Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 490 The Frenzy of the Summer Movie Season
An animated film grossed over 300 million yuan in just four days, with a weekday increase of over 50 million yuan. This can be considered a phenomenal animated film.

It wasn't until autumn that internal concerns arose about a potential clash between "Jianbing Man" and "Monkey King: Hero Is Back".

But there was nothing they could do; Qiu Tian was the second-largest shareholder of "Jianbing Man," and the release date was set by Fox Studio.

But Li Qiutang felt there was no need to worry. The summer movie season was big enough, and with ticket subsidies, audience demand was strong. Three or four blockbusters could easily fill the slots.

"Instead of worrying about 'Jianbing Man,' we should look at 'Monster Hunt,' which will be released tomorrow. That's the movie that will clash with our 'Monkey King: Hero Is Back.'"

"Monster Hunt" is certainly not an animated film, but its selling point is animation.

The film had a very large pre-release publicity campaign!
You have to experience it firsthand to know how powerful the marketing and distribution of "Monster Hunt" was!

The production team even went to the countryside to paint and write big-character posters—"The whole family watches Huba together!"

Not to mention that Zhejiang TV advertises "Monster Hunt" all day long. It's not that no TV station has invested in theatrical films before, but no TV station has ever advertised its own films like Zhejiang TV.

The promotional effect of a satellite TV station that owns hit variety shows like "The Voice of China" and "Running Man" advertising a movie in such a blatant manner is self-evident.

"Monster Hunt" single-handedly raked in 1.7 million yuan at the box office on its opening day—the highest opening day and highest single-day gross for a Chinese-language film.

On that day, "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" had already grossed over 4.7 million yuan, and was wielding its butcher's knife toward the kung fu panda.

The next day, "Jianbing Man" was released, grossing 1.39 million yuan!
No one could have predicted that this movie would achieve such great results on its opening day!

A new director! Da Peng had only directed low-brow short films like "Men's Diary" before.

It's hot! It's so hot!
This is starting to feel like a summer movie season battle!

Even official media outlets have stated that "Monkey King: Hero Is Back, Monster Hunt, and Jian Bing Man have completely ignited the summer movie season."

These three movies were all hits over the weekend!

"Monkey King: Hero Is Back" earned 1.67 million yuan in two days and its total box office exceeded 7 million yuan in 10 days of release, defeating "Kung Fu Panda 2" to take the top spot for the highest-grossing animated film in mainland China. It can be said that "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" has now completed its historical mission.

"Monster Hunt" grossed 6.68 million yuan in its opening weekend, breaking every record that could be broken.

"Jianbing Man" grossed 430 million yuan in its opening weekend.

This was the most frenzied era for Chinese cinema, and countless people will fondly remember the crazy year of 2015.

July isn't over yet, but it's pretty much certain that Autumn Films and Edko Films will be the biggest winners of this year's summer movie season.

The phenomenal success of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" was unexpected in the fall, and Bernard regretted it.

In the autumn, Yu Dong once wanted to exchange "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" for Bernard's "Operation Mekong," but Yu Dong looked down on animated films and declined the invitation.

Now that this movie has surpassed 700 million, with daily growth still exceeding 30 million and heading towards the 1 billion mark, I can't help but feel a little regretful.

But there aren't so many "what ifs" in this world. If we could go back two months and let Yu Dong choose again, he might still refuse "Monkey King: Hero Is Back".

Because nobody has a positive outlook on domestically produced animated films.

The success of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" is also considered a special case. The popularity of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" did not bring new investment to the animated films produced by Almond Pictures. "Ne Zha" and "Big Fish & Begonia" are still supported by Autumn alone.

However, the success of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" made Tian Xiaopeng a target. And that target was none other than Huayi Brothers!
Li Qiutang received news that Huayi Brothers, seeing how popular "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" was, wanted to invest in Tian Xiaopeng's company.

A good director and a good company—everyone wants to invest.

Rationally speaking, Huayi's actions are nothing special, but in Li Qiutang's view, Huayi is trying to reap the rewards of others' labor.

This cannot be tolerated.

Huayi's offer wasn't low, but fortunately, Tian Xiaopeng wasn't blinded by the numbers and chose to press Huayi's offer and communicate with Qiutian first.

Autumn had shown him great kindness, and if he had to choose, he would definitely choose to continue working with Autumn.

So, in the new week, Autumn Pictures invested 2000 million yuan in Tian Xiaopeng's October Culture, completing another step in its investment strategy in the field of animated films.

To date, Autumn Pictures has invested in more than 10 animation companies of varying sizes. Some of these companies were completely unknown to Li Qiutang, but he still chose to invest because he never knew which cloud would bring rain, or which company would contribute key technology or a blockbuster film in the future.

There are risks, of course, but they are risks that must be taken.

Li Qiutang posted on Weibo about the signing of a contract between Qiutian Pictures and Tian Xiaopeng, and shared some of his thoughts. He called on the industry to invest in animation, saying that animated films are a blue ocean with great potential.

Some even said, "It's not impossible for an animated film to become the highest-grossing film in history."

This isn't Li Qiutang trying to show off; he genuinely wants to encourage more people and more funding to enter the animated film industry, as the Qiu family's resources are ultimately limited.

Of course, Li Qiutang also knew that his family's appeals were useless. Only when the outside world saw that animated films really had great potential would funds and talent enter the field.

One movie like "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" is not enough. If there were one or two animated films like "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" every year, the industry could thrive.

Li Qiutang's announcement of the contract was clearly meant for Huayi; the message was, "Don't even think about what's in my bowl."

On Wednesday, "Monster Hunt" grossed over 10 billion yuan in 7 days, while "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" grossed over 8 million yuan in total and "Jian Bing Man" grossed 6 million yuan in 6 days.

In order to help "Monkey King: Hero Is Back" reach 10 billion yuan more smoothly, Autumn Pictures began to play another card.

"Mr. Xu Jingqing has always wanted to hold a Journey to the West concert, but he has been unable to do so for many years due to a lack of funds..." Autumn Film began reporting on the plight of Mr. Xu Jingqing, the composer of Journey to the West.

"Many people ask me, 'I must have earned a lot of royalties over the years, why am I still short of money?'" Xu Jingqing said helplessly. The highest he ever received was "Daughter's Love," which was used in Han Han's "The Continent." "The lyricist Yang Jie and I each received more than 3 yuan."

Once, Xu Jingqing was having dinner with friends when the boss at the table confidently told him that he was in charge of the concert, and money was no problem. Xu Jingqing was overjoyed and thanked him profusely. "He wanted me to redo the demo tape." So Xu Jingqing spent nearly 20 yuan of his savings to re-record the songs. "After it was finished, I invited him to the recording studio. He was drunk that day and fell asleep after listening for a short while." Later, Xu Jingqing asked the boss how it went, and the boss got up and said, "I'll think about it some more." And then, he was never heard from again.

On another occasion, a performing arts company from Sichuan Province approached him, claiming they could organize a "ten-yuan concert" for him locally—"just a few folk musicians and amateur singers who charge a few dozen yuan per show to sing all my songs." This left Xu both amused and exasperated. Another time, a Beijing Music Company approached him, promising to organize a national tour of "Journey to the West" concerts. Xu Jingqing worked hard on it for quite some time, but just before signing the contract, they wanted to buy out the entire project, excluding him. "They only wanted to make money off my work, disregarding artistic expression. I absolutely refused to agree to that."

Then in the fall, October Culture, in collaboration with Tian Xiaopeng, announced that it would sponsor Mr. Xu Jingqing to hold a "Journey to the West" concert.

Sponsoring a concert like this doesn't cost much; five or six million is enough. Compared to what Qiu Tian earned from "Monkey King: Hero Is Back," that's just a drop in the ocean.

Sponsoring concerts didn't directly help boost the box office of "Monkey King: Hero Is Back," but it did win the production team a lot of goodwill from the audience.

That day, Ali's staff approached Liu Yifei for the third time, this time directly to her.

After three visits to Zhuge Liang's thatched cottage, surely we'll be able to persuade her this time!

(End of this chapter)