Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 568 First Day Box Office
Bona Film Group, President’s Office.

At this time, Yu Dong was smoking quietly, but seeing the whole room filled with smoke, it seemed that he had already smoked quite a bit.

This year's summer season has nothing to do with Bona.

The "Wuxia" movie that he had high hopes for was a huge flop, with an investment of more than 1.8 million yuan only earning million yuan at the box office.

Although the movie has not been taken off the screen yet, its box office potential has almost been exhausted, not to mention that "Transformers 3" is still in theaters and "Aftershock" is about to be released.

With these two blockbuster films around, even if "Wuxia" still has box office potential, it cannot be realized.

Not to mention the terrible "Wuxia". If it hadn't been making hundreds of thousands of dollars at the box office every day, Yu Dong would have taken the movie off the shelves less than a month after its release.

But it’s already the end of July, and there are only a few days left until the movie is released in a month, so it’s not far from being taken off the screen.

Yu Dong was filled with anger when he thought about the fact that this movie would lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

Especially when he heard that Chen Kexin had recently purchased a thousand-square-foot mansion in Mid-Levels, Hong Kong, Yu Dong wanted to sink him into Victoria Harbour.

He was not unaware of the tricks of the "Wuxia" crew, but he had already invested his money. If the accounts were checked, the crew would be shut down, resulting in greater losses in the end.

Moreover, Chen Kexin was indeed a famous director at the time, and the film gathered many first-line stars. Yu Dong always felt that the box office of this "Wuxia" should not be bad.

By the time the movie is released, all the money can be earned back. Otherwise, the straw hat must cost hundreds of dollars and must be ordered from overseas. Anyone who is not a fool will know that there is something fishy.

Damn, straw hats originated in China. Who would go overseas to buy straw hats, just like there should be no idiot in China who would buy imported chopsticks.

Even if you can buy these imported products, there is a 99% chance that they are made in China.

But no one expected that "Wuxia" would not even have a box office of 200 million.

In Yu Dong's opinion, "Wuxia" should be able to earn around 600 million yuan at the domestic box office, recover its costs, and then the overseas revenue will be pure profit.

But now the movie has a terrible reputation. Don’t even think about recovering the cost in China, and don’t even think about making any profit overseas, even if there is any, it won’t be much.

A rough calculation shows that the movie "Wuxia" lost at least 150 million yuan.

Although there are other film production companies sharing the burden, Bona is the largest contributor and is of course also the largest contributor to the current losses.

This will bring Bona hundreds of millions of losses, and this year's work will most likely be in vain.

This loss is not the biggest one for Yu Dong. What makes him most uncomfortable is that the failure of this movie will affect Bona’s stock price.

At this time, Yu Dong already regretted letting Bona go public on NASDAQ. Being the first film and television company to be listed on the US stock market sounds glorious, but the company itself has its own difficulties.

The overseas market is very different from the domestic market. In North America, film companies are not considered high-quality stocks, let alone a Chinese film and television company.

Therefore, Bona’s stock price rose for a while in the early days of its listing, but then began to fall slowly, and finally hovered around the issue price.

Peers like Huayi and Guangxian, which are listed in China, have now both achieved market capitalizations of over 10 billion yuan, not to mention the leading Golden Harvest Group, whose market capitalization is set to exceed 100 billion yuan.

Now, Bona is not as good as the above three companies, even compared with the TV drama production company Huace, in terms of market value.

To make matters worse, "Wuxia" was a huge flop. Yu Dong felt that it would not be long before Bona's stock price would fall below the issue price.

This made Yu Dong, who boasted that Bona was no worse than Huayi and its lighting, a little embarrassed to face people.

He was even thinking about whether Bona should be delisted from NASDAQ and then re-listed in the country.

If it were listed domestically, Bona’s market value would certainly not be much inferior to Huayi and Guangxian.

However, Bona has only been listed for more than half a year, and its shares have only just been unblocked. It is not so easy to privatize it, not to mention that it also requires a large amount of capital.

I don’t have the funds to privatize Bona now, and I will inevitably need financing when the time comes.

But all these are still too far away. What he needs to consider now is how to deal with the aftermath. "Wuxia" will be taken off the screen in a few days.

Yu Dong got a headache when he thought about this mess, and he couldn't help but feel even more angry with Chen Kexin.

Especially when he heard that someone spent a huge amount of money to buy a house while he himself suffered a lot of losses, Yu Dong couldn't help but feel angry and couldn't understand the situation.

Does he still think that the mainland's film industry now needs people from Hong Kong to beg you?

You've swallowed up so much of my money, and now you still want to live as comfortably in the mainland as before. Forget it.

The investors of "Wuxia" are not only Bona, but also the giant Shanghai Film Group.

Chen Kexin went to the mainland to make a movie. His main investors were Bona and Shanghai Film Group. Now he has cheated these two financiers so badly. Not only will Bona not let him go, Shanghai Film Group will not let him off either.

Thinking of this, Yu Dong couldn't help but sigh.

Even if Chen Kexin was not let go, he would not be able to recover his losses. What's more, for a big director like him, even with Bona and Shanghai Film Group, it would be difficult to completely ban him in the mainland.

It seems that since Bona went public, Yu Dong has been unlucky. None of the movies he invested in have become a hit, and the previous booming momentum has suddenly disappeared.

Let’s look at other companies, not to mention Huayi. With Feng Kuzi, they can stabilize the basic market, and the other movies they invested in rarely suffer losses.

Not to mention Guangguang, which not only continues to make efforts in the production field, but also has stronger distribution business, and its overall strength is slightly higher than that of Huayi.

As for Golden Harvest, it goes without saying that its performance may have been mediocre in the first half of this year, but Liu Zhou's "Aftershock" in the summer vacation has once again set off a wave of movie-watching.

Not to mention that there will be big productions by two great directors, Zhang Yimou and Xu Ke, to be released during the Lunar New Year holiday.

I heard that Golden Harvest is going to cooperate with Shanghai Film Group to produce Ning Hao's first science fiction blockbuster, which is expected to be a hit.

By now, Yu Dong no longer has the desire to catch up with Jiahe. The gap is too big.

He felt that the only company qualified to catch up with Golden Harvest Group in the future was Wanda Films, which had the support of Wanda Group.

This company, which has been accumulating strength, can be said to be a potential giant. In the past two years, it has made big moves in both Hollywood and the mainland. Once it integrates its resources this year, it will definitely show its fangs.

In addition to Wanda, two other Internet giants, Penguin and Ali, are also eyeing the film and television industry, so competition will be even more intense in the future.

If Bona doesn't reverse its downward trend, it may really fall behind in the future.

Yu Dong was so preoccupied with thoughts at this moment that he had no idea that time was passing so quickly.

Just when he was daydreaming, his assistant knocked on the door of his office. Yu Dong came back to his senses when he heard the sound.

"What's the matter?"

"Mr. Yu, the first day box office of Aftershock is out."

"Oh, it's already past midnight so soon?" Yu Dong looked at his watch. It was already past midnight and Aftershock had been released for a day.

It is not like before. Box office statistics need to be calculated manually now. It takes at least three or four hours to calculate the previous day's box office.

Although not all domestic cinemas are now connected to the Internet, they have almost completed the theater chain model, making box office statistics much simpler.

The daily box office of a movie can be calculated in less than half an hour.

Although "Aftershock" has nothing to do with Bona, this movie is so high-profile and has the important task of competing with "Transformers 3" that Yu Dong couldn't help but want to see its first-day performance.

I believe that it is not just him. A large number of domestic audiences and media, as well as the bosses of major film and television companies, are also waiting for the closing box office of "Aftershock".

Now that he heard the results were out, Yu Dong couldn't help but continue to ask:

"How much is the box office?"

"Ninety-seven million!"

“Not over 100 million?”

"No, this is the data collected over there, I think it should be correct."

When Yu Dong heard this number, he took a deep puff of cigarette, then slowly exhaled, saying:
"Ninety-seven million is already very high. We are only three million away from breaking the 100 million mark. This is higher than the first week box office of "Wu Xia". Tomorrow is the weekend, and I think the single-day box office will definitely break the 100 million mark."

"It seems that if the word of mouth of Aftershock doesn't collapse, the final box office should be able to exceed 3 billion. I just don't know if it can surpass Transformers ."

"I watched this movie at its premiere in Tangshan. The quality of the movie is very high and its reputation will definitely not fall. Liu Zhou is still very capable."

To be honest, the person Yu Dong most wants to work with is Liu Zhou.

But Liu Zhou is not only a director, but also a wealthy man with a leading company behind him. Even if you want to cooperate with him, he will ignore you.

With Golden Harvest's size and influence, other companies really can't do anything to it.

Yu Dong and others originally wanted to unite to face the pressure from Jiahe or to fight against it, but they are not stupid. Not to mention the China Film Group, which they have been trying to win over, they are now starting to win over Shanghai Film Group.

With these two most powerful state-owned film groups, plus Golden Harvest, we are not afraid of anyone.

Therefore, the alliance that was almost connected immediately fell apart as the news of the cooperation between Shanghai Film Group and Golden Harvest came out.

In fact, Yu Dong not only wanted to work with Liu Zhou, but also envied him for being able to recruit a number of great directors such as Zhang Yimou, Xu Ke and Ning Hao.

If any of these three people were placed in other companies, they would be able to support a large company.

However, these three people are all in the same company. Together with Liu Zhou, Golden Harvest's ability to produce blockbuster movies is indeed far ahead of other companies.

"Mr. Yu, although Aftershock is very popular, it has received many negative reviews from the outside world, and Golden Harvest has not yet dealt with it."

"It goes without saying that this is the work of someone else. Someone must be deliberately trying to discredit this movie, or is targeting Liu Zhou."

This kind of thing is very common in China. Bona’s films have been criticized in this way, and he has also arranged people to criticize films of other companies.

"This time may be different. There is a trend of intensifying. It seems that it is not only people in the industry who are criticizing this movie. The methods are obviously different."

"Oh, it seems that there are other people dealing with Liu Zhou." Yu Dong laughed, "He is the richest man in the mainland, and he also has other businesses, so he must have offended a lot of people.

This is interesting, and I am looking forward to the subsequent developments.”

"Mr. Yu, do you still need me to continue to pay close attention to the movie "Aftershock"? "

"No need. This movie will be at its peak popularity in the next half month. There will definitely be news about it everywhere."

"Okay, if there's nothing else I'll be out first."

"Wait a minute, remember to contact Shanghai Film Group for me tomorrow and tell them I want to talk to Mr. Ren."

"Ok."

"Then you can go back first. Thank you for staying up so late with me tonight."

After the assistant left, Yu Dong smoked another cigarette before getting up and going home.

……

The first-day box office performance of "Aftershock" of 97 million was known not only to Yu Dong, but also to the senior executives of major media and film and television companies.

Although the first-day performance was not as good as "Transformers 3", it was not much worse and it broke the first-day record for domestic films.

Although it was expected that "Aftershock" would perform very well, the box office of 97 million is still amazing.

Some people felt jealous, some sighed, and some were of course extremely happy.

Liu Zhou and Han Shanping were among the last ones. They got the movie's first-day box office data even earlier. They were close to the data and received the news as soon as the statistics were released.

"Ninety-seven million, that's a bit of a pity, it almost broke 100 million." Han Shanping said with a little regret.

Although China Film Corporation did not participate in the investment of "Aftershock", he hoped that Liu Zhou's film would achieve good results both for public and private reasons.

Not to mention that he and Liu Zhou have a close relationship, just the fact that this movie is listed on it, he also hopes that "Aftershock" can break the first-day box office record of "Transformers 3".

As "Interstellar" surpassed "Avatar" to create a new domestic box office record in film history, Han Shanping's ambitions grew. He hoped that all domestic film records would be created by Chinese-language films.

Ninety-seven million is less than ten million away from the 3 million of "Transformers 1.05". If it could be screened in more locations, it might be able to surpass it.

"There's nothing to regret. The first-day box office record is not very important. The most important thing is whether the final box office can exceed Transformers 3." Liu Zhou replied with a smile.

Seeing this result, Liu Zhou was happy but also a little regretful. However, as he said, the final box office competition between the two films is the most important.

After all, "Aftershock" carries the hopes of many people, and Golden Harvest amplified the audience's emotions when promoting the movie.

If the final box office loses to "Transformers 3", it will also have a certain impact on Liu Zhou.

"Then do you think Aftershock can surpass Transformers 3?"

“Of course, Transformers 3 only had a box office explosion in the first two weeks, and in terms of staying power, it is definitely not as good as Aftershock.

"Aftershock" is a popcorn movie. Its biggest advantage is its moving plot, unlike "Transformers 3" which is forgotten after watching."

"Well, let's wait and see how much the movie box office will be in the next two days."

(End of this chapter)