Back to 17, My Brother is the Cult Leader

In 2001, Beijing experienced its heaviest snowfall of the winter.

Fang Yuan stood by the office window, watching the snow on the road below being crushed into gray mud by car wheels.

He held a copy of the box office daily report that had just been faxed over; the paper was still warm.

After three weeks in theaters, "Big Shot's Funeral" has followed a classic "high opening, low closing" box office trajectory.

It reached 1200 million in the first weekend, then plummeted to 400 million in the second week, and was less than 200 million in the third week.

Theaters have already started cutting screenings, reducing them from the initial 35% to 12%.

Managers of several major cinemas in Beijing argued with the distributors on the phone for several rounds. Their exact words were, "The occupancy rate is less than 20%, and even the prime-time screenings are not half full. If we continue to schedule screenings, we won't even be able to recoup our electricity costs."

The film's reputation was tarnished from the very first day of its release.

The media reviews were relatively mild, using phrases like "the comedic effect was not as expected" and "Feng's humor has hit a bottleneck," but the audience's evaluation was not so mild.

Several online movie forums were in an uproar. One post was shared thousands of times and was titled "I spent tens of dollars to watch a farce in a mental hospital."

Fang Yuan had read that post, which pointed out the pacing issues in the second half of "Big Shot's Funeral" one by one, almost exactly what he had said to Hao Wei on the terrace—the fake funeral setting couldn't last two hours, the social satire in the middle was too long, and the comedic rhythm was completely broken.

Even more deadly is piracy.

Less than a week after its release, pirated DVDs flooded Zhongguancun and computer malls across the country, selling for five yuan each with ridiculously clear picture quality.

The production company sent people to crack down on fakes, but after shutting down one operation, three more would pop up the next day. They couldn't stop them at all.

After entering the Spring Festival film season, the daily national box office of "Big Shot's Funeral" dropped to less than 50 yuan, which basically marked its death.

The final box office figure was 4300 million.

Fang Yuan placed the daily box office report on the table and picked up the calculator, pressing a few buttons.

China Film Group announced an investment of 5000 million yuan. Even if there is some exaggeration, the actual investment will not be less than that amount.

Of the total, non-mainland actors received over 10 million yuan in salaries, distribution costs exceeded 10 million yuan, and the actual production cost was less than 30 million yuan. Based on the revenue-sharing ratio between theaters and the production company, the 43 million yuan box office revenue meant the production company wouldn't even recoup its distribution and screenwriting fees. The 50 million yuan investment was essentially thrown away without a trace.

He put down the calculator and suddenly laughed.

Feng Xiaogang invested 400 million yuan in this film. It was in cash, taken from his own pocket.

People in the industry know that Feng Xiaogang has a habit of co-investing in scripts he particularly likes.

Because of Fang Yuan's influence, he only received the director's fee for the previous two films; the money the films earned had nothing to do with him.

When "Big Shot's Funeral" was in preparation, he was full of confidence and directly invested 50 yuan and borrowed 350 million yuan from Huayi Brothers.

Now, not a single penny of that 500,000 yuan can be recovered, and I'm burdened with debt.

A few days later, Fang Yuan heard the follow-up from a mutual acquaintance—

Huayi Brothers offered him a deal: they wouldn't pressure him to pay the debt, but the director's fee for his next film would be deducted from the total amount owed, and the debt would be settled once it was paid off.

Fang Yuan was silent for a while when he heard the number.

In 2001, 350 million yuan was enough to buy three or four houses within the Second Ring Road of Beijing.

Feng Xiaogang has made a lot of money making movies over the years, but most of it is tied up in houses and collectibles, and he can't easily withdraw cash.

With Huayi Brothers taking such a cut, he will be working for Huayi Brothers for free for at least the next two years.

Fang Yuan felt a little embarrassed. All that person had done was make a few sarcastic remarks in the newspaper, but in the end, he had made that person work for him for two years, and then he had dug a small pit for that person to fall into, and now he had to continue working for free for several more years.

Meanwhile, the marketing and distribution machine for "Crazy Stone" is running at high speed.

Shanghai Film Group's distribution team has put in a lot of effort this time.

President Zhu personally approved the decision to secure screenings for "Crazy Stone" in the best cinemas during the Spring Festival season.

Fangyuan subsequently added 200 million yuan to its publicity and marketing budget, but this was just standard practice.

What truly made this battle memorable for those in the industry was another thing Fang Yuan did.

He used two channels.

The first one is QQ.

Fang Yuan had his company create dozens of different versions of movie clips, each no more than thirty seconds long, all featuring the most captivating scenes from the film. These clips were then pushed directly to millions of active users via QQ's push notification feature.

At that time, QQ's user base had just surpassed 100 million, and almost no commercial companies had used the push notification function. Fang Yuan was among the first to try it. Given the big boss's influence, Tencent's PR department certainly went all out to make this a success.

The second one is under the banyan tree.

At the time, Rongshuxia was the largest literary community in the country, with millions of daily active users and extremely high user stickiness.

Fang Yuan had Li Xinyu contact the Rongshuxia operations team and discuss a package deal.

We put up a banner for "Crazy Stone" on the homepage, and at the same time, we launched a contest with prizes in conjunction with the film and television section of the site. The prizes were movie tickets and autographed posters from the main cast.

The users of QQ and Rongshuxia highly overlap with the target audience of "Crazy Stone"—they are all young people who like new things and have a high level of understanding and acceptance of humor.

No one in the industry has ever done this before.

Back then, the mainstream methods of film promotion were newspaper press releases, television set visits, and billboards advertising films.

Internet promotion is considered a dispensable add-on, and no production company is willing to spend real money on it.

Fang Yuan didn't think so. He had seen the prototype of internet marketing in Hollywood and knew that once its dissemination efficiency took off, traditional channels simply couldn't keep up.

As it turned out, he really made the right bet.

On the day the QQ push notification was sent out, the company's customer service department was bombarded with calls.

Young people across the country saw the clips via QQ and called to ask, "When will this movie be released?" and "Can we watch it here?"

Less than three days after the homepage of Rongshuxia was marked as "GG" (Gone with the bullet), the essay section received more than a thousand submissions.

On the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, "Crazy Stone" was officially released.

When the box office figures for the first day came out, Fang Yuan was having a boxed lunch with Ning Hao at the company.

Xiaomei peeked halfway in from outside the door, clutching a sheet of printing paper in her hand.

"Mr. Fang, the data for the first day is in."

"How many?"

340.

Ning Hao dropped his chopsticks, his gaze blank. Fang Yuan placed the lunchbox on the table, took the paper, and glanced at it.

340 million, the first day nationwide.

A film with an investment of 600 million yuan, no big-name stars, a director who was making his first feature film, and a film entirely in Chongqing dialect, grossed 340 million yuan on its opening day.

Fang Yuan smiled and said to Ning Hao, "This is nothing, it will go up again tomorrow."

He was right.

The second day, 410 million. The third day, 550 million.

The box office grossed over 1700 million in its opening weekend.

By the second week, the percentage of screenings had increased from the initial 18% to 35%.

Theater managers started calling to request additional screenings, and several theaters that had previously only been given a small screen vacated their largest screens.

The word-of-mouth spread incredibly quickly.