The director starts by learning from the abilities of renowned directors.

Chapter 152 is destined to shock the film and television industry.

Shanghai, Guevara Conference Room.

CEO Liu Yong and co-CEO Zhang Xuejing looked serious as a young employee introduced the information that had just been compiled.

"Based on our on-site visits, we can basically conclude that the scale of Maoyan Movies' integration with the Shanghai cinema ticketing system is approaching ours—" The young employee paused, then added with a serious expression, "and may even have surpassed ours."

Liu Yong and Zhang Xuejing exchanged a glance. Neither of them expected that at the company's most glorious moment, Maoyan Movies would suddenly emerge.

Just recently, CDH Investments approached Guevara and transferred one-third of the investment amount—1000 million yuan—to Guevara's account before the contract was even signed.

Earlier, Shanda's Chen Tianqiao also proactively approached Gewara. After simply experiencing Gewara's online seat selection system, he invested 200 million yuan in venture capital.

The online ticketing business has potential. Online seat selection tickets are more expensive than Meituan's group-buying tickets, but they create value for users. Users can select seats without having to queue at the cinema, and users are willing to pay for this feature. The business logic of online seat selection is viable. It seems that Gewara has already taken the lead in the times and has a bright future. However, a company called Maoyan Movies suddenly emerged.

It took Gewara more than half a year to integrate with the ticketing systems of 60 cinemas, while Maoyan Movies only took less than a month. By the time Gewara noticed it, Maoyan Movies had already reached or even surpassed Gewara's scale in Shanghai.

"Shanghai may not be the city where Maoyan Movies has developed the fastest. Colleagues who went to Beijing for research said that the number of cinemas it has signed contracts with in Beijing may be close to 80. It is also expanding rapidly in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Preliminary assessment suggests that the number of cinemas it has signed contracts with nationwide may have exceeded 300."

"Do they have any measures in place to deal with multiple sales of the same ticket?" Co-CEO Zhang Xuejing asked.

Selling a single ticket to multiple customers used to be a major pain point for Guevara, and despite trying many methods, it has not been completely resolved to this day.

"Basically, it's like we're learning as we go, setting up pre-occupied lock slots and short validity periods. There are also some innovations, such as adding multiple verifications for caching and databases, as well as a callback update mechanism."

Liu Yong took out his iPhone to try out the competitor's app and asked, "How's their user acquisition going?"

""

The young employee said, "Maoyan Movies has set up ground promotion teams in first-tier cities across the country, as well as in cities surrounding Beijing such as Tianjin and Langfang. They claim that the main user group is college students. The specific user scale is still unknown, but our people went to the university campuses in Shanghai to conduct research and found that their penetration rate is already very high."

Currently, the Maoyan Movies app mainly features fresh movie information. It has started gray-scale testing of ticket sales in first-tier cities and the surrounding areas of Beijing. More specific details are unknown, but the announcement on the app made Liu Yong feel extremely uneasy.

The announcement stated that on September 23, the film "Sewing Machine Band," produced by Shenqi Film & Media Company, will begin its preview screenings, and tickets for the preview screenings will be exclusively sold on the Maoyan Movies APP and website.

Liu Yong personally called cinemas in Shanghai to inquire about the situation and concluded that Maoyan Movies' so-called exclusive sales were truly exclusive sales. Without Maoyan's approval, even cinemas could not sell tickets offline. Only if Maoyan Movies still failed to sell all the seats two days before the movie screening would cinemas be allowed to sell tickets offline.

Upon hearing the explanation from her friend at the cinema, Liu Yong felt as if she had fallen into an ice cave.

"City of Rock" is not scary; what's scary are "Breakup Buddies" and "The Great Wall" that followed.

The screenwriter of "Breakup Buddies" is Shen Qing, and the director is Ning Hao. Shen Qing is also the screenwriter, director, and lead actor of "The Great Wall".

It is foreseeable that the preview tickets for "Breakup Buddies" and "The Great Wall" will only be sold on the Maoyan Movies platform—Maoyan Movies was founded by Shen Qing, so what can Gewara use to compete with Maoyan Movies?

Liu Yong knows all too well the power of Shen Qing's films.

In 2010, tickets for Cameron's "Avatar" and Shen Qing's "Gravity" were being resold for as much as one or two thousand yuan each. At that time, Liu Yong led his employees to buy tickets at the original price and then sell them to the audience at the original price. He personally went to the cinema entrance to distribute tickets to the audience. Because he was worried that the crowd would rush in and cause a stampede, he had to change the ticket distribution location several times.

Guevara built its reputation by acting as a free scalper for the audience. The advantages of online ticketing and the pain points of on-site ticket distribution led Liu Yong to launch online seat selection services and terminal ticket machines, thus formally forming a complete business loop.

As a result, Shen Qing has now plunged headlong into this commercially viable path with films such as "City of Rock," "Breakup Buddies," and "The Great Wall."

The scene of audiences queuing overnight when "Gravity" was released, and the scalped tickets that were being sold for as much as 2000 yuan each, are still fresh in Liu Yong's memory. It is not hard to imagine what the scene would be like if the preview tickets for "The Great Wall" could only be bought on the Maoyan movie platform.

Combined with the news last month that "Taken 3" grossed nearly 2 million yuan in just 5 days of preview screenings, Liu Yong felt a chill run down his spine.

The preview screenings of "Hurricane 3" are so large that they are almost as big as the theatrical release. If "The Great Wall" also has such a large-scale preview screening, theaters that do not connect to Maoyan Movies will not be able to screen it. The effect of the large-scale preview screening is close to the theatrical release. It means that whoever does not connect to the Maoyan platform will not be able to release "The Great Wall"?!

The rapid expansion of cinemas has also led to a sharp decline in their profits, with many cinemas losing money. Releasing blockbusters is a rare opportunity for cinemas to recoup their losses. Can they survive without showing "The Great Wall"? Can they survive without participating in the large-scale preview screenings of "The Great Wall"?

Most cinemas are resistant to online ticketing, but Maoyan Movies has exclusive access to blockbuster movies, so cinemas are destined to compromise no matter how unwilling they are.

"Is there any news about Maoyan Movies accepting financing?" Co-CEO Zhang Xuejing asked.

Liu Yong shook his head and said, "I haven't heard of it, and it doesn't seem necessary. I saw a news article about 'Hurricane 3' a while ago."

"What news?"

"The movie 'Hurricane 3' may have earned Magic Pictures nearly 15 billion yuan, which is almost 5 million yuan plus 1.45 million US dollars."

"I saw it, but it will probably take a long time for all the money to be deposited into my account. The DVD and TV rights are just predictions, and even Shen Qing himself probably doesn't know how much he will actually receive for the time being."

"Over the years, Shen Qing must have earned close to 40 billion, right? Our grand financing round only raised 3000..."

Shen Qing has plenty of money, and judging from his past behavior, he probably won't accept venture capital funding.

Throughout the entire Chinese film and television industry, everyone knows that Shen Qing's Magical Film and Television Media has long been qualified for listing. Many people predict that once it goes public, its market value will far exceed that of Huayi Brothers, but Shen Qing simply refuses to list it.

If this is the case with Magic Movies, then it's probably the same with Maoyan Movies.

The atmosphere in the conference room became somewhat oppressive. It was absurd that Maoyan Movies, without seeking funding, could simply overwhelm Che Guevara with money.

Looking at the demoralized team in the conference room, Liu Yong suddenly said confidently, "It's a good thing that Maoyan Movies isn't seeking funding. Maoyan's entry further proves that our business is correct and has a future. If it has a future, capital will be even more eager to invest. If Maoyan doesn't accept funding, then where will the funds that are optimistic about this model go?"

"We!" one of the employees said.

"You guessed it!" Liu Yong laughed. "The film industry is a bit special. It's not very profitable in itself, but people who make a lot of money all want to invest in movies. It's an industry where the volume of their talk far exceeds their output value. Capital and the government won't allow a single ticketing platform to dominate the market. Ideally, there should be three major players, or at the very least, two giants. Even if Maoyan has already secured one of the oligopolistic positions, who will be the second one?"

"Us!" the employees said together this time.

Liu Yong laughed and said, "You got it right. So, in order to successfully become one of the two heroes in the future, everyone needs to cheer up."

New York, on the set of "Lucy".

当地时间9月13日上午，正式开拍前，沈青发了一条微博：「9月16日0时起，猫眼电影APP及网页独家开售大鹏导演电影《缝纫机乐队》点映票，点映时间为9月23日至9月30

day. "

Subsequently, the Maoyan Movies APP's movie information section announced Shen Qing's schedule: On September 23, she will go to the Oriental Cinema in Oriental Plaza, Langfang City to attend the Langfang premiere of "Sewing Machine Band", and on September 24, she will attend the Beijing premiere of "Sewing Machine Band".

The premiere venues were all newly opened cinemas.

At this time, Shen Qing's Weibo followers had exceeded ten million, and the followers were quite active. Then, when the fans opened Weibo that day, they saw that Shen Qing was going to Langfang to attend a movie premiere on September 23? If they went to the Langfang Oriental Cinema that day to watch the movie, they would have the opportunity to interact with their idol after the screening? And they could even use the Maoyan Movies app to select seats and buy tickets online?

Many movie fans tried it out and found it to be very convenient. With this, they no longer need to queue at the cinema early in the morning, saving a lot of trouble. It's really quite useful.

-

Exclusive movie tickets for "City of Rock" will go on sale on September 16th; you might want to give it a try.

Major banks have all integrated with it, and even Alipay has integrated it, so payments are fine and not too troublesome.

On the morning of September 16, in a classroom at a vocational school in Langfang.

Xiao Zhang carefully studied the ticket purchase process on his phone. It was his first time using it, and he was a little unaccustomed to it. It took him a long time to figure out how to buy tickets. Online seat selection was a novel experience. He selected the showtime and looked at the many seats on the phone screen, some available and some not. He studied them for a long time before finally selecting a seat, clicking "confirm," and then following the instructions to pay.

At the same time, netizens on the Chinese internet were discussing the matter extensively.

"Thanks to Shen Qing, I learned that online seat selection exists. It's so convenient."

"Actually, Gewara launched this feature last year, but the scope was very small. Only a few dozen cinemas in Shanghai could select seats online. I didn't expect Maoyan Movies to develop so quickly. All the first-tier cities have it all at once."

"Shen Qing makes so much money making movies. Didn't some media outlets analyze recently that he could earn about 15 billion yuan from just one movie, 'Hurricane 3'? With that much money, he can easily promote his app."

"Maoyan Movies' ground promotion team is indeed quite large."

"Many of the cinemas that partner with Maoyan Movies are new cinemas."

"The new cinema has a better environment."

"It's much more expensive than Meituan's group-buying tickets."

"It's normal for it to be expensive. Most of Meituan's promotional tickets are expensive, and Maoyan's online seat selection is too costly. For every ticket sold, they have to pay 1 yuan to the cinema's ticketing system. In addition, there are bank handling fees, ticket machine maintenance fees, cinema service fees, etc. Maoyan Movies only gets less than 1 yuan in service fees for each ticket sold."

"There's a service fee? And the ticket price is about the same as offline?!"

"It must be that the platform offers discounts on tickets. I saw the explanation on the Maoyan Movies app, which states that there is a service fee."

""

"That's suitable too."

Langfang, Oriental Plaza, Oriental Cinema.

Boss Zhang Hong stood in the empty ticket hall, his mind filled with anxiety.

He has staked all his savings on investing in this cinema and is now heavily in debt; he has no other choice but to go all in.

With 900 new cinemas opening every year, business is tough!

The official opening on September 23rd should be no problem. The premiere of "Sewing Machine Band" was held in Langfang, right here in his Oriental Cinema. He never dreamed he could encounter such a good thing.

"It should be fine. Director Shen Qing will be there in person, so there's definitely no problem with the turnout that day! Director Shen has been such a great help; from now on, we'll just follow his lead!"

Actually, he didn't have high hopes for "City of Rock" at first. He went to Maoyan Movies with the intention of finding a venue for the sequel, "The Great Wall". Unexpectedly, a premiere venue fell from the sky.

Maoyan Movies has been integrated into the cinema's Flamingo system, and the cinema can view the ticket sales information on the platform in real time. Zhang Hong silently walked to the computer.

September 17th, morning, Maoyan Movies conference room.

The company's dozen or so key employees were chatting and laughing together until Chen Zhixi entered, at which point they all quieted down.

Chen Zhixi sat down in the main seat, and before she could even speak, the group of skeletons had already started clapping, and the applause lasted for a long time.

Chen Zhixi was initially taken aback, but after realizing what was happening, she smiled and clapped along with everyone.

"Maoyan Movies' initial success is inseparable from the joint efforts of everyone. The results achieved by Maoyan Movies yesterday demonstrate that our model is viable, and going public is no longer a pipe dream. The company's prospects are beginning to emerge. The company's future development depends on the continued hard work of all colleagues. I wish us even greater success soon."

The audience erupted in prolonged applause once again.

Maoyan Movies has reserved a talent option pool, and executives will receive generous rewards once the company successfully goes public.

Just yesterday, on the first day that Maoyan Movies exclusively sold tickets for the preview screenings of "City of Rock," Maoyan sold over 1.5 tickets at just one cinema, Langfang Oriental Cinema.

More than 4000 tickets were sold for the preview screening on September 23 alone.

In just one day, they sold over 1.5 movie tickets and generated over 40 yuan in sales for a newly opened cinema in Langfang, a somewhat remote location. And this was just one cinema.

How many cinemas are there nationwide? How many cinemas' ticketing systems has Maoyan Movies already integrated with? How many more cinemas will it integrate with in the future? There are 3,000 cinemas nationwide. If each one can sell this many tickets, how much will all 3,000 cinemas combined sell? At this point, Maoyan Movies is destined to shake up the entire industry.