Imagination is full of infinite possibilities. During the stage of conception, they can even use their imagination to stuff the entire universe into a small room, and the same is true for creating a company; but in the actual execution stage, things are full of many variables. Netflix has gone through twenty years of stumbling polishing and breakthroughs before it has evolved into a top giant in the industry. This is not an easy task.

Lan Li is the boss who is in charge of the sky and draws a big pie at will.

But Andre couldn't do this. He needed to consider practical feasibility. Even if it was really feasible, there were a thousand different possibilities for failure during the execution process.

Regarding the establishment of distribution channels, Andrei's thinking direction has always been focused on traditional theaters. Now the situation has been suddenly opened up, and the entire idea must be overturned and started over again. This is a huge project. He breathed a long sigh, temporarily suppressing those messy thoughts, and posed the simplest and most direct question.

"Relying on your own ability to fill the content library, you know, this is a long-term process, and it is impossible to become a fat man in one bite. So what should I do if I accumulate early subscribers? Netflix took thirteen years to accumulate less than 20 million paid subscribers through videotape rental and TV boxes." Andre pointed out the core of the problem in a few words.

Although "House of Cards" has achieved great success, Netflix's plan to fill the content library with original works has just begun. Putting this aside for the time being, it also temporarily forgot to find a 10 billion investment. It must be noted that there are prerequisites behind the success of "House of Cards":

Thirteen years of accumulation of subscription users provide a solid platform, and then "House of Cards" won attention through solid and excellent content of the work and completed the leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. This is an era when "the fragrance of wine is afraid of deep alleys". Stand out in the ocean of online information is definitely not that simple.

"I don't have any idea." Lanli was not panicked at all. The natural answer made Andre choke in his throat, staring at Lanli with a depressed face, and then grind his teeth secretly, "Sebastian! You almost made me swear, you know, this is a very, very impolite behavior."

Renley shrugged and didn't care. "I can only say that Sony Columbia has the second largest film library in the industry, but they are not operating their own streaming platform well."

Andre's expression paused slightly, and then his eyes became brighter.

As of 2017, as of what Lanli knew, North American streaming services were divided into three parts, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Netflix has dominated the world, with 50 million users in North America and 120 million users worldwide. It has opened up with excellent TV series such as "House of Cards", "Breaking Bad", and "Stranger Things", and its market value has even begun to surpass Disney. In 2017, Disney showed unparalleled dominance in the entire film market with the Marvel series and Star Wars series, but it still cannot stop Netflix's catching up. This shows the trend of the times, which also prompted Disney's subsequent series of actions.

Amazon came from behind and jointly launched online streaming related services based on the priority users of its shopping website (prime) and Amazon has as many as 90 million priority users in North America. As of 2017, nearly 30 million of users have begun to subscribe to Amazon's online streaming media, the Emmy-winning "Transparent Family", and the Oscar-winning "Manchester by the Sea" is Amazon's work, and has begun to make the "Lord of the Rings" TV series version.

Hulu is quick to beat. This online on-demand platform, founded in 2007, was jointly invested by nbc Universal, Disney and News Group. The three represent the huge film library of Universal Pictures, Disney and 20th Century Fox, which makes Hulu's resource content library far ahead of its competitors. The original series "The Handmaid's Story" also swept the Emmy Awards, but their subscribers are only 16 million, which is seriously inconsistent with the rich family's foundation.

Simply put, Hulu’s original drama model still refers to Hbo’s classic routines, and focuses more on darkness, adults and high-quality, but ignores the rapid youthful trend of audiences in the Internet era. At the same time, the lack of overseas market expansion has also made Hulu’s subsequent financial support lag behind Netflix and Amazon. In 2017, the three giants invested only one-third of Netflix’s original works and half of Amazon.

Specifically implemented in the six major Hollywood film companies, Disney acquired Twentieth Century Fox, which gave them 60% of the equity of Hulu, and they are also preparing to establish online streaming of sports content through espn to catch up with Netflix.

Warner Bros. later, through Time Warner's investment, also owned 10% of the copyright of Hulu. In addition, Time Warner created its own streaming platform "hbo-now" in 2014, and all hbo episodes can be watched here. "Throughouts and Games" and "Westworld" are still their fist episodes. In addition, they have reached a cooperation agreement with Apple's "Apple-TV".

Universal Pictures owns 30% of Hulu's equity, and also has its own streaming platform "seeso", but it did not spend much effort on operations and did not take any further action for the time being.

Paramount's parent company Viacom Group competed with Disney to acquire 20th Century Fox. Hulu's shares were one of the important reasons, and they finally lost. But immediately afterwards, Viacom Group defeated Disney and successfully acquired Sky TV in Europe. At the same time, they also owned American CBS TV stations, and the streaming media platform also rose in full swing.

Finally, Sony Columbia Pictures.

Sony Colombia's streaming service has never been able to open up. In fact, they have their own free streaming platform crackle, but their popularity and subscription number have always been low. Firstly, because the applicable regions and applicable platforms are very limited, only lg and Samsung products in specific regions are limited; secondly, the parent group itself has never spent too much effort to operate.

It was not until 2017 that Sony delayed its new streaming platform "Funimation-now" through a series of acquisitions, and landed in North America. They took a different approach to provide online viewing of a large number of animation works, hoping to open up the market with the strength of Netflix and Amazon.

Simply put, among the six major Hollywood film companies, Disney and Warner Bros. are still the industry leaders, with frequent actions; Paramount and Universal Pictures are continuing to compete in different ways; 20th Century Fox directly withdrew from the group and stopped playing; in the end, Sony Columbia Pictures is late.

In any era or society, if you cannot accurately grasp the context of the times, it is very easy for a company to fall behind or even collapse. There are countless giants who have been crushed by the wave of the times. The wave of the streaming era has once again changed the structure and pattern of the entire industry. It depends on whether the senior leaders have such vision.

In 2013, Warner Bros. replaced Barry Mayer with Kevin Tsujihara, which was actually a fancy to Kevin Tsujihara's vision and ability in the field of television. Because the parent company Time Warner has already noticed that the power of the large screen is flowing towards the small screen, they need a leader who is more familiar with the field of television.

Obviously, Sony Group has not been able to make timely adjustments.

As Andre said, it is absolutely not that easy to build a streaming media platform. In some cases, even if you can find huge capital chain support, it takes time to produce works, go online, and subscriber users to accumulate, and time requires more financial support.

Even if you talk on paper, you know the difficulties.

But what if we can negotiate copyright cooperation with film companies? Just like Netflix back then, we first use the content library of other film companies to support it, and then follow the route of its own original movies to gain more development time. This... This is almost the best development template for Sisyphus Pictures now.

Lanli has now proposed a key point: among the six major Hollywood film companies, Sony Columbia Pictures' film library resources are second only to Disney, but they have never spent time on their own streaming media platforms. Even if they take back the copyright from Netflix, they still do not take it seriously, and have no intention of digging and using it - this is the leadership's mistake in grasping the context of the times.

Look at Disney, refusing to limit himself to the success of the Marvel series and Star Wars series, he actively began to remake all the classic cartoons in his hands into live-action movies, digging the potential of copyright and exploring it again, while also daring to catch up with Netflix on the streaming platform; while Sony Columbia Pictures is still conceiving its "Spider-Man Universe".

Sisyphus Films is discussing and cooperating with Sony Classics, and it has basically come to an end. So, what if Sisyphus Films further cooperate with Sony Columbia Pictures at this time? Or maybe Sisyphus Films directly acquires the "crackle" platform and creates its own streaming platform based on this?

It is obviously unrealistic to stir up trouble between Netflix, Amazon, and gourds; but it is not necessarily that difficult to acquire cracks.

Andre's thoughts began to spread.

Lanley then added, "Didn't you raise the first fund of Sisyphus before? How much?" He vaguely remembered that it should be 300 million US dollars, and the specific number was not clear, but this was not the point.

Without waiting for Andre to answer, Renly continued, "We are now working with Sony Classics, with a contract that requires an investment of less than $100 million. We can create three crews at the same time at most, which is the limit; but outside of this, we can start preparing to shoot our own original series. I heard Joel and Ethan mention that they are considering filming the series, and then David Finch and David Lynch, they are all interested in TV series."

This is Lan Li’s advantage, the industry’s connections!
Chapter completed!