At present, there were two connections between Isabella and Marvel: the first was an investor-investee relationship. Isabella was a Marvel shareholder, owning a total of 10% of Marvel's shares. The second was a mutually beneficial partnership. Isabella held IP licenses "granted" by Marvel, and she was currently producing projects based on those licenses.
Someone unfamiliar with the industry might look at the surface and assume that Isabella and Marvel had an excellent relationship. But in reality, Isabella did indeed have two connections with Marvel, but neither had been established through direct dealings between the two parties. The Marvel shares in Isabella's possession had been acquired from Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman: she had indeed "invested" in Marvel, but she had not invested directly in Marvel itself. The Marvel rights in Isabella's possession had been acquired from Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and other companies: Marvel had indeed sold its IP rights to outside parties, but Marvel had not sold them to Isabella.
None of this was meaningless wordplay! Since Isabella and Marvel's relationship had never been built upon the friendly communication the public assumed existed between them, their relationship inevitably contained all kinds of problems unknown to outsiders.
For example, Isaac Perlmutter, Marvel's chairman and the man currently capable of controlling the company's decisions, disliked Isabella from the bottom of his heart and wanted nothing more than to throw her out of the company immediately.
Another example was that when Isaac Perlmutter sold the rights to Black Widow, Captain America, and other IPs to Artisan Entertainment, he had intended to reclaim them whenever he wished, and he had possessed the ability to do so. Therefore, the parties had been relatively casual when drafting the contract, rather than imposing the strict conditions that would accompany a permanent sale. It was precisely because Isaac Perlmutter had granted Artisan Entertainment considerable freedom that he had wanted to use someone else's chicken to lay his eggs. In his eyes, Artisan Entertainment was merely a free promotional tool. If Artisan Entertainment made money from Marvel films, then Marvel, which controlled the merchandise, would inevitably benefit from the booming business. And if Artisan Entertainment lost money? At worst, he would simply reclaim the rights and find someone else to produce the films.
That was why Isabella currently enjoyed absolute freedom. The largest Marvel rights agreement in her possession was the one originally signed between Artisan Entertainment and Marvel: since Marvel could not interfere with Artisan Entertainment's creative decisions, it could not interfere with Isabella's work either. That situation alone had already given Isaac Perlmutter an unbearable headache!
And now—Isabella wanted to carry away Marvel's most valuable chicken in its entirety? This was fucking disgusting!
That's right! When Isaac Perlmutter learned that Isabella wanted to renegotiate Marvel's licensing agreement, offering Marvel 1.5% of the net profits from future licensed projects in exchange for every remaining right Marvel still held over the IPs in her possession, his first reaction was that this fucking animal wanted to hollow Marvel out completely! Everyone who understood the industry knew how profit-sharing worked! The party in control could manipulate the accounts with minimal effort and leave the recipient of the percentage with nothing! And when Isabella wanted to keep everything for herself, her objective, her ambition, became perfectly clear!
"Earlier, we said Isabella acquired Take-Two because she wanted to fight Microsoft to the bitter end. But now—haha!"
Isaac Perlmutter began laughing! His eyes blazed with fire! He clenched his teeth, tightened his face, and roared each word separately. "The facts prove that Isabella bought Take-Two simply because she looks down on Marvel! She thinks Marvel isn't worth three billion dollars! In her eyes, Marvel Comics may be nothing more than an old man left behind by the previous era! The only thing she wants is the IP development rights that symbolize the new era! When she despises us from the bottom of her heart, why would she ever spend three billion dollars to acquire us? When she despises us from the bottom of her heart, that is why she ignores us! And acts however she pleases!!!"
Perhaps his chest was overflowing with rage. At that point, Isaac Perlmutter dug both hands into the table! The veins on his neck suddenly bulged! His words plunged everyone present into silence. They all understood what their boss meant.
Isabella wanted to complete the missing rights to the IPs in her possession without purchasing everything connected to their history. In the eyes of anyone who understood the industry, her behavior was exceptionally disgusting and vicious. To put it plainly, Isabella wanted to enjoy the power while refusing to shoulder the responsibility.
After all, the comic-book industry was already declining. Physical comic sales had fallen year after year. As for online subscriptions? Give me a break! Some things could deceive outsiders, but one should not deceive oneself. With digital piracy impossible to eliminate and new forms of entertainment constantly emerging, only developing IPs could allow a company to swim against the current in this dazzling world. That was the real reason Marvel had licensed only the film-development rights to Artisan Entertainment.
But just as Marvel wanted to develop its own IPs and control its own destiny, Isabella suddenly appeared and tried to take away the entire pot? That was fucking robbery!
"Oh my God—"
"…"
"How can Isabella be so ruthless?"
"What she's doing now is practically holding a gun to our heads and ordering us to hand over every dollar in our pockets!"
After pausing for a while, Isaac Perlmutter's public-relations adviser finally lost his patience and became the first to complain. Perhaps he had simply opened the floodgates, or perhaps everyone else could no longer contain themselves.
Before he had even finished speaking, the consultant sitting beside Isaac Perlmutter shook his head and rejected the comparison: "No, no, no—what Isabella is doing is worse than robbery! Robbery means using illegal methods to seize something that does not belong to you! But Isabella is clearly using legal methods to forcibly take away everything in our hands! If we accept her partnership proposal, she can take every IP Marvel owns without spending a single cent! She will make Marvel lose its future forever! But that still isn't the most disgusting part! What is truly disgusting is that she takes the profits and leaves us with the liabilities! Don't forget that we hold a huge amount of Marvel stock! So once Marvel can no longer earn money, won't we be the ones absorbing all the losses? Yes! We can choose not to continue putting money into Marvel! But the collapse of its share price means our wealth will plummet! Right???"
The consultant demanded loudly! At the same time, he looked around at everyone present.
Perhaps his argument was convincing, or perhaps his forceful manner overwhelmed them. The moment he finished speaking, everyone present voiced unanimous agreement.
"There's nothing wrong with that logic!"
"I think that analysis makes perfect sense!"
"So we cannot accept Isabella's proposal!"
"Exactly! The offer she has made is even more disgusting than simply handing the company over to her!"
"Then what do we do now? Reject her proposal outright?"
"Uh—I don't think that will work."
"Why??"
"Because on the surface, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Isabella's partnership proposal. We would only suffer the worst possible outcome if she acted maliciously. Although we all know she is acting maliciously, other people don't!"
"Exactly! Her public image is too good! A blunt rejection would only work against us!"
"Then what should we do?"
"How about—negotiating?"
"Negotiating? What can we possibly negotiate with her about? We can't seriously say we want supervisory powers added to the contract, can we? That would be useless against her! She currently controls the most complete industrial chain in the entire media and entertainment industry! When she can produce, promote, distribute, and manufacture merchandise herself, even if we had eight eyes, she could still drain every dollar of profit from the partnership!"
"Exactly! We cannot negotiate with her! Suppose we demand oversight—during production, she could use Beaver Entertainment to inflate the project's production costs! During distribution, all five major studios with global distribution networks would help her manipulate the accounts! During promotion, she could claim that advertising the project across ABC, CBS, NBC, YouTube, and Google cost ten billion dollars. Even if we hired the Big Four accounting firms, they would only say Isabella had made a mistake and had actually spent one hundred billion! We cannot defeat her through legal methods now! Therefore, we cannot negotiate with her!"
"No, no, no—you misunderstand me! I mean negotiating a partnership where we don't sell the rights!"
"That's impossible! She would never agree!"
"Exactly! She would never agree! Besides, the most favorable negotiation for us now would be replacing the profit percentage with a percentage of revenue, assuming we still want to remain involved with Marvel!"
"Then negotiate on that basis! It is a reasonable demand! And now that we clearly understand Isabella probably does not intend to destroy us completely, why shouldn't we try to maximize our benefits?"
"…"
When the first person to propose negotiations threw out the absurd argument that they had an eight-hundred-thousand-to-six-hundred-thousand advantage, the enormous mansion immediately fell silent. Everyone looked at the man with complicated expressions. After all, the idea that Isabella would not completely destroy them was merely their own analysis and judgment! It was not a fact! Normally, they could use that argument to reassure their boss, but now they could not use it to deceive themselves! Right?
Unfortunately, even though they desperately wanted to correct their colleague's mistake, none of them could bring themselves to argue at that moment. There was no helping it. They had no cards left to play.
So everyone exchanged several glances with the man who had made the absurd argument. The next second, almost simultaneously, they all turned toward their boss, Isaac Perlmutter. Their perfectly synchronized movement made Isaac Perlmutter take a deep breath. He slowly closed his eyes.
"Then—let's try it."
Phew—once again, everyone exhaled at the same time.
Isaac Perlmutter's thoughts were actually quite simple. Earlier, when his backer told him to surrender Marvel in exchange for survival, he had been unable to let it go. Now Isabella wanted to acquire Marvel's rights for nothing while leaving him alone to bear its debts? He was even less willing to accept that. Therefore, why not take a gamble and turn a bicycle into a motorcycle?
As for what he decided, Isaac Perlmutter acted extremely quickly. On the third day after receiving the partnership proposal, he had Marvel issue a formal response.
Uh—that was already the result of considerable patience and restraint. Responding immediately after receiving an offer was a serious mistake in negotiations. It would make the opposing party think you were desperate and cause you to lose the initiative. That theory came from the supreme leader of America, Trump. So, in his own words, anyone rushing to meet him was an idiot.
To secure victory, Isaac Perlmutter began applying The Art of the Deal. Carrying countless emotions and tentative probes, his reply crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the African continent before arriving on December 13, 2007, in Madagascar, beside Mozambique.
That's right~ Isabella was currently vacationing there. Although Madagascar was one of the least developed countries in the world, places untouched by industrial pollution were beautiful.
Take Morondava, where Isabella was staying. Its municipal infrastructure was admittedly in terrible condition. If one had to describe it, even the countryside surrounding a fifth-tier city would look better. But the Avenue of the Baobabs at sunset was truly a corridor connecting the mortal world to heaven.
As the sun descended, Isabella lay camping in a nature reserve, watching Chestnut, the little otter, tease the monkeys. She lazily turned over in her hammock. With her right foot dangling casually over its edge, she smiled and asked, "So Isaac has rejected us?"
"Uh—judging from the current situation, yes, he has rejected us—"
Catherine replied from another hammock while tossing a Nokia phone into the air.
Uh—it was not that they refused to use Apple products. It was simply that this godforsaken part of Africa had no AT&T signal. At the time, the iPhone only worked with AT&T.
"Okay. If that's the case, then we can only implement Plan B."
Isabella stretched. The straw hat resting on her head immediately fell beneath the hammock. Her lazy appearance made Catherine, who was lying on her side and watching her younger sister, laugh continuously.
That's right—attempting to acquire Marvel's rights for nothing had always been a deliberate part of Isabella's plan to swallow Marvel. Only by doing this could she completely enrage Marvel and Isaac Perlmutter. And only after Isaac Perlmutter became furious would he decisively call for reinforcements. Only after Isaac Perlmutter summoned reinforcements and asked his backer for assistance would Isabella have a legitimate excuse to bury the backer standing behind him.
Ahem. So—
"Okay, how are things outside?" Isabella asked.
"John Varley says Lehman is doing fine." Catherine replied.
Once Isabella officially arrived in Africa, it became difficult for her to receive a great deal of information. Africa truly was a place where even birds refused to shit, and Starlink did not yet exist in the sky. Therefore, John Varley passed much of the information to her.
What? Someone was asking why the CEO of Barclays had become her messenger? All Isabella could say was that his wife managed Waibibabu.
Hehe~ John Varley had only sent word the previous day that, on December 11 Eastern Time, the Federal Reserve had announced a twenty-five-basis-point rate cut, lowering the federal funds rate from 4.5% to 4.25%, while reducing the discount rate by the same amount to 4.75%. On the same day, the Federal Reserve Board also voted to reduce the primary credit rate by twenty-five basis points to 4.75%.
Then, the previous day, the Federal Reserve had joined the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, and the Swiss National Bank in launching the largest coordinated intervention by global central banks since the September 11 attacks. Its core measures included the Federal Reserve launching the Term Auction Facility, providing short-term liquidity to depository financial institutions through an auction mechanism, and establishing currency-swap lines with the European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank worth twenty billion dollars and four billion dollars, respectively. This supplied dollar liquidity to the eurozone and Swiss markets to ease the global dollar shortage.
After this series of rescue measures appeared, Lehman would certainly believe it was capable again. Furthermore, according to information heard by Barclays, Lehman had decided to shut down its subprime-mortgage subsidiary, BNC, that month. This meant Lehman might still avoid reporting a loss on its books that year.
Therefore—
"Oh—Catherine, what are you trying to imply?"
Her sister's words made Isabella roll her eyes. She slapped the hammock in dissatisfaction and shouted, "Did I ask you about Lehman? The way you answered makes me sound like the one cooking up every terrible event behind the scenes!"
"Oh, please—why are you pretending in front of me, Isabella?" Catherine could not be bothered with her younger sister. She rolled her eyes and said, "You can pretend to be an innocent little flower in front of everyone else, but that doesn't work on me. Back then, you were the one who tricked me into going to Leavesden!"
"Hahaha—" Being exposed by her sister made Isabella burst into laughter. Without showing any embarrassment, she asked, "Then should we proceed directly with Plan B?"
"Do whatever you like. It's your business, so you decide." Catherine shrugged.
"Okay. Then call Kevin Feige."
Isabella waved her hand. In other people's eyes, destroying Marvel might have been an enormous matter. But to her, any wealthy person who still needed to handle everything personally could not truly be called capital.
When Isabella's Decision 1.0 reached Isaac Perlmutter, he remained speechless for a long time before ultimately approaching Lehman once again.
Because Isabella's Plan B worked like this: she believed her first proposal was excellent, so Marvel only had the right to say "Yes or No." If Marvel said "Yes," then everything would be settled. If Marvel said "No," or even "or," then she would issue a public proposal. She would tell everyone in the world that she wanted to cooperate with Marvel. Then she would sell all the Marvel shares in her possession.
Yeah~ Those who followed her would prosper. Those who opposed her would perish. Since she wanted to force Marvel to draw its knife, she naturally had to kick it toward the edge of the cliff.
Hehe.