The entertainment empire began with Liu Yifei's premarital pregnancy.

Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and many people went straight to the movie theater early this morning.

After more than half a year of promotion, almost everyone in the country knows that a Chinese animated film called "Kung Fu Panda" will be released in Hollywood today.

During this period, such propaganda was very inspiring for audiences in mainland China.

Kung Fu Panda contains a lot of plot about Chinese culture, and even twenty years from now, many people will still appreciate it.

"Second brother, hurry up, or we'll miss our chance..."

Outside the Kyoto Cinema, a group of four headed straight for the movie theater. Judging from their carefree and flamboyant demeanor, they were clearly university students.

"Boss, what's the rush? We've already bought the tickets!"

The fourth brother, standing behind, spoke leisurely.

Just a month ago, Kyoto launched a new feature on its official website, allowing registered Kyoto members to buy tickets and select seats online.

Since its launch, this feature has been very popular among young people.

Although the internet is not as widespread as it is in later generations, most people can still afford to go online.

Especially for young people.

The Kyoto official website sometimes hosts various online events, such as limited-time raffles, movie ticket discounts, and snack sets.

For example, a movie ticket costs 30 yuan, a drink costs 5 yuan, and some snacks cost 15 yuan, which adds up to 50 yuan.

However, if you buy tickets on the Kyoto official website, there will be a package deal that costs only 43 yuan, saving you 7 yuan.

Don't underestimate these seven yuan. At that time, for many people, seven yuan was enough for a day's meals.

Even now, some internet cafes only charge 10 yuan for an overnight stay.

Because Kyoto actively engages with young people, after a month of promotion, young people have become accustomed to buying tickets online.

It's not only cheap but also hassle-free, and you can even choose your seats online.

With these features, Kyoto cinemas instantly became the "top-tier" cinema chain in the entire industry. As long as Kyoto cinemas still had tickets available, almost no one would choose other cinemas.

It has been almost two years since the establishment of Kyoto Cinema Circuit. From the beginning of one circuit, it now has more than 100 cinemas nationwide.

Since the system upgrade last year, Lin Bufan was no longer limited by money, so he began to increase his efforts to expand the scale of the cinema chain this year.

Currently, the Kyoto cinema chain has hundreds of cinemas.

First-tier cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, especially Beijing and Shanghai, each have eight cinemas, and they are all very large.

Kyoto Cinema Circuit categorizes its cinemas into three levels based on their size: flagship, leading, and regular cinemas.

This is a top-tier cinema with 20 standard screening rooms, each with 180 seats – a number that has been carefully calculated.

If the theater is too big, the viewing experience isn't actually that good, especially in terms of sound effects. When playing blockbusters, it can feel empty and distorted. But if it's too small, it won't work either.

180 seats is just right, making a total of 3600 seats.

A flagship cinema has 15 standard screening rooms, each with 180 seats, for a total of 2700 seats.

A standard cinema consists of 10 standard screening rooms, all with identical seating. A standard cinema has 1800 seats.

Among them, Beijing has one leading cinema chain and seven flagship cinema chains, as does Shanghai. Shenzhen and Guangzhou each have one leading cinema chain and six flagship cinema chains.

The four cities together have a total of four leading cinemas and 26 flagship cinemas, with a total of 470 screens and 84600 seats.

Fifteen strong second-tier cities, each with one leading cinema and two flagship cinemas.

Thirty ordinary second-tier cities, one flagship cinema chain and one regular cinema in each city.

Seventy third-tier cities, with two regular-level cinemas in each city.

In total, there are 15 leading cinemas, 60 flagship cinemas, and 170 regular cinemas, with a total of 2900 screens and 522,000 seats.

If we add the number from the four first-tier cities, the total is 275 cinemas, 3370 screens, and 606,600 seats.

If this total amount were placed in later generations, it would only account for about 4% of the market. However, if placed in the context of 08, it would be completely different.

What does this period mean?

Back in 08, all cinemas in China combined had only 5129 screens, not counting the Kyoto Cinema Circuit.

If we include the Kyoto cinema chain, the total number of screens is 8499.

In fact, according to later statistics, there were only 4097 screens at the end of 08. However, due to the box office success of several films produced by Lin Bufan and Kyoto Animation, the development of cinemas has accelerated.

Currently, Kyoto Cinemas can be considered the industry leader, holding a 38.1% share of the entire cinema market.

But precisely because of this, Lin Bufan's investment in cinemas is enormous.

Kyoto Cinemas has always operated directly without franchising, and it even buys the land itself. Not to mention the interior design, it is in a class of its own in China.

On average, the investment for a top-tier cinema is about 80 million yuan, which means each seat costs about 20,000 yuan. This only covers the investment in construction and decoration; the land acquisition cost is the most expensive part.

Taking Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen as examples, a leading cinema chain of this size would require approximately 2.5 square meters of land, typically costing between 5 million and 7 million yuan.

Fortunately, land prices in strong second-tier cities are not high, only around 3 million.

Even so, the land alone cost 60 billion yuan for the 19 leading cinemas, and with other investments, the total cost was 75 billion yuan.

Last year, Lin Bufan's entire year's earnings from signing up were just enough to cover the investment in the leading cinema.

Although the investment in flagship cinemas is lower than that in leading cinemas, the sheer number of flagship cinemas makes up for it. In total, there are 86 flagship cinemas, costing a total of 232 billion yuan.

The total investment in the 170 regular cinemas is 272 billion yen, while the total investment in the entire Kyoto cinema chain is 579 billion yen.