Chapter 427: An Excellent Opportunity

Chapter 427: Chapter 427: An Excellent Opportunity

"That client was complaining to me that this agency looks high-end and decent, with top-tier service, but in essence, it is just a civilised version of a loan shark," Chen Shiyu added.

"The service fees, interest, and management fees are extremely high, and the leverage is very heavy. He himself thinks the costs are too high and is preparing to withdraw and close the account."

Others might have taken it as mere gossip, but Chen Shiyu, with his meticulous mind and keen sense of smell, immediately captured the key information and instantly realised the immense value behind this matter.

After hanging up the casual call, he immediately mobilised his connections and arranged for specialised personnel to secretly dig deep and verify. They peeled away the fog layer by layer, verified transaction flows, checked loan records, and tracked the flow of funds, finally thoroughly confirming the authenticity of the matter.

Not only that, the truth uncovered by the subsequent deep dive was far more severe than it appeared on the surface, and also much more favourable for Irene’s layout.

"Currently, the business situation of Marvel itself continues to be sluggish, with weak revenue, project losses, and single monetisation channels. The company’s book cash flow has long been stretched thin," Chen Shiyu said with a solemn tone.

"Adding insult to injury, the stocks heavily held by Isaac Perlmutter have recently continued to fall, dropping all the way, with serious book losses and a significant shrinkage of personal assets. Now, his income and personal cash flow are completely insufficient to support the rolling interest of high loans. The debt pressure has completely exploded, and he is in an extremely urgent financial crisis."

"Simply put, he is trapped now, caught in a dilemma. If he continues to carry it, the interest will roll more and more, eventually dragging down his personal finances and even dragging down Marvel; if he is forced to liquidate, the huge losses will directly puncture his asset base. Right now is his weakest, most passive window period where he is most eager to cash out to recover."

Speaking to the end, Chen Shiyu’s tone carried a clear hint:

"Irene, you have always wanted to lay out plans for Marvel and replace the CEO. Now is the best time. The opponent has internal and external troubles, is deeply trapped in a debt crisis, has lost all his trump cards, and the initiative is entirely in your hands. If you want to do something, now is just right. Once this opportunity passes, and Marvel or his personal assets come back to life, the Perlmutter Family behind him will definitely not agree to let him step down."

On this end of the phone, Irene listened quietly to all the intelligence. A faint light flickered in her eyes, her mood settled instantly, and her brain quickly sorted out the entire interest chain.

She was indeed not in a hurry originally.

At the current stage, Marvel had no blockbuster output, no heat support, and low stock prices. It could not form commercial explosive power in the short term, and there would be no signs of large-scale rise within two years. She had plenty of time to slowly absorb chips, layout at low prices, and boil the frog in warm water.

But now, an excellent opportunity had been delivered to her.

There was no eternal waiting in the capital market; the opportunity passed in a flash. The opponent’s crisis was one’s own good opportunity.

Isaac Perlmutter’s personal debt crisis was a once-in-a-lifetime, hard-to-find breakthrough point. Once missed, the other party would either stop losses and turn the tables or introduce other capital to solve the trouble. There would never be such a perfect entry opportunity again.

Irene, who had been dormant for a long time and waiting for the wind to rise, did not hesitate at all and immediately made up her mind never to miss this god-given opportunity.

"I know," Irene said in a calm tone, but with unquestionable decisiveness. "Thank you for your hard work. This information is crucial to me."

After hanging up the phone, Irene did not make a scene. On the surface, she showed no signs of movement, still maintaining the mindset of a vacation, as if she had just received an unimportant call, and did not leak any information to the outside world.

Subsequently, she quietly let her assistant, Vera Cecil, synchronise all the secret evidence and investigation materials of Isaac Perlmutter privately pledging copyrights, borrowing money to speculate on stocks, and being deeply trapped in a debt crisis, one by one to the shareholders who held Marvel shares in her hands.

These shareholders were already dissatisfied with Marvel’s business decline in recent years and had long questioned the decision-making ability of the management. Upon learning that the CEO had privately pledged the company’s core copyrights for his own stock speculation, placing the entire Marvel in huge risk, they would surely be furious.

Irene did not need to do anything more. She just needed to wait for the next Marvel shareholders’ meeting to be held. Those undercurrents would surge wildly within Marvel’s senior management and ferment secretly on their own.

Irene’s birthday noise faded away, life and work returned to the right track, and the year-end film schedule in Hollywood also quietly kicked off.

For Echo Pictures and Future World Pictures, this December was a very special month. One of the most important art house films competing for the Oscars was about to land in theatres across the United States. "Brokeback Mountain," directed by Ang Lee and produced by Irene, was officially scheduled to be released at the end of the year.

Months ago, the film’s basic materials, plot trailers, and character posters had been released one after another, starting the preliminary warm-up.

However, whether it was the special nature of the film’s subject matter or Ang Lee’s current reputation in Hollywood, it determined that this film could not adopt the high-intensity, full-coverage, high-profile promotional mode of commercial blockbusters.

Unlike the mass-market compatibility of mainstream family-friendly and commercial romance films, the core essence of "Brokeback Mountain" was secretive, and the subject matter was sensitive. In the current North American public opinion environment, it was easy to trigger controversy and prejudice.

Therefore, Future World Pictures adopted a very safe promotional strategy throughout the process, deliberately downplaying the film’s special core, and uniformly using the Western aesthetic forbidden romance as the promotion theme, focusing on pure, delicate, and regretful fated love.

They used the shell of a romance film that was easiest for the public to accept to package the film, first attracting ordinary audiences into the theatre, and then relying on the film’s ultimate texture and emotional power to move people’s hearts and spread word of mouth.

This low-key, restrained, and gradual promotional approach for art house films was something Future World Pictures was already familiar with.

From "Million Dollar Baby" to "Lost in Translation," having deeply cultivated the art house film distribution track for two consecutive years at the end of the year, the team had accumulated sufficient practical experience.

They were familiar with the audience circles, public opinion risks, and the laws of word-of-mouth fermentation of art house films, and deeply understood the core logic of niche masterpieces "breaking out of the circle by quality and counterattacking by word of mouth." They could steadily leverage market heat without aggressive promotion.

In fact, "Brokeback Mountain" had already completed its first round of word-of-mouth gilding through top European film festivals. The film went abroad, broke through, and successfully won the heavy award of the Golden Lion for Best Picture at the 61st Venice International Film Festival.

With the endorsement of top international film festivals, it had already established a firm foothold in the industry and gained recognition and attention from a vast number of professional film critics.

However, thanks to the film’s low-key promotional rhythm throughout, the public opinion on the internet maintained a gentle heat. There was no deliberate hype, and the subject matter was not magnified.

Most ordinary audiences only knew that this was a Western romance film that won the Golden Lion, with beautiful pictures and full atmosphere. They knew very little about the film’s true story core and special subject matter.

Very few people had insight into the film’s true colours in advance, perfectly avoiding public opinion backlash and public prejudice before the release.