On May 21st, the 43rd Cannes Film Festival in far-off France officially came to a close.
Simon did not rush to Cannes this year; Ira Deutchman went as usual. Giuseppe Tornatore's second feature film, 'Everybody's Fine', co-invested by Highgate Film and several European film companies, entered the main competition unit. However, compared to 'Cinema Paradiso', which won the Palme d'Or last year after Simon's manoeuvring squeezed out 'Sex, lies, and videotape', 'Everybody's Fine' came away empty-handed this time.
David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart' won this year's Palme d'Or amidst a storm of polarized reviews.
In the original timeline, due to the controversy, 'Wild at Heart' couldn't even find a distributor, forcing the producers to handle the theatrical operation themselves.
Simon didn't personally like 'Wild at Heart', but he didn't stop Deutchman from buying the North American distribution rights. In his memory, despite the various criticisms, the box office for 'Wild at Heart' seemed to be quite decent.
Besides 'Wild at Heart', Deutchman also bought another film from Cannes that was very niche for North America, titled 'Ju Dou'. The North American distribution rights for this film should have originally belonged to Miramax, and it even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.
From Simon's earliest 'Run Lola Run' to this year's big Oscar winner 'Driving miss daisy', combined with the commercial success of films like 'Sex, lies, and videotape' and 'My Left Foot' in between, the Hollywood arthouse film market has clearly seen a revival. Major studios are making moves, and even the downstream theatrical market has gradually developed a complete arthouse cinema circuit in recent years due to the continuous success of these films.
The involvement of the giants naturally squeezed the survival space of independent film distributors to a large extent.
After repeatedly intercepting 'Cinema Paradiso', 'Sex, lies, and videotape', and 'My Left Foot', even though only one of those distribution rights was obtained by Daenerys Entertainment, the Weinstein Brothers were, as Simon expected, finding it increasingly difficult to operate in Hollywood. At this point, Miramax was almost unable to continue.
It was against this backdrop that Highgate Film acquired 'Ju Dou', and they planned to try buying more Asian films for North American operation in the future.
After the test of the past year, Simon loosened the reins on Ira Deutchman, planning to increase the number of films Highgate Film releases annually to more than 10 over the next two years, replacing Miramax's industry position from the original timeline.
Speaking of which, it wasn't just Miramax; the sudden rise of Daenerys Entertainment was also squeezing another independent film distributor that was supposed to rise this year: New Line Cinema.
'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' was originally New Line Cinema's first film to break $100 million at the global box office. It was this movie that established New Line's position in Hollywood, eventually leading to the peak of 'The Lord of the Rings' series.
Now, 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' has long been a Daenerys Entertainment project and is about to be released this summer season.
New World Pictures, under Daenerys Entertainment, is also starting to exert force in the horror genre where New Line excels. The success of the 'Scream' series far exceeds New Line's mainstay, the 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' series. New World Pictures also successfully continued the 'Hellraiser' and 'Children of the Corn' horror franchises.
After 'Children of the Corn II', released during the Easter slot on April 13th, with a production cost of $3 million, its North American box office had approached $25 million by the end of May.
Following last year's 'Hellbound: Hellraiser II', 'Hellraiser III' will also be released at the end of the summer season in August.
Although the 'Children of the Corn' and 'Hellraiser' series cannot compare to the box office earnings of the 'Scream' series, they provide New World Pictures with very stable revenue and profits, offering a steady stream of capital for developing other projects.
Moreover, not just horror films, Simon has recently begun to guide Danny Morris, the head of New World Pictures, to try another commercial film genre with great box office potential: lowbrow comedy.
In the original timeline, the 1990s saw new major comedy actors, led by Jim Carrey and Mike Myers, open up the Hollywood market for lowbrow 'toilet humour' films. Representative works like Jim Carrey's 'Dumb and Dumber' and Mike Myers' 'Austin Powers' both achieved excellent results with North American box offices breaking $100 million. Coincidentally, both of these comedy stars rose with the support of New Line.
That's right; having completed the interception of Miramax films, Simon's next target was New Line.
On the Friday after the Cannes Film Festival closed, which was May 25th, Hollywood's 1990 summer movie season officially kicked off.
Universal Pictures' 'Back to the Future Part III' and Paramount's 'Fire Birds' became the opening films of this summer season.
Having experienced the halving of the box office for 'Back to the Future Part II' at the end of last year compared to the first film, Universal clearly lacked confidence in 'Back to the Future Part III', which is why they rushed to release the final instalment before the intense competition of the summer season began.
However, the situation for the 'Back to the Future' series was still considered quite good.
Paramount clearly had even less confidence in 'Fire Birds', which naturally traces back to last year when Paramount 'stole' the two projects 'The Rocketeer' and 'Fire Birds' from Daenerys Entertainment.
In last year's year-end slot, the comic book adaptation sci-fi film 'The Rocketeer', which Paramount had high hopes for and starred Tom Cruise and Meg Ryan, ended up with only a little over $43 million in box office due to the film itself and the impact of 'Batman Begins'. This was against a production budget of $45 million and marketing costs of $20 million, falling far short of Paramount's expectations for this project.
The 'inside story' of 'The Rocketeer' was no secret in Hollywood. Daenerys Entertainment even took the opportunity to promote the idea that a project they favoured might not necessarily succeed in someone else's hands, which made it significantly easier for Daenerys Entertainment to compete for film and television rights afterwards.
Furthermore, in order to make room for 'The Rocketeer' back then, Paramount moved Oliver Stone's new film 'Born On The Fourth Of July', which should have been very successful, to this year's Easter slot, releasing it on April 20th.
However, due to the lack of popularity boost from various nominations and awards during the awards season, even though it received unanimous praise from the media, 'Born On The Fourth Of July' had a total box office of only $33 million in the five weeks leading up to May 25th. Although relying on word-of-mouth, 'Born On The Fourth Of July' is expected to eventually achieve a North American total of $50 million with a good long-term box office curve, this result is still far below the $70 million plus North American box office data from the original timeline.
Oliver Stone was already dissatisfied with Paramount dumping his film in the Easter slot. Once the word of mouth and box office for 'Born On The Fourth Of July' were confirmed, this A-list Hollywood director, who has been in the spotlight in recent years, bluntly criticized Paramount's serious failure in marketing strategy in the media, stating that the box office for 'Born On The Fourth Of July' should have been much better.
Following that, after 'Fire Birds' opened, the media reviews were also a wave of negative criticism. This military film about the US Apache helicopter units was far from challenging the box office record of 'Top Gun' from a few years ago; it couldn't even compare to 'Back to the Future Part III' released at the same time.
It could be said that Paramount has effectively 'screwed up' three consecutive projects.
Although earlier in March, Paramount Pictures released the second box office dark horse of 1990, 'The Hunt for Red October', following the Valentine's Day slot's 'Pretty Woman', Simon knew that the deep foundation built for Paramount by Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, and Jeffrey Katzenberg had already crumbled.
In the end, Martin Davis, the chairman of Paramount Communications who had pushed out three excellent executives, any one of whom was capable of supporting a major film company, reaped what he sowed and had to sell Paramount to Viacom's Sumner Redstone.
Palo Alto, San Francisco.
The time is May 26th. In addition to the DC Cinematic Universe and other Daenerys Entertainment business, Simon has been flying to Silicon Valley frequently during this period, though he rarely stays for a week straight like last time, usually returning the same day.
Today is Saturday, and the purpose of Simon's flight to San Francisco is to check on the internet cafe project led by America Online.
Prior to this, Westeros Company had completed the restructuring of its equity holdings in Cisco, America Online, and Ygritte.
The process of injecting capital into America Online was fully completed, with Westeros Company's shareholding increasing to 75%.
At the same time, Westeros Company completed the acquisition of a total of 42.5% of equity from other Cisco shareholders at a valuation of $300 million. After the transaction, at a cost of 127.5 million USD, Westeros Company increased its shareholding in Cisco to 57.5%.
Furthermore, after a year of operation, Simon's initial capital injection into Ygritte Company was also exhausted, and Ygritte Company clearly had not yet generated revenue to sustain daily operations.
Westeros Company re-injected capital into Ygritte at a valuation of $20 million, with the amount also being $20 million.
Simon had originally given Tim Berners-Lee a 10% stake in Ygritte Company. In this capital injection, Simon had no intention of deliberately diluting Tim Berners-Lee's shareholding and even offered to lend Lee a sum of money in the form of an interest-free loan to maintain his stake.
However, the conservative Tim Berners-Lee had no desire to suddenly add $2 million in debt to his name, so his equity was diluted to 5%.
Westeros Company's shareholding in Ygritte thus increased to 95%.
Regarding personnel.
John Chambers, who previously worked at IBM, officially joined Cisco at Simon's invitation, temporarily serving as the company president. Simon plans to have John Chambers take over after the current Cisco CEO John Morris's contract expires at the end of next year.
Carol Bartz from SUN Microsystems and Jeff Bezos, whom Simon pulled into the internet industry early from Wall Street, quickly stepped into their roles and have begun to take control of Ygritte Company's daily operations.
As for America Online, there are no temporary adjustments to the management team.
However, over the past month, due to continued increases in exposure and efforts in marketing, as well as the official launch of the Ygritte graphical interface browser and portal website business, America Online's performance has seen a small explosion.
In just this one month, America Online's user count increased by 38,000, with the total user count breaking through 100,000 in one go.
In fact, this was actually the result of the accumulation of American PC users since the 1970s; a massive user base made all of this possible.
In Simon's memory, when the internet began to explode, America Online's user base broke through the ten-million mark in 1996 from the hundreds-of-thousands level in 1993 in just three years.
While expanding new users, Steve Case also very efficiently provided free upgrades for America Online's existing users. While retaining some original online gaming features, he installed modems and the IE browser more suitable for accessing the world wide web for users.
The next goal for the technical team led by Tim Berners-Lee is to further improve the IE browser's dynamic web page and graphical display functions, so as to integrate the online games and other functions originally operated by America Online into the IE browser.
To achieve this goal, before poaching Carol Bartz from Sun, Simon had already poached another computer language development team from that company.
In the original timeline, this team, which was originally obscure under Sun, released the Java language, which was more powerful than C, in the following years, and further released JavaScript, an embedded language that significantly enhanced internet web page display functions.
In order to get this team, Simon and Sun agreed that the team's expenses would be covered by Ygritte Company. The patents for the originally planned Java language would still belong to Sun, but the patents for the concurrently developed web-embedded language JavaScript would belong to Ygritte Company.
Although JavaScript still needs about a year to be perfected, with the cooperation of the IE team, many functions have already been realized in advance.
The Ygritte portal website, which seemed to appear out of nowhere, along with features like online news, email, personal homepages, and online forums within the site, has been attracting more and more media and public attention during this period.
Inside a shop on a commercial street near Ygritte Company.
A large group of people including Simon, Tim Berners-Lee, Carol Bartz, John Chambers, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Case are gathered here.
If anyone could be present to take a photo at this moment, they would absolutely realize a few years later what a powerful lineup this was.
The shop is the prototype of the internet cafe led and built by America Online, the result of nearly a month of busy work by the America Online team after moving to Silicon Valley.
Compared to the smoky and dim internet cafes in Simon's memory, the internet cafe in front of him can truly be called a 'bar'. The internet cafe plan proposed by Simon was not to make money, but to promote the products of America Online, Ygritte, and even Cisco. Therefore, the shop is basically based on the leisure layout of a traditional cafe.
The sample in front of them is a very spacious 50-square-meter layout. Inside, there are only 20 of the latest desktop computers, arranged in pairs for couples, private small spaces with partitions, or single-row alignments suitable for communication.
Not just for surfing the internet, the internet cafe will also provide various drinks and snacks, giving people a relaxing and comfortable home-like environment as much as possible.
Regarding the price, Simon really wanted to adopt the subsidized operating model from his memory, after all, it was for brand promotion.
However, because America Online specifically registered a subsidiary 'Intercom Bar' brand and brought in a 40% equity investment from IBM, they definitely still need to consider profit. Therefore, the price for one hour of internet access was set at $3, with extra for drinks and snacks.