章 652: Chapter 653: For the Sake of Secrecy
[Chapter 653: For the Sake of Secrecy]
Time moved into September.
The North American summer box office wrapped up perfectly with a total of $2.17 billion. Of course, this perfection was mostly relative to most Hollywood studios; for Warner Bros., the summer season had not been nearly as satisfactory.
As the holidays passed, the four major public television networks and numerous cable channels kicked off a new year of fall programmes, sparking fierce competition for television ratings. Various new shows and sequels from American networks began to premiere starting at the end of August.
The ABC network, recently acquired by Firefly Group, undoubtedly garnered the most attention. Before the merger, ABC had already started to dominate the television market. Once the programs launched by ABC matched the popularity of Firefly Films' movies, it would mean the market share of the other major networks would continue to be compressed. Furthermore, ABC's heavily promoted programs showed no intention of hiding their ambition to dominate the TV market like they did in Hollywood.
On Monday, ABC aired its long-running sports show Monday Night Football, which enjoyed stable ratings. Starting Tuesday, ABC rolled out three prime-time shows over the following three days: Survivor, ER, and Friends.
Although Friends had just been reclaimed from Fox, the flagship comedy had maintained an average viewership of over 20 million for its first five seasons, dominating the ratings for comedy programs for five consecutive years.
After regaining the airing rights for Friends, Firefly's television department quickly announced that Eric would personally get involved in scriptwriting for Season Six, adding more celebrity guest appearances. Although many industry insiders knew these were mere promotional gimmicks, Eric found it challenging to intervene in a show whose timeline and storyline had already developed for five years. He would mostly just be credited as a writer, while the star guest appearances seemed somewhat more plausible.
However, for Friends' fans, this kind of hype was remarkably effective. Just as the promotional campaign for Season Six began, it sparked heated discussions, and entertainment media predicted that the show's ratings could hit new highs.
At the same time, ABC promoted the reality show Survivor and the medical drama ER with the same intensity as Friends. Although neither program's writing or production had much to do with Eric, no one in the industry seemed to doubt his ability to pick a winner. In fact, after ABC launched Survivor, a reality show that its original writer had struggled to pitch to other networks, an executive in NBC's programming department was fired for missing out on Survivor. While internal power struggles played a role, this incident sufficed to illustrate Firefly's growing influence in the television landscape.
...
Outside of ABC, after Ron Perelman reached a compromise, Firefly successfully acquired the entirety of Marvel Entertainment. While the industry closely watched which superhero Eric would choose to develop into a film, he made no moves in that direction. After fully integrating Marvel into Firefly, Eric merely injected necessary funds and asked Marvel's CEO, Avi Arad, to acquire a comic book company called Image Comics.
Image Comics didn't have any adaptation rights that Eric particularly sought. The reason for acquiring this small-scale comic venture was largely to rectify Ron Perelman's mistakes. In 1992, unhappy with Perelman, seven popular writers responsible for major Marvel series like Spider-Man and X-Men left to form Image Comics. Consequently, the quality of Marvel's comics plummeted. Come 1993, Perelman began issuing substantial junk bonds under Marvel's name, which burdened the company with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, ultimately leading it toward insolvency.
Although Eric was primarily interested in the superhero rights Marvel held, as long as Marvel separated from its capital operations and stabilized, they could still generate impressive revenue despite a shrinking comic industry.
Before special effects technology further developed, Eric did not plan to usher Hollywood into the superhero movie era. Thus, the best option before that was to make Marvel self-sustainable. To achieve this, Eric facilitated the transfer of popular comic adaptation rights developed by Firefly over the past few years to Marvel. After announcing this plan, the once-dwindling Marvel instantly found its way back into comic fans' radar, with the recently released movie based on Charlie's Angels being labeled one of the most anticipated adaptation projects in years.
Of course, although publicly Firefly announced no plans for superhero movies, behind the scenes, Eric had already begun working on the Marvel Cinematic Universe project. By acquiring superhero rights before Marvel began extensively selling them off, the rights were not yet scattered about. Most of the remaining rights, which had quietly been gathered under Flower Films by Drew, could slowly be reclaimed by Firefly in the coming years.
Thus, the newly structured Marvel Cinematic Universe was far grander than its original timeline.
When Katzenberg and other core Firefly executives first saw the extensive Marvel film plan tree chart that spanned nearly 100 films from 2000 to 2030 in Eric's office at the Liberty City estate, they could only display their astonished expressions. Frank Wells, who had already celebrated his 60th birthday, joked wistfully that he would likely never see this plan completed.
...
Meanwhile, in September, Michael Lynn, whose contract had been delayed for several months, announced his resignation. Katzenberg was officially named the CEO of Firefly Group. This transition did not stir any waves, nor did it lead to internal power struggles like those seen at Warner Bros.; everything unfolded smoothly.
After stepping in as CEO, Katzenberg faced his first task of securing a good price for the hand-drawn animation department that had been spun off from Disney while simultaneously reestablishing a fully digital Disney animation department. He did not intend to directly merge Pixar into this new Disney animation division. The Pixar studio, located in the San Francisco Bay, maintained a unique corporate culture and creative vision; forcing a merger would disrupt Pixar's intrinsic rhythm.
However, the new Disney animation division would receive comprehensive technical support from Pixar. Moreover, given the lengthy production timeline for animated films, Pixar and the future Disney animation would not compete against each other but instead provide Firefly with ample 3D animated content. What's more, maintaining a healthy competition among different departments was an excellent way to spark creativity.
...
Aside from all these developments, Eric invested considerable energy into producing the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which was now entering its rehearsal stage.
The media frequently criticized and mocked Eric for "not staying on task" with the show. Following the initial promotions for the event, an NBC financial program even did the math, suggesting that if he used the time spent on the fashion show to make a film, even a movie that only achieved half the box office of Jurassic Park could still yield more than $300 million in profit for him personally and for Firefly. Nonetheless, the fashion show, which was supposed to cost around $20 million, might receive high ratings due to Eric's fame -- though recouping that $20 million investment still seemed quite unlikely, and profitability was even more remote.
However, Eric had never thought of leveraging the fashion show for profit. While NBC's calculation sparked considerable debate, many found its reasoning dubious, including Eric himself, who merely shrugged it off with a laugh.
Since news of the fashion show broke, Eric and the Victoria's Secret brand frequently appeared in the media, greatly boosting the company's revenue, which had increased by 30% over the past three months compared to the previous year.
Eric was confident that following intense media coverage surrounding the fashion show, an increase in revenue of 100% for Victoria's Secret wasn't out of the question. As it stood, Victoria's Secret only held around 10% of the market share, while in the original timeline, the brand boasted over 40%. The annual fashion show, which Victoria's Secret held consistently every year, played a significant role in that marketing success.
The substantial profit margin from a 40% market share was undoubtedly incomparable to the earnings from a single film.
Simultaneously, Eric planned to fuse the fashion show with Yahoo's portal and launch the largest internet marketing campaign in history, further increasing traffic and brand recognition for Yahoo. This strategy promised immeasurable benefits for Yahoo, which was preparing for an IPO strategy the following year.
...
At Firefly Studios, a business SUV parked outside the Victoria's Secret photography studio. Tina Brown packed away a document she had repeatedly reviewed during the ride into her briefcase and glanced outside. Turning to the two girls sitting anxiously beside her in the passenger seat, she said, "Caroline, Melanie, we have arrived. Let's get out."
Caroline shot a glance outside at the massive studio. Looking at Tina Brown's briefcase, she politely offered, "Ms. Brown, let me help you with that."
Tina Brown chuckled and shook her head. Perhaps it was the distinctly British lady-like demeanor of the girl that endeared her to Tina: "Caroline, you're soon to be Mr. Williams' assistant. I can't have you carrying my things."
Upon hearing Tina Brown's affectionate mention of Eric, Caroline felt her face flush. She stammered, "I... I don't even know if I'll be good enough for that job."
The three girls exited the car, where Kelly was already waiting at the entrance.
After greeting Tina Brown, Kelly's gaze immediately fell upon the petite, doll-like Caroline: "You must be Caroline. I'm Kelly Haynes."
"Hello, Ms. Haynes," Caroline knew Kelly was set to be her boss, but seeing the poised, intelligent Kelly in person made the young girl feel unwarrantedly inferior.
Kelly smiled and nodded, greeting Melanie before leading the three of them into the studio.
The design work for the angel costumes was already complete, and the studio had been transformed once again, with a large runway constructed measuring over ten meters long and five meters wide at the center.
Having been the editor of Vogue, Tina Brown's eyes widened in surprise upon seeing the runway. Traditional runways typically only measured a little over a meter in width. Eric's unconventional runway would surely spark controversy in the future.
However, Tina Brown felt no resistance; instead, she sensitively recognized that this runway would undoubtedly become a talking point for the Victoria's Secret show.
In contrast to Tina Brown's thoughts, Melanie -- who was following closely behind Kelly and Tina -- kept stealing glances at Kelly's graceful figure. After a moment, she gently tugged on Caroline's arm to draw her slightly away from the two older women. She leaned closer to Caroline's ear and whispered with a grin, "Caroline, I'd bet money that guy has a relationship with his female assistant. I've heard Kelly Haynes has been divorced for years, but she doesn't look like someone who hasn't had a man around for long."
Caroline blushed and lightly swatted Melanie: "You... don't say things like that to me. I don't want to hear it. Besides, it's rude to gossip about others."
Melanie exaggeratedly sighed, rolling her eyes at Caroline's shy demeanor.
Kelly led the three girls near the runway, where enthusiastic rock music played. Models dressed in simple lingerie walked the runway.
Kelly pointed to Eric, who was nearby observing the models and occasionally jotting down notes in a notebook, and said, "Eric is busy. Let's wait a moment."
"Of course, no problem," Tina Brown nodded with a smile, but her gaze remained fixated on a youthful girl on the runway, whose not-so-tall stature was complemented by impressively graceful strutting. After a moment of deliberation, as if realizing something, she asked Kelly, "This seems to be a rock song; why are there no lyrics?"
Kelly explained, "The six themes for the Victoria's Secret show have all been personally created by Eric, so for the sake of secrecy, we'll only use the instrumental track during the rehearsal phase."
Melanie, startled by the revelation, echoed, "Ms. Haynes, are you saying that all six songs were personally written by Mr. Williams?"
"Yes," Kelly nodded with pride.
Tina Brown, along with the others, had heard Eric's stunning rock single, New Divide, and with Kelly's confirmation, they no longer doubted. They were left once again in awe: what else could this guy do?
*****
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