Dances with Wolves took home Best Picture, Best Director, and five other major awards. Ghost won Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Screenplay. Misery claimed Best Actress. Pixar's 3D animated short The Little Lion picked up the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. These were Daenerys Entertainment's total haul at the 61st Academy Awards.
Not counting honorary awards, the eleven major wins exactly equaled half of the twenty-two film categories. Just like at the Golden Globes in January, Daenerys Entertainment was the biggest winner of the night.
Simon had little interest in attending any parties lately. Still, as the boss, he needed to make at least a brief appearance at the victory celebration out of courtesy.
By the time he and Sophia arrived at the Gucci-themed party at the Beverly Hilton, it was already close to ten o'clock.
Moving through the crowd and offering congratulations to the evening's winners, Simon soon reached a middle-aged man chatting with John Lasseter, Ed Catmull, and the others.
The man was Roger Allers, an animation director and screenwriter Daenerys Entertainment had poached from Disney. He had previously worked on films such as The Rescuers Down Under and was the director of tonight's winning 3D short, The Little Lion.
In the original timeline, Roger Allers had directed Disney's 2D feature The Lion King.
From the end of 1988 until now, more than two years, Pixar had been developing Lion King-related animation technology alongside production of Toy Story.
Tonight's Oscar-winning The Little Lion was the concentrated display of Pixar's technical achievements over the past two years.
In just five minutes, through the brief adventure of a little lion living on the African savanna, the film showcased sweeping 3D grassland scenes and advanced animal fur rendering techniques.
Now that it had successfully taken home the Oscar for Best Short Film, it proved Pixar's technology had reached the level required to produce a 3D version of The Lion King. Production on the feature would officially begin soon.
After congratulating Roger Allers on the win, Simon added, "I'll make time in the next few days to watch the story reel for The Lion King. Roger, this is a gift I'm giving Jenny. If you mess it up, my wife will be very upset."
Although it was only an Oscar for Best Animated Short, Roger Allers was still quite excited tonight. He nodded confidently at once. "Simon, I promise you it will be a truly wonderful story."
Simon smiled and turned to John Lasseter. "John, how much longer until Toy Story is finished? You've gone quite a bit over budget, haven't you?"
In the original plan, Simon had hoped to complete Toy Story for thirty million dollars.
However, perhaps due to the natural perfectionism of any artist, the film still needed a few more months, yet John Lasseter's team had already spent thirty-three million dollars.
Even though Simon was smiling, John Lasseter still looked rather nervous.
Pixar Animation was absolutely the most "freeloading" department under Daenerys Entertainment.
From the time Simon bought it in 1988 until now, more than two years, every other division of the company had been thriving while Pixar had only spent money and produced nothing.
Therefore, everyone understood that Toy Story was the Pixar team's last stand. If it failed, even with the second chance of The Lion King, life for the Pixar team over the next two years would definitely not be easy.
After careful consideration, John Lasseter said, "Two months, Simon. Give us two more months."
Toy Story's release window was November this year, so there was actually plenty of time. Still, every extra month of development meant a large additional expense, so the sooner it was finished the better.
Simon checked Pixar's progress every month. He was still very satisfied with the sample reels of Toy Story that had already been completed, so he was not anxious inside.
The first 3D animated feature would inevitably encounter all kinds of problems. Considering the film's profit potential, Simon could barely tolerate the Pixar team's budget overrun.
However, he would not show this leniency outwardly and still gave them a light scolding.
After chatting with John Lasseter and the others for a while longer, Simon glanced at Jennifer beside him. Once he confirmed he had greeted everyone he needed to, he prepared to leave.
Just as he and his assistant reached the entrance of the party hall, Ira Deutchman walked over, accompanied by several Asian men and women.
Coming up to Simon, Ira explained, "Simon, Zhang and the others wanted to say hello."
Among Daenerys Entertainment's many nominations tonight was Ju Dou, which had received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. This was also the first time a film from across the ocean had been nominated in that category.
Simon had previously instructed Deutschman to pay more attention to and import Asian films but had not shown any extra interest in Ju Dou itself.
Therefore, the film had not won the little gold statue.
Looking at the several big names he could only have looked up to in his previous life, Simon smiled and stepped forward to shake hands with each of them one by one. "Hello, Mr. Zhang. And Miss Gong, your performance in Ju Dou was truly wonderful."
He still needed to return to the Dume Point estate tonight.
Janet had only been pregnant for a short time. Even if she would not mind, Simon was very attentive to her feelings on these small details. Therefore, he had not spent a single night away from home during this period.
Taking his assistant along was simply to drop her off on the way.
After dropping Jennifer off at her uncle George Norman's house, Simon did not linger and continued back to Malibu.
The next day the media coverage of the Oscars as usual centered on Daenerys Entertainment sweeping half the little gold statues.
Fortunately, although some political correctness factors were involved, Dances with Wolves' seven major wins did not spark much controversy. Instead, quite a few outlets noted the fact that other outstanding Daenerys Entertainment films had not received nominations.
In addition, some people noticed Simon's own "absence" from this year's Oscars.
It was not just his absence from the ceremony itself. Simon had not received any personal nominations at all this year. For a while, the media even began speculating whether he planned to retire from acting and directing.
After all, with his current wealth, there was indeed no need for him to personally shoot films anymore.
Facing media inquiries, Daenerys Entertainment denied the speculation but also stated that Simon would likely be unable to pick up the director's chair again for a very long time.
Thanks to the Oscars and the Easter window, Dances with Wolves saw another box-office rebound. During the Oscar week of March 22 to March 28, it posted a remarkable 59 percent increase, adding another 6.54 million dollars and bringing its cumulative domestic total to 139 million dollars.
On March 29, the second week of the Easter window began.
The other two Daenerys Entertainment-related films, Children of the Corn III and Universal's Crazy Night, opened.
New World Pictures had invested ten million dollars in Children of the Corn III and used quite a few of the latest CG effects, hoping to push the horror series toward the box-office heights of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
However, over its first three days Children of the Corn III earned only 6.73 million dollars domestically. The first-week projection was between nine and ten million, with an expected North American total of around thirty million dollars.
It would definitely make money, but it still fell short of the Nightmare on Elm Street series.
Of course, compared with the previous two installments' fifteen-million-dollar totals, the projected doubling for Children of the Corn III was still very obvious. Therefore, the fourth film in the series would maintain the ten-million-dollar production budget level.
John Hughes-produced Crazy Night opened to only 4.02 million dollars over three days. The film's word of mouth was far below that of the still-running Home Alone.
The romantic comedy had an eleven-million-dollar budget and was expected to earn less than fifteen million dollars domestically. Relying solely on North American theatrical distribution, the chances of recouping costs were slim.
After Crazy Night's box-office results came in, the other studios that had been frantically chasing John Hughes because of Home Alone's success calmed down a little and involuntarily attributed more of Home Alone's success to Simon.
After Easter on March 31, time entered April 1991.
America Online's three-month free-trial program officially ended.
In the just-completed month of March, America Online had still received 1.5 million sign-ups and successfully connected another 1.09 million free-trial users.
Of the 970,000 trial users from February, 560,000 had converted to paid accounts, raising the conversion rate to 57 percent compared with January.
Based on the data from the first two months, America Online projected that of the 1.09 million free-trial users in March, more than 600,000 would convert to paid accounts.
In this way, America Online would gain more than 1.5 million new users in the first quarter alone.
Adding the user base accumulated before 1991, the company expected to reach more than 2.3 million paid subscribers by the end of April.
Under such strong growth momentum, and with large numbers of users still waiting for free trials from previous months, America Online officially announced that the free-trial program would continue until all remaining 2.5 million sign-ups had been given the opportunity.
Even at a 50 percent conversion rate, those remaining 2.5 million sign-ups would bring America Online another 1.25 million paid subscribers.
Therefore, once the free-trial program fully ended, America Online's user count would reach more than 3.5 million.
At an average monthly spend of thirty dollars per user, America Online's monthly revenue was projected to exceed 100 million dollars starting in the second half of 1991.
Whether measured by solid revenue figures or visible high growth rates, America Online's IPO valuation was constantly being stimulated.
Morgan Stanley, which had formally signed on as lead underwriter for America Online's IPO, made several adjustments and finally set the company's IPO valuation at 2.5 billion dollars.
At a 2.5 billion dollar valuation and with America Online planning to issue 15 percent new shares, the offering was expected to raise 375 million dollars.
Combined with America Online's own rapid revenue growth, the company would completely shake off its previous funding troubles once the IPO was completed.
On the other hand, with America Online and other regional internet service providers in North America exerting full effort, the total number of web-platform users across North America was projected to exceed five million in the first half of 1991 alone. Reaching ten million users for the full year would also seem very relaxed.
This growth speed far exceeded Simon's original expectations.
No wonder, in his memory, Jeff Bezos had seen the internet industry's annual 2,300 percent growth figure and quickly switched from finance to dive headfirst into it.
As the most important content platform in the web ecosystem, the Ygritte portal was gradually receiving more and more attention along with the explosive growth of web users.
In this era, even the highest-circulation newspaper in North America averaged only a little over two million copies.
The Ygritte portal, which had quickly made a name for itself through its Gulf War coverage, already had more than three million users across North America.
Although the Ygritte portal's user base was widely dispersed, at this point no one dared casually ignore this rapidly growing new media platform.
Therefore, in the new quarterly advertising sales campaign Ygritte portal conducted in late March, the company secured more than twelve million dollars in advertising orders from tech giants such as IBM, Intel, and Microsoft.
Although traditional daily consumer goods advertising on the internet platform still struggled to achieve large results, it was obvious that as an emerging new-tech media platform, the Ygritte portal was perfectly suited for companies like IBM to promote their own products.
Jeff Bezos had precisely grasped this point and specially customized a series of advertising packages aimed at various tech companies. Twelve million dollars in advertising orders might be insignificant compared with traditional media giants, but for the Ygritte portal it was a leap forward.
Before this, Ygritte Company's main source of revenue had still been sales of the IE browser software.
Therefore, after the quarterly advertising sales activity at the end of March, advertising revenue officially became a key focus for the Ygritte portal.
At the same time, the industry once again realized the powerful monopoly advantage the Ygritte portal held over web content platforms.
After all, while a portal website that simply provided news might not be technically difficult, integrating email, personal homepages, online forums, online games, and other functions beyond news was not so easy.
More importantly, Ygritte Company also possessed extremely strong patent barriers.
This was the fundamental obstacle preventing other tech companies from replicating the portal business.
On the web platform, even something as simple as webpage images was actually a proprietary image format that Ygritte had specially developed and patented. Not to mention underlying technologies such as the JavaScript scripting language.
Although Daenerys Entertainment maintained a very open licensing attitude, more and more other websites joining the web platform could easily obtain authorization simply by applying, and it was free. However, it was not hard to imagine that if someone wanted to build a commercial website similar to the Ygritte portal, the day they successfully obtained technical authorization from Ygritte would be the day hell froze over.
Simon hoped internet content websites could flourish, so he had no intention of restricting the appearance of other content platforms. Doing so would bring no benefit to the expansion of the web platform itself.
However, if only content-related patents were opened while patents for related technologies such as email, online games, and the future online payment system remained closed, any similar website built would be destined to struggle to compete with the Ygritte portal.