Chapter 520: Google Goes Public

Before the second round of auditions even began, Duke crossed Scarlett Johansson off the list. During the subsequent auditions, he finalized the casting for several supporting roles first.

After reviewing the screen tests, Duke had largely settled on Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Detective Gordon, and Laurence Fishburne as Lucius Fox. Along with Liam Neeson, who was already confirmed to play Henri Ducard, the primary supporting cast was mostly in place. However, they wouldn't be joining the production just yet; Charles Roven still needed to negotiate their contracts with their agents.

As for the crucial leading roles, once Christian Bale showed strong interest, Duke stopped considering anyone else for the male lead. He was locked in to play Bruce Wayne.

In truth, back in Iceland, Duke had nearly vetoed Christian Bale. The reason was simple: he had only accepted the audition invitation on the very last day of the deadline.

Originally, when Duke hadn't heard from Bale by that final day, he had planned to go with Ben Affleck, but Bale managed to catch the last train.

Contrary to what many believed, Christian Bale wasn't strictly interested in independent films. As a member of the Warner Board of Directors, Duke knew that Bale had auditioned for the role of Robin in the nineties but had been rejected by the crew.

At the end of the day, every actor navigating Hollywood knew exactly how important a good opportunity was.

For the female lead, however, Duke hesitated. While he had seen Katie Holmes during the auditions, he wouldn't even consider her. The remaining candidates—Jennifer Garner, Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway, and Rachel McAdams—each had their own strengths and weaknesses.

He personally leaned toward Anne Hathaway. The actress, who had risen to fame with The Princess Diaries, had been going through a career lull over the past few years. Although her performance in the audition didn't reach the heights of her later career, it was more than enough to handle the film's female lead. Moreover, as long as she didn't open her mouth for a wide laugh, she made for perfectly qualified eye candy.

True, she was relatively robust. In Duke's past words, she was rather broadly built, but she was the quintessential American girl. She perfectly matched the aesthetic standards of the country.

His various deputies unanimously recommended casting her as well.

"I think her screen test was the best."

Inside the screening room, they had just finished reviewing the actresses' audition tapes.

Anna Printz voiced her opinion. "Anne Hathaway has a very unique aura. She always manages to bring a trace of innocence and determination into her gaze during a performance. It's very similar to Rachel Dawes in the first film."

Charles Roven nodded.

"I agree with Anna's view," he said.

Duke thought about it for a moment.

"Then let's go with Anne Hathaway," he said.

As for the future Catwoman, Hollywood was full of actresses with comparable qualifications; the number of suitable candidates was practically endless.

Charles Roven worked incredibly fast. It took him about ten days to finalize the actors' contracts. While the rest of the cast could spend time studying their roles in relative comfort, Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, and a multitude of stunt doubles were summoned by Duke to the training gym at the Warner Studio. There, they began three months of endurance and combat training under Jimmy Carter.

Preparation work proceeded step by step, and the calendar turned to August. Duke's attention was inevitably divided by affairs in Silicon Valley. One of the most important investments of his life, Google, was about to officially conduct its initial public offering.

According to the original plans of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google had been in no rush to go public.

The main reason they were conducting their IPO this month was that certain requirements from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had forced them to make a quick decision.

Under SEC regulations, any company with over 500 shareholders and assets exceeding $10 million was required to disclose its business information, and it had to make its financial status public within four months after the end of the fiscal year.

This specific clause had previously spurred many American companies to simply go ahead with an IPO, and Google met the criteria—it had over 1,000 employees holding stock options, and its assets had long surpassed $100 million.

Well before going public, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had made ample preparations to ensure they would retain control over the company. In April, Google executed a stock split, issuing one non-voting class B share for every class A share with voting rights. Consequently, Google's stock price was halved. While this provided smaller investors an opportunity to participate, it also diluted the voting power of some major shareholders, thereby safeguarding the authority of the two founders.

This was a move any normal businessman would make; no one wanted to see the company they had worked so hard to build ultimately fall into the hands of others. Duke wasn't too bothered by it. He didn't know how to run a company anyway; his investment in Google was purely for the financial return.

On August 19, Google, founded a mere six years ago, went public in a highly anticipated initial public offering. For a company that young, Wall Street had set an astronomically high valuation—$23 billion!

At the time, Google had an annual revenue of $2.7 billion and an annual profit of $286 million.

Unlike most public offerings, Google sold its shares through an auction process, lowering the costs of the IPO.

According to standard Wall Street market rates, underwriters would take a 4 percent cut for an IPO aiming to raise nearly $3 billion. However, by using this auction method, Google's fee was a mere 2.8 percent.

In theory, an auction would secure the highest possible offering price for the listed company while simultaneously giving individual investors the chance to buy shares in the primary market.

Yet when it came time for Google to conduct its IPO, the company faced weak demand, forcing it to scale back its stock offering and lower the initial price.

Although they had initially set the price range between $108 and $135, Google ultimately went public at just $85 per share. They issued only 22.5 million shares, raising a mere $1.9 billion.

To make matters worse, Google's stock price surged by 18 percent on its first day of trading, closing at $100.34. This indicated that the auction had failed to achieve one of its intended goals—setting the offering price as close as possible to the value investors would place on the stock in the open market.

Even a layman like Duke could tell this could hardly be called a successful IPO.

For him personally, however, that wasn't the case. Selling the shares via auction undeniably gave him a window of opportunity. The relatively weak market demand allowed his various foundations to snatch up a significant portion of the shares, bringing the equity stake that had been diluted by earlier measures back up to 25 percent.

Had the SEC not required public disclosures, Duke could have snatched up even more shares. Still, this was enough to satisfy him.

The IPO hadn't been a success, yet Google had become the darling of the market and the media. By the time the market closed that day, Google's valuation had climbed to $27 billion, minting hundreds of multimillionaires in the process.

Undoubtedly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Duke became the three most dazzling figures in this initial public offering.

Of course, holding shares and possessing actual liquid capital were two entirely different things. Trading stocks wasn't like buying vegetables at a market. Listed companies imposed numerous restrictions on their shareholders, and before the lock-up period expired, many people simply couldn't sell their shares.

However, Duke wasn't short on cash; otherwise, he wouldn't have purchased more Google stock. Even though Google didn't pay dividends, his primary goal with the investment was wealth preservation. The rate at which the U.S. dollar depreciated was simply too fast.

Without a doubt, with Google officially going public and raising funds, Duke had, on paper, joined the ranks of the wealthiest billionaires in America.

Furthermore, since Google's stock price continued its steady climb post-IPO, the shares he held would only represent higher and higher value.

Following that, Duke shifted his focus back to his film preparations. Just reviewing and adjusting the various pieces of equipment designed for Batman consumed a massive amount of his time and energy.

Lamborghini specially set up a temporary production line in their workshop, dedicated to completing the primary design and manufacturing work for the Batmobile.

Unlike the four Batman films from the eighties and nineties, the new trilogy leaned heavily toward realism. Duke had no intention of using overly sci-fi gadgets. Just as before, the success of the Marvel Series lay in its more juvenile, all-ages style. For this trilogy to succeed, its grounded, realistic tone was undoubtedly a critical factor.

Not every superhero could be adapted into a realistic style, but Bruce Wayne's core character design naturally gravitated toward it.

On the other hand, Iron Man, which Duke planned to use as the launchpad for the Marvel Series films, was the exact opposite of Bruce Wayne. Tony Stark's personality and his array of advanced black tech dictated that the film couldn't be grounded in gritty realism. A simplified style skewed toward an all-ages or even children's demographic was arguably one of the key reasons for the success of Marvel films.

If Duke had produced a film like Iron Man in a hyper-realistic style, it would be just as horrific as turning Batman into a goofy comedy act.

Time always flew by when he was buried in work. Duke spent the entirety of August and September entrenched in tense, busy preparations. Although he saw Ivanka once during this period, their relationship hadn't improved.

Ultimately, Scarlett had merely triggered the underlying differences and conflicts between them. Donald Trump was a hurdle the two of them simply couldn't bypass.

Ivanka insisted on bringing in capital from the Trump Group during their financing and share expansion. However, with Duke holding a 45 percent equity stake and the corresponding voting rights, he refused to agree, making it fundamentally impossible.

Human greed knew no limits. Duke had already made more than enough concessions to Donald Trump in the past; he couldn't just compromise endlessly.

Fortunately, both of them were relatively rational people. Ivanka, in particular, had invested a massive amount of capital and effort into this company and wouldn't let their personal conflicts bleed into their work.

No matter how profound a romance was, it couldn't withstand the erosion of time. While Duke and Ivanka's relationship hadn't quite reached the point of a complete fracture, it had inevitably cooled. If neither of them was willing to yield, it would be virtually impossible for them to keep walking forward hand in hand.