Chapter 459 459. Give and Take
Wang Zhonglei came to Nie Wei's office and put a recent statistical report on Nie Wei's desk, then sat opposite Nie Wei with an angry face.
"Originally, the screening rate was 30%, but now there are 157 less screens, only about 26% left." Wang Zhonglei's voice was filled with suppressed but difficult to conceal anger.
You have to know that this is not after 2015, when the number of screens in the country had already exceeded 20,000, and 157 screens were nothing in front of such big data, but this was in early 2006, and the total number of screens in the country was only over 4,000. These 157 screens are definitely a very large number.
"Except for Media Asia Cinemas, New Art Cinemas and Art Pearl Cinemas, what about the other cinemas?" Nie Wei asked as he flipped through the report.
When talking about other cinema chains, Wang Zhonglei's face relaxed a little and replied: "The other cinema chains have maintained a very good cooperative attitude."
This news is still comforting for Nie Wei. The starting point of 26% is not bad. As long as the movie is good, Nie Wei believes that the screening rate can still be recovered.
It's just that he was tricked like this, and Nie Wei was really unhappy.
According to the investigation report, among the 157 screens lost by "Back to 20", 150 were allocated to a movie that is about to be released, and the production company behind this movie is officially a film company invested by Mr. Li. It is clear at a glance that it is still the same group of people who did this.
The last time the review did not block his movie, this time it is playing tricks in the cinema chain again. Even if Nie Wei is a clay Buddha, he will be really angry.
"Brother Zhonglei, please be more careful in the next few days to stabilize the current theater chains. I am also preparing. Since the other party has given us such a big gift, I have to give them one in return."
"What big gift?" Hearing Nie Wei's words, Wang Zhonglei temporarily put down his anger and asked curiously. Ten minutes later, Wang Zhonglei came out of Nie Wei's office again. His face had returned to normal, which made all the employees very curious. What did Nie Wei say to Wang Zhonglei to coax the general manager whose face was as dark as ink just now.
After Wang Zhonglei left Nie Wei's office, Nie Wei immediately started his revenge.
At this moment, in a film company far away in the south, a general manager named Song was smiling and asking for credit with the agent from Hong Kong sitting opposite him.
"Mr. Liu, we have offended Huayi badly this time. Four percentage points and 157 screens are equivalent to cutting off a piece of flesh from the other party. I guess we have become a thorn in Huayi's eyes and a thorn in its flesh." Manager Song said helplessly, but his tone was very relaxed, and even a little teasing. Obviously, he did not take offending Huayi seriously this time.
And the agent Liu from Gangdu sitting opposite also listened to Manager Song's words with a smile on his face, and then said with admiration: "Manager Song, your performance this time is very good. I will definitely say a few good words for you in front of the young master when I return to Gangdu."
"No, no, it's mainly your handwriting, Mr. Liu. I'm just a runner and a talker. Without your strategy, this matter can't be done at all." Manager Song complimented, but he was very disdainful in his heart.
This Liu spent millions to accomplish this. In the eyes of Manager Song, he is simply a synonym for a idiot. After all, these millions of dollars were embezzled by Liu from various expenses of the film. Now he can obviously use it on the film, but he insisted on spending money to trip up others. Although he has won more screen time, compared with the effort, this achievement can't make up for the cost.
But who can let him have power? Although he is the general manager of the company, the person in front of him is actually the general manager. The master behind him has more than 60% of the shares of this company. This is also where Manager Song is really helpless. His career is just a toy for revenge in the eyes of others. It is so naive. Manager Song is also worried about his future. He only hopes that this time he can let the person behind him get his revenge completely and stop being so naive in the future.
What General Manager Song didn't expect was that not long ago, Nie Wei and he made the same evaluation. If he knew Nie Wei's mood, perhaps this general manager would really find a feeling called "soulmate".
When Liu returned to his office, he could no longer conceal the excitement on his face. He did all this to please the person behind him. More than ten years of work experience told him that if he wanted to climb up, work performance was secondary, and pleasing the master was more important.
He didn't realize that he had taken a detour at all, and was still secretly happy about this move. When Nie Wei's film performance declined, he could legitimately report the good news to his master behind him. When the master was happy, his chances of moving up to the next level would be quite high.
General Manager Song's ability is still not small. After all, he has been in this industry for more than 20 years. Liu embezzled such a large sum of money. Under the manipulation of General Manager Song, no one noticed the reduction in publicity and other expenses. This has to say that the general manager's industry experience is really rich, and he spends little money to do big things. He is a talent.
Of course, this is also closely related to the strong lineup of films invested by General Manager Song's company.
The director is Liu Zhenwei, who has filmed countless classic comedies. He is also the screenwriter of this film. The cast includes Xie Tingfeng, Cai Zhuoyan, Chen Bolin and Liu Jialing. What gives General Manager Song more room to play is that this film is also known as the orthodox sequel to "A Chinese Odyssey" which once had a great reputation in the mainland.
This makes countless audiences look forward to it. After all, the two "A Chinese Odyssey" series of Master Xing are really classics. Countless popular lines are still talked about, even after more than ten years, the jokes are not outdated, and the actors' superb acting skills, etc.
For so many years, everyone has been looking forward to the sequel of "A Chinese Odyssey" for many times, and now it has finally arrived. This makes this movie surpass Nie Wei's "20 Again" on the new film expectation list for a while. Perhaps this is why Director Liu dared to compete with Nie Wei's new film at the same time, and Manager Song was willing to cooperate, because in their hearts, their own movies will not lose.
Since spending a lot of money to get more screenings, the sequel to "A Chinese Odyssey", called "A Chinese Odyssey: The Monkey King", has a 27% screening rate, just one percentage point lower than "20 Again". Liu has carefully recorded this kind of thing, and it can be used to take credit in the future.
There are still three days before the release of "A Chinese Odyssey: The Monkey King", and major cinemas have also started pre-selling movie tickets.
The title of the orthodox sequel to "A Chinese Odyssey" is not false. The first day of pre-sale exceeded 5 million. At this rate, this movie is expected to get tens of millions of pre-sale data before the release, and the enthusiasm of the audience has completely inflated Liu.
On the same day, he invited a lot of media to celebrate the success with great fanfare. While boasting about the first day's pre-sale box office data of 5 million, he also wished "A Chinese Odyssey: The Monkey King" a box office of over 100 million.
He was so arrogant, on the one hand, for his own future credit, and on the other hand, to disgust Nie Wei. At the celebration banquet, he mentioned more than once that their movie was the most screened movie among the next few movies to be released, which was obviously aimed at Nie Wei.
In addition, he did this to promote the movie. He was a little smart. With such a big fanfare, the media invited would more or less write a news story for them, which would undoubtedly attract a lot of public attention and play a good role in promoting the movie.
However, just when they were looking forward to the media's efforts the next day and then pushing their own movie, an article targeting "A Chinese Odyssey" suddenly appeared on the Internet.
"Without Stephen Chow, will "A Chinese Odyssey" really be "A Chinese Odyssey"? 》
The title of the article is attractive enough. In the eyes of mainland audiences, A Chinese Odyssey and Stephen Chow coexist and are almost equal. In the previous publicity of "A Chinese Odyssey", it has always regarded itself as the orthodox sequel of "A Chinese Odyssey", but now that Stephen Chow has suddenly been mentioned, it has really caused a lot of heated discussion among netizens.
Some people think that as long as the story is exciting, it will be fine, but some people think that "A Chinese Odyssey" is a nonsensical comedy movie with Zhou Xingchi's personal characteristics, and without Stephen Chow, there will be no orthodox nonsensical style. Even if you find a big-name actor, it is impossible to really perform the flavor of "A Chinese Odyssey".
When Liu and Manager Song read this article, Liu was so angry that he smashed the cup on the spot.
"Who is this guy? Is he just going against me!!!" Manager Liu roared angrily. He had a reason to be angry. The content of the other party's article was targeting "A Chinese Odyssey" and directly pointed to the core point of "A Chinese Odyssey"'s promotion. The most important thing was that there were countless people discussing it below.
Manager Liu even found that there was a voting system for this topic, which was aimed at whether the movie "A Chinese Odyssey" was an authentic sequel. There were only two options, yes or no, and what made him angry was that the two options were almost the same.
"Are these people blind? The Great Talk was originally the work of Liu Zhenwei. Now he is both the director and the screenwriter. The idea is also written according to the idea of the Great Talk. This is an orthodox sequel. What is there to question?" Manager Song was also depressed and swore. Such a thing happened before the release, which was really depressing.
But what made him feel faintly scared in his heart was that this matter always made him feel that it was not that simple.
The person who published the article appeared to be just a passerby, claiming to be a fan of Zhou Xingchi. The tone of the article seemed to be just to maintain the comedy status of Xingye, but what puzzled him was how an article written by such an ordinary person could be on the hot search list of blogs overnight and be seen by hundreds of millions of netizens.
Manager Song felt that there must be someone behind this, and the most likely person was Nie Wei.
After all, the blog belonged to Nie Wei, and this article was the first to become popular on the blog, so it was no wonder that Manager Song was so suspicious.
"This is probably Nie Wei's doing, but it's okay, it's just an article, it won't cause much trouble." Manager Song told his guess to Liu, the person in charge, and did not forget to comfort him.
Liu actually thought of Nie Wei, and that was the reason why he was angry. However, as Manager Song said, it was just an article, and it would only attract attention for one day, and it might even create momentum for "A Chinese Odyssey". In Liu's opinion, Nie Wei probably did this out of unwillingness, and it was not worth mentioning.
However, the pre-sale data of the box office on the second day really slapped Liu in the face. Although he knew that it would decline, the decline of two million at a time still made Liu depressed all morning.
But he didn't know that the article yesterday was just an appetizer prepared by Nie Wei for him, and the real feast was still to come.
Now the article is still hanging high in the top ten of the hot search list. As long as users enter the blog, they can see it. Under this article, there are more than 100,000 comments, all of which are discussing whether this movie can maintain the level of "A Chinese Odyssey".
There are both positive and negative sides. When one side is likely to suppress the other, the water army will be dispatched to balance the two sides of the discussion again.
The greater the controversy, the deeper the impression it leaves on the audience, and the easier it will be for Nie Wei to accomplish his subsequent plans.
Soon, the box office of "Back to 20" also began pre-sale, and this was also the last day of pre-sale for "A Chinese Odyssey". Tomorrow, the movie will be released.
"The pre-sale results for the third day are out, 5.1 million, which is even more than the first day. We should thank Nie Wei a lot. If it weren't for that article, we would not be able to break 10 million with the pre-sale results." After getting the pre-sale box office data for the third day, Manager Song showed a happy face, and the original worries in his heart were all gone.
"He is shooting himself in the foot. I thought he was such a smart person, but he actually came up with such a stupid trick. It's a pity that you still regard him as an opponent." Manager Liu was so proud at this moment that his nose was up in the air, and he often spoke disdainfully when evaluating Nie Wei.
But he completely forgot that when the pre-sale box office data came out the next day, he was so scared that he couldn't sleep for half the night. As a result, he finally fell asleep and had a nightmare, which scared himself half to death.
"By the way, the first day box office pre-sale data of 20 Again should be out, Manager Song, ask someone." Manager Liu suddenly thought that this was also the first day of pre-sale for Nie Wei's movie, so he was a little curious and asked Manager Song to ask.
Manager Song quickly asked someone to inquire about the news. In less than ten minutes, he got the news. Manager Song answered the phone and smiled at first, but in a few seconds, he suddenly widened his eyes, which made Manager Liu, who was watching from the side, subconsciously feel a little uneasy.
Thanks to the vast sheep, the son-in-law, and the generous rewards of 0773 book friends.