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

Chapter 343 Battlefield, Flames of War!
In late February, undercurrents were swirling within the Chinese film industry.

A proposal titled "Cinema Alliance" has been quietly circulating in the capital circle. Hongsheng Capital, together with leading real estate giants such as Wanda Real Estate and Hengteng Group, announced that it will invest 300 billion yuan to build "international film and entertainment complexes" in 42 core cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

At the project launch meeting, Wang Zicong, the young master of Wanda, showcased the project model: the IMAX theater is planned to be located below flagship stores of luxury brands such as LV and GCI, and the underground corridor leads directly to the Mercedes-Benz Experience Center.

The press releases, with phrases like "Hollywood-level consumer experience" and "global brand flagship store," kept stimulating investors' nerves. Hengteng even made a bold statement, saying, "We want to make Hermès leather goods accessible to audiences in second- and third-tier cities."

What is most noteworthy is its site selection strategy: all of its complexes are located in the core business districts with the highest foot traffic in first-tier metropolitan areas, or in areas that are key areas for future development planned by the government.

According to sources, Tianyu Media has secured the exclusive distribution rights to Hollywood blockbusters such as "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" and "Future Cop, Limited," which will open simultaneously with the complex.

When this project was officially announced, the entire Chinese film and television and real estate industries were shaken, realizing that a brand new era was gradually dawning...

In this era of change, some are frantically chasing the dividends of capital, while others are deeply feeling the growing pains of the times.

In the spring breeze of February, the Chinese film market was still shrouded in the shadow of Hollywood blockbusters.

The staggering box office figures have left filmmakers sighing in despair, and an atmosphere of despair is spreading throughout the industry.

The screening rate of domestic films has plummeted to rock bottom, with only one art film struggling to stay afloat in the top ten daily box office rankings.

Step into any movie theater and you'll be bombarded with English dialogue and explosive sound effects; it seems that Chinese audiences have long been accustomed to paying for Hollywood blockbusters.

What's even more worrying is that, apart from directors affiliated with Zhou Yang, other Chinese film capital is turning to overseas collaborations, and even four of the five major film companies are in this situation...

Local film projects have been shelved one after another due to a lack of investment, and the once-renowned older generation of directors have become outcasts abandoned by capital.

Mid-level directors either make low-budget films with romance or mindless themes, following Zhou Yang's model to cater to the market. However, due to the impact of Hollywood films or audience fatigue, these films often underperform at the box office and fail to achieve the same success as their predecessors.

They either end up as "outsourced labor" for Hollywood projects.

Young directors face a similarly difficult situation: either join [XuanShi Entertainment] or wait for an opportunity...

[Xuan Shi Entertainment], which once opened its doors wide, seems to have gradually reached maturity and saturation in its director system.

After last year's two waves of popularity, namely the "Special Effects Film Month" and the "Romance Film Month," the market is now flooded with a large number of homogenous romance film scripts.

Faced with this situation, [Xuanshi Entertainment] began to adjust its strategy, no longer blindly acquiring such scripts, but instead shifting its core resources to cultivating a new generation of directors with data support and outstanding creativity.

Those directors who missed out on the early development boom can only wait for new opportunities unless they can come up with a truly innovative script…

In this winter of cultural colonization, everyone is waiting for a change to happen.

Everyone, without prior arrangement, began to look at Zhou Yang's new movie, "The Devil Knight"...

Countless people feel saddened, but they have to admit that Zhou Yang, who has repeatedly created box office miracles, may be the last chance for Chinese blockbusters.

On February 25th, amidst widespread attention.

[XuanShi Entertainment] has finally announced two important pieces of news:

First, the premiere of "Dark Knight" is scheduled for March 1st.

Secondly, the movie "Fast & Furious," which Zhou Yang co-produced, wrote, and distributed, is also scheduled for release on March 1.

Countless netizens were shocked after seeing these two messages!

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

"My grass!"

"What the hell did I just see? Wait, the credits for 'Fast & Furious': Director David Craigie, screenwriter Zhou Yang, producer Zhou Yang, production company Universal Pictures, and China's distributor XuanShi Entertainment..."

"Zhou Yang is the lead actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of 'The Demon Knight,' and the production company is [Xuan Shi Entertainment]..."

"Wait, damn it! Why are they all Zhou Yang?"

"Has Zhou Yang gone mad? He's scheduled all of them for March 1st, is he trying to fight with his own hands?"

"Fighting with the left hand against the right, this round is a sure win!"

"This isn't a box office battle; it's Zhou Yang's 'ambidextrous' performance art! This guy, after all this time of silence, he really did have something big brewing up!"

"..."

2 Month 25 Day!
evening!

The news that "Dark Knight" and "Fast & Furious" would be released on the same day instantly went viral online!

Countless netizens were shocked and dumbfounded by this astonishing news; everyone thought Zhou Yang had gone mad…

They logged onto various social media forums and began surfing the internet like crazy...

The top five trending topics on both [Kuaibo] and [Weibo] were completely dominated!
#Zhou Yang Slaps Himself# (Breaking News)

#Demonic Knight VS Fast & Furious# (Boiling Point)

#ChineseSpecialEffectsBattleHollywood# (Hot)!
The Zhou Yang Home page suddenly saw an influx of hundreds of thousands of users, causing the server to lag. Every few minutes, countless fans were discussing related topics.

He's hitting himself!
This is considered a crazy move in the Chinese film industry and even in the global film industry.

After all, according to industry practice, although the film market is large, almost all film companies tend to follow the unspoken rule of "no kings meeting kings"!
The opening day box office is related to the film's popularity and buzz, so each studio will deliberately avoid competing with the film in the same period. Some studios will even adjust the release date to protect their own films.

Moreover, David Kreich, the director of "Fast & Furious," is no ordinary person.

As the son of the director of the globally popular classic film "Zorro" in the 70s, this rising Hollywood director has been making a name for himself since 98. Many of his films have grossed between $5000 million and $1 million worldwide, and he has even received multiple Academy Awards and Best Director nominations. When such a renowned Hollywood director meets Zhou Yang, a screenwriter whose films are almost all blockbusters in the Chinese and Western markets, and is paired with an internationally acclaimed cast including Vin Diesel and Paul Vaux, even if the production scale is smaller than "Batman: Origins," this is definitely a "highly anticipated Hollywood blockbuster."

Zhou Yang, however, chose to directly confront this work with his other film, "The Devil Knight"!
This is simply...
crazy!

The online discussion erupted like a volcano, with the hashtag #ZhouYangHittingHisself# garnering over seven million views in just three hours!
The [QuickBet] server is also filled with all sorts of leaked information and news...

Major film forums were flooded with analytical posts: "A rational discussion on whether <Dark Knight> can withstand the impact of Hollywood" and "Is Zhou Yang's 'amicable alternation' a marketing tactic or genuine madness?"

Even the usually aloof professional film critics have been caught in the vortex. Yang Bo, editor-in-chief and supervisor of [Movie House], made a rare overnight post on [Quick Blog]: "This is not internal strife, but an extreme stress test for the Chinese film industry!"

Liu Jiasheng, a film critic who recently joined the [Xuanshi Entertainment] system, is currently browsing comments in the study of his newly purchased [Xuanshi Mall] apartment.

He put down his phone and gave his wife a bitter smile: "This madman even cuts himself. I should have asked for an extra 5% of the shares when I signed the contract with his company a few days ago..."

His wife, Zhang Ying, excitedly pulled out two pre-sale tickets: "I snagged tickets for the premiere of 'The Devil Knight'! If Zhou Yang wins this time, even if it doesn't generate a lot of buzz, our house will at least go up in value by 30%!"

Liu Jiasheng watched the frantic discussions about housing price trends in the community's owners' group. Subsequently, the [Xuanshi Mall] became increasingly lively. In just a few days, the lottery ratio for surrounding properties surged to 10 to 1, and it seemed that the prices of existing homes had all increased!
At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that Zhou Yang's scythe might have foreseen this strike all along...

From movies to real estate, everyone in this game is his prey, yet they revel in it, even...

He glanced at a still from "Fast & Furious"!

Nima!

This heartless guy is ruthless when he gets going, all for the sake of popularity and traffic!
He even cut himself!
Cruel person!

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

In the early hours of February 26, the news that "Dark Knight" and "Fast & Furious" were scheduled for release on the same day swept across the internet like a hurricane.

In the morning, before the first trailers for the two films were even released, pre-sale channels were opened.

Long queues formed under the scarlet logo of the 【XuanShi Cinema】 mall across the country.

Scalpers, keenly sensing the business opportunity, immediately inflated the premiere tickets to five times the original price, yet they still sold out instantly, leaving a trail of lamentations under the hashtag #failedtobuytickets# on social media.

Theater managers stared in disbelief at the soaring pre-sale figures!
Seeing the skyrocketing pre-sale tickets, the entire Chinese film industry fell silent.

Seven films, including "Interstellar Lovers" and "Youth Never Ends," originally scheduled for release in March, were withdrawn overnight. One director joked on his WeChat Moments: "This isn't a release schedule, it's a nuclear test zone! Whoever goes there dies, and I don't want to be cannon fodder..."

Even the Hollywood revenue-sharing film "Magical Girl 3" quietly postponed its release to April, resulting in a rare phenomenon in the Chinese film market where Zhou Yang monopolized the month.

……

【Tianyu】

"Mr. Deng, the pre-sale box office figures are in!"

"How many?"

Sitting in his office, Deng Baichuan watched as Xu Haibo, with a complicated expression, hurriedly walked in with a set of data.

Deng Baichuan took the data report, and his pupils suddenly contracted when his eyes swept over that line of numbers—

"Dark Knight" and "Fast & Furious" together accounted for a staggering 85% of screenings on their opening day, and their total pre-sales exceeded 6000 million RMB, breaking the record in Chinese film history!

What shocked him even more was the detail in the backend annotations…

"The overlap in ticket purchases between the two films is exceptionally high, and 73% of the ticket buyers for 'Fast & Furious' also purchased tickets for 'Dark Knight.' These combined ticket buyers spent four times as much on the [XuanShi Mall] as regular moviegoers."

Just as Deng Baichuan was in a daze...

Xu Haibo received a phone call.

His expression remained one of shock!
"The final pre-sale ticket sales are out, and they've already surpassed 7000 million RMB!"

Silence fell over the office.

Deng Baichuan closed his eyes.

I don't know how much time later...

A series of urgent sounds rang out.

Immediately afterwards...

Deng Baichuan's expression was complicated...

"Should 'Eragon Knight' also be released in March?"

"Correct!"

"But based on our internal assessment, we should avoid confronting Zhou Yang in March. He's currently riding high, and there are rumors that official resources will be tilted towards him."

"We can't avoid it! Zhou Yang is too arrogant right now. What's more, his partners in Hollywood are competitors with the Hollywood capital behind us. They are targeting us all over the world."

"You mean you want to use 'Dragon Knight' to snipe Zhou Yang? But what if it fails?"

"There's no 'what if'! If he wants to be deified, we'll personally drag him down from his pedestal! Let the whole world see clearly—this so-called miracle creator is just an ordinary person with slightly better luck! He is definitely not a god, and he can never be a god!"

"..."

(End of this chapter)