Celia Miller came to Los Angeles this time mainly to discuss with Simon the various details of the formation of the Victoria private army.
The plan started at the beginning of the year, has been prepared for more than half a year, and has been quietly implemented in the near future. The training base is mainly in Ukraine, but Simon does not plan to select too many Ukrainians this time. Instead, he will expand the recruitment scope to Eastern Europe, North America, Africa and Latin America, which is basically a global casting net.
There are many advantages in avoiding having soldiers come from a concentrated area.
Keep loyalty to the greatest extent, reduce the possibility of infiltration, and eliminate the hidden danger of forming gangs.
Recruitment conditions are 16-year-old male, orphan priority, after the background investigation and physical examination test, the first will accept two years of cultural course training and preliminary training.
This process is mainly to develop language ability, as well as the ability to learn English.
Most of all, brainwashing.
Two years later, another batch of them will be eliminated. When they reach the age of 18, they will start formal military training. The time is still two years. When they are 20 years old, they will retire at the age of 40.
It's not taboo in western countries to keep private troops. In those days, the Rockefeller family had their own private army. Nowadays, many mercenary companies are also private armies.
Last year's Rwanda war has made the existence of Uighur private army an established fact.
This time, as long as the operation is proper, even if it is exposed, there is no need to worry about it. Simon does not intend to cultivate tens of thousands of troops, let alone thousands of private troops at one time. Instead, he still adopts the strategy of breaking up the whole into parts, and Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, and Africa will put some of it into practice.
Even if there are only one or two hundred people in a group, there will be one or two thousand in ten years.
So it goes back and forth.
The most important thing is to form a sustainable training mechanism.
In addition, ordinary mercenaries recruited from other channels are enough to ensure that the Westeros have a powerful violence machine when they need it.
After talking with Celia, it was already ten o'clock in the night.
The guest room for the woman is in the cliff villa next door. Simon personally takes Celia out of the shell villa and goes to the master bedroom upstairs. Janet, who has never been able to stand up late, has fallen asleep, but she is still sitting at the head of the bed, reading magazines and waiting for Simon.
After washing, Simon goes to bed and goes to the middle of the two women. Janet, who feels Simon's breath, naturally sticks up to her. She hums and pulls the man to lie down and use him as a pillow.
The assistant reached out and turned off the bedside lamp. She also lay down and said to Simon softly, "the rooms for the two babies are ready. You can have a look when you get up tomorrow."
Simon agreed and reached for the assistant.
"Sophie really wants to bring the two babies here?" she said, leaning on Simon's arm
"That's what I said, but it may be the same as you used to be." Simon said, and then asked, "do you think you can't take care of it?"
"No, I'm just worried about taking care of it."
"How can it be? You take good care of the three kids and teach them well. Seriously, it's hard to say what Jennie and I would have done without you. You know, neither of us has the talent to raise children. "
Remembering that Janet had been robbing the Melbourne ducklings recently, she chuckled and then said, "that's why you two get together. You're all the same people."
"Oh, and you?"
"Me, as the book says, big girl."
"To be exact, it's the big girl who warms the bed."
"It's not cold in Los Angeles."
"It seems that you still haven't learned the essence of Chinese."
"Ha ha, it's too difficult, and I don't have so much time. By the way, Moore will start to enter kindergarten next month. Do you think it's necessary to increase Chinese course? "
Melbourne was born in December 1991 and will be 4 years old at the end of the year. It is the age of school.
In recent years, the female assistant has been personally running a school for kids in Malibu. The private school for senior children of the Westeros system started operation last year. It plans to provide a full range of education from kindergarten to middle school. Kids will officially enter school next month.
In fact, from the beginning of learning English in Melbourne, both Veronica and Jennifer began to teach children early, and Simon once thought about family education for children.
In the end, he gave up the idea.
Let children enter the school, learning knowledge is also the second, mainly contact with the outside world, and master a variety of interpersonal skills.
Because of Simon, the little guy has been receiving Chinese education in recent years. At this time, when the female assistant asked, Simon said, "no, joining the Chinese course may make other parents feel not used to it. However, of course, they still have to learn. As before, they still hire a tutor for Moore."Over the years, people around him have experienced too much of Simon's peculiarity and are used to it.
However, for the outside world, even if he already has such great fame, power and wealth, Simon still tries not to take the initiative to show too much if it is not necessary.
Chinese is one of them.
The two chatted in a low voice for a while. They noticed that Jennifer's little hand was rowing on her chest. Simon was understanding. He broke away from Janet on the other side with a smile. He put his hand around the assistant's slender body and whispered in her ear, "come by yourself. Don't wake Jane up."
In August, the summer vacation in North America comes to the second half of the end.
In a box office week spanning July and August, the most eye-catching one is the box office comparison of the two new films "future water world" and "king of fighting" which started on July 28.
From July 28 to August 3, the box office revenue of the $175 million "future water world" in the first seven days of the first week was only $25.19 million, which was unexpectedly lost to MGM's "king of fighting".
The production cost of the action movie king of combat adapted from the video game "real quick fight" is only 18 million US dollars. At this stage, it is not even a medium cost, and it also has a strong B-class film style. However, such a movie, in its first week of painting, unexpectedly won 32.75 million US dollars at the box office, exceeding the opening performance of "future water world" by 7 million.
According to the ladder sharing agreement signed by MGM and the cinema, the studio can get 90% of the box office share in the first week after excluding the basic expenses of the cinema, which is actually about 75% of the total box office in the first week. By calculation, MGM recovered a total of $25 million in production and publicity investment in the first week of the project.
Simon began to pay attention to fighting games when he developed the "bear the turtle" video game earlier, and has achieved success. Therefore, in recent years, the game Department of danielis entertainment has paid special attention to the production and distribution of such games. With the advantage of the prophet, after completing the overall merger and acquisition of EA at the end of 1991, the game Department annexed a Chicago game production company, middle, in early 1992 ay。
This happens to be the developer of "real quick fight".
In 1992, the first movie of "real quick play" was released, and 900000 sets were sold in a year, which was not up to the level of several popular series of danielis Game Department, but also a good success.
However, this is far lower than the history.
Simon can't remember how much "real fight" sold in the original space-time, but it must have been more than a million, and even later once competed with the "Street Fighter" series.
After Simon's personal attention, the game Department paid more attention to the sequel, which took two years. Finally, three months ago, midway released "real quick hit 2", and Denise entertainment also spared no effort in marketing and promotion. At the beginning of May, it was launched in the summer vacation. By the end of the release of "king of fighting", the sales volume of "real quick fight 2" has exceeded 500000 sets in three months.
The sales curve of video games is different from the box office of movies, but more like music records, which are still hot for one or two years.
Three months after it was put on the shelves, the sales volume has exceeded 500000 sets. The game Department predicts that the total sales volume of "real quick hit 2" in the next two years will reach about 3 million sets.
Denise game is another hit.
MGM's film adaptation of the game is actually a linkage, and it has successfully benefited from the release of "real quick hit 2". It has only invested $7 million in publicity budget, and the effect is no less than the $10 million and $20 million in advertising investment of other films.
Simon has always been very cautious about adapting movies from games.
Because there are too many cases of tragic failure, but few of them succeed.
Therefore, for the adaptation of "real quick fight", he actually gave it to MGM with the idea of transferring risks. Otherwise, new world film, owned by danielis, could have made it by herself. He didn't expect that it would have turned out to be a black horse.
At the beginning of $32.75 million, even if the follow-up trend of popcorn movies will not be too strong, the local $70 million will certainly not be able to run, and it will be able to sell well overseas.
Compared with Warner Brothers, which is deeply mired in the future water world, and Disney, which has made a big fall in Stallone's judge Swat, it's just the king of fighting. MGM has a huge income this summer. What's more, it has a budget of 12 million US dollars, and it has a budget of 23.07 million US dollars in the first week.
For danielis, it must be a mistake to transfer the right of adaptation to MGM. However, in the end, it can be regarded as water and fertilizer does not flow to outsiders.
Like last year's alien, with the first week's box office results coming out, MGM immediately announced the project for the sequel of the king of fighting, and publicly said that it would still adhere to the low and medium cost strategy.
In addition to the two new films, Jurassic Park 2, the heaviest one in the summer, grossed another $8.07 million in the ninth week of its release, officially falling into the $10 million range in a single week. The cumulative box office of the film reached $381.76 million, and continued to move steadily towards the $400 million threshold.Apollo 13, released during the Independence Day holiday, has been in a stable trend in the recent period since it received $56.31 million in the first week.
From July 28 to August 3, the box office of Apollo 13 decreased by 29% in the fifth week of its release, with another $12.78 million, totaling $143.57 million.
The domestic box office of the movie, completed in June, is 176 million US dollars. The domestic box office of Apollo 13 is almost the same as that of the Easter comedy.
If there were other studio blockbusters on last year's box office list, from 1995 to now, Denise entertainment has completely shown a dominant posture.
Up to now, the four films that have entered the box office Club threshold of 100 million yuan, Jurassic Park 2, this man from the earth, fight smart star 3 and Apollo 13, are all from danielis entertainment, and this time they are all non foreign cooperation projects.
In addition to danielis, although some films like "die hard 3" and "ghost horse elf" have temporarily entered the top ten of the annual list, the total box office of these films is less than that of "Jurassic Park 2". This situation is just like Simon's memory that many years later, other studios have entered the top ten, and the total box office of these films is not as good as "big planet" of Dibao's family Or the Avengers.
The oligarchy was completely formed.
On August 4, a new box office week opened in the second half of the summer season.
Just like MGM's distribution strategy, many other studios put their projects in this period in order to avoid a series of blockbusters in the early summer season.
On this day, a total of four movies with more than 1000 screens were released, including Disney's "dangerous game" starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Warner Brothers' "magic of love" starring Julia Roberts, Paramount's "time warrior" starring Denzel Washington and fox's low-cost family comedy "cursed lawn".
Four new films, the production cost is not more than 30 million US dollars, although after the release inevitably formed a shock to many old films, but there is no pop money.
The first week's best performing Julia Roberts love movie, magic of love, grossed only $16.61 million in seven days. The king of fighting, which sold well in the first week of painting, fell 54% in the next week, with an expected deep drop, ranking second in the list with $15.21 million in revenue, with a cumulative box office of $47.96 million in two weeks.
The box office of Warner Bros.'s future water world 'fell 43% next week, closing another $14.35 million, with a total box office of $39.54 million. It is estimated that the total box office of about $60 million in China is about $20 million lower than that in history.
Friday, August 11.
Another box office week opened, with the number of major new films reduced to two, namely, MGM's "Internet thriller" starring Sandra Bullock and fox's romantic comedy "walking in the clouds".
Simon left for Europe at noon to accompany Sophia.
The direct flight from Los Angeles to Rome will take about 12 hours to reach 10000 kilometers. It is expected to arrive at the destination at 9 a.m. local time tomorrow.
Girl a is still with her.
In the front cabin of Boeing 767, after the plane was stable, Alison gave Simon some documents she had just received before she left.
This is a bunch of real estate information.
Girl a gives a brief introduction. These properties are mainly collected from Asia by the private real estate brokerage team of the Westeros family.
It's still Simon's buying routine.
I heard that there were several properties from South Korea. Simon opened them directly to find the target. A total of three properties were in Longshan District in the center of Seoul, South Korea, just like the upper east side of Manhattan in New York.
Simon looked at the information in his hand, but he thought of something else.
In recent years, I forgot Korea.
As one of the four little dragons in Asia, South Korea will have direct competition with the westero system in many industries in the future, such as the electronics industry, the game industry, and even the film and music industry. If it can't control it, it's better to suppress it, and the sooner the layout is, the better.
But it's not too late.
To be exact, the most appropriate time for the layout of South Korea should be 1997.