Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 489 The Great Sage Returns!
No one really believes the production company's boasting, right?

Nobody believed that "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" could gross 12 billion yuan at the box office.

The day before "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" was "Tiny Times 4," and the same day was "Forever Young." Although the "Tiny Times" series has been criticized, its core audience is still stable, and it should be no problem for the finale this year to rake in 300 to 500 million yuan. "Forever Young" is He Jiong's work to monetize his national popularity, and with the support of a top young idol like Li Yifeng, it is also reasonable for it to rake in 300 to 500 million yuan.

The two films alone have taken up a market of 600-700 million yuan. How can a Journey to the West animated film possibly rake in 12 billion yuan?
Supporting the domestic animation industry is just a slogan; are you really going to do it?

Because it wasn't taken seriously, nobody considered "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" a competitor. Who would be so bored as to target an animated film?
So surprisingly, no one in the market criticized "Monkey King: Hero Is Back," which made things much easier for the publicity team.

Sure enough, "Tiny Times 4" grossed over 100 million yuan on its first day.

Despite the criticism, they made money for the investors. Which domestic film company can make four movies and make money from each one?

With its first-day box office exceeding 100 million, "Tiny Times 4" can be declared a perfect ending to the series ahead of schedule.

For a long time to come, the "Tiny Times" series will be the only representative film series for the "Tiny Times" sisters, which is hard to say whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

The next day, "Gardenia in Blossom" and "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" were released on the same day.

The high-profile promotion in the fall did have an effect, securing 23.8% of the screening share for "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" on its opening day, although it still lagged behind "Forever Young" (30.3%) and "Tiny Times 4" (33.8%), which were released on the same day.

However, considering that this is an unpopular animated film, the fact that it managed to snatch 23.8% of the screenings from theaters on its opening day is already the best the distributor could do.

As expected of a national TV host, He Jiong's directorial debut is truly remarkable in its ability to generate revenue.

The 9600 million yuan box office gross for "Gardenia in Blossom" on its opening day is a fitting reward for He Jiong.

But no one expected that "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" would actually rake in a staggering 5700 million on its opening day!
Setting a new record for the highest opening day box office for a domestic animated film, "Boonie Bears: Snow Daze" earned 20 million yuan on its opening day at the beginning of the year, and "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" earned almost three times that amount!
The current record holder for the highest-grossing animated film in mainland China, "Kung Fu Panda 2," only earned 6000 million yuan on its opening day. The monkey almost killed the panda!

Of the three movies released around the same time this week, the one with the best reviews is "Monkey King: Hero Is Back"!
The production team was truly surprised by the outstanding performance of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" on its opening day. Now, Li Qiutang doesn't even need to urge them anymore; the publicity team has decided to ignite word-of-mouth ahead of schedule!
"Go see it, everyone!!!"

"The strongest domestic animation!"

"The new version of Journey to the West is impeccable in terms of story creation and animation effects. It is of Hollywood animation standard. The highlights are the moving and subjective shots, as well as the awesome 3D visual effects."

As the weekend approached, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" truly ignited the screens!

On Saturday, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" saw its screening share rise to 28.17%, still lagging behind "Forever Young" at 31.2% and "Tiny Times 4" at 33.19%—the three films almost completely took up the screening slots.

"Monk Comes Down the Mountain" can only pick up scraps and leftovers - when has director Kai Ge ever suffered such grievances!
However, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" had the fewest screenings but contributed the highest box office!

On Saturday, this horse-faced monkey dumped 9300 million yuan from the market, surpassing the 8500 million yuan of "Tiny Times 4" and the 7900 million yuan of "Forever Young".

They've gone mad! Utterly gone mad!
It really is like the Monkey King returning!

A domestically produced animated film grossed 9300 million yuan in a single day!
It has been 10 years and 7 months since the "Opinions on Supporting the Development of the Animation Industry" was issued at the end of December 2004. No one thought that Chinese animation would be where it is today!
The idea for "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" has been budding in Tian Xiaopeng's mind for eight years now, and Tian Xiaopeng never expected it to come to fruition today!
On Sunday, box office revenue was expected to decline, and indeed both "Tiny Times 4" and "Forever Young" saw declines. However, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" bucked the trend, with its daily box office reaching 1.15 million yuan!
With a box office of 2.65 million yuan over the first three days, "Tiny Times 4" has a perfect ending, ranking second in the week. It is indeed a strong contender.

The experience of the previous three films tells theaters that fan-oriented youth films only rely on their opening weekend, and 80% of "Tiny Times 4's" box office revenue will be realized during its opening weekend. Therefore, "Tiny Times 4" is basically done for; it will only hold the top spot for a week, and the competition later in the summer season will be irrelevant to it.

The same applies to "Gardenia in Blossoms".

But "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" is different! It can still be screened and it can still make money!
This explains why, after the start of the work week, the screenings of "Tiny Times 4" and "Forever Young" were drastically reduced, while "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" remained largely unchanged.

Theater managers are very pragmatic!
The biggest pressure for "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" is not the publicity and distribution, but the doll factory!

The theater manager has been calling Autumn Pictures non-stop!

Autumn Pictures should hurry up and send them "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" merchandise!

It's selling so well!

If the cinema hadn't said that the dolls at the entrance and on the counter were for display and not for sale, the audience would have taken both of them.

Before autumn, we had no experience in making merchandise, and we did not expect the movie to be so popular, so we did not have much stock of dolls. We did not dare to stock up, because movie merchandise is too difficult to sell in China. If we could not sell them and they were stuck in our warehouse, how would we sell them in autumn?

The manager of New Film Union in Yanjing even called Li Qiutang, asking him to give New Film Union special treatment and get 100 million yuan worth of goods.

"Can you sell it for a million?"

"Don't worry about whether I can sell them or not, just give me the goods. I want all of them, including Sun Wukong."

How can he get such a good deal? He wants all of Sun Wukong? You have to sell Jiang Liuer, Zhu Bajie, Chaos, and the Mountain God, who are relatively harder to sell, along with them.
The factory has stockpiled so much material; it has to be used up eventually.

On Monday, Liu Yifei spontaneously promoted "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" on Weibo, posting a photo of herself holding a horse-faced monkey doll with a smug caption: "I used to have a lot of 'Monkey King: Hero Is Back' dolls at home, but they were all looted these past few days. This is the only one left, and I even hid it."

Afterwards, more friends in the industry joined in the enthusiastic promotion of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back".

This further amplified the buzz surrounding "Monkey King: Hero Is Back".

On Tuesday morning, the data from Monday came out, showing that even on a weekday, the box office revenue reached 5000 million!

"Monkey King: Hero Is Back" grossed 3.15 million yuan in just four days, breaking the previous record for domestic animated films held by "Boonie Bears: Snow Daze" and pushing the box office of domestic animated films to the 300 million yuan mark.

Although it's still a ways off from the 6 million yuan gross of "Kung Fu Panda 2," and even further from the 12 billion yuan that Li Qiutang touted, it's already a victory for domestic animated films.

But Li Qiutang remained calm and composed, putting on airs at the company: "No rush, 12 billion is entirely achievable. All we need to do now is maintain good publicity and distribution. Send a few people to the factory to check things out. Domestic merchandise and toys don't sell well, but 'Monkey King: Hero Is Back' is sure to be a hit, so this wave of merchandise will definitely sell well."

Li Qiutang also reminded them: "We need to hurry up and make T-shirts and accessories with our partners. Those counterfeiters are too fast. If we are even a little slow, we won't even get a share."

"There are many films to make and heavy tasks to complete during the summer vacation. After we finish this tough battle, I'll give you all red envelopes and let you go on a holiday." Boss Li never hesitates to make empty promises, and he is always generous when it comes to giving them away.

(End of this chapter)