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

Chapter 93: Disputes Begin
After a work becomes popular, the first people to reap the benefits are bound to be the actors.

Most of the main actors in "Psychological Crime" are newcomers, and the only one who entered the industry earlier, Wang Longzheng, is not very popular. However, with the popularity of the online drama, the number of fans and popularity of several main actors have also increased significantly.

The one who benefited the most was naturally Chen Ruoxuan, who played the male lead. The plot of a male-centered drama is biased towards the leading actor, and Fang Mu's "genius personality + tragic experience" is particularly attractive to female audiences, so he attracted a wave of fans.

When he was filming Soul Ferry, he was just a supporting role in the "Red-dressed Senior Sister" unit, so his popularity hardly increased. But now that Crime of the Mind has not finished airing, his number of fans has skyrocketed to tens of thousands in just one month.

Don't underestimate the number compared to those actors who gain hundreds of thousands of fans with just one drama. You should know that he didn't have an agency at the time, and naturally no one managed his "zombie fans" or anything like that, so almost every increase in followers was from real people.

Next is Wang Taling. The cool and handsome character he plays as "Criminal Police Captain Tai Wei" is also a very attractive setting.

When he was talking to Meng Bai on the phone, he said happily that he was recognized when he went out one time. Although people called him "Captain Tai", this was the first time he heard someone say "I know you" outside the screen.

This made the brother so excited that he insisted on taking Meng Bai out for a drink to express his gratitude. After he was drunk, he patted his chest and promised Meng Bai that if there was a role that needed him in the future, he could ask for it at any time and he could pay him whatever he wanted.

If Arclight Pictures didn't have any agency business yet, Meng Bai really wanted to take advantage of his momentum and sign him two "ox-horse contracts" or something.

Logically speaking, Li Yitong, as the female lead, should also have gained popularity. But unfortunately, as a "tool female lead" in a male-led drama, her role is crucial but there is nothing memorable about it.

In addition, in the later part of the plot, as the heroine's identity was revealed, the biggest explosive point of this character disappeared, and the hero's memories decreased, resulting in the heroine's appearances becoming less and less, so that Li Yitong as an actor did not reap too many benefits.

But even so, Boss Li, a complete newcomer, was already quite happy. He even called Meng Bai every two days during this period, asking if he was still in Jingbei and wanting to invite him out for dinner to "express his gratitude."

It’s true that Meng Bai is actually in Jingbei these days, but he doesn’t have the energy to accept the invitation right now.

"Psychological Crime" will be coming to the finale in half a month, and he has to solve the problem of the ending choice that has been shelved before.
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Leshi.com building, high-rise conference room.

Liu Jun had an obvious smile on his face. He happily handed a document to Meng Bai and said with a smile, "Haha, brother Meng, this time, thanks to the explosive performance data of your "Psychological Crime", it can be regarded as helping to maintain the face of our entertainment department."

Meng Bai glanced at the document in his hand, which recorded a series of data including the number of views of "Psychological Crime" so far, the number of members, effective viewing time, advertising efficiency share, etc.

One month after its launch, the total playback data of "Psychological Crime" has exceeded 5 million, breaking the website record previously left by "Pendulum" and challenging the "6 million" online drama record of "So Young".

There are still four episodes and a half months left until the finale, and judging by the current growth rate, it won’t be difficult to surpass it by the end of the broadcast period.

The number of new paid members is also leading. When "Pendulum" was launched at the beginning of the year, the total number of paid members of the entire Leshi.com was only 150 million. Now, nearly a year later, this number has more than doubled to 400 million.

Among them, the two works of Arclight Film and Television played a very important role.

Meng Bai has a basis for saying this. After "Soul Ferry", in addition to the cooperation with Arclight Pictures, Leshi.com has also launched many other web drama projects, but all of them are of mediocre quality and performance, and none of them is outstanding.

In fact, this is also normal. A video website only needs high-end "fine productions" and also some "popular" ordinary dramas. After all, a website as big as Leshi.com cannot always rely on Arclight Films to survive.

Not to mention the issues of discourse power and tolerance, it can be seen from the output that Meng Bai worked very hard for nearly a year and only produced two and a half works.

But even so, there has been no hit work, which is quite stressful for both Liu Jun and his film and television entertainment department. "Why, is there competition between different departments within our company?" Meng Bai asked curiously.

"Of course, there is always competition in the workplace." Liu Jun sighed, "Don't think that big companies like ours are a monolithic entity. Sometimes our internal struggles are just as intense as our external ones."

After working together for more than a year, Liu Jun and Meng Bai can now be considered "old friends", so he is not afraid to tell him some of the "secrets" within Leshi.

Strictly speaking, Liu Jun does not actually belong to the Leshi.com headquarters, but to Leshi Pictures.

Since its establishment, Leshi Pictures has always focused on movies and has not been involved in other film and television aspects.

It was not until Meng Bai brought "Soul Ferry" to Gan Wei and persuaded her to agree to invest in the project and it achieved great success and successfully brought about a wave of online dramas that Leshi.com began to pay attention to the production of original content on the website.

In order to seize this opportunity, Boss Jia allocated some personnel and resources from Leshi Pictures, established the Film, Television and Entertainment Department, and began to be responsible for the work of "website ecological content construction".

From the perspective of the entire Leshi Group, there is nothing wrong with this operation. After all, they are all our own people and our own business, so whoever does it doesn't matter.

But if we look at it specifically for each individual, the difference is huge.

Although the newly established film and television department still belongs to Leshi Pictures, it is mainly connected to the website and has basically nothing to do with movies. This is equivalent to taking a piece out of the film department.

Moreover, because the new department wants to develop a web drama project, it will inevitably occupy the total resources and budget of Leshi Films. Although it will not affect the establishment of the film project, it will increase the difficulty of application, which is equivalent to a direct conflict.

With competition, the relationship between them is naturally not very harmonious. Liu Jun happened to have not made any big splashes in the online dramas after "Soul Ferry", and he has been subjected to a lot of sarcasm and cold words recently.

Fortunately, he still had Meng Bai and Arclight Films as his backup. Sure enough, as soon as "Psychological Crime" was released, various explosive results helped him to brush a wave of annual KPIs, and he finally felt proud of it.

With confidence, Liu Jun spoke more confidently. During the previous meeting, he harshly criticized several senior executives from the film industry, which served as a way to vent his anger.

Of course, the resentment between the two sides has also deepened.

"Won't this cause a conflict?" Meng Bai asked. Although he was also the boss now, a company as large as Arclight was not involved in these things, so he was quite curious about it.

"Oh, conflicts are nothing. You haven't seen anyone stabbing his own people in the back." Liu Jun sneered and said, "Besides, if we have conflicts among our subordinates, maybe it's just what the boss wants."

At this point, Liu Jun waved his hand and said, "Forget it, let's not talk about this anymore. Let's change to a happier topic."

As he spoke, he took out another document from the side, looked at Meng Bai and asked, "Have you heard of Anle Pictures?"

Meng Bai frowned and recalled: "I have heard of it. It is Jiang Zhiqiang's company, right?"

"Yes." Liu Jun nodded and said excitedly: "Anle recently contacted me and said that they think the story of "Psychological Crime" is very good and want to adapt it into a movie."

(End of this chapter)