Chapter 35: Thanksgiving

Tim Lee had a short talk before Sunny, and he got into serious conversation. Drinking the fresh coffee that Alicia served the duo, Tim was the first to ask questions.

"You know Sunny, I can call you Sunny, right? (Sunny nodded.)

Good. You know Sunny, I wanted to meet these Finnish guys and actually received a letter from their instructor about their browser. I went there and then I found these guys left their college and you hired them and bought them here.

Can you tell me why you are so much interested in their work?"

Sunny had no idea about Tim's intention, but he knew this guy was not after money otherwise he would not have left WWW open to the public.

"It's the key for the future Mr Tim. Right now, the internet is confined to the offices of scientists and engineers but in future, it must be in the home of every American and it should act as the common connector to all human beings on the planet.

For that, we need to make sure, the internet becomes so easy to use that a child has no problem doing it, even for the first time. This needs images, graphics and clear intuitive browsers and search engines.

The web browser we are developing is the first part. Then we will be focusing on this search engine. Finally, we will keep optimising and improving it. Fixing the bugs, updating the codes and everything, you know.

On the side, we will be adding new tools, launching new features to make sure we are always fresh in the market."

Sunny spoke his ideas openly and Tim was amazed by the clear ideas this boy had in front of him. For Tim, finding the boy almost half his age and having much better and clear vision than many experts he met in these last months was a nice surprise.

"Right! Would you be kind enough to show me around," Tim asked and Sunny happily gave the tour of his small college turned company.

Later Tim left after praising Sunny and their team's revolutionary work and also asked Sunny to speed up his work because new competitors might come next year.

Sunny took his advice seriously and decided to unveil the first GUI-based browser their team was developing on Thanksgiving.

Sunny named the browser - 'Rocket' or 'R' based on the villain 'Team Rocket' in Pokémon and designed a simple rocket on a Pokeball type red-white circle.

The simple logo with a rocket in middle was perfect for his ideas. It reflected unparalleled speed and their goal to be the fastest in the development and innovation of new tools.

A person just needs to click the Rocket icon to open the home page and from there he can use a small directory these guys created manually.

Initially, Sunny wanted to add the improved search option but considering the advice of Tim Lee, he decided to add that in future upgrades. Presently, this was already a revolutionary browser with GUI-added abilities.

When Sunny was involved in this internet project, he forgot one person completely. Sofia.

American Zoetrope, her father's studio managed to find a distributor for their movie - Wind, which Sunny had rejected in their meeting. This movie was released in September by TriStar Pictures.

Sunny knew this movie will never work but he had no idea, how grossly he overestimated the loss. This movie was a box office disaster. It was so bad, so freaking bad, that only 15 tickets sold out on the second day in a leading theatre.

15 tickets on one day in a theatre that had 5 shows and 3 screens. This was a disaster for TriStar and for Senior Coppola. He couldn't figure out why or how this movie failed so miserably or why it didn't work and when a man is down on his luck, he will remember those who warned him before.

Sofia was also caught in the mix. On one hand, she was sad and disappointed with the movie's performance, but she was proud of Sunny's vision. However, watching her father work tirelessly for the release of the next film, Dracula, she also decided not to approach Sunny.

In this way, both Sofia and Sunny started maintaining this silence, a distance would be a more apt word, in their communication and their relationship for whatever that was, started losing its ground like a sandcastle made on the beach.

Meanwhile, John Kerry was busy distributing various movies Rover Pictures acquired this year. From Blue Sky, Reservoir Dogs, and others direct to VHS.

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Blue Sky was released with limited promotion and in a few selected theatres. This movie was meant for the Oscars and Sunny just wanted to make sure they don't make a loss on it.

John was already familiar with this kind of operation and from September - Blue Sky was already shown in a systematic manner.

Blue Sky- as Sunny predicted had a very mediocre opening and even though it received critical acclaim, especially for the actress, Jessica Lange, the theatres were mostly empty.

It only managed an opening of 7 hundred thousand dollars and by October, it somehow managed to grab 2 million dollars. This was even lower than Pokemon which was still in some theatres globally.

The film was only released in domestic markets in US and Canada and Kenneth was already preparing to release the VHS tapes before Thanksgiving.

After getting the rating R on the second movie, Reservoir Dogs as they expected, Rover pictures started showcasing the trailers and got the theatres ready for the release. The movie will be released on October 8, 1992.

However, Sunny was so focused on the internet company that he didn't realise this until he checked the monthly financial reports from Alicia.

He found he had no time or energy to focus on both companies at the same time. He needed a real secretary and he needed to free his hand from real-time working to focus on real-time management.

Sunny decided he won't involve himself in the developing team after the browser is launched publicly. From now on, he must be the guide, the manager, and the visionary idea creator.

Working as a tool man was not profitable or even possible in his case if he ever wants to live the life he desires. Considering a possible collaboration with Quentin in future, Sunny kept a close eye on his movie.

Reservoir Dogs was released in more than 1000 theatres which was only possible after personally calling the guys from last time who refused to showcase Pokemon.

Surprisingly, Reservoir Dogs and Unforgiven were compared by many viewers but this was not something the media actually promoted.

Being an American Revisionist Western film - Unforgiven was heavily favoured by the general audience and the violence and bloodshed in Reservoir Dogs were not actually something people could easily relate with.

Americans love cowboys and Unforgiven was heavily promoted because of Clint Eastwood who wrote the script, directed, produced and even starred in the movie. Compared to a no-name guy like Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood had a massive audience.

However, all of this was not bad as Rover Pictures still managed to earn all their investment back and earn good profits from the VHS sale of Blue Sky and the consistent performance of Reservoir Dogs showed a good performance at the box office.

The number of theatres increased in the second week to 1500 from 1000 but it was scaled back in the fourth week and the movie was almost pulled off in the sixth week earning a total of 5.5 million in ticket sales.

The sale of VHS tapes was now bringing additional profits.

In summary, by the beginning of November 1992, Rover pictures had more than 20 million in the bank account and more money kept coming. The Pokemon series was being showcased in Japan by TV Tokyo for a sky-high price and on Fox Kids in the US.

Not only did the popularity increase, but the direct sales of peripherals went from several hundred to several hundred thousand in revenue.

Rover pictures made a lot of profit from the movies and TV series this year and Sunny was ready to show off his first internet browser to the world.

One week before Thanksgiving, on November 19, 1992; the media was invited for a press conference in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. This group of media was not only from the entertainment group but also had journalists from major educational and scientific publications and news channels.

Even Tim Berners-Lee was invited as the Chief Guest that day.

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