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Way back in the early days of the World Wide Web (a.k.a the mid 1990s), I decided to create a web site devoted to Godzilla. Why? Who knows. I guess I just thought it would be a fun thing to do. At the time there weren’t many other webpages devoted to Godzilla, so mine became one of the “top” sites on the subject pretty much by default. And no, that wasn’t my 15 minutes of fame…My 15 minutes of fame came in early of 1998 due to all the hype surrounding the release of the American Godzilla[1] film. A large part of the marketing campaign for the movie revolved around keeping the actual appearance of the title monster a complete secret, but there were the inevitable leaks. And one of those leaks ended up making its way to me as the owner of one of the aforementioned “top” Godzilla sites in the world. Which is how I ended up getting mentioned on the front page of the March 27 issue of the Wall Street Journal:[2]Film Producers Play Cat and Mouse Game With a Giant Lizard* * *It's Godzilla vs. the Leakers As a Sting Operation Keeps The Monster Under Wraps----------By BRUCE ORWALL, Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALHow do you hide a 200-foot-tall radioactive lizard?That's the question two movie producers and Sony Corp.'s TriStar Pictures are struggling with as they prepare to unveil a new movie version of "Godzilla" this summer. Sony and the "Independence Day" team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich have given the schlocky 1960's monster an edgier '90's look, which they want to be a complete surprise when the would-be blockbuster opens on May 20.A massive promotional campaign now depends entirely on keeping the made-over beast under wraps. Publicity photos and preview trailers show only Godzilla's eye and foot. and the film's 150 merchandising partners have been given strict orders to keep the secret. At February's American International toy Fair in New York, retailers wishing to review Trendmasters Inc.'s line of Godzilla toys were routed through metal detectors into a room that required an electronic access card for entry.But kept secrets are a rarity in Hollywood, and Godzilla's handlers have fretted that a leak would squash their publicity drive like a Tokyo subway car. So they went one step further. They set up a sting operation.Rather than give Godzilla licensees real renderings of what the monster would look like, Messrs. Devlin and Emmerich instead disseminated a series of fake drawings, each slightly different. If any of them became public, they would know where the leak came from and cut ties with that partner. "We sent out these drawings to see who was going to be able to keep a secret," Mr. Devlin says. The producers planned to hand over the real designs at a later date, before any of the licensees began manufacturing merchandise.Such paranoid tactics are unheard of, if not unprecedented, other movie executives say. Mr. Devlin says he was inspired to try it by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, whom Mr. Devlin says has put out disinformation about the plot of next year's much-anticipated addition to the "Star Wars" cycle. But a spokeswoman for Lucasfilm Ltd. strongly denies that, saying that Mr. Lucas doesn't want to risk betraying his most ardent fans.Controversial though it may be, Mr. Devlin's trap worked. One of the fakes showed up on the Internet late last year, and Mr. Devlin sprung into action. "We knew exactly which partner we'd sent it out to," he said of the fake drawing. "So we terminated that partner."Mr. Devlin wouldn't identify the company in an interview, but people familiar with the situation say that the offending party was Fruit of the Loom Inc. A spokeswoman for Fruit of the Loom declined to comment.That's when the disinformation campaign started taking on a life of its own. The first problem arose because Godzilla loyalists didn't realize that the monster they saw on the Internet was a phony. And they were dismayed."People just were not happy," says Barry S. Goldberg, who designs computer systems for a Boston law firm when he isn't updating his encyclopedic "Temple of Godzilla" Web site. "It looked like a cross Between 'Alien' and 'Creature of the Black Lagoon.Longtime Godzilla fans, it turns out, have been fearing all along that the producers would toss out what Mr. Goldberg calls the "thunder-thighed and ponderous" two-legged beast they love in favor of a slicker, more agile four-legged version. They are also worried that the new Godzilla will boast not the traditional monster's "atomic breath," but rather a wimpy "hurricane-force breath."To shut down potentially damaging negative buzz, Mr. Devlin began spinning Internet taste-makers like Mr. Goldberg, Harry Knowles and Patrick Sauriol, who operate competing Web sites that specialize in gossip about unreleased movies. Mr. Knowles says that Mr. Devlin contacted him to explain that a low-level Fruit of the Loom employee had unwittingly passed the phony on to a friend, who put it on the Internet.Another problem involved the film's other licensing partners. Many of them were nervous about Sony's demand that Godzilla merchandise be held off shelves until the film is released; the pre-opening period usually accounts for about 35% of movie-merchandise sales. They were irritated to learn that they had been set up. "Once it came out that the drawings were fake," Mr. Devlin says, they demanded the real drawings." He instructed the companies that had received the decoys to destroy them.But in classic movie-monster form, the unleashed decoys have refused to die. Licensees in some cases passed them on to sub- contractors for use in designing merchandise, and the potential for leaks multiplied. Sure enough, a white sculpture showing the monster wrapped around the Empire State Building appeared on the "Temple of Godzilla" site in January -- another fake presented as the real thing. The picture was later picked up by more popular sites.The producers renewed the search for suspects, but wider distribution of the fakes now made that more difficult. The ship was springing other leaks, too. Another licensee, Tiger Electronics Inc, of Vernon Hills, Ill., was terminated for allowing a trade magazine to publish a photo that showed part of a real Godzilla toy. Tiger Electronics declined to comment.Desperate to take swift action, the producers turned up the heat on the Website operators. On Feb. 6, Mr. Goldberg received an e-mail from Josh Gordon, who works in the interactive division of Messrs. Emmerich and Devlin's Centropolis Entertainment. "We are extremely upset, surprised, and disappointed that you would post the alleged Godzilla sculpture," Mr. Gordon wrote. He continued: "In order that people who had no part of this leak don't lose their jobs, we are asking that you tell us where you got these pictures from. This is an extremely unfortunate situation that could have been prevented IF you had used a little more discretion in your decision."A bit shaken, Mr. Goldberg coughed up a photo of the anonymous envelope in which the statue pictures had arrived. "I felt a little guilty." he says, but adds: "That was all I could tell them. I wasn't holding out."The postmark on the envelope led the producers to an unidentified sculptor in Hermosa Beach, Calif. Upon learning that he was molding a fake Godzilla, the sculptor had thrown out -- but not destroyed -- the sculpture. The producers believe the mold was plucked from the trash, photographed, and eventually sent to Mr. Goldberg for use on his Web site.Discovery of the leak's source came not a moment too soon, as Mr. Devlin explained in an e-mail to Mr. Goldberg: "EVERY partner who was given those particular fakes were about to go on the chopping block."Then Mr. Devlin made a last request. The media were hounding him for real photos of Godzilla, which he couldn't provide. "If we did," he wrote, "an entire promotional campaign of $150 million will go down the drain." Yet he knew other fakes were still floating around. "I'm sure, at some point, those will leak out as well. And of course, the REAL creature may eventually leak out as well. The problem for us all is that this has become some kind of game wherein a feeding frenzy is growing on the Internet and encouraging people to lie, steal and bribe their way into getting the 'scoop.'"So Mr. Devlin has asked Mr. Goldberg and others to preserve his publicity campaign by not posting any unauthorized Godzilla photos they receive: "Because," he wrote, "there will be more."For the record, Mr. Devlin was completely lying about there being a “fake” version of their Godzilla that was sent out to foil leakers. Not only was the “leaked” design identical to the version that was shown in the film, the actual maquette that I was sent (I only told them I had received pictures of the maquette when, in fact, I had received the maquette itself) was identical to an actual toy that was produced and sold after the movie came out:In addition to this mention in the Wall Street Journal, I was also quoted in various articles (including one in the New York Times) once the movie actually came out. I even had my picture taken for a May 27th article about the movie in the Boston Herald:[Back when I had a little more hair, was a lot fatter, and was a lot more single.]Barry Goldberg of Somerville, creator of Barry's Temple of Godzilla, ``the largest and most popular fan (Web) site in the world,'' (Barry's Temple of Godzilla) has been fielding 100 to 200 e-mails a day from fellow aficionados.``In the final analysis, I felt it wasn't truly Godzilla,'' said Goldberg, who attended the new film's giant New York premiere at Madison Square Garden and has seen the movie a second time.My website is still around, btw, but I haven’t updated it in years as I have moved on to other things. I still enjoy watching the movies, though!Footnotes[1] Godzilla (1998) - IMDb[2] Film Producers Plot a Sting Operation In Ardent Effort to Hide New 'Godzilla'

I am from somewhere overseas. But before you, Quora users, would leave an answer on this question, then I would remind to you the definitions of the following words/names that are mentioned on the question’s title.===Stellantis is the name of an alliance that was the outcome of a merger between mass-market Groupe PSA, aka Peugeot SA, which also includes Citroën, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, whereas the Chrysler nameplate on other hand, is a luxury marque.Toyota, which is the spiritual nemesis to both Hyundai-Kia Motors and its future slave Nissan, is the biggest Asian [Japanese] car manufacturing company. Especially with the majority of its sales are being located in Southeast Asia, a region in which neither Hyundai-Kia, Nissan, nor as well as, Stellantis - aka Peugeot - performs well. Also, the [Toyota] Yaris is one of Toyota’s deeply significant models, despite that it is neither marketed the United States and Canada.Mazda is an averagely famous Japanese car company that also had such engineering ties with Nissan in the past, despite being in the same time that Mazda was part of Ford from 1979 to 2010 as a result of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. But however, Mazda too ended up merging with Toyota, instead of Nissan, in 2017, and thus it [Mazda] has no plans to cut ties with Toyota.Subaru is a neither famous Japanese car company whose cars are also infamous as it [Subaru] is being dependent on boxer engines and four-wheel drive, Subaru was then a subsidiary of Nissan from 1968 to 1999, General Motors from 1999 to 2005, and despite no plans for breaking up, Toyota from to 2005 to present.Suzuki is a Japanese company of motorbikes and it is neither famous elsewhere, mostly in the Western world, since its [Suzuki’s] car manufacturing department is no longer active in the USA and Canada since 2012 and 2013. But also, it is deeply big in India while it is criticised for its cars being accident prone, hence the reason why Suzuki stopped making and selling cars within the US and Canadian markets, see also: Maruti Suzuki - Wikipedia and In Toyota and Suzuki alliance, two families find common ground - Nikkei Asia.===And despite this question is mainly Toyota willing itself to learn lessons from Sony’s takeover of Columbia Pictures in 1989 by taking over Stellantis, therefore I copied and thus pasted the references, coming from the link that is attached on this question, seen below:===“NEW YORK — The board of Columbia Pictures Entertainment voted early today to sell the movie and TV studio to Sony Corp. for $3.4 billion in cash, the first sale of a major Hollywood studio to a Japanese concern.”“Sony immediately pledged that it will place the company in the hands of its U.S. subsidiary “and keep it as independent as possible, as a full-fledged member of the U.S. film industry.” Sony is rumored to be considered installing producer Peter Guber, the 47-year co-chief executive of Guber-Peters Entertainment, as chief executive of Columbia.”“Columbia’s two top executives, President and Chief Executive Victor R. Kaufman and Chief Operating Officer Lewis Korman, will leave the company after the sale, Columbia said.”“Columbia Pictures Entertainment includes the Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star studios, television programming and syndication operations, a huge film and TV library, and the 820-screen Loews movie theater chain. The 2,500-employee company has secretly talked with Sony intermittently for more than a year, and it announced Monday that negotiations were under way.”“Coca-Cola Gives Option”“Coca-Cola Co., Columbia’s largest shareholder with a 49% stake, has given Sony an option to purchase those shares, Sony said. Coca-Cola’s management has pledged that it will recommend the sale of Coca-Cola shares to its board at a meeting scheduled Oct. 2. The New York investment banking firm Allen & Co., which holds a 3% stake, has given Sony an option to buy its shares as well.”“Sony will begin a tender offer for Columbia shares Oct. 2. The offer will run for 20 days.”“The sale is part of a consolidation of the film industry that has come as increasing worldwide viewing of entertainment has driven up the studios’ values. Already this year, the Warner Bros. studio has been sold to Time Inc. with its parent, Warner Communications, and MGM/UA Communications has agreed to be sold to Qintex Group of Australia.”“Sony was willing to pay a lofty $27 a share for a company with meager earnings because of the strategic value of Columbia’s film and TV “software” to a company with a strong hold on the emerging TV and audio technologies, analysts said.”“The purchase of the studio “extends Sony’s long-term strategy of building a total entertainment business around the synergy of audio and video hardware and software,” said Michael Schulhof, vice chairman of Sony Corp. of America, in a prepared statement.”“Several analysts said the high price makes it unlikely--though not impossible--that another bid will appear.”“Sony had no immediate word on whether it foresees layoffs at Columbia, but some analysts said they do not expect major changes immediately. Traditional Japanese concern about maintaining employment “suggests it’s unlikely they would come in and make dramatic changes,” said Christopher Dixon, an entertainment industry analyst with Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York. Also, “Sony is perplexed at some of the realities of the Hollywood community . . . so they would probably be unwilling to go in and rattle the cage.” he said.” - source: Sony to Buy Columbia, Says Americans Will Run Studio : 1st Sale of Film Maker to Japanese - Los Angeles Times - latimes.com===“The Columbia Pictures empire was sold on September 28, 1989, to the electronics giant Sony for the amount of $3.4 billion, one of several Japanese firms then buying American properties. The sale netted Coca-Cola a profit from its investment in the studio. Sony then hired two producers, Peter Guber and Jon Peters, to serve as co-heads of production when Sony also acquired the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company (the former game show production company, Barris Industries, Inc.) for $200 million on September 29, 1989. Guber and Peters had just signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros. in 1989, having been with the company since 1983. To extricate them from this contract, Steve Ross, who at the time the CEO of Warner Bros.'s then-corporate parent Warner Communications, sued Sony for $1 billion. Sony completed CPE's acquisition on November 8 and the Guber-Peters acquisition was completed on the following day.”“In 1990, Sony ended up paying hundreds of millions of dollars, gave up a half-interest in its Columbia House Records Club mail-order business, and bought from Time Warner the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio lot in Culver City, which Warner Communications had acquired in its takeover of Lorimar-Telepictures in 1989, thus ending the Burbank Studios partnership. Initially renamed Columbia Studios, Sony spent $100 million to refurbish the rechristened Sony Pictures Studios lot. Guber and Peters set out to prove they were worth this fortune, but though there were to be some successes, there were also many costly flops. The same year, Frank Price was made as the chairman of Columbia Pictures. His company Price Entertainment, Inc. that he founded in 1987, was merged with Columbia in March 1991. Price left Columbia on October 4, 1991 and was replaced by Warner Bros. executive Mark Canton and reactivated Price Entertainment as Price Entertainment Company with a non-exclusive deal with SPE. Peters was fired by his partner Guber in 1991, but Guber later resigned in 1994 to form Mandalay Entertainment the following year. The entire operation was reorganized and renamed Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) on August 7, 1991, and at the same time, TriStar (which had officially lost its hyphen) relaunched its television division in October. In December 1991, SPE created Sony Pictures Classics for arthouse fare and was headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, whom previously operated United Artists Classics and Orion Classics. Publicly humiliated, Sony suffered an enormous loss on its investment in Columbia, taking a $2.7-billion write-off in 1994. John Calley took over as SPE president in November 1996, installing Amy Pascal as Columbia Pictures president and Chris Lee as president of the production at TriStar. By the next spring, the studios were clearly rebounding, setting a record pace at the box office. On December 7, 1992, Sony Pictures acquired the Barry & Enright game show library.”“On February 21, 1994, Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television merged to form Columbia TriStar Television (CTT), including the rights to Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! after CTT folded Merv Griffin Enterprises in June. That same year, the company also purchased Stewart Television. On July 21, 1995, Sony Pictures teamed up with Jim Henson Productions and created the joint venture Jim Henson Pictures.”“In the 1990s, Columbia announced plans of a rival James Bond franchise, since they owned the rights of Casino Royale and were planning to make a third version of Thunderball with Kevin McClory. MGM and Danjaq, LLC, owners of the franchise, sued Sony Pictures in 1997, with the legal dispute ending two years later in an out-of-court settlement. Sony traded the Casino Royale rights for $10 million, and the Spider-Man filming rights. The superhero has since become Columbia's most successful franchise, with the first movie coming out in 2002 and having since gained two sequels, with plans for three more. Between the releases of the first and second sequels in 2004 and 2007, Sony led a consortium that purchased MGM – giving it distribution rights to the James Bond franchise.”“In 1997, Columbia Pictures ranked as the highest-grossing movie studio in the United States with a gross of $1.256 billion. In 1998, Columbia and TriStar merged to form the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group (a.k.a. Columbia TriStar Pictures), though both studios still produce and distribute under their own names. Pascal retained her position as president of the newly united Columbia Pictures, while Lee became the combined studio's head of production. On December 8, 1998, Sony Pictures Entertainment relaunched the Screen Gems brand as a horror and independent film distribution company after shutting down Triumph Films. In 1999, TriStar Television was folded into CTT. Two years later, CPT was folded into CTT as well.” - source: Columbia Pictures - Wikipedia===So, those are the lessons that Toyota would learn from Sony’s 1989 acquisition of Columbia Pictures, as it is a concept reflecting the relationship of a Western company being owned by an East Asian company.As with the western corporation is from the USA or Europe, hence Columbia Pictures and Chrysler are from stateside while Peugeot and the rest of Stellantis are from Europe. And as well as, the East Asian “concern” is from Japan or South Korea, with Toyota and Sony are coming from the Land of the Rising Sun.While the love affair between Columbia Pictures and Sony, which gave birth to Sony Pictures Entertainment in 1991, has been forever. A hypothetical scenario of Toyota outbidding the French government and China’s Dongfeng Motor Corporation as a new shareholder, and later, owner of Stellantis would emulate the lessons that Sony learned from its takeover of the US-based entertainment company in 1989.Therefore as a result of that, a Toyota-Stellantis partnership would be the automotive industry’s equivalent to the Sony-Columbia Pictures alliance, especially it would even help Toyota to put Lexus, Hino Motors, and even Daihatsu, as with the latter are no longer selling cars in Europe and Britain, into demise like Chrysler Europe in 1978.Thus, Toyota would revive Chrysler and replace its three subsidiaries with the American car company [Chrysler] as alternatives, with Chrysler taking the place of Lexus, and somewhat, Jeep would take Hino Motors’ place unless if Dodge and Ram are already reorganised into Jeep itself.For sure, the Jeep name would be a fit for light commercial vehicles that would end up being based on family cars of all sizes, but its presence in the British market is deeply poor.But, prior to that, Toyota would sell off the shares they own in Mazda, Subaru, and Suzuki to the latter themselves, and thus, Toyota would end up outbidding the government of France and Dongfeng of China as Stellantis’ owner/biggest investors.Surprisingly, Toyota’s US and Canadian operations trademarked and used the Solara name, as the “Toyota Camry Solara”, that was previously used in the saloon variant of the Simca 1307 aka Chrysler Alpine, dubbed as the “Talbot Solara”. Peugeot/Stellantis owns the rights of the Solara name exclusively to Europe/UK, since Groupe PSA took over and killed off Chrysler Europe in 1978.Similarily, the Humber Sceptre had its name being reused by Peugeot, in 1990, for SRi variations of the 205, 405 and 605. Whereas a year later, the “Sceptre” name was also reused by Toyota, but it was instead called as the “Toyota Scepter”, as “this was due to the Camry name being adopted by a smaller version of the same car in Japan”.Especially since Japan is neither get a use to learn British English, hence due to its [Japan’s] geographical proximity with the USA hence Hawaii, they would rather learn American English instead.Since “scepter” is from the Americans, then “sceptre” is from the Britons, Irish, Australians, and Kiwis, but also in addition, Japan and [even] South Korea are still considered deeply as strategic and trading allies/pawns of the United States of America, which is why it deeply examines that Toyota, Hyundai-Kia, and Nissan are deeply strong in the US market.Furthermore, if Toyota have already taken over Stellantis, then Lancia and Maserati would just fold themselves, hence go bankrupt, together with Opel and Vauxhall Motors instead.While DS Automobiles on other hand, would also put itself into demise, and thus, reorganise into Citroën in exchange for the [Citroën] C3 manufacturer to relive itself as a luxury marque whose cars are powered by Toyota, and not Peugeot, just like VW did to Skoda and SEAT…And as for Mazda, Subaru, and Suzuki, only the latter two would just go bankrupt by merging and reorganising themselves into Nissan’s orbit, at the same time when they are [Nissan] already merged and sharing parts with the Hyundai-Kia automotive group. But also in addition, Mazda would become a replacement for Infiniti.- Genda Nicolai Yturzaeta IwakawaSee also:Hence the link, what do car enthusiasts think of Hyundai's ongoing and uncertain deal with Apple? Do they think that it would harm other marques since they also use the iPad maker's products? Perhaps, why shouldn't Hyundai too take over Nissan alone? - QuoraGenda Nicolai Yturzaeta Iwakawa's answer to Why are Toyota engines so reliable? Why do Toyota engines last longer? - QuoraIf the Hyundai Motor Group would acquire and treat Nissan alone like Lancia, which is popular in Italy. Then as a response, why shouldn't Toyota take over Stellantis/Peugeot until its cars would share mechanical parts with mediocre yet bland Toyotas? - QuoraImagine if Hyundai would neither take over and treat Nissan alone just like some region-specific brand, ex: Stellantis' Vauxhall. Then, why shouldn't the Kia owner acquire a share in Daimler in order for Hyundai to gain benefit from MB's safety tech?And in addition to that, here are the images that would reflect this question and its answer(s):Source: Citroën CX was Inspired By, Named For, and Shaped by Aerodynamics - Petrolicious“All your Citroëns are belong to Toyota…”