A little after five in the afternoon, auditions for the male lead in Misery wrapped up.
This final, small round had only three candidates. The last to read was Don Johnson, Melanie Griffith's husband.
At first, Simon had not thought that Don Johnson, with his tough-guy screen image, would be able to pull off a writer. But after a few favors were called in by people in the Griffith family circle, and after Simon watched the carefully prepared audition tape Don had sent over, he changed his mind.
Besides, Don Johnson was the same age as Susan Sarandon. The two of them could generate a kind of offbeat, unexpected chemistry.
They talked through the character, ran scenes from the script, and for the final portion Susan Sarandon herself came in to read opposite him. The audition ended up running a full hour and a half. Don Johnson was basically confirmed as the male lead. From here it was just a matter of the producers negotiating fee and details with his agent.
When quitting time rolled around, everyone left the audition room chatting and laughing.
Once the others were gone, Don stayed behind. "There's one more thing, Simon. Mel and I are planning a baptism for Dakota on the sixteenth next month. We were wondering if you'd be free to come. You picked her name, after all."
At the celebration for Lethal Weapon 2's box office success a few months earlier, Simon had casually suggested the original Dakota Johnson name for the couple's soon-to-be-born daughter, just for fun. He had nearly forgotten about it afterward.
When the baby was born in October, however, the Johnsons had really used the name and had made sure people knew it was personally chosen by Simon.
The tiny newborn girl had thus drawn a surprising amount of media attention. After Vanity Fair offered a handsome fee, a family portrait of the three Johnsons landed on the magazine's November cover. The feature piece once again pointedly mentioned that the baby's name had come from Simon.
Simon's explanation that Dakota meant "eternal smile" had even sparked debate among some linguists.
"The sixteenth, huh..." Simon thought for a moment. "Don, I'm not sure I'll be in Los Angeles then. But if I am, I'll definitely be there."
Batman was scheduled to open on December 22, with Warner Bros. setting the Los Angeles premiere for December 20. Simon had no intention of getting too involved in the day-to-day promotion, so there was a good chance he would not be back before the twentieth.
Don Johnson did not know any of that. Hearing that Simon would certainly attend as long as he was in town, he grinned and reached out a hand. "Then it's a date."
Simon shook his hand, smiling. "Of course."
With Misery's principal cast now in place, the only film on the ten-picture slate set to release next year that remained to be finalized was A League of Their Own.
Now that the ban on CAA had been lifted, the production officially sent an offer to Tom Hanks.
After Big, Hanks had firmly entered the top tier of male stars. However, he had not yet shown the kind of overwhelming box office pull some of the old-guard leads enjoyed, so his quote was a fairly standard five million dollars. Simon did not bother haggling.
Sony, fresh off its acquisition of Columbia Pictures, was in a swaggering, big-spending mood. Simon, by contrast, capped A League of Their Own's budget at 25 million dollars.
Five million would go to Tom Hanks, two million to Geena Davis, and Penny Marshall, who had stepped up to A-list director status after working with Hanks on Big, would also collect five million to direct.
Those three would take 12 million between them. To still guarantee 10 million for production costs, there would not be much left over for the rest of the cast. Madonna, who had only had a minor role in the original, certainly would not be invited back, and many supporting actors would only be able to work on modest weekly salaries.
Still, on a project personally overseen by Simon, actors would line up even if they had to pay for the privilege. A tight budget would not hurt the quality of the cast.
Beyond the projects already entering active production, Simon kept looking for candidates to round out the remainder of the ten-picture plan.
The next day was Thursday, November 16.
Skipping Childhood was opening the following day, with its premiere scheduled for that evening at Grauman's Theatre in Hollywood.
The red-carpet event kicked off at five in the afternoon. Simon attended alone, stopped briefly on the carpet for photos, then went straight into the theater. At eight o'clock the screening ended, and most of the invited guests moved on to a nearby hotel for the after-party.
Simon had planned to slip out early, but Terry Semel stopped him.
In the hotel ballroom, after a round of pleasantries, Semel led Simon over to a quiet corner. "Here's the thing, Simon," he said. "Time Inc. has already decided on next month's Time magazine Person of the Year."
Seeing the congratulatory look on Semel's face, Simon hardly needed to ask. "Me?"
"Who else?" Terry Semel laughed. "Honestly, you already deserved it the last two years. So you should clear some time soon for a cover shoot. And this time, you're not wriggling out of the interview."
Time's Person of the Year.
Simon sighed inwardly. He knew exactly what that meant.
As a current affairs weekly with global influence, every Time cover subject drew tremendous attention. Some people craved it so badly they would even fake their own Time cover.
Person of the Year was the crown jewel, the most important face Time put on its cover every year.
It was not the kind of cover you simply landed.
Last year, some outlets had already predicted that Simon would become Time's 1988 Person of the Year. In the end, Time Inc. had chosen "Endangered Earth" over Westeros.
Facing outside criticism, Time had explained that Simon was still too young and did not yet meet the standard for Person of the Year.
Now, suddenly, he did.
That obviously was not some random twist of fate. It was the most natural outcome in the world.
Anyone who thought about it for a moment would see Warner's influence behind it. Time Inc. and Warner Bros. had finally shaken off Paramount's legal entanglements and completed their merger.
This year, Simon had become the richest man in the country at twenty-one, credentials more than sufficient on their own. Add in Time Warner's desire to pump up Batman ahead of its December release, and there was no way the Person of the Year cover would go to anyone else.
There had never been such a thing as a truly impartial, neutral media outlet. Now that Time belonged to the new Time Warner, of course it would skew toward corporate interests.
Simon could clearly recall, from his other life, how after Wonder Woman came out, Warner's golden child had been pampered by every Time Warner outlet, pampered to the point that Patty Jenkins, a director with no real claim to such recognition, somehow ended up on that year's Person of the Year shortlist, with the laughable justification that "Patty Jenkins redefined how the world should view women."
Thinking of that, he almost wanted to roll his eyes.
Out loud, he only said, "There is one thing, Terry. I'm heading to Europe this weekend."
"That's no problem. As long as you're cooperative, they'll send a crew to Europe for the shoot and interview. Probably toward the end of the month."
"Have them coordinate with my assistant," Simon nodded. He had already had more than enough attention these last few years, and he did not feel any particular thrill at the news. He changed the subject instead. "You going after Sony for a billion dollars over the Guber-Peters company, that's pretty ruthless."
Sony had decided that veteran producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters would run Columbia Pictures. To that end, it had not only offered them huge compensation packages, but also paid 200 million dollars in cash to acquire their production company.
The hitch was that Guber-Peters had originally been under the Warner Bros. umbrella. As soon as Sony completed the acquisition, Warner slapped them with a lawsuit, demanding a billion dollars in damages on the grounds that Guber-Peters had breached its contract.
At the mention, Terry Semel chuckled. "You know Steve. He can't stand the Japanese sticking their hands into Hollywood. This is our turf."
Simon knew Warner had eventually shaken 600 million dollars out of the Japanese in settlement, Sony's first tuition payment in Hollywood. He admired Steve Ross's tactics even as he reminded himself, quietly, not to make the same mistake.
The day after the premiere, Skipping Childhood [?] officially opened wide across North America, rolling out on 2,206 screens.
Universal had slated Back to the Future Part II, the sequel to its 1985 box office champion, for Wednesday, November 22.
To avoid going head-to-head with Back to the Future Part II, six new films opened on Friday, November 17. Among them, Skipping Childhood, the Daenerys-Warner co-production, Paramount's Harlem Nights, and Orion's Phantom Childhood all launched on roughly 2,000 screens.
No one was underestimating Skipping Childhood, but the other studios seemed to think it would be the easiest title to live with.
As for the following week, aside from The Gucci Documentary, a Gucci fashion documentary being released by Daenerys label Highgate Pictures, Back to the Future Part II would essentially dominate the Thanksgiving frame.
Ira Deutchman was quite puzzled by Simon's insistence on pitting The Gucci Documentary against Back to the Future Part II, but Simon did not bother explaining.
In his memory, compared with the original, which had topped 200 million dollars domestically as the year's box office champion, the sequel's returns had been cut in half. Universal had thrown every resource it had behind the project, with a production budget alone reaching 40 million dollars. Even though Back to the Future Part II had still crossed the 100 million mark, it had fallen far short of expectations. Calling it a failure was not an exaggeration.
The sequel was not nearly as formidable as people imagined. The Gucci Documentary would not, in fact, take much damage from it.
On another front, with plenty of groundwork already done and with Simon's permission, Nancy convened another meeting on Friday about acquiring EA, with James Rebould flying in from the East Coast to attend.
Cersei Capital's funds could not be repatriated in the short term, and Nancy was planning to make formal contact with EA over the weekend, very likely without needing that money at all. Once the second half's earnings were fully tallied, even without tapping Cersei's war chest, Daenerys would probably be able to buy EA within the 350 million budget without much strain.
Once the EA meeting ended and Simon dismissed the others, he sat down with Amy and James to discuss the plan to acquire MCA.
After engineering the Sony-Columbia deal, Michael Ovitz was almost certainly now pushing Panasonic to acquire MCA, Universal's parent. But like Sony's purchase of Columbia, that deal would drag on. Simon would have plenty of chances to step in.
Until now, he had only hinted at the MCA plan to his assistant. Amy and James were stunned when they heard it, then quickly became excited.
If they could take MCA, Daenerys Entertainment would leap straight into the top spot as the largest studio in Hollywood. Its old weaknesses in records, television, content libraries, and theme parks would vanish overnight.
Of course, there were issues.
MCA's current market cap was already close to 4 billion dollars. Amy and James both believed that Daenerys might need as much as 8 billion to acquire it.
Lew Wasserman's 8 billion dollar asking price to Sony the year before was no secret.
Knowing how the North American economy would move over the next year, Simon was more optimistic than either of them. He knew he would not need that much to close the deal. But even if the final price did reach 8 billion, that number would not be a crippling problem for him.
Once the current play in the junk bond market wrapped before year's end, Cersei Capital's capital base alone would be enough to cover 8 billion. After that, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War that followed would send oil prices rocking and rolling, giving Simon even more chances to make money.
In the nineties, the price tags on major Hollywood studios would only go higher. The sooner he took Universal, the better it would be for Daenerys.
This was not something that would happen all at once, of course.
For now Simon simply wanted Amy and James to know his plan and start laying groundwork. Compared with the sub-200-million-dollar EA, going after MCA, a behemoth by the standards of the day, would not be a move he made before next year at the earliest.
He also had no intention of mounting a hostile takeover, so he did not ask James to quietly accumulate MCA stock. That might save some money down the road, but it could all too easily alarm MCA's management, making Lew Wasserman and the others think Simon was preparing a raid.
Provoking management hostility to save a billion or two in a multibillion-dollar deal was, in his eyes, penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Janet was due to arrive in Los Angeles around two in the afternoon. After wrapping up with Amy and James, the three of them had lunch together, and then Simon headed to LAX to meet her flight.
[GodOfReader: Hey guys, it's me your favorite translator, I guess? Forget that. There won't be a chapter for the next 2–3 days unless I find time. I won't be able to upload a new chapter since I'll be busy soon, school-related, of course!]