In the past January, the theme of the world's film industry was called "Avatar", but in February, this theme still remained unchanged. "Avatar"'s North American box office officially exceeded the threshold of $700 million, and the global box office exceeded the $2.5 billion mark!

Although the film's daily box office numbers dropped to more than 10 million US dollars from all over the world, it is still moving steadily. Some optimistic institutions estimate that the final box office of "Avatar" will be close to or even exceed the terrifying figure of $3 billion.

At the Golden Globes held in January, "Avatar" was also the biggest winner, winning two awards: Best Director and Best Drama.

This is related to Disney's operation planning. Last month was a critical moment in promoting the box office of "Avatar". Disney used all the means to promote the film. Even with the approval of James Cameron, it also hyped up the five marriages of the truck driver one by one...

As for the issue of weather vane, in fact, everyone knows that there is a huge gap between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and the relationship between the two is not particularly large. Under various favorable conditions, the possibility of "Bomb Disposal Force" failing is very small.

On February 2, the 82nd Academy Awards nominee luncheon was held at the Samuel Goldwind Theater in Beverly Hills, and "Avatar" and "The Bomb Defence Force" became the biggest nomination winners.

The former received nine nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Photography, Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction and Best Original Soundtrack.

The latter also won nine nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Photography, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound Effect.

The two films are destined to fight at the Oscars.

After the box office of "Avatar" was on track, Ryan's attention shifted. George Lucas seemed to be really planning to retire. After Disney's negotiating team secretly contacted Lucasfilm for a period of time, the two sides had entered the substantial negotiation stage and began a long-term price tug-of-war.

Overall, it was a little smoother than Ryan thought.

Viacom and Time Warner are both busy with internal affairs and have no intention of interfering. NBC Global and Conscart are also very calm. The News Corp, which is most worried, does not seem to have changed much.

If everything goes on like this, Lucasfilm will definitely become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Walt Disney. The obstacle now is nothing more than price.

Lucasfilm has a market value of about $3.3 billion now. If Disney wants to complete this kind-hearted acquisition, it must adopt a premium approach. In the first round of formal negotiations, Disney quoted an overall acquisition price of $3.515 billion, but was rejected by the management led by George Lucas.

Ryan did not have the intention of having private contact with George Lucas. This kind of deal involving billions of dollars could hardly play any role.

Negotiations are still in a confidential phase. At the end of January, Disney submitted a second offer of $3.65 billion to Lucasfilm, which was once again rejected.

After the Oscar nomination was announced, Walt Disney held a special board meeting to discuss the next offer.

"Lucas Films is the proactive party," said Robert Eiger. "If it weren't for the financial crisis that caused major groups and banks to shrink their money, they wouldn't have a shortage of next companies. Although George Lucas now has the intention of selling, but if they can't sell it, they can continue to operate."

“We can raise the quote again.”

Another executive director said that he was the son of Crete Disney, Roy Disney, and after Roy Disney passed away, he became the only representative of the Disney family at Walt Disney.

However, his reputation and ability are much different from Roy Disney, and he is famous for being a master of low expectations.

"My psychological bottom line is $4 billion." Ryan said slowly.

Lucasfilm is worth the price. Unlike other companies, Lucasfilm does not have a cent debt, and Disney does not have to worry about debt and bad debts after the acquisition.

The high-quality resources that can be acquired in this way are almost impossible to find in Hollywood.

"Robert, the specific pricing..."

The door of the conference room was suddenly knocked, and a secretary went to open the door. George walked quickly towards Ryan.

Many people, including Nicole, looked at it strangely. They all knew George, the special assistant to the chairman. This is a calm and even silent person, and he also holds a certain right to make decisions. If there was no particularly major incident, he would never have entered the board of directors?

what happened?

Seeing the encrypted phone number handed over by George, Ryan put it in his ear. After hearing a few words, his brows unconsciously frowned, and his blue eyes narrowed into a line.

Hanging up the phone, Ryan looked at the other directors who focused their eyes on him, breathed slowly, and said calmly, "The issues we are discussing now are about to be interrupted."

"What happened?" Nicole asked.

"I just received the news." Ryan stood up and walked a few steps before saying, "The Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Justice Department have received complaints from several companies that have decided to launch an antitrust investigation into Disney's video website business and computer animation business, and their representatives will soon appear in Burbank."

The venue was silent immediately. If it were any commercial group company, antitrust investigation would be a very headache.

"Robert..." Ryan looked at the CEO, "The negotiations with Lucasfilm are temporarily left to you."

"no problem."

After the other party nodded, Ryan continued, "Next, we will discuss how to deal with this antitrust investigation."

Strictly speaking, Disney does have absolute advantages in online videos and animated films, and it seems normal to be complained about monopoly, but Ryan always feels that things will not be that simple. Robert Eiger and Cook Dick also agree with his point of view.

Especially the time of the antitrust investigation this time is too sensitive. If the scale of the investigation is expanded, it will completely disrupt the pace of Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm.

Regardless of whether Disney's business behavior constitutes a monopoly, since someone has promoted this antitrust investigation, it must be dealt with seriously.

As the world's largest and most developed economy, the anti-monopoly system and practice in the United States have undergone more than 100 years of evolution and improvement. It has always maintained a certain crackdown on monopoly behavior, and the crackdown methods are also in a consistent pace with changes in economic and social situations, forming a pattern of coexistence of monopoly and competitive dynamics.

After the 1990s, as the international competition for technological innovation became increasingly fierce, the federal government's antitrust goal was no longer simply to prevent market monopoly and manipulate prices, but to focus on how to prevent technological monopoly other than patent protection. Just like antitrust investigations against Microsoft and Apple, strictly prevent the emergence of knowledge-based network oligopoly.

Especially after the Obama administration came to power, the Bush administration's tolerant policy of the monopoly of large companies was changed, and the Clinton administration implemented strong antitrust based on the goal of encouraging innovation and technological change. It is not easy for large companies to withdraw from antitrust lawsuits in the United States.

According to the federal antitrust law, once a company is found to be suspected of monopoly, it may face a variety of punishments such as fines, imprisonment, compensation, civil sanctions, forced dissolution, and splitting. The Ministry of Justice can directly file civil and criminal lawsuits against enterprises suspected of monopoly.

The Federal Trade Commission can also directly make rulings or file civil lawsuits. In addition, damaged companies or ordinary consumers can also directly file civil lawsuits against companies suspected of monopoly and demand three times the damages.

In short, antitrust investigations are a big trouble for a company.

If large companies want to get rid of antitrust investigations, the common method is to pay huge fines to "spend money to eliminate disasters", which has almost become an international practice.

But Ryan realized that this antitrust investigation may not be that simple, and Disney may not be dragged into a long-term investigation quagmire like a Microsoft lawsuit.

Things were just as he speculated. Just after noon, the Wall Street Journal, an authoritative financial media under News Corp., disclosed the news on its official website, saying that the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Bureau of the Department of Justice will investigate whether Disney abused its dominant advantage in the Internet market and unfairly transferred Internet users to Disney's growing service network to suppress its competitors.

As soon as the news leaked, Walt Disney's stock price fell, and by the afternoon closing, the single stock price fell by nearly three percent!

The next day, the Federal Trade Commission representative arrived in Burbank first, and the News Corp.'s New York Post gossip website immediately posted pictures of antitrust representatives entering Walt Disney headquarters on the Internet, completely confirming the news that Disney is about to accept an antitrust investigation.

Disney's stock price continued to decline. In just two days, Disney evaporated four percent of its market value, totaling up to US$3.5 billion!

Denying is definitely not a wise choice. Disney simply posted on a blog saying that the Federal Trade Commission had launched an investigation into the company's business, but Disney stated that it was "not clear what the committee was concerned about specifically."

"This will be the biggest crisis Walt Disney faced in more than 90 years of its founding!"

"If antitrust is established, Disney could face a sky-high fine of more than $3 billion!"

"The Department of Justice may file a formal antitrust lawsuit against Disney, and Disney will be split into two parts: film, television, entertainment and online media!"

In just three days, from Fox TV and the Wall Street Journal in North America to Sky TV and the Times in the UK, they were crazily hyping and reporting on Disney antitrust incidents, and even some media from other media groups joined in.

After all, if Disney is really split, other media groups will lose one strong competitor. Even if they cannot be split, it is in their interest to take the opportunity to weaken Disney. (To be continued)
Chapter completed!