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

Chapter 454: Stars begins broadcasting

【Latest news: More than 30 countries around the world, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, have declared a state of emergency. 】

[Okay! Ma Dan used to mock us every day on the Internet, now it’s okay, everyone should spread it together. ]

[No, they don’t have national assistance and lockdown measures. They go out on the streets every day to “walk” and infect more people than we do.]

[Initially, no one cared about this disaster. It was just a wildfire (Australian wildfire), a drought (Chilean drought), the extinction of a species (Hawaiian snails), and the closure of a distant eastern city. Until this disaster became closely related to everyone. ]

[I would say that The Wandering Earth is still too advanced. If it were released now, it would definitely be a masterpiece! ]

【…】

"All the cinemas are closed. If it is really released now, I am afraid it will only be an online movie."

Looking at the comments from netizens online, Chen Zhixi complained.

"Don't mention it. Didn't Xu Zheng's latest film, Lost in Russia, just be sold to ByteDance and broadcast online?" Meng Bai at the side said, "Who knows, movies may also be broadcast online and offline in the future."

Upon hearing this, even though Chen Zhixi and Xu Zheng had a good relationship, they couldn't help but frown: "Old Xu and his men went a little too far this time. They've offended the downstream side badly."

As the flu raged, the government issued a notice to temporarily close all public places, and cinemas were naturally one of them. Without the big screen, many Spring Festival movies were withdrawn or postponed.

The relationship between theaters and producers can be described as "love-hate relationship". Normally, they haggle over every penny for box office share, but at times like this, they "overcome difficulties together".

The producers withdrew the film and waited for the theaters to restart, and then made money together. Although there was no explicit rule, it was a tacit understanding between the two parties.

But at this time, ByteDance suddenly announced that it had bought the Spring Festival hit "Lost in Russia" for 6.5 million yuan. Audiences can watch the entire movie for free on various platforms such as Douyin, Toutiao, and Xigua.

ByteDance’s statement was very generous, saying that it knew everyone was bored staying at home during this Spring Festival, so it invited people across the country to watch movies for free.

As soon as this announcement came out, the Internet exploded.

Netizens and audiences naturally praised the film. Although the quality of the "囧 series" films has been getting worse and worse, and the plot of "Lost in Russia" is hard to describe, it is free.

It's boring to stay at home, so it's nice to watch a movie with the family. It's free anyway.

Compared to the audience, the video platforms are confused, especially Qiyi TV, Tencent Video and Youku. It's not that they haven't thought about doing this before, but they are embarrassed to do it because of the rules of the traditional film industry.

I never expected that the short video platform ByteDance would get there first.

But if you think about it, they are not just doing it randomly. Just like all major Internet applications have wanted to make short videos in recent years, ByteDance, a platform that started out with short videos, also wants to make long videos.

As early as 18, Xigua Video, a subsidiary of ByteDance, announced that it would invest 40 billion yuan to create its own variety shows. Then last year, Douyin also increased the length of videos on the platform from one minute to five minutes, and finally to fifteen minutes.

Even before the Spring Festival, TikTok announced a partnership with Netflix to simultaneously broadcast "Dracula", a new work from the team behind the British drama "Sherlock Holmes".

Coupled with the current "Lost in Russia" movie, ByteDance is clearly planning to continue to explore and develop in the long video field.

The audience is happy to get something for free, the video platforms are confused and regretful, and the film industry, especially distribution and theaters, are left with only anger.

On the same day that ByteDance and the production team of "Lost in Russia" announced the news, cinemas and film practitioners from all over the country spoke out to condemn the film company's rule-breaking behavior.

It’s no wonder they are anxious. The incident with Huanxi Media has indeed directly affected the key interests of all parties.

For distributors, if your movie is not shown in theaters, then you don’t need a distributor.

As far as publicity and promotion are concerned, the way streaming platforms work is very different from the current traditional theaters, and has also been taken over by emerging Internet companies.

The ones who were hurt the most are the cinema chains and theaters. Not to mention the disputes between online and offline themselves, when such a high-grossing movie with a box office of over 15 billion is released on streaming media, they downstream will not get a penny, which is really painful at this time.

What’s more important is that once this kind of thing starts, it will be out of control.

This is different from ArcLight's previous work "Soul Ferry: Huangquan". That film was intended to be released online because of its subject matter. Moreover, ArcLight has always been an online drama company, so no one would say anything.

"Lost in Russia" is a real theater movie, and Xu Zheng is a serious film practitioner, the nature of which is completely different.

In fact, there have been rumors in the industry recently that a certain video platform has sent out an "urgent copyright purchase" invitation internally, contacting another Spring Festival movie and asking whether it would choose to broadcast it online.

Although no one has confirmed it, many people choose to believe it. After all, for upstream producers, revenue is the most important thing. They don’t care whether it is shared by theaters or sold directly to streaming platforms.

The film and television industry has been in a tough time for cinema chains and theaters in the past two years due to the film and television industry's cold winter. Before they could recover, the flu hit. As for force majeure, we can only grit our teeth and swallow our anger, but then something like this happened again.

As far as Meng Bai knows, many theaters and distributors have privately said that they want to jointly boycott Huanshi Media and Xu Zheng to serve as a warning to others.

"I don't think a joint boycott will happen." Meng Bai shook his head. "No one knows how long this pandemic will last, and how much energy the cinema chains will have left by then. Let alone Huanxi Media, Xu Zheng has real box office appeal. When that time comes, I'm afraid no one will say they will never cooperate."

"That's true." Chen Zhixi said, "In that case, can we also transfer the movie online? I have always felt that the movie "Famous" is particularly suitable for the style of online streaming platforms."

"It's OK to sell it online, but the key is who to sell it to." Meng Bai said, "The cast of this movie is much worse than that of Lost in Russia, so it's hard to raise the price. We can't just sell it to Heng Video. It's better to wait and see when the lockdown is lifted, and then try to release it in theaters."

After that, he smiled and said, "Maybe the audience will wait for so long and it will bring about a wave of movie-watching craze, and we can also get some of the benefits."

Chen Zhixi thought about it and felt that it made sense, so he put the movie matter aside for the time being.

Regardless of the boycott from the theaters, the film producers of Lost in Russia not only landed the film without any risk, but also made a fortune.

ByteDance is not at a loss either. As the current leader in short videos and the world's strongest "super unicorn", spending 600 to 700 million to earn traffic and users is nothing.

They did attract a lot of traffic, after all, everyone is now locked in their homes. It’s better in the countryside, at least there is a yard, but in the city, there is really only online entertainment.

It's not just ByteDance. Almost all platforms have received a huge amount of traffic this time, and the number of daily active users has increased significantly. Among the major platforms, there is a second-tier platform that is particularly eye-catching, and that is the new horizontal video.

As early as when various places called on people to stay at home, Heng Video started its own "One Dollar Membership for Free" promotion.

Then, in response to the total blockade of Hubei, a policy of "free access to all copyrights for IP users in the Hubei region" was issued.

These two eye-catching plans, coupled with the platform's own ad-free and clean interface, immediately attracted a large number of new users.

When Hengten Network just acquired Ruyi, Nangua Movie only had 7 to 8 million users. After the integration and reorganization into "Hengshi Video", the number of users was less than 9 million before the Spring Festival.

However, with the popularity and traffic during the Spring Festival, in just less than half a month, the number of paying users of Heng Video has grown to more than 17 million, nearly doubling.

Although the membership fee was not much, the share price of Hengten Network rose against the trend. Although the increase was not large, it was unique compared with other film and television stocks that fell.

The surge in the number of users has brought about huge popularity and traffic. Hengten has also struck while the iron is hot and announced that the first drama of the new "Tracing Back Series" in cooperation with Arc Light, "Twinkle Twinkle Star", will be aired soon.

As one of the few signature brands in the domestic entertainment and film and television circles in recent years, arclight dramas have their own traffic.

In addition, many audience fans know that the "Backtrack Series" is Arc Light's next key project, and the theme of "time travel" is rare in domestic entertainment, so it has attracted a lot of attention as early as when the project was first announced.

I thought the first work would have to wait until this summer to be released, but I didn’t expect it to be broadcast so soon.

Not only horizontal videos, but all platforms obviously want to seize this rare opportunity and have launched trailers for their dramas.

Qiyi TV teamed up with director Wei Zheng to restart the "Love Apartment" series after six years and launched the final season of "Love Apartment 5".

Tencent Video teamed up with Jiaxing to launch the sequel to "Eternal Love", "Three Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms", starring Dilireba.

Youku's new drama is a food drama called "Hua Jian Huo Hua Xiao Chu". From the title, it can be seen that it wants to replicate the small hit "Hua Jian Li Hu Fang Da Chu" that Arclight previously cooperated with Huace.

Even Mango TV released the latest trailer for the ancient idol drama "Three Thousand Crows", starring Zhao Lusi, a new online drama star who has been quite popular in the past two years.

All five platforms have new dramas to be released, which will naturally be welcome news for viewers stuck at home.

The most anticipated ones are naturally "Twinkle Twinkle Star" from Heng Video and "Eternal Love" from Tencent.

Needless to say, the former is very popular. Although the latter's lead actress Reba has lost her popularity in the past two years due to the previous "Golden Eagle Shooting" incident, she is still one of the few "90s Flowers" with high traffic.

Although we are looking forward to it, we will have to wait until it actually starts airing to know how it actually performs.

……

In addition to platform development and the launch of new dramas, Meng Bai has a lot of other things to do during this period.

For example, he initiated donations to Jiangcheng and other areas with severe influenza in the name of Arclight Pictures, Apocalypse Entertainment and himself. This is what basically all large companies will do.

In addition, due to the influenza pandemic, many employees of Arc Light were left at home. Fortunately, the company had a plan before the Spring Festival holiday, so they could work remotely online, which did not affect the company's operations.

But there are still some impacts. Several of ArcLight's projects, such as "Want to See You" and "Eastern Palace", have all suspended filming, waiting for the storm to pass.

The film and television industry is inherently high in assets, high in risk, and has a slow payback cycle, and many companies are operating in debt. Now that such a natural disaster has occurred, investors are also tightening their belts, and few can get their money back, which puts even more pressure on them.

Faced with this kind of emergency, both large and small companies are in the same situation. Small companies lack funds, and large companies have high costs, so they can only grit their teeth and hold on.

In comparison, ArcLight's cash flow is still healthy. After the suspension of new projects, there are no other spending projects, so it will have no problem surviving this storm.

The only thing Meng Bai is thankful for now is that his idea of buying a building to integrate the Arc Light System together last year was not implemented, otherwise he would be facing considerable financial pressure now.

There are also benefits to the suspension of projects. For example, Meng Ziyi cannot shoot his next drama for the time being, so he can focus on the promotion of "Twinkle Twinkle Star".

Because of the previous "fan siege" incident of "The Untamed", although this girl's reputation was affected, her popularity has also increased a lot.

Like Meng Ziyi, the male lead Qu Chuxiao's current reputation is also mixed.

Fans of the two leading actors, haters, fans of the rival works, fans of Arclight, passers-by...

For a time, in the discussion forums of major platforms, one could almost always see people arguing about the drama "Twinkle, Twinkle Star".

Putting aside other things, the popularity of this drama has skyrocketed, and many viewers who were not very interested in the drama before were attracted to watch it for fun.

Otherwise, why do people in the industry always say "black fans are also fans"? As an industry that needs to attract the attention of others, popularity itself is the biggest resource.

"Uncle, I'm so nervous now!"

Influenced by the public opinion on the Internet, Meng Ziyi knew that Meng Bai was busy recently, but still couldn't help but give him a call.

Meng Bai could naturally hear the anxiety in the girl's words, so he didn't argue with her as usual, but comforted her in a gentle voice: "It's okay, it will be fine. Even if you don't believe in yourself, you have to believe in me and Director Wang Wei."

Meng Ziyi had blind trust in Meng Bai, so when she heard this, she really felt relieved.

Yes, this is a project that my uncle personally started. It has never failed before, so it is completely unnecessary for me to worry about it.

Having put aside her worries, Meng Ziyi began to focus fully on publicity. The crew held live broadcasts, released promotional videos, wrote recommendation copy... In short, they did it in various ways.

Finally, amid the curiosity of passers-by, the expectations of fans and the attacks of black fans, the first work of Heng Video and Arc Light, "Twinkle Twinkle Star", was aired before the end of February.

(End of this chapter)