I'm in Hollywood

Chapter 284: when all schemes are exhausted

The day after the Federal Trade Commission announced an investigation into Firefly and United Talent Agency for alleged anti-trust violations, Firefly responded by filing a lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against Fox Television, demanding $29 million in back-owed Friends advertisement royalties, and requesting the court to terminate the already-signed Friends post-fourth season premiere rights contract due to Fox's breach of contract.

Upon receiving the news, Barry Diller and Robert Murdoch were immediately unsettled, and they successively called Eric to make some oaths that Fox had nothing to do with the recent events, asking Eric to drop the lawsuit and expressing that they would settle the debt owed to Firefly as soon as Fox's financial audit was over.

Since the situation had become so dire, Fox still refused to admit its involvement in the scandal and Eric was reluctant to lose face, so he also shared his hardships with the other party and stated that he was doing this out of desperation since the situation had developed to this point.

Eric smirked as he hung up the phone, knowing that things were definitely going to loosen up from Fox. Although only one season was aired, Friends had already become a trademark for Fox.

Just like in the previous life, when many people thought of the NBC television station, the first thing that came to mind was Friends. After Friends aired in 1994, it brought NBC an average of more than 3 million US dollars in advertising revenue per episode. Not only that, but due to this trademark, in the 10 years that Friends was on air, NBC's overall strength was almost the sum of ABC and CBS. Ten years later, due to the end of Friends, NBC had no new follow-up US drama and its ranking dropped directly from the first place among the three major TV stations to the last place, even behind Ox, and it has not risen again for many years.

This shows how important a hit show is to a TV network, let alone Fox, which had stepped up a notch due to the success of Friends, but still lagged behind the Big Three and could easily be outpaced again with one misstep. So Eric could be sure that Fox would not be willing to give up on such a show for a debt of less than $30 million.

Eric was not willing to give in this time, not for the $30 million ad royalties, but decided to continue the lawsuit against Fox if they refused to compromise. This caused the alliance of the major movie companies to start to unravel. Or, until Fox finally got back the rights to the next four premieres of 'Friends'.

In the seven major movie companies, Fox and Firefly had the deepest entanglement of interests. Therefore, it was also the easiest to break through. As long as Fox began to compromise, Eric believed that the other companies would not be able to persist for long, because they would realize that if Fox compromised, Firefly would no longer be surrounded, and the release of 'Home Alone 2' and 'Sleepless in Seattle' by Fox could provide enough resources for Firefly to respond. Even if Firefly lost the antitrust investigation in the end, Eric would still not be in a desperate situation.

Under this situation, the rest of the companies will continue to persist, and there will be no benefit to forming an irreconcilable contradiction between the two sides.

And, since it had come to this, Eric also no longer held back anything, throwing out all the other chips in his hand at once.

... ...

"Barry, you must hold on. Don't forget, as long as the end result is successful, not only the copyright of Friends, but also the two programs that are temporarily stopped by Firefly now, they all belong to Fox..." Michael Eisner said in an office with a hint of excitement on the phone to Barry Diller on the other side. After he learned of Firefly's lawsuit against Fox TV station, he knew what Eric was up to. Therefore, at the first moment he got the news, he dialed the phone in Barry Diller's office.

The two were discussing on the phone when Michael Eisner's assistant rushed into the office.

"Mr. Eisner, something bad has happened. It's a big deal!"

Michael Eisner noticed his assistant's anxious expression, frowning strongly in annoyance, he hastily said a few words to Barry Diller before ending his call and asked, "What's going on?"

The assistant stammered, "You'd better take a look, many TV stations... many TV stations are broadcasting a video clip."

Michael Eisner's heart skipped a beat, a vague premonition rising, he got up and followed the assistant to a lounge, where several other Disney executives had gathered, quietly whispering as they watched the program on the lounge TV.

Ignoring the others, Michael Eisner looked directly at the television screen.

On the silver screen, Aron Campbell's lips curled into a smirk but the expression on his face was somewhat victorious as he faced the camera and spoke to the young man sitting opposite him: “...Mr. Williams, the 'public' you talk about is the most foolish of all groups, it depends on the media to control public opinion as to what they think of you..."

Michael Eisner was filled with rage and he picked up a coffee cup on the table in front of him and threw it furiously at the television screen.

Crash!

The television screen shattered and smoke billowed out. The high-level executives who were watching attentively were suddenly silenced.

"That idiot!" Michael Eisner cursed and then he glanced around the room. "It's working hours now, don't you all have work to do? Get out of here!"

When Michael Eisner's rage was unleashed, no one dared to refute him and all of them hurriedly scurried away around the corner of the wall.

After everyone had left the lounge, Michael Eisner called to his assistant: "Go and tell that fool to get out of here as far as he can right now, immediately, without letting anyone find him."

The assistant nodded carefully and hurried away.

After Aron Campbell's threatening video of Eric was exposed, it quickly spread across the world, especially Aron Campbell's words about 'the public being the most foolish group', which caused a strong reaction among the ordinary people. In this overly free society where freedom is shouted out as being above all else and even written into the Constitution, people found themselves to be a group of people who were being fooled and the anger that followed can be easily imagined. Therefore, no one questioned the contents of the video, and since Firefly simply released the video without any explanation or accusation, there was no force stupid enough to stand out and deny the authenticity of the video. Thus, the series of public opinion storms in North America about Eric began to reverse.

The media that had originally attacked Eric had to restrain and even stop the attacks, and many of the newspapers that had followed the public opinion in order to distance themselves from being seen as a part of Aron Campbell's fooling of the public, changed their stance and began to appeal for the various attacks Eric had faced in this period.

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