Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 470 Get started

Li Qiutang received a call from Mr. Hu, who informed him: "You can now recoup the private funds you've raised."

However, Mr. Hu did not forget to remind Li Qiutang: "Be careful, if you help your fellow villagers, they might stab you in the back."

Li Qiutang understood what he meant and said she would pay attention.

Judging from Mr. Hu's words, it seems that the ministry has decided to hand over this year's approval to Changchun Film Group.

This means that Huayi's planned amusement park project in Xingcheng has fallen through.

A few days later, instead of receiving any notification from Changchun Film Group, Li Qiutang saw the latest negative news about herself online.

"Young directors are a bomb planted by Hollywood in the Chinese film and television industry. The higher their achievements in China, the better. When they explode, the Chinese film and television industry will be severely damaged, if not destroyed. The Golden Globe Award is just a way for Hollywood to give them a gilded reputation." There are very few directors in China who can be called "young directors," so the Golden Globe Award is even more clearly targeted.

"The Golden Globe is actually an American citizen. He and Liu Yifei have no feelings for each other. Their marriage was arranged by an invisible force, just to wait for the right moment to blow up the entire Chinese film and television industry."

"The Golden Globes has a safe containing all the dirt he's collected on the entertainment industry. Every celebrity you can name has dirt on him; it's his life-saving secret."

This smear campaign is different from the usual accusations against Li Qiutang, such as saying her works are bad or that her family relationships are bad. This time, the charges against Li Qiutang are much bigger.

They've even gone so far as to treason and betray their country.

Upon seeing these materials, Li Qiutang roughly sensed that someone wanted to take action against her, and this time it was different from the past.

Then, the movie "Wolf Warrior," which was showing in theaters at the time, began to be attacked.

"One star. The whole movie has no imagination whatsoever."

"No stars to give, pure wishful thinking, and incredibly pretentious from beginning to end."

"This is a lazy borrowing of American individualism, overemphasizing individual ability and failing to take root in local culture. This 'wolf' is not mature enough."

While "Wolf Warrior" did receive some negative reviews after its release, this wave of public criticism was clearly orchestrated, with similar attacks appearing on various platforms.

If it were just some trolls posting insults, that would be one thing, but what's more serious is that "Wolf Warrior" was found to have engaged in box office fraud!
A viewer posted on Weibo, tagging Autumn Pictures, Zhang Zhao, Wu Jing, and other main creators, saying that when he bought a ticket to see "Wolf Warrior" at Huayi Brothers Cinema in Chongqing, the clerk said that the machine system was malfunctioning and could not issue a ticket, so he wrote a movie ticket by hand for him.

This viewer felt that this was very abnormal.

If this is just an isolated case, it shouldn't attract autumn's attention. Who can say for sure about system malfunctions?

However, in the following days, more and more viewers from all over the country reported that they encountered problems during the ticketing process, either being unable to get tickets or being given tickets for other movies instead.

Qiu Tian finally realized what was happening, and Li Qiutang, Zhang Zhao, and other senior executives also found out.

Zhang Zhao and Xu Lin, the deputy general manager of distribution, were smoking and cursing in the office: "Damn it, what's so great about stealing in April!" Zhang Zhao had smoked half a pack of cigarettes and still couldn't figure out why they would steal from such an unpopular release period as April.

Xu Lin took a deep drag on his cigarette: "We're releasing three movies this summer, and the summer movie season is huge. I'd even give him a second glance if he tried to steal box office revenue this summer."

Li Qiutang and Chen Zhixi walked in without knocking and asked directly, "Have you found out who did it?"

The room full of executives looked at each other in bewilderment. Xu Lin glanced at Zhang Zhao, then at Li Qiutang and Chen Zhixi.

Chen Zhixi then said, "Everyone else, please go out first."

After everyone had left, Li Qiutang said again, "Old Xu, you've always been in charge of the distribution."

Xu Lin stubbed out his cigarette and said, "We've found out that about 14 cinemas across the country have been stealing box office revenue, causing..." Before he could finish, Li Qiutang interrupted, "I don't care about that. I just want to know who did it." Fourteen cinemas, even if each one stole just one ticket, that's still two or three million yuan. That's a huge loss.

“We suspect it’s Huayi,” Xu Lin said. “It’s just a suspicion; we haven’t collected any direct evidence yet.”

"Tell me why Huayi?"

"These things are handled by marketing companies in various places, and they do a shoddy job. At most, they collude with cinema managers, but most of the time they bribe the staff on duty. Our field sales staff talked to them, pretending that they wanted to do this kind of work to earn some extra money, and asked them to introduce them to potential partners. They gave us the contact information of several advertising and technology companies. We then followed the trail and found that these companies had a lot of business dealings with Huayi."

"But it still doesn't directly prove that Huayi did it."

That's how many things are; they can't be fully investigated, but having a general goal is enough.

Zhang Zhao, who clearly knew more information, asked, "Could it be that the Changying Group's affairs have been affected by them?"

Zhang Zhao wanted to learn some experience in running a theme park in advance, so he also participated in some of the work.

Huayi felt that we had ruined his project.

Li Qiutang couldn't think of any other reason for the moment, but taking a beating without fighting back wasn't his style.

"What films does Huayi have coming out next? I'm competing with their last one. Do they have any films for the May Day holiday?"

"No," Xu Lin said, adding, "Let's not act rashly. The film should proceed according to the company's schedule. If we want to retaliate, we can do it from other angles."

This made Li Qiutang calm down a bit.

Xu Lin continued, "We'll issue a public announcement first. Once the announcement is made, the other party will at least restrain themselves a bit. Otherwise, if we let it go, they'll steal twenty or thirty million."

Li Qiutang agreed, and Xu Lin then asked, "So how will you handle your personal matters?"

Li Qiutang waved his hand: "It's alright. Unless you accuse me of treason, this little bit of information won't affect me."

If Li Qiutang could be swayed by a few words, he wouldn't be where he is today.

"Let's get 'Wolf Warrior' sorted out first. You don't need to worry about what's going on with me."

That afternoon, Autumn Pictures' official Weibo account released a statement titled "Statement on Resisting Box Office Fraud in the Film 'Wolf Warrior'".

At the beginning of the statement, Qiu Tian condemned the recently discovered box office fraud of "Wolf Warrior" and declared: "We will unite with all parties to resist the box office fraud of individual cinemas. If we find that a cinema has engaged in such behavior, we will terminate our cooperation with that cinema."

In the statement, Autumn Pictures stated that it had reported the matter to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the China Association for the Promotion of International Trade.

Autumn Pictures called on industry insiders and outsiders to jointly monitor box office revenue and announced the monitoring methods and reporting channels.

The statement was subsequently reposted by Wu Jing himself and the official Weibo account of the movie "Wolf Warrior". Li Qiutang and Liu Yifei also reposted it. When Li Qiutang posted it, she added an angry emoji and said, "Strongly crack down on this!"

The release of the "Statement" did stop the box office fraud, but the attacks on Li Qiutang personally, and even Liu Yifei and his family life, are far from over.

If you ruin someone's business worth tens or hundreds of billions, will they forgive you?

But Li Qiutang was already prepared to welcome him.

(End of this chapter)