Chapter 74: Marvel

"Now our "Observer" APP has been put on the AppStore, and the Android version of the APP is also under intensive development."

William Chen came to the newspaper office of the New York Observer. Now he is fortunate to have Kaplan back. He is indeed an experienced newspaper businessman and has a very moderate control over the content. Now the paper newspaper has won again. It has returned the hearts of users, and the breadth of reports has also been significantly improved.

Of course, this is also due to the investment of funds, which has increased the scale of editors and reporters, and made the news sources of the newspaper more extensive.

The web editor Allen has also done a good job. The just-launched observer APP, William Chen, has also been downloaded and used. The New York Observer.

The key point is that this measure did not reduce the sales of paper newspapers too much, because they faced different groups. Most of the users who downloaded the Observer APP were young people, and they themselves were indifferent to paper newspapers.

"Next, we need to enrich the content of the APP. We can make a news briefing every day, summarize the most important news of the day in the shortest words, and attach a link to the detailed content. Well, it can be called "Today's News". As a column in a prominent position on the homepage in the APP.”

"Also, I mentioned the function of reading newspapers with audio. You can contact Nuance and entrust them to develop a built-in text-to-speech program for us. We must pursue quality and try to be as close as possible to normal human voices. Before, You can find some professional dubbing experts, and record the vocal version of the more important news and articles, which can be used as value-added services after testing to test user feedback.”

Nuance was known to William Chen in the conversation with the founder of the company when he acquired Siri. This is the world's largest company specializing in the development and sales of speech recognition software, image processing software and input method software.

Siri is cooperating with Nuance to use their services to recognize user voice and give feedback in the form of voice, while Siri's main research direction is the part of artificial intelligence.

Nuance is currently listed on Nasdaq with a market value of around $2 billion. After this company entered William Chen's vision, it became one of his investment targets. However, the company's market value is somewhat high and it can be replaced Sex is also great, so there is no rush to make a decision.

Kaplan also brought up another thing. Recently, he discovered a good novel, which was serialized in both paper newspapers and electronic versions, and was loved by many readers. The novel is called "GossipGirl".

Oh? Gossip Girl? William Chen remembered hearing this name in his previous life, but it was a very popular American drama, which was adapted from a novel. In his impression, that American drama should have been out for many seasons, indicating that the ratings are still very good.

Most American dramas are broadcast at the same time. Once the ratings are not good, the episodes will be cut off decisively. Therefore, American dramas that can produce many seasons are definitely popular and the ratings are always popular, such as "Friends". , "CSI" these.

So William Chen said to him decisively: "I have also seen this novel on the APP, and I know that it is written in the life of a girl born in the Upper East Side. It is really good, then sign a long-term contract with the author and keep it. She. In addition, I am also optimistic that this novel will be adapted into a TV series, and I will find someone to contact her to buy the adaptation rights."

Up to now, the benefits of William Chen’s initial purchase of the New York Observer have gradually emerged. In terms of media, the future will be dominated by online media, but the role of the New York Observer is to provide him with a A group of professional media content workers, based on this, can expand to the network media.

Just like in China in the previous life, the Weibo field used to be extremely competitive, including big Internet companies such as Zhalang, Penguin, and NetArt. Why did Zhalang win the final competition?

One of the important reasons is that the company's genes are very suitable for Weibo. From portals to blogs to Weibo, their media content field has strong combat effectiveness, which is in line with the characteristics of Weibo. Without relevant experience, the content control is not in place, it is easy to cross the line, and the earlier meal is a typical example.

In the United States, the importance of public opinion is beyond words, so William Chen wants to have a certain right to speak in this area, and the New York Observer is a key for him to enter this field.

In the field of film and television, William Chen also initially involved content, production, and channels. Netflix will develop in these three areas in the future. He has Future Films in his hands, although it is still only a small company. , but it is also in development. After "Magic Mike", he is ready to start the shooting of "Gossip Girl".

In terms of content, the "New York Observer" provided him with "Gossip Girl", and the other is his other target - Marvel.

Nielsen is currently in contact with Marvel, which is headquartered on Fifth Avenue in New York, and hopes to negotiate an investment in Meta Investments.

According to the information seen by William Chen, Marvel's current situation is not good. Since the end of the last century, their comics sales have been declining. They have previously adapted movies including "Spider-Man", "X-Men" and other comics It was sold to film companies such as Sony, but it was still sluggish after going through a lot of chaos.

In fact, Sony had the opportunity to buy the film adaptation rights of all Marvel characters. At the end of the last century, Marvel filed for bankruptcy because of a debt of 700 million US dollars. At that time, the court even designated a trustee to prepare to sell Marvel, but in the end Marvel saved the crisis and avoided the fate of being sold.

But in order to survive, he once offered to package all the comic characters at a price of 25 million US dollars and sell them to Sony for the film adaptation rights, but Sony only sees Spider-Man, and does not think other characters have any value, and finally spent 20 million. Dollar bought the movie rights to Spider-Man, and wasn't even willing to spend an extra $5 million on other characters.

In their words, that is--Marvel's superheroes, except for Spider-Man, are not worth mentioning.

Ha ha.

Now, Marvel is still not as strong as before, so in order to get out of the predicament, coupled with the great success of the previous "Spider-Man" series of movies launched by Sony Pictures, the president of Marvel at this time Kevin Feige hopes to form Marvel's own. The film and television production department, Marvel Studios, gradually recovered the superhero copyrights that had been released, and filmed the superheroes in their hands into movies.

But it's embarrassing that they don't have enough funds to carry out these plans now, and because of the chaos of Marvel over the years, whether it is the bank or other film companies, they are not optimistic about Marvel's plan to produce and distribute its own movies. So it is not easy to get financing.

In Marvel's plan, they are going to shoot the two movies "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" at the same time, and gradually launch their Marvel Universe concept This is also something that can't be helped, they are more affected by Welcome superheroes, such as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men and other characters have been authorized out, we can only pick from other characters to find a more suitable one.

And they estimate that the production cost of the two films "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk" alone will be more than 300 million US dollars, plus at least 400-500 million US dollars of funds to be released and the film copyright recovery.

But with the current situation of Marvel, where can it get this money? At first, it was not unthinkable that they would seek cooperation with other film companies to jointly produce these two films. If the effect is good, after recovering some of the funds, they will start their own Marvel Universe plans.

But after asking all the big six in Hollywood, all the companies have no interest in their plan. If it's superheroes like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, maybe they'll think about it.

As for Iron Man and Hulk, these two heroes will also be popular? This has almost become the consensus of all film companies at this time, that is, this attempt by Marvel will eventually end in failure.

In the end, Marvel's president Kevin Feige even prepared to mortgage all their assets to the bank to borrow to complete the plan this time.

However, in that case, it can only be regarded as a last-ditch effort. If this movie plan can't be successful, then the only way to wait for Marvel is to go bankrupt.

Kevin Feige's idea is that if this inaction continues, Marvel's return path is still slow death, so why not take a gamble, maybe the salted fish can turn over.

At this time, Nielsen came to Marvel on behalf of Meta Investment Company.
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