In a manor on the outskirts of Greenwich, north of New York City.
The date is January 7th.
The new year has passed, and it's now officially 1993.
Just two days ago, at an emergency shareholders' meeting, Time Warner Group formally confirmed its new management team. Gerald Levin succeeded Steve Ross as the new chairman of Time Warner Group, while Ross's close allies, Robert Daly and Terry Semel, jointly assumed the role of co-CEOs of Time Warner.
Despite the formal announcement of the new leadership, the internal dynamics of Time Warner Group remained fragmented and divided.
Gerald Levin, though nominally at the helm, could only exert control over the original Time Inc. business units. The two co-CEOs continued to firmly manage the various companies under the Warner Bros. umbrella.
On the day following the confirmation of Time Warner's new management, The Wall Street Journal published an article critiquing the company's 'synergy.'
The merger between Time Inc. and Warner Bros. was initially justified by the management's heavy promotion of the supposed 'synergy,' claiming that the merger would greatly enhance the company's competitiveness and overall revenue through extensive collaboration in movies, television, magazines, and other areas.
However, in the three years since the merger in early 1990, the much-anticipated synergy had not materialized. Time Warner remained as divided as ever, and even saw conflicts such as HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures clashing over television rights for films. The recent management reshuffle also faced continuous turmoil.
Additionally, the entire Time Warner was still bogged down by the heavy debt burden from the merger.
In summary, according to The Wall Street Journal, the merger was a complete failure, serving only to satisfy the management's ambition for blind corporate expansion.
Faced with The Wall Street Journal's criticism, Time Warner quickly issued a public rebuttal, but it couldn't stop the company's stock price from further declining.
As the new year begins, Simon has stayed in New York due to various ongoing matters.
Observing The Wall Street Journal's sudden critique of Time Warner, Simon realized that this minor media storm could have another significant impact on Warner.
In several discussions late last year, Terry Semel had hinted to Simon about expanding Warner Bros. Pictures' diversity in film production.
This essentially meant mimicking the current operations of Daenerys Entertainment's three labels and venturing into genres like thrillers and arthouse films, which were the domains of New World Pictures and Garon Films.
For Warner Bros., the simplest way to achieve this was undoubtedly through acquisitions.
With the management transition complete, even if the power dynamics hadn't changed much, the new executives needed to produce some achievements, even if just for appearances, to show a new atmosphere.
In the original timeline, it was precisely in 1993 that Time Warner acquired the rapidly growing New Line Cinema. This acquisition later yielded blockbuster franchises like "Rush Hour" and "The Lord of the Rings," making New Line a subsidiary that nearly rivaled the main label.
However, this time, due to the rise of Daenerys Entertainment, New Line Cinema lost its first domestic box office hit series, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and was consistently outperformed in its strong suit of thriller and horror films by New World Pictures, making it far less prominent than in the original timeline.
Compared to the original timeline, where New Line had to sell itself to further expand, now, its primary goal in seeking a buyer was simply survival.
Therefore, the attractiveness of this second-tier label was significantly lower. Additionally, with The Wall Street Journal criticizing Time Warner's previous merger as blind expansion, any plans to acquire New Line or other second and third-tier film companies to increase production diversity would likely be shelved to avoid further criticism.
Without a buyer, New Line Cinema, which had fallen into operational difficulties due to over-expansion in recent years, might not survive the year and could face bankruptcy.
Due to the success of Daenerys Entertainment's three-label strategy, other Hollywood studios have been somewhat mimicking this approach. While Simon can't stop them, suppressing a struggling second-tier film company is a different story.
Whether it's New Line or Miramax, or even Orion Pictures, which is still barely hanging on, under Simon's watchful eye, these companies have little hope of securing any potential blockbuster projects.
In recent years, films like "The Silence of the Lambs," "The Crying Game," and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which originally belonged to these companies, were all intercepted by Simon, who preemptively utilized New World Pictures and Garon Films to dominate the niche film market often overlooked by major studios.
New Line's fate was destined to change, and Simon had also recently dealt with another company.
Miramax.
Like Daenerys Entertainment in its early days, many of Hollywood's second and third-tier film companies rely heavily on bank loans to sustain operations.
In recent years, the Weinstein brothers, who managed Miramax through numerous challenges, had accumulated about $15 million in debt to Chase Manhattan Bank, a prominent Wall Street institution. This debt was particularly to Chase Manhattan's Hollywood-focused film financing department.
Beyond Chase Manhattan, Miramax also had various other debts, totaling around $23 million.
While $23 million is insignificant for Daenerys Entertainment today, for a small outfit specializing in distributing low-budget arthouse films, it's a substantial sum.
During negotiations for a $300 million loan for Verizon Communications, Simon had James Rebold, who was involved in the talks, propose an additional condition to Chase Manhattan: to expedite the collection of debts from Miramax.
To Chase Manhattan, a minor and perennially struggling film company like Miramax wasn't worth much consideration. Given the company's financial difficulties, collecting the full debt was unlikely. Chase Manhattan was already pursuing debt recovery and had prepared to write off the debt as a bad loan.
When the Westeros system's request came, Chase Manhattan saw it as a minor company having somehow antagonized Daenerys Entertainment. With potential collaboration opportunities far exceeding the $300 million financing deal, they gladly complied.
As a result, on the same day The Wall Street Journal criticized Time Warner's overexpansion, a small New York-based third-tier film company officially filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District Court of New York.
Although the Westeros system's development has been smooth, Simon has always understood that business competition is never a warm-hearted affair.
Business is inherently ruthless.
Wiping out a company that should have shone brightly in the original timeline didn't trouble him at all.
In the sitting room of the manor's villa, after lunch, Simon and his wife, along with James Rebold and Verizon Communications' Chairman and CEO Raymond Smith, discussed the Westeros system's next steps in the telecom sector.
A week before Christmas last year, the U.S. Congress officially passed legislation lifting the ban on telecom operators from engaging in equipment manufacturing.
Although Congress passed the law, it was largely a move by the Bush administration to accumulate more political legacy before the official transition of power. The elder Bush's departure was inevitable, and George W. Bush was set to formally enter the American political stage.
In the final months of the election, the Bush administration had been trying to push through several tech-related bills.
However, due to the prominence of the "Information Superhighway Act," which was in its final stages of discussion, the Bush administration could not claim Clinton's campaign partner's bill as its own achievement. Therefore, in the tech sector, the White House seemed somewhat inactive.
Things naturally need to proceed step by step.
With the lifting of the ban on telecom operators from entering equipment manufacturing, Nokia could now reasonably expand into the North American market.
In the original timeline, Nokia never had a strong presence in North America, mainly because the North American telecom equipment market was too closed, with sales channels monopolized by telecom operators. It wasn't until the iPhone's emergence that the U.S. telecom operators continued to control over 90% of the telecom equipment market through bundled sales with telecom plans.
This time, with Verizon's cooperation, Nokia's entry into the North American market would not face the same difficulties as before.
In recent years, AOL has been aggressively expanding in the ISP sector, and alongside this growth in internet services, Verizon has been heavily investing in its mobile network.
Owning the prime markets along the East Coast of the U.S., and decisively choosing the second-generation GSM standard without wavering like other operators who wasted resources on multiple formats, Verizon's mobile communications development outpaced its peers.
Next, while deepening its mobile business in its core markets, Verizon aimed for expansion.
However, this expansion must address the antitrust constraints from the 1984 AT&T breakup.
This, too, was a foreseeable step in the coming years.
Whether through public media or private lobbying, the Westeros system has been advocating for the 'triple play' concept over the past two years.
Combining broadband, cable TV, and home phone networks into one could significantly reduce operational costs for operators and provide cheaper services to consumers.
U.S. antitrust regulations primarily aim to prevent monopolies in the telecom industry from leading to high prices that harm consumers.
With the triple play concept, not only can operational resources be greatly saved, but it can also provide maximum affordable communication services to consumers. Therefore, this idea has garnered widespread support both in the media and in U.S. political circles.
Loosening telecom regulations is beneficial for all telecom giants.
The triple play concept proposed by the Westeros system quickly gained unanimous support from the telecom industry.
AT&T even published a report suggesting that relaxing telecom regulations and promoting triple play could save the U.S. telecom industry hundreds of billions of dollars annually, which could then be passed on to consumers.
The discussions about Verizon and Nokia's entry into North America lasted all afternoon.
By evening, after sending off James Rebold and Raymond Smith, the couple boarded their plane back to the West Coast.
The next day was January 8th,
Friday.
The first box office week of 1993 had concluded.
From January 1st to January 7th, due to the start of the workweek, all films in North American theaters saw a significant drop in revenue.
In its third week, "Jurassic Park" experienced a 35% drop, adding $46.91 million to its total.
Meanwhile, this blockbuster dinosaur film's cumulative North American box office surpassed the $200 million mark, reaching $210.46 million.
Daenerys Entertainment's other year-end release, "Home Alone 2," saw a 43% decline in the first week of the new year, with weekly earnings of only $5.66 million, bringing its cumulative total to $147.69 million.
Unlike the sharp decline of the two commercial films during the workweek, Daenerys Entertainment's award season contender "Scent of a Woman" had a relatively stable box office trend, with only a 28% drop, and another film, "The Crying Game," also showed a slowdown in its downward trajectory.
Meanwhile, the 1992 annual box office rankings, as of December 31, 1992, were released.
Daenerys Entertainment's summer hit "Wonder Woman" topped the chart with a massive $371 million, unsurprisingly becoming the year's highest-grossing film.
Though "Jurassic Park" continued its strong performance, it was unlikely to surpass "Wonder Woman" domestically. Both internally and externally, it was projected that "Jurassic Park" would end its North American run at around $350 million. However, looking at the overseas markets where both films had opened, the competition for the top spot in international box office revenue remained unpredictable.
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