I'm just trying to ride the wave of popularity!

Chapter 263 The Smoke of Battle Begins!

It was already four in the morning.

The heavy rain outside the window finally stopped.

The conference room of Tianyu Entertainment was brightly lit and filled with smoke.

[Huashang Brothers], [Tianyu Media], [New City Films], [Meile Films], [Royal Films]

The heads of the copyright departments of China's five major film companies were all sitting in the conference room of Tianyu Media, their eyes fixed on the projector in front of them.

The projector displayed the box office curve of "The Black Robe Alliance" on the screen, with the rising red line and data stimulating everyone's eyes.

Fifty million in three days!
The daily box office exceeded 1740 million!
And this was all done without any of the three major cinema chains in China showing the film!
Xu Haibo stared at everyone, his expression gradually becoming serious: "Just now, I received news that 'The Resurrection' has surpassed 1000 million RMB at the North American box office! And 'Saw' has grossed nearly 7000 million USD worldwide..."

As soon as he finished speaking, the conference room fell into a deathly silence.

Everyone at China's five major film companies looked on in shock and disbelief.

Everyone knows what these data actually represent!
A new force, led by Zhou Yang's [Xuan Shi Entertainment], is rising rapidly and is poised to secure a place in the grand feast of the Chinese film market...

"He's about to sit down and eat!"

"If we don't give it to him, he'll try to steal it!"

"..."

Xu Haibo's gaze swept over everyone present: "I know that our companies have previously engaged in open and covert competition in the market, but now!"

"This traitor to Chinese cinema is wielding Hollywood's knife, trying to stab us all in the back! Every extra dollar 'Black Robe Alliance' earns is another drop of blood being sucked from us!" Xu Haibo tapped the curtain, looking around at everyone: "Today, either we join forces to crush Zhou Yang at the starting line, or... next year at this time, everyone here will have to give up their seats for him and watch him scramble for food!"

In the conference room, Xu Haibo's words were suddenly interrupted by a rapid knocking on the door.

The secretary practically burst through the door, scattering documents all over the floor, but instead of picking them up, she was extremely agitated.

"Catwoman has a release date set ahead of schedule! Columbia and Warner Bros. just released a joint statement announcing a simultaneous global release on September 20th! They've authorized our five major Chinese companies to jointly distribute it!"

In an instant, everyone in the conference room was stunned, and then they all stood up!

"Is the news accurate?" Zheng Guotao, director of the copyright department of [New City International], snatched the document, his fingers trembling slightly.

Upon seeing the Warner CEO's signature on the document, he suddenly burst into laughter: "Good! Good! Wasn't Zhou Yang going to sit at the table and eat? This time, he won't even get a lick of the plate!"

In the beam of light from the projector, Xu Haibo took out a trailer disc from the files, inserted it into the computer, and picked up the remote to play the trailer for "Catwoman"...

Anne Desserlie's Catwoman costume gleamed in the moonlight, each leap exuding the elegance and power befitting her $2000 million salary.

Everyone was glued to the screen!

"A production cost of two hundred million US dollars!" Xu Haibo pointed to the 1:1 scale Gotham City street scene on the screen and exclaimed sincerely, "This is a real superhero movie!"

Then, he looked at everyone!

"From this moment forward, all five of our companies will bet all our promotional channels on this movie!"

"In addition, we will show a joint statement to the three major cinema chains in China and the remaining 27 cinemas. Under the agreement of the [China Film Protection Month], we cannot stop the screening of 'Black Robe Alliance', but we can at least reduce their screening market by about 60%!"

"Also, in the past six months, let's stop hiding things. I know you've all been keeping a lot of media and studio accounts..."

"This time, bring it all out!"

"..."

....................................

At 8:00 AM on September 16th.

A sudden media storm has swept across China's internet, targeting the "Black Robe Alliance."

The trending topics list suddenly underwent a major reshuffle around 7 a.m.

The hashtag #CatwomanReleaseDate# debuted at number one on the charts with its black and red visual design, followed closely by hashtags such as #AnneDesservieOscarAwardPerformance# and #Nearly$2MillionEpicProduction#!
Clicking on the entry reveals a barrage of stills of Anne Descartes in a tight leather suit, accompanied by numerous captions emphasizing the "$30 suit," seemingly a veiled jab at the cheaply made Spider-Man costume in "The League of Black"...

10:00 AM!

Aside from MovieHome, all the homepages of online movie websites were flooded with Catwoman specials.

Even the most popular post on [Movie House] quickly turned into various news about "Catwoman" within just a few hours!

Columnist "Film Critic Lao Zhou" published a 10,000-word analysis overnight, comparing the origins of the 1966 Catwoman comic with the film's aesthetics frame by frame, but suddenly changed his tone at the end: "Some copycat works try to pander to the public by deconstructing classics, like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa—clumsy!"

As soon as the topic was dropped, the comment section was flooded with a large number of unregistered accounts, all neatly displaying the message "Support official superheroes".

The most ruthless blow came from [Wandou Movie Network].

In the early hours of September 17, the website suddenly adjusted its rating algorithm, causing "Black Robe Alliance" to plummet from 8.9 to 7.1!

A special page for "Catwoman" appeared on the homepage. Some users noticed that the website quietly removed the "Anti-hero Movies" category tag and added a "Officially Licensed Superheroes" section in its place.

When angry viewers questioned the issue on the forum, the moderator quickly deleted the posts and permanently banned seven active accounts, instantly silencing all public opinion...

On the morning of the 17th, seemingly out of nowhere, studio "user accounts" from all directions flooded various "Tieba" forums, causing a surge in popularity for these accounts.

At 9:00 AM, a pinned post in red suddenly appeared on the Spider-Man forum: "Black Robe Plagiarism Confirmed! Comparison Illustrations."

The poster, "Justice Passerby A," meticulously pieced together frames of footage featuring Pad Picker and Peter Parker, even marking them with red circles to indicate that "the angles of the spider webs were copied exactly."

Five minutes later, the post was shared to twenty related forums, and the replies were all screenshots of people "boycotting pirated movies".

The real killer move is hidden in the details.

A well-known film and television public account suddenly published "The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Record of Catwoman Filming", and specially emphasized in bold font that "the crew customized 200 sets of costumes for Descartes, each set being worth the equivalent of a down payment for a house in a third-tier city".

The accompanying photo shows Anne Dessereau practicing martial arts under the guidance of Hendrik Willem Van Loon's team, a stark contrast to the shabby scene in the behind-the-scenes footage of Shen Long demonstrating moves with a broom in "The Alliance"...

By the evening of the 18th, the trailer for "Catwoman" had surpassed 1000 million views on the three major video platforms, and related topics had garnered a total of over 7000 million reads!
Apart from [Movie House] and [Quickbo], discussion posts about "Black Robe Alliance" seemed to have been wiped out by an invisible hand, disappearing from the trending lists of major platforms...

Especially on Weibo, some netizens captured Weibo's backend data: the actual search volume for "Black Robe Alliance" was 300% of the displayed data, but all related entries were restricted to outside the top 20 of the entertainment list. Soon, the data screenshot displayed by this netizen was instantly suppressed...

Even on platforms like [Movie Home] and [Kuaibo], which are under Zhou Yang's own control, various trending posts about "Catwoman" appear every now and then...

In this precise media campaign, the "Zhou Yang" news, which had been bombarding China for a long time, was finally suppressed...

However, for the five major companies, it seems that all of this is not enough!
The online traffic was decimated, and five major offline companies even bought out all the lightbox advertisements for [Metro Media].

As commuters squeeze into the morning rush hour train carriages, they can see Catwoman's sharp claws poking against the poster for "The Black Robe Alliance," with the tagline: "Some heroes are born with it in their genes!"
In addition to the visual impact of subway advertisements, offline promotions are even more ubiquitous...

Starting in Beijing, and gradually spreading to other major cities, the glass windows of bus stops were replaced with posters of "Catwoman"...

Chain supermarkets such as [Lian Dong], [Hua Xi], and [Tian Tian Le] have signs at their checkout counters that say "Buy Catwoman co-branded Coca-Cola and win movie tickets".
The most outrageous one is the "Catwoman Special Drink" launched by a chain milk tea shop from Taiwan, with a provocative slogan printed on the cup sleeve: "Fake heroes only deserve to drink sugar water"...

The overwhelming publicity, almost frantic, pushed the popularity of "Catwoman" higher and higher!

By the evening of the 19th, some even predicted that "Catwoman" would surpass "Spider-Man" at the box office, reaching an astonishing 4 million RMB and dominating the competition!
..............................

"Mr. Zhou, something's happened! The five major film companies have gone mad! They've actually given up nearly 10% of their profits to the 24 cinema chains we're cooperating with, asking them to screen more of 'Catwoman'!"

"At their instigation, six theater chains are now using screen time to blackmail us into renegotiating revenue sharing... The remaining 18 chains are still observing, but eight of them have gradually increased the screen time for 'Catwoman' to be similar to that of our 'Black Robe Alliance'... They called us to explain that they had no choice..."

"There are just too many online trolls. Our own media outlets, [Movie Home] and [Kuaibo], are dealing with them every day, but we still can't stop these waves of attacks..."

"..."

Perhaps it was due to the overwhelming publicity, or perhaps it was because the market enthusiasm for "Black Robe Alliance" had decreased after three days of release!

《黑袍联盟》自15日以后，票房从1700万人民币跌到了1300万人民币，17日又跌至1200万，18日1120万……

Despite the fact that the total box office revenue over three days is still quite good!

However, this inevitably made Dong Qichang feel as if he had been punched hard, leaving him breathless!

in the office.

Dong Qichang sat opposite Zhou Yang, his eyes revealing undisguised worry.

Zhou Yang, on the other hand, calmly observed the various trending topics on the internet and smiled faintly.

"This time, they've used almost every resource at their disposal to pressure us. I'm afraid their publicity budget is over ten million!"

"An investment of tens of millions, definitely more than that. I've never seen the five major Chinese film companies promote a Hollywood movie so aggressively..."

What do you see in them?

"I've witnessed madness!"

"No!"

"what do you mean……"

"I saw fear in them!"

"..."

Zhou Yang pushed up his glasses.

Just then, the phone rang.

It was Carl from Marvel Comics in Hollywood calling. On the other end of the line, Carl sounded anxious and even suggested changing the global premiere date of "The Black Robe Alliance" to avoid the competition.

(End of this chapter)