After the weekend, time moved into the final week of June.
Before this, Wonder Woman had officially begun filming in the UK on Monday, June 17.
This time they had not chosen Australia for shooting, mainly because the origin story still followed the World War I background from Simon's memory of the Gal Gadot version. Australia did not have suitable locations similar to wartime London or the Amazon tribe's Paradise Island.
Therefore, the film would primarily be shot on location in the UK and Italy.
With a series of projects being greenlit and starting production over the past few months, Daenerys Entertainment's major 1992 slate was now largely finalized.
For 1992, Daenerys Entertainment had four key in-house productions scheduled: Ninja Turtles 2 in the Easter slot, Wonder Woman in the summer, Home Alone 2 for Thanksgiving, and Jurassic Park for Christmas.
At the same time, three co-production projects had been confirmed: The Last of the Mohicans with Warner Bros., Indecent Proposal with Paramount, and A Time to Kill with MGM.
All seven films were box office successes in Simon's memory.
Once people figured out the pattern behind Daenerys releases, these seven projects became the focus of attention for every filmmaker in Hollywood.
"Thank you both for coming today, Sam, and Renee."
"You're welcome, Simon. This is what I should do."
"It's an honor to work with you, Steven."
Malibu, Daenerys Studios.
The final audition for the male and female leads of Jurassic Park had just concluded.
After weeks of selection, Simon and Spielberg had together decided through today's audition that Sam Neill and Renee Russo would play the roles of paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler respectively.
The original Jurassic Park had essentially been an ensemble piece, though the couple of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler had more screen time than most.
Simon had no plans to make major changes to the plot of the original Jurassic Park.
However, he would correct some of the mistakes the original series had made.
The most important one was maintaining continuity throughout the franchise.
In the 1990s Jurassic Park trilogy, while the first film had exceeded nine hundred million dollars globally, the next two had seen steadily declining box office.
In Simon's view, besides the plots heavily copying the first film and lacking innovation, the biggest issue had been the lack of continuity.
In Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World, almost all the main characters from the first film were dropped. Aside from the dinosaurs, it was essentially a completely different story. This had caused the sequel's North American box office to drop by nearly half compared to the original.
Many years later, when Jurassic World was rebooted, the producers had not repeated this mistake.
The male and female leads, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, continued their roles after the first film's 1.6 billion dollar global smash. Even with average reviews, the strong continuity helped the sequels still gross over 1.3 billion dollars worldwide.
Therefore, this time Simon had decided from the beginning to lock in at least two recurring characters.
Sam Neill and Renee Russo's pair of scientists would be signed by Daenerys Entertainment to trilogy contracts right away.
Of the two, Sam Neill had played the role in the original version, so there was no need to explain further.
Renee Russo was replacing the original Laura Dern.
Aside from personal reasons, Simon felt that Renee Russo's age and temperament suited a paleobotanist role far better than Laura Dern.
Laura Dern had looked like she was in her thirties in the original film and paired well with Sam Neill, but in reality the actress who aged quickly on screen was only twenty-five this year.
In his memory, Laura Dern had landed the role mainly because she had received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress the year before filming began.
Steven Spielberg disliked working with actors who were too high-profile. An Oscar-nominated Laura Dern had been just right in terms of popularity and acting skill.
This time, Jurassic Park had been moved up a year. The film that earned Laura Dern her supporting actress nomination, Rambling Rose, had not even been released yet. Coincidentally, Renee Russo had earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination at this year's Oscars thanks to the role Simon had arranged for her last year in Goodfellas.
Since Simon had no particular feelings toward Laura Dern and Renee Russo was an excellent fit, there was no need to look any further.
After the audition ended, Sam Neill and Renee Russo left first. Simon then discussed other supporting cast members with Spielberg and went to check on the motion capture technology Daenerys Effects had specially developed for Jurassic Park.
The velociraptors in the film would this time be shot using motion capture technology to make the movements more vivid and lifelike, instead of pure CG animation.
At the same time, the early maturity of motion capture technology could also be applied to many other Daenerys Entertainment films.
After staying busy until noon, Simon had lunch with Spielberg, then personally walked him to the parking lot. Just as they were about to part, Spielberg seemed to suddenly remember something. "There's one small matter, Simon."
Seeing the expression on Spielberg's face, Simon roughly guessed what it was about and smiled, signaling for him to speak.
Spielberg also smiled. "Regarding the film The Last of the Mohicans that you're preparing, I have a goddaughter who would like to audition for the younger of the two kidnapped sisters."
"Your goddaughter, Steven. Is it the little girl from E.T., Drew Barrymore?"
Spielberg shook his head. "No, it's someone else. Gwyneth Paltrow. I've known her father for a very long time. We worked together at Universal back in the day. She's nineteen this year and just had a small cameo role in my film Hook."
So this is what having such a godfather gets you?
Simon sighed inwardly but had no hesitation. He would definitely grant this small favor, so he nodded readily. "No problem. I'll arrange it."
Michael Mann had been working on the script for The Last of the Mohicans recently. Simon had already read the first draft. The two sisters did not have very large roles.
Moreover, since she could eventually win an Oscar for Best Actress, Gwyneth Paltrow clearly had genuine talent. As her godfather, she should understand that Spielberg's favor was not something to be used indefinitely. She probably would not act arrogantly like some of the "goddaughters" Simon remembered from his memories.
Simon's rapid rise had somewhat overshadowed the glory of veteran top directors like Spielberg.
It was impossible for Spielberg to feel completely at ease about it.
Normally, with Spielberg's status in Hollywood, a small role like this would only require a single phone call. The fact that he had brought it up to Simon in person showed that for Daenerys Entertainment's major projects, all major casting decisions still required Simon's personal approval.
Seeing how readily Simon agreed, Spielberg subconsciously felt much less guarded toward the young man.
The two continued chatting beside the car for quite some time before Spielberg finally drove away.
After seeing Spielberg off, Simon had just turned around when his female assistant walked over carrying a folder.
"AOL has just sent over the latest revised prospectus. If you have no objections, it will be submitted to the SEC tomorrow. The IPO roadshow will begin on July 1, with official listing on July 12."
Following the standard U.S. stock listing process, AOL's prospectus had already been submitted two months earlier. This was simply making some adjustments to the detailed terms.
Simon took the document from his assistant as he walked and flipped it open to the marked revision sections.
After recent restructuring, AOL's total shares had been set at approximately 150 million. Westeros Company held 112.9 million shares, giving them slightly over 75% ownership. The remaining roughly 25% belonged to early investors and AOL management.
Additionally, this IPO would convert AOL into a dual-class share structure.
The existing 150 million shares would be Class A shares, while the new 22.5 million shares to be issued would be Class B shares.
Class B shares would carry only one-tenth the voting rights of Class A shares.
After issuing new shares equivalent to 15% of the total, Westeros Company's voting power would actually decrease by less than 1%, still sitting at 74.1%.
Therefore, unless Simon voluntarily gave it up, almost no one would be able to seize control of AOL from Westeros Company, not even the original shareholders who held some Class A shares.
The main revision in the document Simon was holding concerned the IPO price range.
Two months earlier, Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for this IPO, had valued AOL at 2.5 billion dollars. Since then, due to AOL's continued explosive user growth and market anticipation for the IPO, the valuation had been steadily revised upward.
This time, AOL had set the offering price range at 19 to 21 dollars per share.
At the high end of 21 dollars, this gave AOL a valuation of 3.15 billion dollars.
Given AOL's user growth rate, the company was expected to reach 3.5 million total users by the end of the first half of 1992, with a full-year target of over 7 million.
At an average of 30 dollars per user per month, 3.5 million users would generate over 100 million dollars in monthly revenue. This didn't even account for additional growth in the second half of the year. Simon actually felt that the 3.15 billion dollar valuation was still somewhat conservative.
However, he had no intention of raising the offering price further.
Leaving extra growth potential for the market would benefit both AOL and the entire internet industry.
Cisco's IPO was also in preparation.
Cisco served the entire U.S. ISP sector. Riding the rise of the internet and Westeros's monopoly on World Wide Web technology, the company's growth over the past year had actually been even faster. As a hardware manufacturer, however, Cisco's performance was not as immediately visible as AOL's rapidly increasing monthly user numbers.
Simon had deliberately scheduled Cisco to go public after AOL for exactly this reason.
If AOL could achieve a strong debut, the capital markets would almost certainly give Cisco the same enthusiastic reception.