Chapter 374 The Box Office Premiere
Su Yang was dumbfounded, but it was not a pleasant one... It had been more than an hour, yet the movie had only been played for a few thousand times and the income was less than 10,000 yuan.
“This means that only a few thousand people had watched the movie for more than six minutes.
‘Based on the amount of users on IQIYI, this shouldn’t be happening...
‘How could it be so little?’
Su Yang was puzzled.
‘Based on my past observation of the box office, many movies would explode on the first day with hundreds and millions of viewers on the day of its premiere.
‘These numbers are really a sore sight to see.
‘Based on the data that Li Zijun had sent me, the number one online movie “Xu Qingling’s Holy Spirit” that iQIYI had released yesterday had a box office of more than 1.7 million yuan with 71,000 views.
“The premiere of this online movie that is very much similar to “Fighting The Buddha” which is also an S-rank movie.
‘In the end, one of them received 1.77 million yuan on the day of its premiere while the other has only received 10,000 yuan now. Based on the situation, it’s likely that I’d only be able to hit 1.2 million yuan by the end of the day...’
Su Yang found it hard to accept. ‘Based on my calculations, is this movie really going to make a profit?’
At that moment, Su Yang was no longer thinking about how much he could earn. He was only concerned if he was about to make a loss.
However, when he thought about the amount of effort that he and Bubbles had painstakingly put into the production of the movie and Little Hus’s nose that had never failed him before, Su Yang could not help but feel. ‘Maybe there’s still some hope left?’ With that thought in mind, he logged out and did not want to look at the data which he so despised.
He opened his post and realized... ‘I have got 99+ messages unseen on my post.. ’99+? “Am I hallucinating?’
Su Yang opened his WeChat in disbelief. He realized that everything began to blow up because of the post he shared. Out of all the friends he had on his social media, more than half of them replied with some even leaving multiple comments.
As for why it had reached 99+, this was because the system recognised comments and likes as different and showed up as separate notifications.
Su Yang had a look at the messages. Most of them were congratulatory messages. He then scrolled through his newsfeed and realized that many of his friends had reposted the link to his movie and were promoting it for him.
Su Yang couldn’t help but give a wry smile.
It was not that he felt his friends were wasting their time. On the contrary, he felt that it would definitely help the box office. However, this was also the reason why he felt terrible. Despite receiving so much help from his friends, the numbers were still so bad. ‘Sigh... this feels terrible.’
He scrolled through his newsfeed and realized that Chu Xia, Xu Lu, Tang Jing, Wang Dong and many other close friends had also replied.
Chuxia commented, ‘Wow, you’re really awesome.’
Xu Lu commented, ‘It seems that my junior is really getting more and more impressive.’
[Tang Jing commented, ‘You have time to film a movie yet you haven’t got the time to visit me? I’m going to ignore you from now on!] Su Yang felt that it wasn’t Tang Jing who replied. It was more like Tang Xiaomi the cheeky fellow.
Old Zhou commented, ‘Not bad, not bad at all.’
It was an endless stream of comments. All in all, many people whom Su Yang had not been in contact with for the longest time had suddenly shown up after he managed to produce a movie.
‘I’m touched.’
He replied to each and every one of his friends. Although he was tired, he felt glad.
The night passed by uneventfully. The next day, Su Yang woke up and took a look at the box office rankings for yesterday’s online movies.
The resulting data was out of his expectations.
“Fighting The Buddha” was ranked fourth with a box office total of 275,000 yuan and over 130,000 views.
“Xu Qingling’s Holy Spirit” maintained its position as the top movie. Perhaps because there was no movie that could surpass it, its box office rose from 1.77 million to 2.25 million!
“This is literally blinding my eyes.’
The way profit sharing of online movies and cinema movies works were slightly different.
The profit return from cinemas was actually rather saturated. For example, a cinema had received a box office of 100 million yuan for a certain movie. A part of the profit is then shared between the cinema operators and the production company. The remaining earnings would then belong to the film producers themselves.
Generally speaking, a movie that had been played in a cinema would reap about a third of the total box office. In other words, a box office of 100 million yuan would allow the film producers to reap around 30 million yuan.
However, the box office for online movies were different. The filmmaker company would receive all of the profits from the box office. In other words, if a movie made a box office of 2 million yuan, that 2 million yuan would solely belong to the filmmaker company, hence there was no need to split it anymore as long as the taxes were paid.
Based on Little Deeny’s calculations of the trend of the box office for most online movies in the past year, she estimated that “Xu Qingling’s Holy Spirit” would end up with a total box office of somewhere between 30 to 40 million.
Su Yang was so shocked that his jaw almost dropped. ‘Is it that big of a hit?’
It was indeed very popular. The income of a good online movie was actually no less than that of a movie being played in the cinema. After all, if one wanted to achieve this income from the cinemas, the box office of the movie had to be above 100 million.
‘According to what Little Deeny had said, this online movie is a collaboration with a popular TV series of the same name, hence why the box office for the movie is so scary.
‘Moreover, 30 to 40 million yuan of box office was more than enough to compete for this year’s box office champion in the Aegean Arts Festival.’
Su Yang looked at the 200,000 yuan that he had earned on that day. He felt as though he was a parent comparing the results his child had with another.
Su Yang, Producer Zhao, and little bun had a conference call to talk about the underperformance of their movie. Both of the latter were a little upset. After all, one was in charge of production and the other was in charge of marketing. Therefore, it was normal for them to feel bad If the movie did not perform.
Surprisingly, Su Yang gave them a few words of encouragement and consoled them. “Based on the current situation, we should be able to cover the 5 million yuan that we invested into this movie. The only problem now is how much profit we would be able to earn. Furthermore, due to the scheduling issue, the promotion from IQIYI has been delayed by a week. Thus all hope is not yet lost. At the very least, we should wait until the next week’s recommendation is released before we can see the actual box office of our movie.”
In fact, during the conference call, Su Yang suddenly realized. ‘Hang on, I still have one more trump card, the FindMe app!
‘Even if it’s a cover page of the movie, if I were to use the FindMe app to promote it, it should probably help increase significantly! ‘Plus, I don’t even need to request for the owners of the app to promote it, I could let Lin Jiali do it herself. It should probably work.
‘However, I probably shouldn’t promote it now. I should wait until next Monday when everything else is ready instead. That way, it should be more effective.’
Therefore, he gave Tan Mei a call and told her to ask all of their employed celebrities to stop promoting the movie and await for the company’s further arrangements.
After giving Li Zixuan the same order, Su Yang calmly went off to have his breakfast.
However, when he was eating breakfast, he saw that there were many negative articles and editorials about “Fighting The Buddha’ online.
Perhaps it was because the movie’s box office premiere had been released that the media found an opportunity to criticize Su Yang. “Despite both movies being an S-rank project, the box office premiere of ‘Xu Qingling’s Holy Spirit’ was 1.77 million yuan, while ‘Fighting The Buddha’ which had been released the next day only has a meagre 270 thousand yuan,
“Although both movies were in collaboration in terms of intellectual property, why is the box office for “Fighting The Buddha” only a fraction of the “Xu Qingling’s”? Is it because “Journey to the West” pales in comparison to “Xu Qingling’s”? This is obviously impossible.”
“Could there be an error in judgement by iQIYI’s project assessment? But “Xu Qingling’s Holy Spirit”, which has the potential to compete for the annual box office championship, has already proven their capability of iQiyi Internet Film Department’s eye for judgement.” “So why is all this happening?”
“Based on our research, we discovered that the “Fighting The Buddha” has actually gone through a series of changes including changing its director, script, post-production processes
etc.”
Following that, the article began to rant on about the crew of “Fighting The Buddha” in detail such as how a teenage girl was the director, the unspoken rules implemented by the production crew, the unprofessional directors and other negative information.
‘All in all, it’s the same trick that (In) Company has used to slander “Fighting The Buddha in the past.’
Looking at these negative reports, Su Yang was calm.
He knew why [In] Company was endlessly trying to target him. It was because Mr. Jia had given them too much pressure. Hence, they wanted to break Su Yang’s spirit in other areas. In fact, they wanted to destroy Su Yang. Even if they could not destroy him, they could force Su Yang into a negotiation since both parties had evidence that could be used against one another.
But Su Yang did not care.
‘These people probably thought that the “Fighting The Buddha” will surely fail, so they’re out to attack and make things worse. However, what they failed to realize is that the marketing strategy for “Fighting The Buddha” has not even started...’
Su Yang sent the negative messages to Li Zijun for her to deal with. Just as Su Yang was about to go out for a walk, he received a WeChat message.
He opened it and saw that it was from Lin Jiali. ‘Su Yang, are you... ok?’
Su Yang thought for a moment. ‘Lin Jiali must have found out about the box office premiere’. Su Yang then replied, ‘Relax, I’m fine.’ A moment later, Lin Jiali sent an emoji that illustrated how a kitten was peeking at his direction whilst hiding in a corner. Then, she said, ‘Actually, I’ve long felt that the movie wouldn’t do well.’
Su Yang was confused. ‘Is this girl here to rub salt on my wounds?
‘But... Lin Jiali isn’t that kind of person.’
Just as he was thinking about this, Lin Jiali’s message came again. ‘After all, you haven’t got a good judgement in choosing people. Look at the female lead you’ve chosen. Don’t you know that this female lead has really bad luck? She won’t be popular no matter what movie she participates in!’ ‘That’s true...’
Su Yang couldn’t help but smile. It was just like what Lin Jiali said.
Lin Jiali continued, ‘That’s why you should choose a better female lead next time, that way you would surely score a big one. Plus, you can’t consider your movie to be a complete failure. You’ve managed to earn 300,000 yuan during the premiere. I’m sure you could earn 5,000,000 yuan after 90 days of screening, couldn’t you?”
Lin Jiali’s comforting words warmed Su Yang’s heart.
Lin Jiali sent a gif of a duck that kept swaying.
Then she replied ‘You should be feeling better now, right? You’re not feeling sad anymore, are you?”
Su Yang replied, ‘I don’t feel sad anymore.’ Lin Jiali replied, ‘That’s good, that’s good. I was really afraid that you would do something as foolish as commiting suicide. I don’t want my one and only loyal fan to disappear just like that.’
Su Yang was speechless.
‘Isn’t this sudden change of topic too weird? ‘And what’s this about suiciding?
‘Who in their right mind would want to suicide?
‘I suppose the way her mind works isn’t something an ordinary person could ever comprehend.’
Su Yang explained the current situation to Lin Jiali while lamenting about the movie. ‘In any case, the movie hadn’t started its promotional campaign yet, so everything was still uncertain.’
Lin Jiali didn’t listen to him at all. She only thought that Su Yang was trying to avoid the reality of the situation and became even more worried.
In the end, Su Yang had become annoyed and decided to ignore the silly girl. ‘I’ll let her imaginations run wild for now. When the movie’s actual box office gets revealed, she would be blinded!’
Su Yang found an excuse to stop chatting with Lin Jiali and stood up from the dining table.
The moment he stood up, he froze because he remembered something he had overlooked...
He thought about it seriously before calling Little Deeny, “Little Deeny, are you there?”
Little Deeny answered, “Yes, Master.” As Su Yang walked up the stairs, he asked with a deep gaze, “Was the mastermind behind the negative news that you investigated last week really from [In] Company?” Little Deeny’s voice rang in Su Yang’s ears. “Yes, Master.”
Su Yang shook his head. “Strange, something seems off...”

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