Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 494 Encirclement and Suppression
By New Year's Day 2011, all the movies scheduled to be released during the Lunar New Year holiday have already been released in theaters for large-scale screenings.

Just as everyone expected, the movies with the best box office performance were the works of the four major directors who had attracted much attention before their release.

The most outstanding one is undoubtedly Liu Zhou's sci-fi blockbuster "Interstellar". After one month of release, the box office in the mainland has exceeded 11.32 billion, reaching billion, becoming the first domestic film to break the billion box office in the country.

At the same time, the film's overseas box office is also outstanding. So far, including North America, the overseas box office has exceeded 1.07 million US dollars, reaching million.

Now everyone understands the ambitions of Golden Harvest and China Film Group, and they hope that "Interstellar" can break the box office record of "Avatar".

However, the single-day box office of "Interstellar" is less than 1.9 million yuan, and it will get lower and lower. If it wants to break the record of "Avatar", it must get another million yuan in box office.

Some people think that Golden Harvest and China Film Group must have a backup plan that should help "Interstellar" break the record, while some people think it is extremely difficult and should be impossible.

The two parties holding different opinions did not argue with each other, but were just waiting to see what would happen.

After "Interstellar" came "Let the Bullets Fly", which came later than the others and grossed 2.9 million yuan in its first seven days, setting a new first-week box office record and surpassing "If You Are the One 2" which was released six days earlier.

Not only did it have a high box office, it also received great reviews, and the outside world was very optimistic about "Let the Bullets Fly".

Next is Feng Kuzi's "If You Are the One 2". As the sequel to Feng's representative comedy, quite a number of people are looking forward to this movie.

The movie grossed 1.6 million yuan in the first six days of its release, proving Feng Kuzi's appeal as one of the four great directors.

However, the quality of this movie is indeed not as good as its sequel, and it was criticized by many viewers and media because of too many advertisements, and it was also squeezed out by "Interstellar" and "Let the Bullets Fly".

This caused the second week box office of If You Are the One 2 to be cut in half, earning only 2.66 million in seven days, and a total of million in days.

This result is actually very good. If the movie’s final box office exceeds 400 million, there is still a little hope.

However, this result is not as good as that of "Interstellar" and "Let the Bullets Fly". Needless to say, the former has more box office than the latter in one week.

The last one is "The Orphan of Zhao" by Chen Shishi, who is also one of the four major directors in mainland China.

Before the movies were released, the works of the four great directors were all highly anticipated, but after their release, Chen Shiren's "The Orphan of Zhao" became somewhat mediocre.

The other three movies are all reaping huge box office revenues, but "The Orphan of Zhao" has not yet broken the 100 million yuan box office mark after 16 days of release.

"The Orphan of Zhao" was released on December 15th, and earned nearly 13 million yuan on the first day, and the word of mouth was not very good.

The film's producer, Shanghai Film Group, director Chen Shishi, and lead actor Ge You also promoted the film very hard, but to no avail.

It would be fine if it were any other time, but now it is the highly competitive Lunar New Year season. With the release of If You Are the One 2 and Let the Bullets Fly, as well as the aftereffects of Interstellar, the box office of The Orphan of Zhao has been severely squeezed.

Later, perhaps poet Chen and Shanghai Film Group realized that the situation was hopeless, so they gave up and stopped investing resources in publicity.

So far, after sixteen days of release, this movie, which was highly anticipated by poet Chen before its release, has only earned a total of 63 million in box office revenue.

Now the daily box office is only one or two million, so it should be very difficult for the final box office to exceed 100 million.

It is precisely because the box office of this movie is so different from the works of the other three directors that the always high-profile poet Chen has disappeared.

Apart from some gossip tabloids and some self-media who would drag out poet Chen and torture him, some large mainstream media also gave him face and only reported on the other three big directors without mentioning him.

But despite this, we are not blind. Whether it is the audience or the industry, the filter of the great director Chen Shishi has become increasingly thin.

At this time, some people have begun to lead the trend online, saying that "Farewell My Concubine", the highest-rated domestic film, was not directed by him.

In fact, some people said something like this after The Promise, but at least it didn’t gain traction. Later, Mei Lanfang restored some of his reputation.

But now, "The Orphan of Zhao" has shattered his hard-earned reputation again, and made everyone see more clearly the gap between him and other great directors.

Especially this time, four great directors were competing on the same stage, but in the end, people felt that Chen Shishi was not at the same level as the other three directors.

So if someone sets this pace again this time, it will be more marketable.

The rumor that "Farewell My Concubine" was not directed by Chen Shishi but was directed by his father was once rampant on the Internet.

Poet Chen, who was already filled with resentment over the box office failure of "The Orphan of Zhao", became even more furious when he saw these rumors on the Internet.

According to his previous temper, he would never tolerate anyone who spread rumors and would definitely pursue them to the end.

But now is the time for him to stay out of the limelight for a while. If he continues to be as high-profile as he was after “The Promise”, he will definitely be ridiculed by the public, which will make him look even more narrow-minded.

After all, his influence at this time has dissipated a lot compared to after "The Promise".

So poet Chen's face turned red with anger, but under the persuasion of his wife, he did not do anything and remained silent.

However, Liu Zhou, Jiang Wen and Feng Kuzi didn't care at all about how poet Chen felt. They only cared about the box office performance of their movies in the new year, and they no longer considered "The Orphan of Zhao" as a rival.

On New Year's Day, the entire film market experienced a certain rebound.

"Let the Bullets Fly" continued to maintain its strong momentum thanks to its overwhelming reputation, raking in 32 million at the box office and once again becoming the box office champion of the day.

The box office of If You Are the One 2 also broke 10 million on New Year's Day, reaching 14 million, which is also a very good result.

Although the box office of "Interstellar" has recovered, it has been released for a month after all. It earned 7 million on New Year's Day. Although it did not break 10 million, it was also very good.

However, New Year's Day is not a big holiday, and the holiday is only one day. After New Year's Day, the box office of the three movies returned to normal levels.

In the following four working days, "Let the Bullets Fly" earned 1.1 million yuan at the box office. Together with the New Year's Day, it earned million yuan in five days, and its momentum remains strong.

"If You Are the One 2" performed much worse, earning only 24 million in the following four days, and only 38 million including New Year's Day.

Not to mention "Interstellar", which only earned 11.56 million in the first five days of the new year, including New Year's Day, pushing the total box office of the movie to billion.

However, in order to promote the film, which will be broadcast on CCTV's "News Network" in two days, Golden Harvest and China Film Group invested 10 million yuan in promoting the film. Liu Zhou originally focused all his energy on "Interstellar", but it was a critical moment after all.

But the matter at Sina was also very important, so he had to take time off to deal with it.

He thought that there was no need for him to keep paying attention to it. Everything that needed to be arranged had been arranged, and CCTV had already finalized the deal. Even if he kept keeping an eye on it, it would not have any impact.

Whatever the final outcome may be, we can only leave it to fate.

The matter on Sina's side was about Sina Video, and Liu Zhou had also personally arranged for Sina President Wang Yan to handle it personally.

Video websites were introduced to China after YouTube was founded in 16.5, and became particularly popular in China after YouTube was acquired by Google for a huge sum of US$ billion.

In just three years from 04 to 07, hundreds of video websites were established.

After fierce competition in recent years, there are only less than ten websites left, including Penguin and Baidu's recently established Penguin Video and iQiyi.

However, the three most powerful video websites at present are still Sina, Youku and Tudou.

Among them, Youku and Tudou were listed not long ago and are wealthy and powerful, and have been consolidating their advantages. Although Sina Video has not been listed, it has the Sina Group as its backing and is also not short of money.

But to be honest, the player with the largest market share in the domestic market at this time is not these three, but Qvod.

When it comes to Qvod, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the massive amount of seed resources it contains. However, it not only captures these resources, it can capture almost all video content.

While other video websites are struggling with bandwidth and traffic, Qvod's encoding and decoding technology means that its bandwidth demand is only one percent of those video websites.

The peer-to-peer technology of Qvod is also skirting the line of piracy. After users search through Qvod, they are redirected to small websites, and then they play or download through Qvod without spending a penny in copyright fees.

Other video websites are spending a lot of money for the online copyrights of some film and television dramas. Which of the surviving video websites has not invested over 100 million yuan?
Therefore, this also led to the fact that video websites invested real money but did not achieve the desired results, and a large number of users were lost. Everyone only needed to install a Qvod on their desktop to watch all the movies and TV series!

This undoubtedly caused the greatest damage to Sina Video.

Because Sina Video owns a large number of online copyrights of previous movies and TV series, including the copyrights of nearly 5,000 movies and 80,000 episodes of TV series.

After the country began to protect online copyrights, because Liu Zhou acquired it early, Sina Video has remained invincible in the subsequent copyright wars.

Thanks to copyright distribution, Sina Video not only covered its operating expenses but also made a net profit of 7000 million in one year.

If Sina Video had not also been unwilling to lag behind and invested a large amount of money to purchase the copyrights of new movies and TV series, Sina Video would have been able to maintain a balance between income and expenditure by distributing copyrights to other video websites.

The indiscriminate capture of online videos by Qvod has undoubtedly caused the greatest damage to Sina's interests.

Although everyone used to engage in piracy, they have now moved on from the mainstream. They certainly don’t want to have pirated video websites and players anymore, otherwise they won’t feel balanced.

Therefore, Qvod has now become a major concern for major video websites. With such a player that can watch all movies and TV series for free, it will be a long time before they can implement a membership fee system.

Moreover, others have so many film sources without spending a penny, while they have to spend a lot of copyright fees every year.

So this time Liu Zhou asked Wang Yan to take the lead and convened the heads of several domestic video websites to prepare to work together to bring down QVOD.

In the original time and space, Liu Zhou was also a loyal user of Qvod, and he was very angry about the mess that Qvod was making.

Unexpectedly, now he would have to destroy it with his own hands, but this was in his interest and Liu Zhou could not help being soft-hearted.

In fact, QVOD cannot survive forever. Even without Liu Zhou, several other video websites will still encircle and attack it.

The collapse of Kuaibo is inevitable. Without a big boss backing it up, it would be easily destroyed.

The formalization of online copyright is also inevitable, otherwise so many video websites will not be able to operate.

Google spent more than one billion dollars to acquire YouTube, but because all the videos on it are pirated, it still paid billions of dollars in copyright fees.

Moreover, Liu Zhou would not be as ruthless as Jia Yueting and others in the original LeTV. He just wanted to shut down Qvod without putting its founder in jail.

Back in a large conference room in the Sina Building, the presidents of nearly ten domestic video websites had already arrived.

Youku's Gu Yongjiang, Tudou's Wang Wei, Six Room's Liu Yan, LeTV's Jia Yueting and others were all waiting, while Penguin Video and iQiyi's Pony Ma and Li Yanhong did come in person.

It was mainly because of the arrival of the two of them that Liu Zhou came here in person, otherwise Sina President Wang Yan would have come forward.

At this time, several people in the conference room were a little confused, not knowing why Liu Zhou called them over.

"Ladies and gentlemen, those sitting here are the leaders of domestic video websites and the top companies in this industry. The future YouTube of China will surely be born from people like us." Liu Zhou said with a smile after greeting them.

Several people didn't care about Liu Zhou's flattery. They secretly wondered what he wanted to do after he just won the title of the richest man for two consecutive years, so they just looked at him and didn't say anything.

Seeing this, Liu Zhou did not keep the topic secret and changed the subject:
"But there is still a biggest enemy standing in our way!"

These words instantly perked up the spirits of the few of them, and Jia Yueting was the first to speak:

"The biggest enemy? Mr. Liu is talking about Qvod?"

"That's right! I think you all know the impact of Qvod on various video websites. If we don't remove Qvod, a website that spreads pirated content,
Let more users flow to our video website, and accelerate the formalization of copyright. Otherwise, we will get half the result with twice the effort even if we invest more money in it in the future. "

So Kuaibo, Kuaibo, you'd better go bankrupt. It will be a bankruptcy whether it's a year earlier or later.

After hearing Liu Zhou's words, everyone instantly understood what he meant.

Liu Zhou is summoning the six major martial arts sects to besiege Guangmingding!

(End of this chapter)