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

Chapter 409: The sickly and masochistic little junior sister!

If there is any area in the film, television and entertainment industry that has anything to do with industrialization, it is definitely artist management.

All the brokerage companies, whether they focus on actors, singers or idols, are constantly summarizing the fame experiences of those popular stars, and then finding ways to arrange them on newcomers, in an attempt to mass-produce popular artists.

At the beginning of 17, the remake of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" was aired. Li Yitong broke through the siege with the role of "Tong Ronger" and successfully became a hit.

The situation faced by "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber" earlier this year is almost the same. The performance of the drama itself is average, and the male lead is not outstanding, but the female lead has attracted much attention.

However, this time, there are two female protagonists instead of one.

Although Chen Yuqi, who plays "Zhao Min", is also a professional actor, she went to Hengdian after graduation. Later, when she was filming "A Chinese Odyssey Part Three", she was noticed by Tang Yan and signed to her studio.

For Chen Yuqi, the good news is that her boss is the only artist under her, so he is willing to use his connections to provide her with resources. The bad news is that her boss is the last one among the group of female stars who became popular at the same time.

Take the most famous "Poet of the Tang Dynasty" for example, Yang Mi turned around and became a good friend of capital, Liu Shishi made a fortune in silence, and although Liu Yifei's movies in recent years have all flopped, she is taking the "international route" and her status is still there.

In comparison, Tang Yan is a bit lame. She has starred in many big IPs, such as "Why Sheng Xiaomo", "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", "Nine-story Demon Tower" and "The Princess Weiyoung", and the reputations are worse than the last. Finally, there was a relatively good performance in "Diamond Lover", but it was stolen by the second female lead Reba.

Plus, she herself is not very career-oriented, so as an artist under her, there are resources, but whether you can become popular in the future depends on your own performance.

Just like in "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber", although Chen Yuqi's popularity is not as good as Zhu Xudan, the popularity of the characters played by the two was actually similar at the beginning.

It's just that Zhu Xudan is backed by Taiyang Chuanhe, and the company hopes that she can replicate the effect of "Tong Ronger" before, so a lot of publicity resources were invested. After the drama was broadcast overseas, it even bought the hot search to the next door kimchi family.

For a time, the Internet was filled with various marketing soft articles praising the "new version of Zhou Zhiruo", as well as various press releases such as "overseas fans obsessed with her beauty", and the topic was immediately at its peak.

Therefore, by the end of the entire drama, the popularity of "Zhou Zhiruo" was almost an order of magnitude higher than that of "Zhao Min".

Although Taiyang Chuanhe's publicity efforts were strong, it still failed to reach the success of "Tong Rong'er". One reason is that "Zhou Zhiruo" is indeed a little worse than "Huang Rong", and the other is that there was a more outstanding actor in the role of "Zhou Zhiruo".

Even if it was just marketing hype, Zhu Xudan's management team was too embarrassed to say that her version was better than Gao Yuanyuan's.

Although the goal was not fully achieved, the girl's popularity is indeed much higher than before, and she can be regarded as a second-tier echelon among the "90s flowers". She went to Korea a few days ago to run a few schedules and promotions, and just came back yesterday.

"The film industry has a long process, slow results, and there are hard indicators like box office. If you want to increase popularity, it's really better to do TV dramas or web series," Meng Bai suggested.

"But filming is awesome, and my status is growing fast." Zhu Xudan leaned into Meng Bai's arms and said coquettishly, "Brother~~If there is a suitable movie role, please consider me."

Feeling the soft jade in his arms, Meng Bai did not force the girl's choice: "Okay, then it's a deal. If the box office of "The Wandering Earth" can exceed 50 billion, I will give you a movie heroine."

"Hehe, I know you are the best, mua~"

Zhu Xudan leaned forward to give him a kiss, and then casually said, "Actually, it doesn't have to be a particularly large production like The Wandering Earth. I'll be satisfied if it can have a box office of 20 to 30 billion."

"..."

Meng Bai almost choked on his breath: "Girl, you are really bold to say 'a box office of 20 to 30 billion will be enough', this is an understatement."

Even though the box office records of the mainland market have been repeatedly broken in recent years, with the upper limit raised to more than 33 billion, to be honest, there are only domestic films with box office revenue of over billion so far.

This is in addition to the three movies released during this year's Spring Festival.

There are about 500 to 600 domestic films released every year, not counting documentaries, cartoons, etc. On average, there are only four or five films that can earn over 1 billion yuan per year.

This is why Meng Bai did not pay so much attention to the film market before - the pie is really too small, and high-quality resources are basically concentrated in the hands of the top few companies.

ArcLight can produce four or five hit web dramas a year, but it is a pretty good achievement if it can produce one hit movie.

Zhu Xudan certainly understood this truth. For a small actress like her who had no appeal at all, let alone a box office of 200 to 300 billion, even if it was 200 to 300 million, as long as she didn't lose money, it would be a great success.

So she was just joking, and her main purpose was to tease Meng Bai.

"That little girl Mai Mai has 5 billion, and I only want 2 billion, that's not a piece of cake."

Zhu Xudan had a sly smile in his eyes, with an expression that said, "I'm just talking nonsense, teach me a lesson if you can," "I see, you may have feelings for that girl, so..."

"What nonsense are you talking about!" Meng Bai interrupted the girl and glared at her, "She is not even an adult yet."

"Oh - so it's for training, then you want to wait for her... Oops!"

Zhu Xudan was only halfway through her words when Meng Bai grabbed her and laid her face down on his lap. Then, Meng Bai raised his palm high and slapped her hard.

"Snapped!"

"Snapped!"

"Snapped!"

Three crisp sounds echoed in the room. Meng Bai pressed the other party and said, "Junior sister, you really can't feel at ease if you don't get taught a lesson for a day, right?"

Feeling the stinging pain, Zhu Xudan bit her lips tightly, but her eyes could not help showing some heat. She twisted her legs together subconsciously, turned her head to look at Meng Bai with a blushing face, and said in a soft voice: "Yes, yes, I just can't feel at ease unless I am taught a lesson... Then Senior Brother, come and teach me a lesson every day!"

Meng Bai looked at her changing expression and couldn't help feeling a little surprised. He patted her twice more experimentally - sure enough, this time her expression changed even more obviously.

Tsk tsk, I didn't realize that. He had always thought that this little apprentice sister seemed a bit yandere, but now it seems that she has some masochistic tendencies!

Thinking of this, Meng Bai began to feel a little moved.

Just as he was about to pull Zhu Xudan up and try some weird things, the girl suddenly stood up and said, "Wait a minute, Senior Brother, I, I'm going to change my clothes first." "Clothes? What clothes?"

"You'll know when you see it."

Zhu Xudan smiled with a rosy face, then ran into the inner room with her legs tucked together.

Meng Bai was not in a hurry and sat on the sofa and waited for a while. Suddenly, he saw the bedroom door open, and then Zhu Xudan, wearing a white ancient costume and with her hair in a high ponytail, walked out of the room.

"This..." Meng Bai raised his eyebrows, "Isn't this the dress you wore when you played Zhou Zhiruo?"

"Well, I asked the costume designer of the crew to order a new one."

Zhu Xudan walked over slowly, and was very satisfied with the way Meng Bai looked at her: "How is it?"

"Not bad." Meng Bai nodded, and then smiled again, "Okay, Junior Sister, I'm prepared."

"Of course." Zhu Xudan responded.

But that was not the end. She picked up the remote control and turned on the TV in the living room. Then she skillfully found the new version of "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber" that was currently on the air. She clicked on an episode and it happened to be her part.

"How is it, Senior Brother?" Zhu Xudan clung to Meng Bai and looked at him with spring eyes, "Isn't it more lively now?"

Meng Bai took a deep breath, looking at the ethereal "Zhou Zhiruo" on the screen, then looking at the tender little sister in his arms - this scene was really exciting.

"I didn't realize it, Junior Sister..." Meng Bai lowered his voice, "...it was very exciting."

Zhu Xudan looked up at Meng Bai with an innocent expression: "So, Senior Brother, do you like it?"

"great!"

After saying that, Meng Bai leaned down without hesitation.

In the spacious room, the dialogue on the screen and the humming outside the screen complement each other, creating a unique melody.
-
As March approaches, the cumulative box office of "The Wandering Earth" has reached 48.2 billion yuan, and it seems that it is likely to break the 50 billion yuan threshold. But at the same time, the single-day box office of the movie has dropped to to million yuan, and is still declining.

If the film had been released at the originally scheduled time, its performance would have been frozen here. Now that it has been delayed for two months, no one can say whether it can make it through.

The crew had previously held two small celebrations when the box office exceeded 30 billion and 40 billion, but everyone wanted to hold a big one. However, now that the results are stuck below 50 billion, they always feel that they are not up to the mark.

Finally, Meng Bai, Guo Fan and China Film Group discussed it together and decided to wait until the box office exceeded 50 billion before legitimately inviting fans and audiences to hold a large celebration meeting.

The box office of the movie will take time to build up, so Meng Bai has returned to his normal schedule and started his new job in 2019.

Actually, nowadays, apart from occasionally producing a few scripts, there are not many specific administrative tasks that require him to personally show up. Including several film and television projects approved by the company, although he is the producer, most of the work is done by the staff below.

Of course, this does not mean that he can just sit there and have fun every day. On the contrary, more issues concerning the company's development strategy require him to think more seriously.

For example, his top priority right now is to split up ArcLight’s online drama, TV series and film business systems.

In the past few years, ArcLight’s scale was not so large, and since it mainly focused on online dramas, basically all its businesses were put together.

But as the company expanded rapidly and several movies and TV series sold out in a row, it became a bit cumbersome and confusing to continue maintaining this mixed business state.

So starting this year, Meng Bai decided to split up several businesses and operate them independently.

First of all, Arclight's most important and basic online drama project does not need to change and will continue to stay in Arclight Film and Television. At the same time, the company's film and television department is also split into two groups, one for internal use, mainly responsible for its own main control projects; the other for external use, responsible for projects in cooperation with other companies.

The projects that Arclight has already filed this year are mainly the remaining two of the "Zijin Chen Trilogy", "Undocumented Crime" and "Silent Truth". The ones that are ready to be broadcast include "Hunting Crime Picture Book", "The Hidden Corner" and a costume detective drama "Youngsters of the Great Song Dynasty" filmed in the second half of last year.

These are just some of the confirmed projects, and there are many unconfirmed projects in the pipeline. As the field where Arclight started, they will always maintain their current leading position in the online drama market.

As for TV series, he authorized all related projects to Tianqi Entertainment, such as "I Like You" which was previously given to Bai Lu, the third spy drama "The Rebel", and "The Golden Years" which has been approved and is currently being adapted.

As for the remaining film business, he established a new "Arc Film". At the same time, at the suggestion of Gu Fei, he prepared to inject capital into Houyang Zaihong Fund to obtain controlling rights, and then indirectly hold shares in Ruyi Pictures.

Just like Gu Fei said, if Hengten Network will restart the acquisition of Ruyi Pictures in the future, it will be a perfect capital operation. Even if there is no acquisition, Ruyi Pictures itself is a good asset target. Taking advantage of the current discount in the film and television industry, there is still money to be made.

In addition to the investment in Ruyi Pictures, Qiming Venture Partners also had another deal, in which it completed the B round of financing for Taiyang Chuanhe together with ByteDance.

"After this round of financing, Taiyang Chuanhe's current valuation has reached 25 billion. At the same time, our shareholding ratio has also increased further, and the difference between our shareholding ratio and Mr. Yang's is only about 10%..."

In the office, Gu Fei was reporting on the financing situation.

Meng Bai listened and looked around the new office. Qiming Venture Partners had been working with ArcLight's Xicheng District company because of good business.

However, as Pinduoduo went public, it had more and more funds, and the investment business involved was also wider, so the original location was a bit inconvenient. So after the beginning of this year, he asked Gu Fei to change the office and move it to the financial center.

In fact, in addition to Qiming Venture Partners, he also wanted to move Arclight Films to a new location. As the scale of the previous small building in the industrial park expanded and the number of employees increased, every room was now packed.

However, moving is not something that can be done just by moving. You still need to find a location, pack up and prepare, and find the right time. Fortunately, we separated the TV series and film businesses this year, taking away a lot of people, which has temporarily eased the situation and should be able to last until next year.

Thinking of this, Meng Bai thought that he could wait until next year to move. After all, this is the peak period for real estate prices, and it might be cheaper if he moves next year.

Well, you still have to be more careful in your life. Otherwise, where would your billions of dollars come from?

(End of this chapter)