How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 267 The Breakup (Part 2)

Promoting a film shouldn't just be about promoting the film itself.

The opening scene of the film, featuring the female lead He Ji, is based on the map "Chouhai Tu Bian".

It is a coastal military map compiled by Zheng Ruozeng and others when Hu Zongxian was the governor of Zhejiang Province. It was created to defend against Japanese pirates. It is the earliest, most detailed and complete coastal defense military topographic map that we can see to date.

The map that He Ji and He Yuan are looking up at at the beginning and end of the propaganda is the "Coastal Mountain and Sand Map": In the two maps "Fu Qi/Ba", starting from the fifth island "Jilong Mountain" from the right to the left in the upper row, there are Pengjia Mountain, Diaoyu Island, Huaping Mountain, Huangmao Mountain, Ganlan Mountain, Chiyu Island and other islands, which clearly show that this has been the coastal defense area of ​​the Ming Dynasty since ancient times.

The promotion of the second female lead, He Hui, is a tribute to Mr. Chen Yuxiang's heroic act of defending the Diaoyu Islands.

We should promote the example set by He Yuan, the third female lead, who embodies the spirit of her elder sister and is always ready to carry on her sister's long-cherished wish.

They also need to publicize the chaos in the Japanese workplace, the future advancement of technology, and the changes that the smartphone era will bring to human society.

Taxis will be replaced by ride-hailing services; working people and college students will order takeout for their meals; online loans are risky and will be subject to collection if overdue; driving a new energy vehicle for ride-hailing can earn you over 10,000 yuan a month; and you can collect Cullinan fragments by shaking your hand and giving live stream rewards.

In the eyes of the film industry, this movie is filled with a lot of mediocre and even boring setup plot.

However, once the publicity campaign officially began, the film industry was completely stunned.

It turns out that the promotional elements of a movie can span multiple fields such as major events, history, humanities, geography, technology, automobiles, mobile phones, and high-tech internet.

There are so many elements that it's hard to know where to even begin discussing them, but no matter what type of forum, online community, or QQ group you open, you'll see arguments related to "22".

The promotional reach of "22" was too wide, and everyone was talking about their own thing without disturbing each other. Occasionally, they would meet in social media hot topics and offer some unique perspectives.

Coupled with the constant stream of news circulating online about the tech industry shake-up caused by the overseas trailer for "22", the film's popularity has been pushed to a level that doesn't deserve it.

Seeing that "22" broke 100 million yuan at the box office in one day and that tickets were hard to come by, the film industry secretly denounced it as a stain on art, while at the same time gradually learning new film promotion and hype techniques.

So even if a movie has a terrible plot, it can still have such a big impact on box office revenue just by piling up gimmicks and over-interpreting it. I've learned something new.

However, the impact was greater on the technology sector, not just due to the influence of the "Nokia pill theory" overseas, but also because seeing the "real-life" mobile internet in the movie made most people pay attention to mobile development ahead of time.

The demonstration in "22" of KT, a software for daily communication, being able to send voice messages, make real-time voice calls, and video calls, directly caused a division within Tencent, which was still struggling with the WDS mobile version.

Zhang Xiaolong, who had just been promoted to vice president, was deeply inspired after watching the movie. After conducting some research, he was shocked to find that KT was not a fictional company in the movie. It had already gained a user base of tens of millions in Korea and even had a certain number of users in Japan and East Asia. The voice function that impressed him was already in use, and video calling was under development.

He took the data he had compiled overnight to Ma Huateng and claimed that the KT model might be the biggest threat to overthrowing Tencent's social media dominance.

At a critical moment when Ma Huateng was struggling with 360, he had no time to pay attention to the matter. He only held a meeting to discuss it. Liu Chengming, the head of the Penguin Mobile Business Unit at the time, publicly ridiculed Zhang Xiaolong for being stupid from watching movies and recommended that he watch "Iron Man" and create Jarvis.

But Zhang Xiaolong was adamant, even going so far as to make a pledge. The email business he was originally in charge of lacked commercial monetization capabilities, and he desperately needed a respectable performance to secure his position.

Liu Chengming directly questioned the necessity of WeChat, and even threatened to resign if it succeeded.

Liu Chengming was, after all, a founding father of Tencent. Although KT had already established itself in Korea, it might not be able to replace Tencent's mobile phone business. Ma Huateng was unwilling to affect Liu Chengming, so he turned around and suppressed Zhang Xiaolong, telling him to wait and see. Right now, they still had to deal with the 3Q war.

Zhang Xiaolong was somewhat disappointed, but he made a decision to secretly work out the basic prototype first before persuading Ma Huateng.

But before he could even assemble a team, he heard Lei Jun from the neighboring company, Coarse Grain, making a high-profile announcement that Coarse Grain's first "self-developed" mobile operating system had officially entered internal testing, and that the concept presentation PPT for the MiTalk APP had been released, which seemed to be just some scenes from "22" that had been cut out.

However, it caused a huge stir in China's technology circle, with many investment institutions extending olive branches to Coarse Grain, giving the company, which had been established for less than five months, an extremely high valuation of 3 million US dollars based on their optimism about the future development of mobile communications and smartphones.

Seeing how easily whole grains could obtain such a high valuation, Le's, which already has one foot in the tech industry, was not to be outdone.

The next day, Accountant Jia also announced that the 'Hexin System' had entered the internal testing phase, and a video link that redirected to Bilibili. The video contained real footage showcasing the 'LeChat' software, which already had similar functionality to KT.

MiTalk is still in the PPT stage, but LeTalk can already be demonstrated on actual devices!
Le's stock price rose in response. After a little over a month of listing, it fell from a peak of 60 billion to 50 billion before hitting the daily limit again. Industry insiders were very optimistic about it.

Upon hearing this news, Lei Jun smashed two experimental machines, and the next day, news spread that employees of Le's Company had been poached.

But we received even more surprising news: Le's doesn't have a software department yet!

So where did this LeChat come from?!

Is this some kind of ghost?!
Since "22" sparked discussions among big names like Nokia and Google overseas, the domestic business community has been studying the film like they would financial statements to find something they could leverage.

After all, China has been learning from the US in terms of both model and development. After Musk made a huge bet on Nokia, he released a concept image of Tesla's newly developed model at the height of its popularity and introduced the concept of 'vehicle-machine interaction', which directly boosted Tesla's market value from $15 billion to $17 billion, setting a new high since its listing.

A single concept image can increase the value of the Le family by half, which makes it hard for Accountant Jia to ignore. However, his cleverness lies in understanding the principle of taking advantage of one's proximity to the source.

Instead of trying to figure it out yourself, you should go directly to the creator of "22" for answers. Although the movie is officially produced and distributed by Xingmei Entertainment, just by looking at the purity of the cast, you can guess that it was definitely Wang Yao's work.

So Accountant Jia flew directly to Shanghai to learn from Wang Yao.

Now that Le's has finished telling the story of film and television + terminal devices, it can only tell the story of software applications.

Of all the apps featured in the movie, the only one that has any connection to Le Shi today is the social media app KT.

KT is doing very well in Korea and East Asia. They may consider using Yahoo's channels to seize the Western market before Kik's release. However, Wang Yao has no plans to promote it in China yet, since the current penetration rate of smartphones in China is less than 10%, and only about 6% of them are iOS and Android systems.

The reason why they dared to release it in "22" is because they can convert KT into WeChat at any time, while whether it is Tencent, Xiaomi or other manufacturers, it would take at least 4 months of development time.

His idea was to get competitors to spend money to generate buzz in the mobile communications market first, and then let them test the waters with the operators.

The only constraint restricting mobile communication is the operators. To be honest, Wang Yao isn't good at this kind of thing, so he can only leave it to Jia, the accountant, and Lei Jun, who are good at it, to help him pioneer the project.

Moreover, mobile app development is not difficult; the key is promotion and marketing, and how to capture users' minds. Wang Yao has some experience in this area, and he also has other trump cards up his sleeve, such as online payment photo taking next year and a Spring Festival Gala red envelope sharing, which would be enough to quickly acquire customers.

After reaching an agreement with Accountant Jia to invest in Le's, Wang Yao had his team modify the KT system based on the Windows CE system, in exchange for 5% of Le's shares. This gave Accountant Jia the opportunity to raise the stock price again and strike a blow at Boss Lei.

Due to the limited development period of less than a month, LeTalk's performance could only remain in the internal testing and demonstration stage, but that was enough. The subsequent development costs were borne by LeTalk until the LeTalk team was able to take over.

Just then, Wang Yao acquired over 60,000 units of the M8 inventory from the Meizu. Both the M8 and Le's 'Hexin' were developed based on the Windows CE system and belonged to the Microsoft camp. Once developed, they could be directly put on the machine for testing to accumulate the first batch of users and continue to build momentum for Le's.

Furthermore, last month, Nokia's newly appointed CEO announced that Nokia would join the Microsoft camp to develop ecosystem software based on Windows CE.

In the next five years, the smartphone operating system market will still be dominated by iOS, Android, and WCE. The Microsoft camp still has a long lifespan, and in China, it still has loyal partners like Changxiang to support it. Therefore, the development path of Leshi and Xin still has a promising future.

After LeTalk goes into public beta, Tencent will most likely get involved, and Wang Yao plans to see if he can sell the Android version for a good price again.

However, Tencent can no longer use the name WeChat. Wang Yao has already re-optimized and developed WeChat based on KT. The case of KT's operation for more than half a year has provided WeChat with a lot of valuable experience, avoiding the problems that the Shit Mountain code would bring in the future.

Most software development is a 'spur-of-the-moment' endeavor for creators. Programmers write code like authors write novels, writing whatever comes to mind, and then it's a process of creating and resolving plot holes. After all, no one can be perfect before they even begin.

For example, it is rumored that the earliest fountain healing mechanism in LOL was actually based on Sona's healing skill. In other words, if Sona were removed or modified, it would directly cause the entire game's healing system to collapse. Therefore, the LOL champion Sona cannot be easily changed.

With KT serving as a guinea pig, WeChat is expected to surpass its predecessor in terms of functionality and operation in the future. Therefore, Wang Yao is not in a hurry to release it. Many things are not better the sooner they are released, but rather the more appropriate they are.

"Mr. Wang, is your movie a prediction or a realistic portrayal?" Accountant Jia asked with a broad smile as he looked at the closing price.

With two consecutive limit-up days, Le's market value has returned to 60 billion, and judging from the momentum, it may even head towards 70 billion, which is at least as much as the valuation of coarse grains.

"At the time, I just wanted to enrich the storyline. I thought it was interesting, so I filmed it. I didn't expect it to become so popular," Wang Yao chuckled.

"Mr. Wang is incredibly lucky. I, Lao Jia, admire nothing but good luck in this life, especially since Mr. Wang also has the ability. Can you tell me how many good things Xinghuo has up its sleeve? Takeout? Group buying? Or live streaming?" Accountant Jia asked with a smile.

"These things will be difficult to achieve for at least two or three years. The limitations of mobile terminals and the cost of hardware bandwidth are two barren roads that can only be traversed step by step. What's more, there's the mountain of operators in front of us." Wang Yao shook his head with a smile.

Most of the mobile lifestyle depicted in "22" will only have real value after 4G becomes widespread.

"Difficulties can be overcome; what's worrisome is taking the wrong path." Accountant Jia smiled. He was also somewhat of a hardware vendor, and he was well aware of the limitations of the current development of the internet.

"No one has the ability to predict the future; everyone can only try to figure things out based on their limited knowledge," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Hey, Mr. Wang, you're so young, how come you're more pessimistic than me, a middle-aged man? I think your future is bright and promising," Accountant Jia said with a smile.

"Perhaps we don't have the same magnanimity as President Jia," Wang Yao waved his hand.

“Mr. Wang is just making fun of me. The team from Xin and the team from the Maozu have been working well together recently, but they still insist on choosing the Android camp. Moreover, their production capacity is limited. I’m thinking about whether we should find two more manufacturers to cooperate with,” Accountant Jia said seriously.

“Currently, the mobile operating system field is divided into two camps: open source and closed source. iOS and WCE are both closed source, while only Android is open source. Since we have a grudge against Apple, we will definitely choose open source. Moreover, open source does have great advantages, and future sales will be better,” Wang Yao explained.

"Then what about Xin?" Accountant Jia frowned upon hearing this.

“Hexin has some inherent weaknesses, and it’s based on the WCE system. It could actually focus on the tablet/TV market, and take a mid-to-high-end route for its mobile terminals to improve its image,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Didn't Mr. Wang say before that the television market was declining?" Accountant Jia was taken aback.

"I'm talking about traditional TVs, but didn't you see that the TV in '22' is like a super-large flat panel or an all-in-one machine? It's called a smart screen," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"You mean, a TV is just a large tablet? A TV with an operating system?" Accountant Jia's eyes lit up.

"The advantage of television is its home furnishing attributes. This perception will last at least until the post-05 generation grows up. There will be at least another 20 years of market in the future. We can also get involved in the smart home field. Hexin started late and we are developing our own technology. We may have missed the golden age of mobile terminals, but we can bet on overtaking others in the future."

Moreover, the tablet + smart screen market is worth hundreds of billions. If we can gain an advantage first, coupled with LeEco's copyright ecosystem, the future is promising." Wang Yao chuckled.

"Did Mr. Wang say he wasn't from time travel?" Accountant Jia joked.

"I've loved science fiction since I was a child. Arthur C. Clarke's '2001: A Space Odyssey' from 1968 already introduced concepts like tablet computers, instant messaging, and artificial intelligence. However, I prefer Kevin Kelly's 'Out of Control' from 1994."

It directly predicted the development of the internet over the next 30 years, including trends like algorithm swarms, decentralization, and biomechanics. The concept of smart living originated from the smart nation described here. "If you have the chance, you could visit this person; he seems more like a time traveler," Wang Yao smiled.

"I've heard of him; he's apparently a special producer for 'The Matrix.' I didn't expect him to be so amazing," Accountant Jia said, somewhat surprised.

Out of Control won't be released in China until the end of this year, so apart from a few science fiction enthusiasts, Kevin won't become popular in China until next year. However, it's also because Kevin didn't pay much attention to the Chinese market before. It was only after Apple's explosive potential in China and BYD's heavy investment in the new energy field that he re-examined this huge market that he had overlooked.

Because Kevin is not just a technology forecaster, but also a searchlight in Silicon Valley, using academic exchanges and media channels to influence technology trends. It was after communicating with him 12 years ago that Ma Huateng started an oligopolistic ecosystem model of global spending spree.

"I suggest that if we're looking for OEM partners, we should prioritize those in the Microsoft camp. HTC, Enjoy, and Xiaomi are all good options. For mobile phones, we can position them at a higher price point, while keeping the tablets more affordable," Wang Yao said after a moment's thought.

"I'll go back and do some research. Is Xinghuo or Tianhuo short of funds right now?" Accountant Jia changed the subject.

"The funds for the acquisition of AMC are almost ready, and the current revenue is sufficient to support the company's operations. What's up?" Wang Yao raised an eyebrow slightly.

“I have several older brothers who are very optimistic about Mr. Wang’s future development and hope to get involved,” Accountant Jia said cryptically.

"Oh? How much funding is involved?" Wang Yao asked curiously.

"That depends on the size of Mr. Wang's project," Accountant Jia said with a mysterious smile.

“Then next time, after acquiring AMC, we’ll need a local Hollywood film company to back us up. Legendary Films is still very valuable.” Wang Yao smiled.

"Okay, I'll let you know in advance." Accountant Jia nodded. "By the way, has the online streaming rights for '22' been sold?" "Sohu and iQiyi both want to buy it, but I haven't decided on a price yet. After all, the box office is still uncertain." Wang Yao shook his head.

“Okay, we’ll hold an open auction then. After all, we’re all family.” Accountant Jia smiled meaningfully.

The popularity of "22" remains high in China. Every time the box office exceeds 10 million, the official team releases a celebratory poster. At first, netizens just watched the excitement, because most of the movies that were supposed to be seen had already been released in the past half month. It was just a sense of pride for the participants.

But as the box office grew rapidly every day, the celebration posters turned into a comic strip. Each update was about the vision of future life. The Q-version characters such as Snow King, kangaroo, white elephant, and flame became familiar to everyone. Netizens and viewers went from initial anticipation to regular discussion, and eventually started urging for more updates.

Compared to the celebratory posters that were released at least seven times a day and the massive online buzz surrounding "22", other films released at the same time seemed particularly quiet.

September's film market was originally fiercely competitive. First, the blockbuster "Inception" broke 100 million yuan in its opening week, continuing the dominance of imported films. Then, director Zhang Yimou's "Under the Hawthorn Tree" could have taken over from "Tang Zhen" and also achieved a record of breaking 100 million yuan in its opening week. Unfortunately, it was hit by "22", which was in the midst of a boom.

Although "22" had no promotion and relied entirely on natural traffic to drive its box office in its first week, it still managed to achieve 8000 million yuan. However, with the Captain incident and the offline promotion by Mixue, the box office began to rise sharply in the second week. After the promotional risk was lifted, it had an overwhelming momentum and achieved a terrifying box office of 2 million yuan in four days.

Although "Hawthorn" secured 30% of the screenings and did a good job with its marketing and distribution, it was directly overshadowed by the popularity of "22". Its box office barely broke 10 million yuan on its opening day, and later, as theaters made way for "22", its box office was far below expectations.

This is a direct blow to Xinli Media, which is venturing into the big screen for the first time. This art film, which has a budget of 7000 million and is touted as the most expensive Chinese-language art film, will likely face huge losses.

“Investing in this movie is indeed very risky,” Xinli CEO Cao Hua complained to Zhang Yimou and Zhang Weiping.

"Who would have thought we'd encounter something like this? It's absolutely outrageous." Zhang Weiping's expression was rather grim.

They are the main investors in this movie, but based on the current situation, the box office may not even break 100 million yuan, and the estimated loss is more than 20 million yuan.

"Luck is something you can't really predict," Zhang Yi said, scratching his head, clearly at a loss for what to do.

If it were other types of movies, he could at least offer some comments and generate buzz.

However, "22" occupies a moral high ground. The captain is still not sure if he can return home, and no public figure dares to provoke trouble at this time.

Although the industry has already criticized the movie and Xingmei.

"Is there any way to remedy this?" Cao Hua asked, frowning.

“We can only drag it out until the hype surrounding ‘22’ fades, and then we can launch a concentrated promotional campaign. I’ve booked the remaining screenings with Tan Hui, so he has to give me face,” Zhang Weiping said, frowning.

"I heard he didn't produce this movie?" Zhang Yi raised an eyebrow.

“This strange style is definitely not something he could come up with. It’s said to be that guy from Tianhuo.” Zhang Weiping rubbed his temples, looking somewhat annoyed.

He never expected that the dinner party would bring Tan Hui and Wang Yao together, and even form a combination that made everyone in the industry feel threatened.

Originally, people weren't too worried about the Skyfire Cinemas. After all, the film itself is what matters, and cinemas also need to make money. As long as the film is good enough, it won't be too affected by the cinemas.

Regardless of Xingmei or Tianhuo, in their eyes they can only be considered investment and distribution companies, with no core competitiveness in the film industry (directors/actors), but the popularity of "22" directly broke everyone's perception.

Luck certainly played a part, but putting aside the element of luck and making an objective judgment based on the film's marketing and distribution, even without the captain's incident, the box office would definitely not have been low given the scale of the marketing campaign.

But this movie was a low-budget film with no big stars, no famous director, and no quality. Yet it still managed to make a fortune at the box office by relying entirely on gimmicks, which is equivalent to breaking the conventional logic of the film industry.

In other words, as long as a suitable gimmick can be found to match the publicity and promotion, the rate of return can be guaranteed.

This is a classic example of using commercial means to disrupt the art market!

In the eyes of these seasoned veterans, this new model was heresy and had to be eliminated.

But the thought that Tianhuo now has plenty of money and manpower, and can even play by itself, completely out of their control, and even plans to spend billions to acquire one of the world's largest cinema chains, made Zhang Weiping very unhappy with this sense of powerlessness.

"Young people these days are truly remarkable," Zhang Yimou exclaimed.

“I’ve heard of him, his name is Wang Yao, right? He works in the internet industry,” Cao Hua said.

“Yes, I met him once. He’s pretty arrogant,” Zhang Weiping said, pursing his lips.

"Really? I see Yu Dong and he get along quite well. Isn't Huayi also going to invest in their company?" Cao Hua asked doubtfully.

“You just stole Lu Chuan’s girlfriend right in front of him, aren’t you arrogant?” Zhang Weiping sneered.

"There are rumors about that. I heard that Qin Lan even became a director." Cao Hua smiled.

"Speaking of which, do you know that Ni Ni is also an employee of their company?" Zhang Weiping turned to look at Zhang Yimou.

"Huh? I just heard about it." Zhang Yi was taken aback. He was very busy with four projects this year, and he didn't have time to manage the actors for "The Golden Hairpin" because they were all in special training.

“I was planning to sign her before filming started, but they told me she had already signed with Xinghuo before the new year. I was thinking, should we change her?” Zhang Weiping said.

After Huayi's successful IPO, he also thought about how the money from the IPO would be more abundant. So, it was because of the preparation for the IPO that New Pictures decided to start signing artists when they finalized the "Hawthorn" project last year. Little Yellow Duck and Dou Xiao were among the first batch of artists signed.

With such a large project as "The Golden Hairpin," Ni Ni, as the female lead, is definitely the biggest beneficiary. Last year, when Zhang Yi was selecting actors, he was busy with the company's financing. In addition, the project will not start until the end of the year, so Ni Ni's contract has not been in a hurry.

But to my surprise, I found that the duck I was about to eat had already been eaten by someone else.

Zhang Weiping already looked down on Wang Yao, and now that he learned that Ni Ni was a member of Xinghuo, he also had some reservations about her.

"They've been training for over half a year already, and now you're changing actors?" Zhang Yi frowned. He wasn't interested in the company going public, and he didn't care whether or not they signed a contract. He only cared about whether they could make a good film.

Ni Ni was one of the candidates he valued, because the fact that she would change roles without signing a contract made him somewhat unhappy.

“What can we do if we don’t replace them? Let someone else reap the rewards? This play is going to win a major award, such good resources should definitely be given to the company’s artists,” Zhang Weiping said matter-of-factly.

“The candidates I’ve shortlisted are all a bit lacking. If it’s possible to replace them, I’ll have to set aside time to select someone again,” Zhang said, frowning.

“That won’t do. You still have the ‘Impression Putuo’ performance to work on. By the time you finish it, it will be the end of the year. If you have to select and train again, won’t that delay filming for another year? You’re already a slowpoke when it comes to filming.” Zhang Weiping objected directly.

"Dawdling?" Zhang Yi was taken aback upon hearing this.

“I understand you have a passion for art, but we are going public after all. Look at Xiaopao, they release two movies a year, sometimes five in two years, and they do well at the box office and with good reviews. Even big directors only release one movie a year on average,” Zhang Weiping complained.

In fact, he had long been dissatisfied with Zhang Yimou's overly critical "artistic" attitude. In recent years, with the maturation of the commercial film market and the impact of imported films, he was green with envy seeing those films grossing hundreds of millions or even billions of yuan.

After all, he was sitting on a treasure trove of Zhang Yimou's money. Even Feng Xiaogang could rake in nearly a billion yuan in box office revenue every year, but because of Zhang Yimou's pretentious intellectualism, he not only didn't earn much each year, but sometimes he even had to make ends meet.

Although "A Simple Noodle Story" was heavily criticized last year, it was still profitable at the box office, which ignited Zhang Weiping's ambition to make money.

He knew that now was the best time to make money. Times had changed; it wasn't the era for art anymore. If he didn't make money now, who knew if he'd have another chance later? Especially since a new generation of directors were starting to make their mark.

Zhang Yimou is indeed very stable, but he doesn't make money. The two have talked about this issue several times, and although they always parted on bad terms, they never really had a serious argument. However, today, due to the potential box office success of "22" and "Tang Zhen" exceeding 7 million yuan, coupled with the pressure of losses from "Hawthorn", Zhang Weiping's mentality has become somewhat explosive.

"Stop, stop, stop! Are you saying I'm hindering your ability to make money?" Zhang Yi's face darkened.

"That's not what Wei Ping meant, is it?" Cao Hua quickly stepped in to mediate.

"No, that's exactly what I mean, Mouzi. You're the pillar of the company. You can't just think from the director's perspective. Look at how many companies have gone public this year. They've raised more money, and they can make more films."

Audiences are all about following the crowd. You may be famous, but if you don't produce any new works for too long, people will forget you. This year, at least 500 movies will be released in theaters, and there may be more next year. If you don't hurry, can you guarantee that you won't be replaced?" Zhang Weiping said, taking advantage of the fire.

“What’s the use of making a lot of films? As long as the works are good enough, the audience will not forget them. You’re overthinking it. As for making money, I didn’t stop you from investing in other people’s films, did I?” Zhang Yimou said in a deep voice.

“80% of the company’s funds are tied up in you. Don’t you think about how much money you’ve wasted over the years? You never consider the cost. For example, this time, ‘Under the Hawthorn’ could have been done for 20 million, but it ended up costing 70 million.” Zhang Weiping said unhappily.

"Stop! Why didn't you say anything when the budget was exceeded? Now that the box office isn't recovering, is it my fault?" Zhang Yimou was also somewhat annoyed.

"Hawthorn" is his masterpiece, and its current box office performance is due to unforeseen circumstances. It's his bad luck.

“I’ve told you, but you don’t care. You’re such a great director, all you think about is the visuals. Even if I told you, would you just stop filming?” Zhang Weiping sighed.

“Good works require money and time to polish. Look at Hollywood, which one didn’t have an investment of hundreds of millions and a year or two of polishing? You need to broaden your horizons.” Zhang Yimou breathed a sigh of relief.

"Director Zhang, we're in China, not Hollywood. And even if I gave you a budget of 1 billion, if you have the ability to make the box office worthwhile, I'd beg and plead for you to make money!" Zhang Weiping sneered.

"What are you saying? What kind of talk is that?!" Zhang Yimou was furious.

You can say he's indecisive or wasteful, but you can't say he's incompetent.

“Stop, I’m not going to argue with you. Let’s talk facts. ‘The Golden Hairpin’ must start filming by the end of the year and be released next year. I’ll bring in as much money as I can this time. Let’s see how it goes at the box office. If you win, I’ll listen to you; if I win, I’ll listen to me!” Zhang Weiping waved his hand and said.

“Fine, but the female lead can’t be changed.” Zhang Yimou got angry.

“No, we have to change it. If not, we’ll use Xiao Zhou,” Zhang Weiping said, frowning.

"You can't even tell her figure from front to back, how can she play this kind of role? Do you even have a brain?" Zhang Yi couldn't help but roll his eyes.

“Then find someone else, and you handle it yourself,” Zhang Weiping said in a deep voice.

"You replaced Ni Ni, aren't you afraid of offending Tianhuo?" Cao Hua couldn't help but remind him.

Don't you want more screenings?

"Tianhuo only accounts for 30%, not 50% and they can't control everything. Director Zhang's film is good enough, and they also need to make money." Zhang Weiping said with a forced smile.

"That's asking too much of you. Either use Ni Ni, or give me another six months," Zhang Yi said, frowning.

“No, or we can postpone ‘The Golden Hairpin’ and I’ll find you another film that makes money to shoot first, while we can find the female lead later,” Zhang Weiping compromised.

"In the end, it all comes down to money, doesn't it?" Zhang Yi suddenly laughed.

“That’s right. A company must be profitable for three consecutive years before it can go public, otherwise everything will be in vain. Or you can find the money yourself,” Zhang Weiping said coldly.

In recent years, apart from the widely criticized "A Simple Noodle Story," almost all of Zhang Yimou's films have suffered heavy losses. Now, "Hawthorn" is also losing money, and the budget for the film "Jinling" is as high as 6 million yuan. It is said to be a masterpiece that has been five years in the making, but in reality, Zhang Weiping feels that it is also a work to save face for his personal pursuit.

This investment is almost impossible to make a profit because the box office needs to exceed 12 billion. It is said that the main promotion and distribution will be carried out overseas to win awards, but losing money is a foregone conclusion.

Therefore, Zhang Weiping felt that apart from himself, no one would be foolish enough to risk such a sure-fire loss.

He asked himself honestly, and he was absolutely right to do everything he could.

"Okay, let me think about it." Zhang Yi looked Zhang Weiping up and down, seemingly finding his golden partner unusually unfamiliar today.

Cao Hua watched from the side and felt that an unpredictable rift might have formed between the two.

(End of this chapter)