Huayu started as a substitute director

Chapter 700 Closing the Channel
On April 4th, two days before May Day, the May Day holiday begins.

Yutu's "Lucy 2", Bona's "The Palace of Devil", "Dream Partners", "The Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" and other films were released as scheduled.

At a Wanda Plaza in Beijing, there is a bustling crowd of people. Wanda Plazas are basically located in bustling areas and have natural flow of people.

At the Wanda Cinema, there were obviously fewer people. There were posters on the walls of the cinema and light boxes on the ground, all of which showed pictures of various movies, but there was no poster of "Lucy 2".

Except for "Lucy 2", other movies can be shown in Wanda Cinemas as usual, including Bona's movies.

If Wanda really wants to be restricted, it will have to wait until the summer vacation. Wanda can still hold on during the May Day holiday, after all, there will be a Hollywood movie "Captain America 3" in a few days.

But at this stage, "Lucy 2" is the most popular movie.

At the cinema ticket counter, there were fewer people lining up here. A couple holding milk tea took out a hundred-dollar bill and slapped it on the table and said, "Give us two tickets for Lucy 2!"

"Sorry, we don't have Lucy 2 showing here!" the lady at the counter said politely.

"Ah! Then what should we look at?" A guy in the back row reacted strongly.

"We have movies like 'The Dark Knight', 'Dream Partners', 'The Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons' and more. You can watch something else," said the lady at the counter.

"What a rubbish cinema. They don't even show Lucy 2. I'm wasting my time. I'm leaving." The guy waved his hand and left the queue.

A few people also left the team. Some of them came just for "Lucy 2", but most people found it troublesome, or they were not there to see a movie but to go on a date, so it didn't matter and they still chose to watch it here.

But some people also watch "Lucy 2" just because it is the most popular movie.

"Sir, do you need to see anything else?" The lady at the counter had no choice but to keep smiling as she knew nothing.

The two lovers were discussing for a while, and the boy said, "Other movies are not good, my girlfriend wants to watch Lucy 2!"

"Sorry, no!" the young lady said politely.

"Then let's go somewhere else." The man took his girlfriend and left.

On the way, the girl sipped her milk tea and said, "Why don't we buy movie tickets online? This way we don't have to take a detour."

"Sure, I'll download Meituan." The boy took out his mobile phone.

Now ticket sales are either entered through the Meituan entrance or the WeChat entrance, but WeChat is not conspicuous, and most people don’t have that habit or awareness, so most people enter through Meituan.

But most people don’t use Meituan unless they order takeout, so it needs to be downloaded. Now is the time when Meituan and Ele.me are fighting the most fiercely, and both sides are spending a lot of money.

“No need to download. Do you have Douyin? You can enter from Douyin. They sell movie tickets on Douyin.” said the girl.

"Yes, where do I go from?" The boy clicked on TikTok, and a behind-the-scenes clip of "Lucy 2" appeared.

These are the behind-the-scenes footage of Liu Tianxian and Xu Laoguai filming. One of them is listening carefully while the other is telling the story seriously.

"From here, you can see it inside the wallet." The girl sipped the milk tea with one hand and nodded with the other.

The screen will jump to the Tupiaopiao ticketing page. As soon as it jumps, there will be a coupon waiting to be collected, followed by various movies, which are basically the most popular movies at the moment.

"Take this coupon and it's only 9.9 yuan," said the girl.

"So cheap." The boy was surprised, that would save him dozens of dollars.

The girl smiled and said that it was normal that her boyfriend didn’t watch movies often, so he didn’t know.

Generally speaking, if men are not accompanying their girlfriends, they rarely go to the movies and basically play games at home.

"You also need to bind a bank card!" Just as the boy was about to pay, the card binding page popped up.

Most people don’t carry bank cards when they go out.

“You can pay with Alipay, just return it.” The girl instructed.

The boy clicked back and then Alipay appeared.

"This is hidden too deeply," he said.

"They do this so that you can bind your bank card, but you can't use Huabei." The girl said with a smile.

"I don't need Huabei, I have money in it." said the boy.

In order to bypass Alipay and WeChat Pay, Douyin first pops up the bank card option, and it is best to bind the bank card payment. This is a little trick.

This is to prepare for the future, so as to avoid being restricted by these two companies in the future. Alipay is okay, but WeChat is very likely.

Alipay is a financial service software, and is separate from Taobao e-commerce. If it stops supporting payments, Alipay may be isolated. After all, Taobao alone is not enough to support the strength of Alipay.

It is not enough to support it in competing with WeChat. Of course, the regulations are still imperfect and anything is possible.

The improvement will be done later, but the rules introduced are that payment institutions are not allowed to directly or indirectly participate in the business activities of e-commerce platforms.

This rule has severely restricted the merger of Ant and Alibaba.

WeChat belongs to the social ecosystem and is designed to serve social purposes. It does not have many financial functions and is most likely to be restricted.

In the past, WeChat often imposed restrictions on TikTok.

The reason why we are not allowed to use Alipay Huabei is that we need to find Jack Ma to sign a payment agreement, which he has not signed yet.

The two of them quickly purchased the tickets and went to other nearby cinemas. The tickets were cheaper than those purchased offline at the counter, which is why more and more people are being drawn to buying tickets online.

Since Wanda Cinema did not show Lucy 2, Tupiaopiao also deliberately diverted the data.

That is to say, most customers are diverted to other cinemas in the form of subsidies, which has reduced the number of people who buy tickets online to watch movies at Wanda Cinemas.

Wanda has fewer visitors, so other cinema chains have more visitors in disguise. The scale is more than 1 million people a day, but Wanda has no share.

This has put Wanda's operations in disguised trouble. Ordinary people don't feel much about this kind of diversion, as they just go to whichever cinema has movies.

Of course, some people were also surprised. They took a photo on the Wanda Cinema's movie schedule display screen, which showed that there was no "Lucy 2";
Then I went to the Star Cinema and took a photo of the screen, which showed that most of the screenings were for Lucy 2. I posted on Weibo: "Why is there no Lucy 2 in Wanda's cinema, while other cinemas are basically showing this movie?"

"The two sides are arguing!"

"Yutu has already issued a statement that it will not be on Wanda Cinemas. A few days ago, Xiao Wang even complained, saying that the principal was blaming him."

"What's it about? There's some great science to share."

"Xiao Wang has a foul mouth. He cursed the principal and Liu Tianxian, and even the couple. Just don't go to Wanda Cinema to watch movies. You can watch other movies." "This guy is really rubbish!"

"If it were me, I wouldn't be able to help myself and would have scolded the principal so many times."

"If you want to watch Liu Tianxian's movies, don't go to Wanda Cinema. Don't contribute to the box office of this garbage. You can go to any other cinema."

This is finally the appeal from Liu Tianxian’s fans. This matter is not a big deal and is not hot news. It is just a topic of conversation among netizens after dinner.

However, Liu Tianxian's fans were shouting everywhere, which made this matter quite popular.

At present, Douyin, Bilibili and other platforms are full of video and text promotional videos of "Lucy 2". Fang Hong has fully utilized the traffic advantage of Chang'e.

Relying on the powerful dissemination power of Tik Tok and other platforms, as well as the explosive traffic, the number of views of thousands of promotional videos has basically exceeded one million, and the publicity can be described as overwhelming.

Coupled with big data push and traffic generation, coupons can be sent directly to everyone. It doesn’t matter whether they read it or not. They will be pushed and sent directly.

In this way, the flow of people leaving Wanda Cinema is diverted and the movie-watching crowd is sent to other cinemas.

Fang Hong needs to set an example for others, that is, even without Wanda Cinema, "Lucy 2" will still be a box office success. Just follow his Jade Rabbit and let big data contribute to your box office.

The sectors under Chang'e have traffic pools and are not short of traffic at all. In addition, the traffic of Douyin is growing exponentially. Tupiaopiao has data, which is the ticket purchasing data of the people attracted.

All that is needed is to filter the data, that is, who are the people who watch the movies and who are not.

At this stage, issuing coupons directly to everyone is a process of screening data. Collecting data and collecting user habits is a long process.

Thanks to the strong support of traffic data, "Lucy 2" broke the 1.1 million mark on the day of its release, reaching 1.2 billion at the box office, and million on the second day.

The 29th and 30th are just weekends, not May Day, and May Day is not a particularly big period.

The box office of other movies were not high. "The Phantom of the Opera" had 1270 million on the first day and 1741 million on the second day; "Dream Partners" had 1729 million on the first day and 1809 million on the second day.

"The Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" was even worse, with only 485 million; the next day it was 628 million.

This movie not only had poor box office, but also had bad reputation. Huang Xiaoming responded: "This is a spiritual practice. I hope the audience can feel the power of persistence and belief."

I don't know what he is talking about, it's all weird, it's rotten so what, but he even links it to belief.

Not to mention other movies, they didn’t even reach 5 million, so it’s good enough to have 1 or 2 million.

Since "Lucy 2" has a very good reputation, people who have seen it say "It's awesome!", "It's very imaginative.", "Liu Tianxian is so handsome!", "Liu Tianxian is so aggressive!" and so on.

The clips that were taken out from the internet are all very exciting short clips of Liu Tianxian. On May Day, the box office of "Lucy 2" exceeded 1.8 million, and the total box office in three days exceeded more than 4 million.

The box office of other movies is still at the previous level, with not much change. It is also at this level during this period, and the number of moviegoers is not as large as expected.

But it’s still good to be able to draw the audience in and make them watch “Lucy 2”.

Seeing such a high level of box office performance and comparing it with other movies, Wang Changtian sighed: "The principal is still amazing."

Even so, Wanda couldn't stop the principal!
The box office has remained over 2 million in three days, and it is possible that "Lucy " will exceed billion.

Now that the box office has exceeded 1 billion, it is still a box office performance worth mentioning.

"I told you, the principal is the son of destiny, and Mr. Wang is just bringing shame upon himself. You see, the box office is still strong." Wang Zhongjun said to Chen Guofu and Yaolai CEO Qi Jianhong.

He was looking for reasons to join the principal, and he was persuading the two men to participate in the principal's "Eagle Killing Conference!"

"I just don't know what benefit we will get from standing on the principal's side," said Chen Guofu.

"Let's go talk to the theater chain and lower their share. The principal said that his theater chain can reduce its share. Chang'e Technology's resources can also be discussed. The final conclusion will not be known until the Eagle Killing Conference. You won't regret it when you go." Wang Zhongjun also spared no effort.

Several people nodded and went to see what was going on.

In a high-end office, Zeng Maojun reported: "Mr. Wang, the number of moviegoers in our theaters has dropped by more than 80% in the past two days."

Mr. Wang took the report and looked at it expressionlessly. In the past two days, more than 300 cinemas only sold a few million yuan at the box office. Each cinema only sold a few thousand yuan, which was not enough to pay the electricity bill. It was very miserable.

However, such a small scale does not arouse his emotions. What he is afraid of is that the battle line will be prolonged and all the good films will not be released by Wanda, which will be troublesome.

It's okay for one or two months, but if it extends to half a year or a year, who can bear it, especially during the summer vacation?

After that, we have to wait until the end of the year, and a year will have passed.

"The box office of other movies is not good, only "Lucy 2" is doing well. In addition, Tupiaopiao has deliberately diverted the number of people, so even fewer people come to our cinema to watch movies." Zeng Maojun said.

There weren't many people watching other movies in the first place, and with the diversion, there were basically not many people going to their cinema.

I heard that he left without Lucy 2.

“All Wanda-owned cinemas have closed their access to Tupiaopiao. Rather than letting them restrict us, we might as well end it ourselves.” Mr. Wang is still very courageous.

"What about this?"

Zeng Maojun was shocked. There would be even less traffic.

The fight has reached a white-hot stage. In the end it all depends on who compromises first. I didn't expect that the person who used to be timid in front of him would compromise first.

Now we are strong enough to fight them head-on.

"It's okay. He's not the only ticketing platform. Alibaba has Taopiaopiao and Time.com. We also have our own platform. We can't let him lead us by the nose. We must take the initiative." said Mr. Wang.

This is to cut off the connection with Tupiaopiao and divert people who are loyal to Wanda Cinema and accustomed to watching movies in Wanda Cinema to other platforms.

Wanda also has some loyal audiences. Some people see that there is no Wanda Cinema on the platform, so they go to other platforms to buy tickets.

A complete separation means allowing other ticketing platforms to take advantage of Wanda Cinemas, be introduced and compete with Yamato Ticketing.

As for the ticket subsidy, they will naturally do it.

"It's just that there is no good content at this stage. If we do this, won't there be even fewer people?" Zeng Maojun meant that others have traffic and content.

"The content will be there, don't worry." Mr. Wang has made up his mind.

To achieve such a big thing, you don’t let others lead you by the nose. If you let others lead you, you are doomed to failure.

Besides, "Captain America 3" is about to be released, and it's not just about Yutu.

(End of this chapter)