Daenerys Entertainment's Burbank branch.
After two full weeks of tug-of-war negotiations, New World Pictures president Danny Morris finally secured the rights to a thriller novel called The Silence of the Lambs.
The Silence of the Lambs had been published two years ago. It was a sequel written by author and screenwriter Thomas Harris, based on his other novel, Red Dragon.
Red Dragon was published in 1981 and was adapted for the big screen in 1986 under the title Manhunter.
But Manhunter had been a disastrous flop. It was made with a fifteen-million-dollar budget and only earned a little over eight million at the box office. So even though The Silence of the Lambs sold extremely well as a novel, Hollywood wasn't particularly enthusiastic about adapting it. Over the past two years, the project had been passed around among filmmakers, never successfully getting off the ground.
Until Daenerys Entertainment showed interest.
Before that, only Orion Pictures, which had just survived a bankruptcy crisis after receiving a two-hundred-million-dollar infusion from Canada's Seagram group, had been circling the project off and on.
Once word got out, every major Hollywood studio perked up. They expressed interest and started tossing out tentative offers.
When Daenerys Entertainment didn't back off the way it usually did after everyone piled in, the bidding war erupted.
By Daenerys Entertainment's usual practice over the past two years, once a project became a feeding frenzy, the company simply refused to join the bidding.
This time, The Silence of the Lambs was the exception.
Because Simon insisted the rights had to be secured.
And in the end, they got them.
The final deal was one million dollars up front, plus five percent of net global box office profits.
Just the one-million-dollar base price was far higher than the initial asking price for adaptation rights.
Under Hollywood accounting, net profit participation usually didn't exist.
But Thomas Harris's agent wasn't an amateur. The contract capped the project's cost at thirty million dollars. In other words, no matter how much Daenerys Entertainment actually spent, profit calculations would treat the cost as a fixed thirty million.
That cap was still high.
To earn any profit participation at all, The Silence of the Lambs would need to reach at least seventy million in worldwide box office.
Even if no participation ever materialized, the one-million-dollar advance alone was far beyond Thomas Harris's expectations.
And Danny Morris believed that if The Silence of the Lambs truly had the value Simon placed on it, worldwide box office would be at least two hundred million.
Two hundred million, with a fixed thirty-million cost, would mean Thomas Harris could still take another three million in profit share.
Of course, if the film really did reach two hundred million globally, Daenerys Entertainment would be making a killing too, making the expense well worth it.
Still, Danny Morris couldn't quite understand why Simon had suddenly become so intensely interested in this project, to the point of breaking precedent. Once this kind of exception existed, more rights holders would definitely start raising their prices the moment Daenerys Entertainment showed interest.
Santa Monica.
After ending his call with Danny Morris, Simon felt helpless too.
Why make an exception for The Silence of the Lambs? It wasn't just because it was a huge box office success in another timeline. It was also to cut Orion off at the knees.
To be honest, this was a lapse on Simon's part.
He should have remembered this project earlier.
The second horror thriller after The Exorcist to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, a film that produced a Best Actor winner with barely fifteen minutes of screen time, and a major box office performer as well. There was no way Simon could allow himself to miss it.
Yet until he happened to see a batch of rights materials sent over by New World Pictures, he had still overlooked it.
If some other studio had already secured the rights or was trying to, Simon might have considered cooperating and putting The Silence of the Lambs into the old ten-film plan.
But not Orion.
In the original timeline, The Silence of the Lambs was essentially Orion's last true blockbuster.
Now, with Simon in the picture, a lot had already changed.
Because of Simon's string of massive successes in Hollywood, capital had become even more bullish on the North American film and television industry.
So Australia's Qintex successfully acquired MGM. Canada's Seagram group also tested the waters of Hollywood early. At the beginning of this year, it injected two hundred million dollars into Orion, which had been on the brink of bankruptcy, and obtained twenty-five percent of the company from Orion's original major shareholder, John Kluge.
With that funding, Orion survived and was preparing to regroup.
The Silence of the Lambs hadn't even been a top priority for Orion. For one thing, its predecessor, Manhunter, had failed badly, which heavily shaped people's expectations for the sequel's box office prospects. In Simon's memory, the film's release date landed in the dead month of February, almost like it was being dumped.
And yet, it became a phenomenon.
If Daenerys Entertainment did what it usually did and walked away the moment other studios showed interest, then this project still had a very high chance of ending up with Orion.
To get Orion's library, and to reduce Daenerys Entertainment's competition in Hollywood, Simon wouldn't allow Orion to have that kind of success again.
He had already taken Dances with Wolves away from Orion. Now he was taking The Silence of the Lambs as well. In his memory, that meant Orion's last two major hits were both now in his hands.
Seagram was only testing the waters. The Bronfman family's ambitions in Hollywood didn't stop here, and they weren't going to keep pumping money into a small pond like Orion.
Once that two hundred million was burned through without a real turnaround in performance, Orion's run in Hollywood would be over.
With The Silence of the Lambs secured, the next step was naturally greenlighting production.
This time, Simon had no hesitation in abandoning the idea of casting Anthony Hopkins as the male lead.
As the actor playing Alfred, the butler in the Batman series, if Hopkins suddenly became an Oscar-winning Best Actor, it would only introduce more variables into the DC plan. So Simon would rather see The Silence of the Lambs shrink at the box office, or even fail because of the casting change, than allow any unpredictable complications in the DC film universe, which Daenerys Entertainment was building as a pillar.
If the actors in the DC film universe could calmly honor their contracts, Simon wouldn't mind giving them a push. But after everything that happened following Batman's release, Simon had given up on that idea.
People's hearts were always fickle.
And Simon had never been the type to trust them much in the first place.
In the midst of the bustle, the first week of the 1990 Easter season slipped by.
This year, Easter fell on April 15.
During the Easter week of April 13 to April 19, Hollywood released two films. One was New World Pictures' Children of the Corn 2 under Daenerys Entertainment. The other was Paramount's family comedy The Clan of Geniuses, starring Daryl Hannah. Both opened on around 1,300 screens.
Children of the Corn 2 didn't earn strong reviews and showed no dark-horse potential. In its opening week, it took only $7.13 million. With Pretty Woman in its eleventh week and finally slowing down, Children of the Corn 2 barely took the top spot for the week. It was projected to finish around $25 million in North America.
Compared to its $3 million budget, a projected $25 million total was a clear success.
Paramount's The Clan of Geniuses opened to $5.76 million. If it could hold its weekly drops in check, its domestic total might surpass $15 million, which wasn't terrible. But the film's budget was also $15 million. For Paramount to recoup costs, it would have to rely on overseas markets and other distribution channels.
By now, last year's Batman and Driving Miss Daisy, along with February's Valentine release Pretty Woman, were all entering their final stretch.
With the Easter week's box office champion failing to break ten million in its first week, the holiday season felt a little quiet.
By late April, Hollywood as a whole was already gearing up for the summer season a month away.
Daenerys Entertainment had already begun running TV spots for Ghost and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These were its two key summer releases this year, dated for June 1 and July 6. There was also Hellraiser 2, locked for August 10 at the tail end of the summer season, with a marketing push naturally far smaller than the first two.
The Fox co-production Sleeping with the Enemy and the Disney co-production The Hand That Rocks the Cradle were dated for June 15 and July 27. Those two didn't require Daenerys Entertainment to invest much attention into marketing.
Even so, counting everything up, projects connected to Daenerys Entertainment this summer totaled five films, more than any other studio in Hollywood.
Somewhere in his subconscious, Simon always wanted to keep a low profile, but reality rarely allowed it.
Saturday, April 21.
There was simply too much to do lately, and the weekend still meant overtime.
A little after two in the afternoon, Simon was on the phone with Warner Bros.' Terry Semel, discussing preparations for The Fugitive, when Jennifer pushed the door open. Sandra followed behind her. Seeing Simon on the phone, she rudely walked right in anyway and sat down across from him.
Simon spoke with Terry Semel for a few more lines, then put down the receiver and casually made a mark on an actor's profile in front of him.
It was the file for the actress being considered to play Harrison Ford's murdered wife in The Fugitive, a role with very little screen time. In the original version, it was played by Sela Ward.
This time, Sela Ward had submitted her resume again.
She was a woman he'd spent a night with, and she was also the original choice. Simon didn't plan to audition her. He simply handed her the part.
He set the papers aside, lifted his head, and caught Sandra craning her neck to peek. Simon put down his pencil with a grin. "Stop snooping. That's commercial secrets."
Sandra pursed her lips. "Like I care. So tell me, why'd you call me here? I'm busy. I'm going to Palm Springs for the weekend with everyone. I'm leaving soon."
Simon slid the Silence of the Lambs script across to her. "See if you're interested. I already had someone send Bob a copy too. If you're interested as well, you two can act in it together."
The Bob Simon mentioned was Robert Duvall, also one of Jonathan's clients. And because they'd once studied under the same acting teacher, he and Sandra, despite being more than thirty years apart, counted as senior and junior classmates. When Sandra first entered Hollywood, Duvall had helped this junior classmate before.
Since Simon didn't plan to use Anthony Hopkins, he also stopped insisting on matching the original cast. He wasn't especially close to the original female lead, Jodie Foster, either. He might as well let Sandra try. Apart from lacking an Oscar-winning pedigree, Sandra's fame and box office appeal over the past two years were actually stronger than Jodie Foster's.
And if the project still succeeded, it might even earn Sandra an Oscar Best Actress nomination.
If it failed, then it failed.
Sandra grabbed the script, flipped a few pages with a loud rustle, then stuffed it into her shoulder bag. "I'll read it over the weekend. Anything else?"
Simon put on an injured look. "Leaving that fast? Am I really that unlikable to you now?"
Sandra rolled her eyes. "You're a married man now, Mr. Westeros. I don't want rumors with you again."
"I get it. You're afraid Janet will come after you."
"Think whatever you want."
Sandra clearly got provoked anyway. She stood up as if to leave, but suddenly leaned over the desk, grabbed Simon by the collar, and yanked him toward her.
Simon thought she was about to force a kiss. Instead, Sandra bared her little white teeth and snapped them shut in the air right at his nose, nearly making him jump. By the time he reacted, she was already laughing as she run out of the office.
Rubbing the nose that had almost been bitten, Simon could only shake his head in helpless amusement.
Jennifer pushed the door open again to remind him. Simon stood, left his office, and headed toward a conference room in the building.
James Rebould and Apollo Management's Leon Black had both flown to Los Angeles for the weekend. Today, they were going to discuss the MCA acquisition, mainly the funding question after the offer was formally launched.
Even though the groundwork had been underway for a long time, and even though Simon knew Japan's Matsushita was also quietly preparing its own bid for MCA, Simon still decided to wait until September in the second half of the year before formally launching his tender offer.
In his memory, Matsushita's negotiations for MCA began early as well, but because the war broke out after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the North American stock market took a heavy hit. Matsushita's acquisition wasn't fully settled until early 1991. Simon still had plenty of time.
After the war began, MCA's stock would fall along with the broader market. That would also be the best moment for Daenerys Entertainment to enter.
But as for early preparations, sooner was always better.
The more thorough the preparation, the higher the odds of winning later.
After quietly contacting a number of banks in North America and overseas during this period, James Rebould had essentially resolved the question of where the funding would come from. Major banks across Europe, Australia, even Japan were all very interested in Daenerys Entertainment's financing plan.
Given Daenerys Entertainment's excellent financial numbers and the vast wealth accumulated across the Westeros system in recent years, those banks weren't worried in the slightest about Simon being unable to repay enormous loans.
For the planned funding pool of more than three billion dollars, Simon naturally wasn't going to rely on just one bank, though even if he tried, it would likely succeed. Spreading the loans out was effectively the same as drawing a group of potential allies around Daenerys Entertainment.
In this world, the more money you borrowed, the more righteous you could afford to sound.
Using profits and interests to tie others in, weaving a wide net for Daenerys Entertainment and the entire Westeros system, was something Simon had focused on heavily in recent years.