Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 406: Go ahead, little ball!

The box office champion of the year!

Before The Wandering Earth was released, neither Meng Bai, Guo Fan, nor other main creators of the crew dared to even think of this possibility.

Based on the film's pre-sale box office, audience expectations, network popularity and other data, Maoyan and Tao Piaopiao Lighthouse predicted that the total box office for "The Wandering Earth" will be 20 billion.

This number may seem insignificant compared to the blockbusters that have grossed 3 billion or 4 billion in recent years, but for producers and distributors such as China Film, ArcLight, and Beijing North Culture, it is already a very satisfactory result.

If there really is 20 billion, not only can I get my money back, but I can also make a small profit, which is a huge success!

The same is true for the audience. When most passers-by heard that this was a science fiction movie, they deducted one point in their hearts. And for the few science fiction fans, they also had doubts about the team of this movie.

Therefore, expectation management is still very important. When most audiences went to the cinema with the idea of "it's probably just average, but I'll just support domestic science fiction", what they got was a luxurious masterpiece that far exceeded their imagination.

This immediately made the audience excited!
[Holy crap! Is this really a sci-fi masterpiece that we can make ourselves?]

[I thought it was another money-making movie under the guise of a scam, but I didn't expect the director to be serious about it! ]

[This special effect, this texture, this plot is... awesome! I'm praising "Little Broken Ball" so much! ]

[I am Sun Chen, male, 21 years old, ID number 3710…96. I lost a bet with my friend because I insisted that “The Wandering Earth is definitely a bad movie”. Now I follow the bet and apologize in my real name. (By the way, I sincerely recommend The Wandering Earth to everyone)]

【Five-star praise! 4 stars for the quality of the movie + 1 star for encouragement. There is indeed a gap with Hollywood, but there is not much left. As a viewer, I am willing to support such a movie. I hope this will be the beginning of Chinese science fiction movies. 】

【Little broken ball, go! 】

【…】

Faced with the extremely high quality of "The Wandering Earth" that far exceeded expectations, the audience was first surprised, and then turned into "tap water" and began to recommend it on online and offline social platforms and in their circles of friends.

The ticket purchasing platform also quickly adjusted the box office forecast of the film based on the actual data and audience feedback after the release. It increased from 20 billion to 40 billion, doubling it.

When this forecast data came out, not only the audience but also the people in the industry were shocked.

Four billion! Not to mention the annual box office champion, even in the entire domestic film industry, there is only "Wolf Warrior 2" ahead of it.

Oh, by the way, Wu Jing also starred in Wolf Warrior 2.

Who would have thought two days ago that a movie with a weak subject matter, unremarkable cast, and inherent "debuffs" could show such great potential?

The extremely high attendance rate prompted cinemas to report to the higher authorities, hoping to increase the number of screenings of The Wandering Earth. The cinema chain naturally would not refuse such a money-making opportunity and directly increased the film's screening schedule to 24%, more than doubling it.

With the support of word of mouth and screening schedule, on the third day of the Spring Festival, the single-day box office of "The Wandering Earth" continued its upward trend, reaching 3.8 million yuan, surpassing "Crazy Alien" and successfully winning the first "single-day box office champion".

The latter's box office on the same day dropped to 2.4 million, ranking second, while "Speeding Life" continued to maintain its third position.

But what is more surprising is that the attendance rate of "The New King of Comedy" plummeted from 55% on the first day to 30%, and the screening schedule was cut in half. At the same time, due to the poor reputation, the single-day box office was only 6600 million, surpassed by the animation "Boonie Bears: The Wild Age".

Many viewers joked online that it was no wonder that people always said there were only five of the "Four Heavenly Kings", it turned out that it was because the last one was falling behind.

However, for the producers of "The New King of Comedy", it doesn't matter how much the performance declines. The production cost was 5000 million, and the box office has now exceeded million, which can be said to be a huge profit.

It doesn’t matter if this IP becomes unpopular. Anyway, Stephen Chow still has "The Mermaid 2", "Kung Fu 2", "The God of Cookery 2", "Shaolin Soccer 2", etc. The money he makes from them in rotation will be enough for Zhou Xingchi to complete the bet.

The only thing that has changed is that no one will be so embarrassed to say "We all owe Stephen Chow a movie ticket" anymore. And looking at the current situation, it is very likely that "Stephen Chow owes his fans a movie ticket".

The success of unlocking the "single-day box office champion" achievement made the entire crew extremely excited. Guo Fan even wrote a "small essay" titled "Little Broken Ball, Learn to Hold Your Head Up!" and posted it on Weibo to express his gratitude to the audience.

"Sure, Lao Guo, your writing skills have improved recently."

In the office, Meng Bai looked at the short essay on the screen and said to Guo Fan on the other end of the phone.

"It's completely spontaneous, there's no technique involved, it's all emotion." Guo Fan said with emotion.

Meng Bai smiled and said, "Okay, Brother Emotional, you must have done a lot of interviews over the past two days."

"More than a lot. My various program invitations and promotional schedules are all scheduled until after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month." Guo Fan seemed to be complaining, but anyone could hear the smile in his tone that he couldn't hide.

But it is true that five years of hard work have paid off beyond expectations, and anyone would be excited for a month.

"Then keep running. I support you mentally. Come on!"

"Damn! I suddenly realized that you investors are the most comfortable!"

Guo Fan cursed with a smile, but having said that, he knew in his heart that compared to them, the success of the movie was more important to investors like Meng Bai.

After all, if he failed, it would only mean he lost some opportunities, and he could slowly start making youth films in the future. But Meng Bai and his team had invested hundreds of millions of dollars, and if they really failed, it would be a huge loss.

Moreover, it is a cold winter for the film and television industry, and all companies are very cautious about the projects they want to shoot. If "The Wandering Earth" really fails, it is very likely that no capital will dare to invest in science fiction themes for a few years.

Fortunately, they succeeded.

Like Guo Fan, Meng Bai also expressed his feelings. He was moved by Guo Fan's serious and persistent spirit, so he joined the project. As he became more and more involved, he also became full of affection for "The Wandering Earth".

For Arclight Pictures today, the failure of a movie is painful, but not too disastrous. After all, after so many years of hard work, no one wants to end up with failure.

Fortunately, they succeeded. But this is just the beginning, there is still a month to go. If nothing goes wrong, they may create a new miracle.

Meng Bai was just planning to talk to Song Ge and his team from Jingbei Culture about the publicity work ahead when there was a knock on the office door. Then, Li Mu, who had been recruited, walked in.

"Xiao Li." Meng Bai looked at him and frowned. "What happened?"

After the rumor-mongering incident, Li Mu stayed at Arc Light Films. At first, Meng Bai simply thought that Li Mu had some talent in writing short essays and stirring up public opinion, but later he discovered that he was very sensitive to various trends online, so he transferred him out and set up a "Public Opinion Supervision Department."

To put it simply, it is to use the public opinion system to search various topics related to Arclight Films on various mainstream online platforms and discussion forums every day, so as to timely understand whether there is any new public opinion about the company. In fact, many film and television companies have similar departments, but most of them do not pay much attention to it, and each time they wait for things to ferment before coming out to explain.

In comparison, younger entrepreneurs like Meng Bai are more sensitive to online public opinion, so they also care more about it.

However, except for situations like the announcement of the "wealth list" some time ago, Meng Bai is very low-key most of the time, and the company's works have maintained quality, so Li Mu is rarely used.

Now he suddenly comes to see me, is there some new situation?
Although he had been "recruited", Li Mu still felt uneasy when he saw his boss due to his previous experience. However, when he heard Meng Bai's question, he still quickly said, "There is no problem with the company, but we found that there were a lot of bad reviews about the movie we recently released since yesterday."

"Oh, what did I think?" Meng Bai was relieved when he heard that. "There are still people who don't like RMB. Which movie dares to say that it is perfect? It's normal to have bad reviews."

The reputation of "The Wandering Earth" is indeed very good, but it is only very good, and there will always be people who don't like it. No matter how awesome Meng Bai is, he can't control the personal preferences of every audience.

"Well, it feels like these bad reviews aren't just directed at the movie."

Li Mu handed the pad in his hand to Meng Bai, who took it and looked at the negative reviews sorted out on it.

[I saw a Wolf Warrior 50 cents post and gave it zero points! ]

[When I see Wu Zhanlang, I feel sick. ]

[The "scenery" content is too high, Chunchun is just a space wolf! The plot is nonsense and the acting is awkward. It's really too much to give it one point. 】

[It looks so awkward. The main character team is all Chinese. How dare they say it's a global disaster? In the end, it's up to the Chinese to save the earth. It's so embarrassing to brag. ]

【…】

Meng Bai just took a quick glance and immediately understood - these bad reviews mainly came from two types of people, one was the legacy of the previous "Wolf Warrior PTSD", and the other was those "American believers" who extremely worshipped Hollywood.

These two types of people had already appeared when Wolf Warrior 2 was released. Specifically, they couldn’t bear to see the Chinese protagonist saving the world, beat up American mercenaries, accused the movie of forcibly hijacking patriotic slogans, and claimed that all the audiences who supported the movie were “patriotic thieves”…

In short, at that time, whenever someone talked about "Wolf Warrior 2" or domestic films online, some people would immediately start a series of questioning and insults as if in a stress reaction, and netizens called them suffering from "Wolf Warrior PTSD."

At that time, there was a huge debate on the Internet surrounding the movie, with fans and haters fighting each other. It was not until the official intervened and supported "Wolf Warrior 2" in the name of "Zhongsheng" and banned a number of water army studios that the matter came to an end.

It's just that the surface has been cleaned up, but there are still a lot of remnants in the corners. In the past two years, with the rise of domestic films, various similar disputes have broken out on the Internet, and these people have also appeared.

Until this year's Spring Festival, with the success of "The Wandering Earth", a standard "Chinese science fiction", and Wu Jing as the important protagonist, it naturally became a new target.

Sure enough, looking at these comments, we can see that group of people are following suit again, smelling the scent.

"Do you think there are water troops here?" Meng Bai asked.

Li Mu thought about it and shook his head: "Probably not. Even if there are, there must not be many. As far as I know, the rhetoric of the water army is generally simple and highly repetitive. In addition, the water army is generally a large number of new accounts, or special accounts for negative reviews. There are not many of them here."

At this point, he paused and smiled again: "Besides, the 'Seven New Regulations' were just released not long ago, requiring the crackdown on online water armies. The situation is tense right now, and generally no water army studio would dare to go against the wind. At most, there would be some black fans who might write scripts to post bad reviews themselves."

Meng Bai heard this, shook his head and sighed: "If it was a navy, I really wouldn't care, I would just catch the core. But it's really hard to deal with this kind of black fan who spontaneously stirs up trouble."

Just like many public intellectuals, you know he is deliberately making trouble, but you can't find any evidence. Even if he is slapped in the face, he doesn't care, he keeps silent and pretends nothing happened, and jumps out next time he gets the chance.

"Mr. Meng, it's not appropriate for us to intervene, but we can ask the audience who supports us to help us fight back." Li Mu said, "In addition to those targeting the movie, many of these negative reviews are directed at the audience. As long as we arouse everyone's emotions, we can naturally form our own power."

Meng Bai pondered for a while. Although Li Mu's plan was a bit of a take advantage of the audience, it was indeed a good idea. Moreover, after sparking a debate, it would also help the popularity of the movie.

"Okay, then do as you think. Be careful to control the strength."

"I understand, boss."
-
Li Mu acted quickly. As soon as he reported the situation to Meng Bai, he immediately "boosted" those malicious comments on various platforms, making them appear directly in the sight of many fans and viewers of "The Wandering Earth".

The effect was very significant, and the "battle" between the two sides started immediately.

[I really don't understand. It's just an ordinary science fiction film. Hollywood has made it so badly. What's so great about it?]

[It's so funny. Take a good look at the quality of the garbage movies your American father has made in recent years. Especially Marvel. Apart from "Avengers 3", the rest of them, such as "Black Panther", "Captain Marvel" and "Thor ", are all a mess.]

[Can something like "The Wandering Earth" be considered science fiction? Wolf Warriors fans, open your eyes and see what level "Avatar" and "Interstellar" are.]

[Ah, yes, yes, burning rocks to push the earth is nonsense. Love can pass through black holes, which is real science fiction. The humor score is really good. ]

【Rubbish audiences will naturally praise rubbish movies. 】

[I used to think Wu Jing's words were a bit too much, but now I find that what he said really makes sense. Some people are just mean! ]

【…】

From Weibo to Douban, from Zhihu to Bilibili, for a time, the controversy about "The Wandering Earth" could be seen on almost every platform on the entire Internet.

Major video bloggers, up-masters and self-media marketing accounts are extremely busy. No matter whether they are praising or criticizing, as long as the name of "The Wandering Earth" is mentioned, there will be a lot of views.

This situation is just like what happened in "Wolf Warrior 2" back then.

In terms of numbers, there are naturally more viewers on the side of the movie supporters, and there are no internet trolls flooding the screen, so they are almost suppressing the black fans.

However, the haters are also very stubborn, and they insist that The Wandering Earth is just an ordinary science fiction movie, which cannot be compared with the works of Hollywood directors. The reason why it has achieved the current results is purely because of the "patriotic" traffic.

However, just when the two sides were arguing fiercely, an English Weibo post directly ended the game.

“Good luck with your space journey of the Wandering Earth. Good luck with the voyage of Chinese sci-fi films.”

The content of the post seems to be very simple, just a simple blessing for The Wandering Earth. What really caught people's attention was the sender of the post - "James Cameron".

(End of this chapter)