invest more money to incubate the international version of Tudou as soon as possible.
There is also TBV. Although it did not agree to a direct buyout, it agreed to license the film library resources accumulated by TBV over the years to Tudou.com in the form of "minimum guarantee + click-through profit".
Fan Wumian was a little overjoyed to have these two collaborations successfully concluded.
The reason why Malaysia's Celestial Pictures and TBV agreed to the terms one after another was probably because they were thinking of "making good use of waste". After all, apart from Tudou, no other company could offer a price that would attract them.
LeTV, which should have seized the opportunity to rise, has now been squeezed out by Tudou and has a market share of less than 2%, and its boss Jia is still just a nobody.
Sohu, a Chinese company listed on NASDAQ, was reluctant to throw money into the dominance of Tudou. After struggling with video websites for a while and finding that the results were not good, it has begun to transform into a short video platform similar to Youtube, and its presence seems particularly weak.
More than 80% of the long video market in the mainland is occupied by Tudou.com, an online video platform that Fan Wumian casually acquired, and its latest market valuation has exceeded US$7.5 million.
Not only he laughed, but the executives of several satellite TV stations that raised funds last year also laughed. With the official commercialization of optical broadband technology, it has gradually become popular in first-tier cities. Facing the trend of the times of "optical fiber replacing copper", Tudou's valuation naturally soared.
The "entertainment empire" built around Tudou.com as its core seemed to have taken shape in March 2007.
From upstream content creation, IP incubation and financial support, to midstream content production and operation, publicity and distribution, to downstream channel monetization, derivative product development and performance activities, etc., all the companies under Fan Wumian's name have their own layout.
It is not clear how high this "entertainment empire" will grow in the future, but Fan Wumian believes it is worth some thought.
On the morning of March 3th.
After getting up, Fan Wumian worked out and swam to avoid collapse due to neglect of body management. At this moment, he had just taken a shower and was choosing clothes in the cloakroom when Pu Jiajing hurried over and reported:
"Boss, you sent someone to negotiate a takeover with Marvel Entertainment, and the 10% premium you offered was rejected outright by the company's board of directors."
After listening to this, Fan Wumian shrugged and said:
"Not surprisingly, the board of directors of Marvel Entertainment has mortgaged the copyrights of so many comic characters and is ambitiously preparing to make a big move. I guess they think my offer is too low."
The year before last, Marvel Entertainment's total market value remained at around US$8.2 million. After such a long time, it has remained stagnant, with the total market value barely breaking through US$9 million.
There was no other way. The company had to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from outside but still failed to produce any decent works. It also had to pay high loan interest regularly every month, which resulted in the company's financial report data being appalling.
Fan Wumian rounded up the price and proposed a comprehensive acquisition for $10 billion. Although they did not have high expectations for this, the board of directors of Marvel Entertainment rejected it outright and did not even bother to discuss it. This indirectly shows that most of the board members of Marvel Entertainment now have high expectations for the upcoming filming of "Iron Man".
Pu Jiajing asked, "What should we do next? Should we continue to raise the price and negotiate with them?"
"There is no need for that for now. Let's let the bullets fly for a while. If the US economy goes into recession, it might overwhelm their psychological defenses."
After putting on his pants and picking out a black shirt, Fan Wumian added:
"If it's impossible to privatize Marvel Entertainment and delist it, it's also good to just acquire part of the shares. Ask the person in charge of this matter to contact the major shareholders of Marvel Entertainment one by one and tell them that if they are willing to sell, they can contact me first. The 10% premium condition remains unchanged."
After shorting listed companies such as Huifeng Bank and New Century Financial Corporation, the funds obtained from the second pledge of Penguin shares some time ago returned to Fan Wumian with interest.
It can be said that since he started his business, Fan Wumian has never had so much money in his hands. In addition, with the support of banks, he can indeed think about privatizing and delisting Marvel Entertainment.
From the perspective of return rate, if you put out a capital of two or three hundred million US dollars and wait for "Iron Man" to be released, you will have the opportunity to make a profit of about 10 times, which is generally considered quite good.
What's more, most of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Marvel Entertainment obtained from Merrill Lynch's mortgage loan are still lying in the company's account. If it is privatized and delisted, Fan Wumian can also use this loan.
Unfortunately, just as his plan went smoothly, the Marvel Entertainment board of directors directly rejected his acquisition offer, so that the plan was blocked and some subsequent ideas could not be further implemented.
It’s not that he is impatient, but the “Iron Man” project has been brewing for a long time, and accurate news has come out recently that it will start filming soon.
Fortunately, it will take at least a year from filming to release, during which time Fan Wumian still has the opportunity to find the right time to try to take over this most promising company in Hollywood.
Pu Jiajing stayed beside him and had long been accustomed to doing things without thinking and just following orders.
Seeing that Fan Wumian had already thought of the next step, she just changed the subject and said:
"Just now, Miss Xue, whose family nearly went bankrupt, called and said that her company has been unsealed and is preparing to resume normal business. In a few days, she will find a restaurant in Xiamen to treat us to a meal and spread the good news. She wanted to ask if you are free to go and help support the event."
"Invite me? I'd better not join in the fun."
Hear the words.
Pu Jiajing smacked his lips and asked:
"Why don't you go? Miss Zuo, Miss Zhuang and the others have come one after another and drained you of your wealth."
Other things can be admitted, but this is absolutely not acceptable.
Fan Wumian rolled his eyes and said:
"My relationship with Xue Shiyun is not what you think. Although I don't mind having another lover, if I provoke her, it means I am giving her something to hold against me. I am not that confident in her, so I will just go with the flow..." (End of this chapter)