Among the heavy-hitting films of the upcoming year, one project significantly affected by Simon's influence is Kevin Costner's new movie, *Waterworld*. Initially scheduled to shoot under Universal, the film shifted to Warner Bros. thanks to Simon's butterfly effect. Filming began at the end of June, with an original schedule of three months.
However, due to the unforeseen impact of tides on the costly sets built on Hawaii's waters—repeatedly destroyed by waves—the production faced delays. Additionally, creative disagreements led to a change in directors and rewrites, leaving the project far from completion after three months of filming.
Warner Bros. initially set a budget of $70 million for *Waterworld*. Yet, due to the escalating costs of rebuilding the water-based sets and the ongoing expenses of maintaining a large crew in Hawaii, the film had already burned through over $50 million in just three months. The original $70 million budget had become a joke.
Having already invested heavily, Warner Bros. found itself trapped, forced to continue pouring funds into the project. Industry rumors suggested that Warner hoped to cap the budget at $100 million, but Simon knew that the final cost of *Waterworld* would balloon to $175 million.
The reason was simple: they were riding a tiger and couldn't dismount. The initial $70 million would grow to $100 million, and from $100 million to $175 million, as Warner tried to salvage their investment, ultimately leading to a financial disaster.
Panasonic, after acquiring Universal, rushed to offload this burden within a few years, largely due to the financial chaos caused by the *Waterworld* debacle. Realizing they couldn't handle Hollywood, they exited as quickly as possible.
In contrast, *Jurassic Park 2*, which had started filming in Hawaii earlier, wrapped smoothly two weeks ago and entered post-production. This was partly due to Daenerys Entertainment's tight control over its projects and Michael Bay's evident filmmaking prowess during production.
While Warner Bros. struggled with the *Waterworld* fiasco, another trap laid by Simon earlier in the year, *Cutthroat Island*, was progressing steadily under the joint efforts of Paramount and Carolco. With complex preparations due to large-scale naval battle scenes, this film wouldn't start shooting until the end of the year, with a planned release date late next year.
At dinner, the family discussed various movie topics. After the meal, as his assistant handed Simon little Nick, who was placed in his lap, and then started cleaning up, Simon turned to Janet, who was chatting softly with Seattle.
After a few more whispers with her daughter, Janet handed the little girl to Simon as well, smiling, "Janet has prepared a stack of scripts for you. This weekend, you can stay home with the kids and go through them."
Understanding why his assistant, who had shifted her focus to family life, suddenly showed renewed interest in films, Simon knew it was an attempt to distract him. Focusing on movies was better than thinking about darker deeds.
Simon was aware of his changes over the past six months. He also knew that at the pinnacle of the pyramid, it was a jungle filled with beasts. If you were a sheep, even pretending to be a sheep would lead to a tragic end. Having reached his current position, unless he was willing to immediately abandon much of what he had achieved, the future development of the Westeros system would inevitably involve many harsh realities.
Public perception often views both high-level politics and large corporations as inherently evil. This perception isn't entirely wrong. The stakes at the top are enormous, and the space for survival is narrow. To maintain one's position, one must employ means beyond the ordinary, often harming those at the bottom of the pyramid in the process.
Even if Simon were willing to give up certain things, he would likely not receive any goodwill in return. Some would see the Westeros system's weakness and covet more, until everything Simon had was carved up.
However, since his assistant had already made arrangements, Simon decided to spend the weekend at home, watching the kids and going through a stack of scripts for the next phase of Daenerys Entertainment's external cooperation plans.
The new week began with the first major event being the official launch of the Alia financial information software.
Despite Bloomberg's lawsuit, Alia continued its development. With relentless promotion from Westeros' media platforms, the story of one of the "ABCD girls" founding the Alia company became widely known. Some media reports even half-jokingly suggested that the Alia software would offer exclusive financial insights from the Westeros system. Within just a few days, this newly released software garnered nationwide attention.
The recovering U.S. stock market and the booming tech sector, coupled with Alia's affordable price point, led to sales exceeding 10,000 units within two and a half days of its launch. This achievement was even more remarkable considering that B-girl hadn't listed Alia in the widely recognized Eaglet software store.
This wasn't out of reluctance to share the store's cut. B-girl wanted to ensure that every software purchaser felt that Alia was worth the money. Thus, instead of allowing users to download and buy the software online, Alia's customer service team provided one-on-one explanations via phone or online for every interested buyer.
This approach not only helped customers understand Alia's features right away but also honed Alia's internal team, ensuring that everyone was well-versed in the software. Consequently, when the software officially launched, everyone, including B-girl herself, took on customer service roles.
However, Alia's staff was not enough to meet demand. After securing data-sharing and client-referral agreements with Cersei Capital and Goldman Sachs, B-girl temporarily borrowed 100 employees from these firms to assist with customer service. These employees, originally from the bonds and stocks sales departments and who had previously participated in Alia's trial run, quickly adapted to their new roles in less than a day.
Moreover, many of these borrowed employees, impressed by Alia's promising future, applied to join the company permanently, even after several days of grueling ten-hour shifts. B-girl welcomed this and began negotiating with Cersei Capital and Goldman Sachs.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg, unwilling to give up easily, criticized Alia two days after its launch, with Michael Bloomberg himself accusing Alia of spreading misleading and false information. He also questioned the potential insider trading stemming from Alia's partnerships with Cersei Capital and Goldman Sachs.
The Westeros system didn't just defend itself. Solomon Brothers, now a shadow of its former self after the treasury bond scandal two years ago, suddenly filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Bloomberg, accusing the Bloomberg terminal of stealing numerous data analysis models from Solomon Brothers and quickly releasing them online, providing ample evidence to support their claim.
Before founding Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg had worked at Solomon Brothers for 15 years, rising to partner level, and Bloomberg's initial team was also composed of former Solomon Brothers employees. It was therefore plausible that the Bloomberg terminal's design could not entirely escape the influence of Solomon Brothers.
In reality, while every major financial giant on Wall Street has its unique models for bond and stock analysis, fundamentally, many principles are universal, much like mathematical theorems. No matter how users manipulate them, they remain consistent at their core, making the idea of patents irrelevant.
Bloomberg had no choice but to accuse Alia of software patent infringement. Bloomberg's departure from Solomon Brothers had occurred over a decade ago, and when Solomon Brothers was at its peak in the 1980s, they didn't care about the rise of a financial information company. But now, as Solomon Brothers lay in decline, they might lack the strength to challenge Bloomberg.
However, with certain factors behind the scenes, everything made sense.
Bloomberg's lawsuit against Alia and its subsequent nitpicking didn't go unanswered by the Westeros system. Solomon Brothers had no intention of letting Bloomberg walk away clean, choosing instead to tarnish Bloomberg's image.
After all, how many can claim to be spotless in this world?
Moreover, many investment banks and funds closely tied to the Westeros system hinted that they might strengthen their cooperation with Alia and abandon the old and expensive Bloomberg terminal.
In the short term, Alia couldn't realistically replace the robust and comprehensive Bloomberg terminal. Nevertheless, this threat was something Michael Bloomberg couldn't afford to ignore.
While Wall Street kept a close eye on the skirmish between Alia and Bloomberg, the broader media began focusing on the new Forbes 400 list of America's wealthiest individuals.
The new Forbes 400 list would be published in the October 10 issue of *Forbes* magazine, with the rankings also appearing on the Forbes website simultaneously.
In recent years, due to a certain young tycoon dominating the wealth rankings, the public had become somewhat desensitized to those astronomical numbers. However, this very dominance made everyone eager to know how much this individual's fortune had grown this year.
With Daenerys Entertainment Group going public in July, Simon had already been touted as a $300 billion billionaire by many media outlets. However, most agreed that Forbes' assessment carried the most authority, thanks to years of experience in compiling such lists.
Malibu, Daenerys Studios.
It was October 7, another Friday.
Simon had spent the entire week in Los Angeles, focusing on various stages of Daenerys Entertainment's year-end and next-year movie projects.
The afternoon schedule involved a meeting with the *Jurassic Park 2* team to discuss post-production editing and special effects.
From 2 PM until after 5 PM, the meeting included watching dailies, discussing details with the special effects team, and making various decisions. As the meeting neared its end, Amy Pascal personally brought in a photographer to capture Simon, Michael Bay, and other key members of the team discussing the film's post-production at a workstation. The display on the workstation was carefully selected for
the photo, ensuring everything looked perfect before snapping a series of photos.
These photos would be released as press releases on Daenerys Entertainment's website, the company's official Facebook account, Eaglet portal, and some print media platforms friendly to Daenerys Entertainment.
The headline would likely read something like "Simon Westeros Discusses *Jurassic Park 2* Post-Production with Film Team."
Recently, there had been media reports suggesting that Simon had completely stepped back from managing Daenerys Entertainment, which had even affected the company's stock price. This was likely the intent behind some of those actions.
The photos served as both a clarification and a counterattack.
Of course, if Simon didn't want to, no one could force him to do anything. At this stage, Simon's media strategy was to stay as low-profile as possible. However, he still held deep feelings for Daenerys Entertainment, the company he had built from the ground up. So when Amy brought it up during lunch, Simon readily agreed.
A simple internal photo not only clarified that Simon hadn't relinquished control over Daenerys Entertainment but also helped promote *Jurassic Park 2* without revealing too much personal information—achieving multiple goals with a single move.
With that task done, Simon returned to the administrative section on the third floor of the studio.
MGM CEO Sherry Lansing was already waiting in Simon's office, accompanied by a man and a woman.
When Simon entered, all three stood to greet him.
The man and woman with Sherry Lansing were Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, half-siblings from the UK who had recently taken over control of half the rights to the 007 series from the Broccoli family.
MGM had long been heavily dependent on the 007 series, especially when it was in a dire financial state before Sony's acquisition. This dependence had allowed the Broccoli family to maintain absolute control over the classic spy series.
But times had changed.
The current MGM was no longer the struggling entity Simon remembered. A series of box office hits in recent years had rejuvenated the studio, and with Simon's support, MGM was no longer as reliant on the 007 series.
The two parties now held equal power, each owning half of the rights.
With MGM no longer dependent on 007, the old power structure had shifted.
After collaborating to develop *GoldenEye*, Simon had strongly pushed for MGM to regain control of the 007 series. The Broccoli family initially resisted. However, with MGM no longer reliant on 007, the series remained the Broccoli family's sole source of income and prestige, causing the power dynamics to shift in MGM's favor.
As the previous head of the Broccoli family, Albert Broccoli, had grown old and could no longer manage affairs, the next generation of heirs had softened their stance.
After the release of *GoldenEye* in 1991 and a fallout in early 1992, it took until now for the Broccoli family to attempt reconciliation multiple times, which Simon had declined.
Simon didn't intend to shelve the 007 series indefinitely. Having let the Broccoli family sit in the cold for over two years, now that MGM had regained some of its strength and was ready for the next phase of growth, the timing was right for Simon to ease up.
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