"Phil, are you saying that Isaac thinks our proposal is excellent, but he doesn't want to cooperate with us right now because, in his eyes, our offer lacks sincerity? Or, to put it another way, we simply haven't offered him enough?"
"Yes, Mr. Ballmer. That's the conclusion I reached after traveling to New York and speaking with Isaac face-to-face."
"Okay. So you're sure his position was firm? It wasn't that something you said caused him to misjudge the situation?"
"Absolutely, Mr. Ballmer. Although I'm not a negotiation expert, before meeting Isaac, I spoke at length with our partners at Activision. Marvel and Activision have had a long-term partnership, after all. Through them, I learned about Isaac's personality and preferences. I can guarantee that what we're seeing now reflects Isaac's true intention. I've already done my best."
"But—you can't possibly be telling me that his true intention is to get one billion dollars from us, right?"
"Yes. And he also demanded that the money be transferred to him personally by Mr. Bill Gates."
"Do you think that's ridiculous?"
"Mr. Ballmer, to be honest, I find this result ridiculous too. But Isaac is essentially a robber. The fact that he left finance had nothing to do with his own wishes — it was purely because he provoked someone he couldn't afford to. Given that, I personally think this price is consistent with his nature, even if it isn't reasonable."
"Oh — shit! Fine, I understand. You worked hard traveling over the weekend, so take this week off.
If you'd rather not rest, that's fine too. If you choose to work, go to Finance and report your weekend overtime at five times your normal pay. If you'd prefer to save the leave, you can take a week off at any time in the future. Mm-hmm."
"Oh — Mr. Ballmer — thank you for your generosity. I'll be heading out, then?"
"Alright, goodbye."
November 13, 2006, was a Monday.
After hearing Phil Spencer's report — Phil had just returned from New York — Steve Ballmer smiled as he sent him off, letting him do as he pleased. And as the door closed—
Sitting back in his private office chair, he felt somewhat irritated.
Microsoft's intention was clear: to play the universally hated troublemaker, provoke an internal war inside Marvel, and trick Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter into attacking Isabella Haywood.
The reasons were straightforward—
Isabella had not sold YouTube to Microsoft;
She had sold it to Google instead;
And she had reached a partnership with Apple;
With Microsoft, Apple, and Google all at odds with one another—
An enemy's ally deserved to be destroyed.
Was there anything wrong with that logic?
It was precisely for this reason that, upon discovering Isabella held shares in Marvel and that Marvel's chairman, Isaac Perlmutter, was an exceptionally bloodthirsty and combative figure, they decided to join forces with him.
They would strike together — and destroy Isabella.
In Steve Ballmer's view, this cooperation was virtually guaranteed to succeed.
The attack strategy they had devised was sound. Since Microsoft had a gaming business and Marvel had always embraced game adaptations, using games as the basis for cooperation was beyond reproach.
From there, as long as they pinned the accusation of leaking Marvel secrets on Isabella — or made her the scapegoat for disrupting the company's revenue and depressing its stock price — they could drag her into serious danger.
And once Isabella was in danger, the attacks could intensify.
That's right!
Trying to destroy Isabella at this moment was genuinely difficult.
Isabella's situation was nothing like Rupert Murdoch's.
To the world at large, Murdoch's fate was inconsequential — his role was replaceable. Anyone could run the businesses under his name.
Isabella was different.
She could inspire loyalty in countless people and deliver tangible benefits to many investors. Her existence was unique and irreplaceable, and anything threatening her would draw enormous attention.
So anyone seeking to bring down Isabella would have to follow the same playbook: tarnish her reputation first, then move in for the kill. Any direct, open attack was useless against Isabella as she stood now — her sterling reputation acted as a shield, and her positive public image turned attacks back on the attacker.
If one needed a comparison, it was how the industry had once dealt with MJ.
But—
Just when Steve Ballmer believed he had planned everything perfectly, Isaac Perlmutter responded to their cooperation proposal with an outrageous demand.
A fee of one billion dollars was something Steve Ballmer could not accept under any circumstances — even with Lehman backing Isaac Perlmutter.
In essence, what Microsoft was attempting was to drive a wolf to fight a tiger.
They had no desire to confront Isabella directly. That was why they sought to incite Isaac Perlmutter to mobilize Lehman against her.
Unfortunately, the reckless Isaac Perlmutter had seen through their intentions.
This really was—
"Sigh!"
Steve Ballmer let out a heavy sigh and shook his head helplessly.
"Damn!"
"This guy swings between madness and shrewdness!"
After cursing a couple of times, Ballmer reluctantly abandoned the idea of forging an alliance against the enemy.
He picked up the documents on his desk and tried to get back to work.
But after turning only two pages, a surge of frustration flared up in him without warning.
Everything before him was bad news—
The first document was a report from Microsoft's general department on "Zune":
The Zune launch event had been held late last month.
Despite Microsoft's heavy investment in promotion — paying off numerous media outlets to generate frenzied hype, billing Zune as a next-generation digital player capable of dethroning Apple's iPod — the market was unmoved.
The moment the Zune launch event ended, negative reviews flooded in.
Consumers found the design bulky and far less elegant than the iPod. Moreover, while Zune's 30GB of storage sounded impressive, Apple — notoriously stingy with storage — had already offered 60GB in last year's iPod model, with this year's version going up to 90GB.
"Only a fool would buy a Zune, right???"
Once that sentiment took hold, the launch could only be called a failure.
Because the launch event and the release date were nearly back-to-back, there was no time to overhaul the marketing strategy or salvage the product's image before Zune hit North American shelves the following day.
If current market trends held, Microsoft's own internal forecast was that first-week Zune sales would be dismal.
And that—
"What the — !"
"These people are all useless idiots!"
Steve Ballmer erupted.
Zune was a product he had championed personally. Poor sales would reflect directly on his leadership.
In his original plan, Zune was meant to be another weapon aimed at Isabella.
If it failed, the plan collapsed.
The logic was this:
If Zune could defeat the iPod, Apple would be thrown into a panic.
Most of Apple's revenue at this point came from the iPod. With the hardware nearly perfected and little room for improvement, Steve Jobs's only avenue to drive further iPod sales was through software.
iTunes had already signed deals with the Big Five music labels. With Warner, Sony, EMI, Universal, and Bertelsmann all in iTunes' library, the only remaining untapped market for the iPod was Isabella's fanbase.
There was no getting around it — Isabella's fans were a peculiar bunch.
Those who listened offline bought physical discs and had no use for an iPod. Those who listened online simply went to YouTube, where the best digital versions were already available for free.
So, if Steve Jobs partnered with Isabella again — say, putting her songs on iTunes for free — Microsoft could stoke a conflict between her and the broader music industry.
After all: iTunes was a paid platform. If Isabella released her music for free to drive traffic, what room would that leave for other artists?
But none of that was possible unless Zune became a massive hit and crushed the iPod.
"Sigh!"
Ballmer sighed again, a headache setting in.
Then he turned to the second document, and the headache worsened.
It was a report from the marketing department:
According to reliable intelligence gathered by the department, as of mid-August — roughly halfway through the previous quarter — Apple had already become the fourth-largest music retailer in the world, driven by iTunes' explosive growth.
The top three were Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. That made Apple's fourth-place global ranking effectively first place in digital music retail.
The implications were alarming.
The previous global fourth — and the previous global first in digital music — had both been Amazon.
If Apple's "iTunes + iPod" combination had already displaced the world's largest e-commerce platform in music retail, Microsoft's hope of crushing the iPod right out of the gate with Zune?
That was pure fantasy.
A permanent latecomer disadvantage might simply be Zune's fate.
"Oh! Shit!"
"What is all this garbage!"
Steve Ballmer scratched his head furiously.
He felt as though the blood pounding in his skull was about to make him go bald.
What?
He was already bald?
Oh—
Never mind.
The marketing report left Ballmer in a foul mood. Three pieces of nightmare-level news in the first hour of his workday, and he had lost all appetite for it.
The problems he faced weren't going to be solved by staring at documents, and he certainly couldn't undo any of it. So — if he couldn't change circumstances, he might as well ride them out.
He pushed the aggravating matters aside and did what he was best at: calling meetings and shouting at subordinates.
He vented every ounce of his frustration.
By the time work ended, his mood had improved considerably.
That night, before bed, he even found time to say a prayer.
He prayed that God would bless Zune with strong sales — because if that happened, every problem he was facing would resolve itself.
Unfortunately, indulgences are only useful after a robbery has succeeded.
With the arrival of November 14, 2006, Zune finally went on sale.
After Microsoft's heavily hyped Zune finally dropped its veil and reached the American public, its first week on the market made it the runner-up in America's portable media device market — second only to the iPod, and ahead of rivals including Samsung, Toshiba, and Sony.
On the surface, this was an impressive result.
In reality—
Zune's single-week sales accounted for just 9% of the total market that week.
The iPod's share that same week was 63%.
Yes!
As a new product in the portable media device market — one Microsoft had spent 200 million dollars promoting — Zune's first-week market share couldn't even surpass the routine sales of an iPod that had been on shelves for years with no new model in sight.
Ordinary people in 2006 might not have grasped the significance of that.
Readers in 2026 should.
Because the age of fine-print marketing taught everyone one lesson: if a newly launched digital product cannot win its debut week's sales crown, it can simply be put down immediately.
And when the iPod's regular daily sales were running seven times higher than Zune's launch figures—
Why on earth was Microsoft still making MP3 players?
The moment the sales data landed, Microsoft shot itself in the foot and the situation exploded.
Bill Gates, deep into retirement planning, rushed back to Microsoft, summoned the executives, and called an emergency meeting.
When a product Microsoft had spent heavily to build couldn't match the industry leader's routine sales — and the gap was sevenfold — there was nothing left to say. And this—
Isabella knew nothing about Microsoft's fixation on her.
The reason was simple.
First, a great many people wanted her dead. If she devoted attention to every enemy, she'd have no life left to live.
Second, she was extraordinarily busy.
Not only did she film for eight hours a day, but she handled other work in every spare moment.
This wasn't because her staff were incompetent and incapable of managing things on their own.
It was because her business empire had grown too sprawling.
With interests scattered across the globe, it was entirely normal for her business in the Cayman Islands to be raided by pirates one day, her New Zealand operation swept clean the next, and her North American venture seized the day after that.
What's more, many of her current businesses were born from sudden flashes of inspiration — and when her mother didn't fully understand her intentions, Vivian naturally couldn't make calls on her behalf.
So after receiving reports from staff below, Vivian and Catherine could only log the issues and wait for Isabella to address them when she had time.
So—
"Keisha, I understand. You're saying Emma Thomas called Susie and said her husband Christopher Nolan wants to shoot The Dark Knight with IMAX cameras?"
"Right — Susie has no objection, but Warner does."
"What's their problem?"
"The cost. Without IMAX, The Dark Knight would likely run around 120 million dollars. With IMAX cameras, the production budget climbs to somewhere between 185 and 200 million."
"An increase of 65 to 80 million? That's not much. How much did they spend on Superman Returns?"
"It's not that simple. The cost increase from IMAX ripples through every stage of production — the 65 million rise in the production budget is actually the smallest part. Print costs alone will surge. Nathan Bailey called to say that IMAX processing runs four times what standard film does. A normal print might cost tens of thousands of dollars; IMAX processing can run a hundred or two hundred thousand."
"Oh—" Isabella understood Warner's position.
She added, "But Christopher Nolan won't let it go?"
"No." Catherine nodded. "And his wife also mentioned that he believes IMAX is the future of moviegoing. He wants to shoot at least one IMAX sequence. If you agree, filming can begin next February."
"Then go ahead."
Isabella waved her hand — the matter was settled.
In her memory, IMAX technology — and honestly, theatrical moviegoing itself — had by 2026 become something of a relic, teetering on the edge of irrelevance.
And IMAX had never truly gone mainstream in her previous life because building the infrastructure was prohibitively expensive.
So Christopher Nolan thought IMAX was the future? He might be wrong about that.
Not that Isabella particularly cared.
The Dark Knight's production costs were going on Warner's tab. Whether they spent more or less was no concern of Isabella's. She only needed the film to be a hit and to stay reasonably faithful to what she remembered from her previous life. That was enough.
With a wave, Catherine moved cleanly to the next item.
"Iron Man is nearly ready as well. Like The Dark Knight, Kevin Feige says it can begin shooting next February, in California."
"Good. Who's playing Pepper?"
"Spielberg's goddaughter — Gwyneth Paltrow."
"Perfect. She suits the role well."
Another wave from Isabella.
Pepper was still the right choice, then — no issues there.
Catherine flipped to the next page.
The third item concerned Avatar.
With Isabella covering the full investment, the project had moved forward at remarkable speed. Like The Dark Knight and Iron Man, it was on track to begin shooting early next year — though post-production would likely take longer than both of those films combined.
Isabella had no objection. She waved her hand again.
Just as Catherine was about to continue, Isabella cut in: "Are the remaining subjects urgent?"
"Not really—" Catherine glanced over her notes twice and gave a reply that suggested everything could wait.
"If nothing's urgent, then nothing's important right now. Bring it up when something becomes pressing."
Isabella shut down the work report without ceremony.
That unhurried manner made Vivian — who had been watching quietly — frown slightly, ready to say something.
But before she could, Isabella had already stretched—
Or tried to.
The attempt failed. She was sitting in a car and couldn't extend her arms properly.
A small frustration.
She yawned, glanced at the rearview mirror of the people-carrier, caught her mother's eye, and said, "Mom, if you're about to tell me to get back to work, I'd say that's a bit unreasonable."
"We're on our way to the hotel. The Goblet of Fire Part Two premiere is tonight."
"I've been taking work calls the whole drive — so letting me rest a little seems fair, doesn't it?"
Isabella tilted her head slightly, blinking at her mother.
That expression — cute but clearly worn out — made Vivian smile and raise an eyebrow. "Of course."
It was already December 2006 — one week before the official release of Goblet of Fire: Part Two.