Chapter 260 Director Wu Wants to Do Big Things!
The next day.
Light and Shadow Times headquarters, in Wu Yuan's office.
Li Xiaoping held a document, sat opposite Wu Yuan, and talked eloquently: "The box office on the day of release was 800,000, and the results were not bad."
"The word-of-mouth response on the Internet has been pretty good. Mainland movie fans are relatively tolerant of domestic horror films. After all, mainland movie fans also know that the General Administration has strict requirements."
"Except for the "hallucinogenic" explanation of the ending that made many fans complain, the other plots were well rendered."
"Horror movies, as long as they scare people enough and stimulate the heart, it will be a good movie for movie fans."
Wu Yuan nodded in agreement: "Of all types of movies, horror movie fans are the most tolerant."
"As long as it's scary enough, it doesn't matter if there are problems with the plot logic or the characters behave strangely. I won't be very picky."
"Anyway, when people watch horror movies, they go there to relieve stress and find excitement. They don't care about the story itself."
"This is why horror films have never been taken seriously by awards and film festivals."
"Has the DVD release been discussed?"
"The talks are settled." Li Xiaoping reported with a smile: "Japan, South Korea, and DVD distributors in Southeast Asia have all reached talks."
"With the copyright sharing model, for every DVD sold, after deducting the recording cost, the company can get 30% of the net profit."
"Thirty percent." Wu Yuan smacked his lips, a little dissatisfied.
But he also knew that this ratio was already good.
After all, publishers in various countries also have to bear the costs of promotion and transportation. The proportion of these costs reaches 20% after excluding the burning costs.
In addition, they provide their own sales channels in their own countries. Local snakes get 50%, and Light and Shadow Era gets 30%, which is normal.
If you think this profit distribution is too low, then unless Light and Shadow Times goes to various countries to build sales channels, improve the sales chain, and do DVD distribution on its own.
Otherwise, if we negotiate with another publisher, the result will be the same.
"Okay, let them make DVDs and sell them as soon as possible." Wu Yuan also asked: "And North America, you can also try to do DVD distribution. North America also has a large group of horror movie fans."
If we want to say where the DVD market is the largest in the world, it is North America and Japan. Both countries have strong video rental plots, which later developed into DVD.
Even in 2020, other countries have basically phased out DVDs. When they are used to watching videos on online platforms, the DVD market in North America and Japan still has annual shipments of millions of copies!
Sadako's story originally relied on the "video tape complex" between the two countries to become popular in Japanese and American movies and has been remade many times.
"With the American DVD distribution side, John from Light Times helped us contact him. Lionsgate is willing to take over the North American DVD distribution of "Don't Knock on the Door" and we are currently discussing the details of the cooperation." Li Xiaoping said confidently.
Lionsgate is considered the most commercially successful independent film and television company in North America, and its DVD business is also very large.
It is worth mentioning that many of Jet Li’s kung fu films were distributed by Lionsgate Pictures.
How did Jet Li get his reputation as "Kung Fu Superstar"?
Very few of his movies have achieved good box office results in North America, and even few of them have been released. But why are they considered to be international kung fu superstars on par with Cheng Long now?
Most of this credit goes to Lionsgate.
The DVDs of Jet Li's "Once Upon a Time" series are selling very well in North America, with millions of copies sold. Plus the rental market, about one-third of the people in North America have watched Jet Li's kung fu movies.
Not in a movie theater, but on a DVD watched on TV at home.
Jet Li's title of "King of DVD Kung Fu" is no joke.
Lionsgate has also tasted this sweetness, so it is willing to try making DVDs of Chinese horror movies to see if there will be any more surprises.
"Let's talk, there's no rush." Wu Yuan was not dissatisfied with this, and asked in a casual tone: "Have Jiang Sumying, Liu Zhiyang, and Liu Meichuan signed the contract for "Soul Ferry"?"
"This TV series is related to the development of the company's streaming media platform. Whether it can get off to a good start as soon as it is launched depends on this TV series."
Yes, this was what Wu Yuan and Liu Yifei were talking about in the cinema yesterday.
The company’s biggest strategy for the next stage!
As the mainland's entertainment market grows stronger and the Internet develops better and better, Wu Yuan is certainly not satisfied with the company only being a film producer.
He has the foresight to know that if he only focuses on film production, he will not only easily get stuck in the cinema, but also have extremely low risk resistance.
After 2015, these film production companies established around the turn of the millennium have basically faded away, just like the major state-owned studios that were eliminated when they emerged.
The reason is that its body is too thin.
Whether it is Huayi, Chengtian, Bona, Emperor, etc., they only do film production + artist management business.
Although these two fields are very profitable, their ability to resist risks is too poor.
With the artists’ contract termination and departure in 2012, the wave of establishing studios, and the entry of Internet giants, these film production companies, which only had film production business, had neither the moat of Internet matrix nor the support of physical theaters, were soon beaten to pieces by Internet giants.
Huayi, which was doing the best, simply de-filmed and stopped making movies. It turned to real estate, calling it a film-related industry, but in fact, it was just that it could not make it as a producer.
The big and small Wang, who were originally considered to be the richest in the circle, were dwarfed by the two Ma and one Wang. They could not afford to spend as much money as Internet companies, so they could only choose to exit in a decent manner.
As we all know, in any industry, as long as Internet companies are about to enter, it will be the big fish eating the small fish, and the small fish eating the shrimp. Soon, there will be only a few Internet giants fighting each other, and there will be no room for other small and medium-sized companies to survive.
Because the Internet giants have always adhered to this kind of culture, and they are used to eating alone.
If Wu Yuan wants to ensure that he can maintain the existence of Light and Shadow Times after the Internet companies enter the market in the future, and even compete with them in the film market, he needs to start building his own moat now.
Downstream, he needs to build a physical theater chain to protect the screening rate of his own movies, and upstream, he needs to build his own online streaming platform to ensure that his own TV series and movies will not be exploited by Internet giants in the future and buy the online broadcasting rights at extremely low prices.
Of course, Wu Yuan does not want to build a video platform like Youteng Ai.
He does not have tens of billions of money to burn, and he cannot afford it even if he raises funds.
The video platform war is completely a money-burning war, and the intensity of money-burning is even more terrible than that of taxi-hailing software.
A video website like this can burn out tens of billions a year, and even the three major Internet giants have been somewhat injured. After burning for more than ten years, it is really not enough, and they began to increase the membership price.
Wu Yuan, with his limited resources, could only scrape together a billion dollars, so he didn't want to jump into this bottomless pit.
The streaming platform he wanted to build was similar to Netflix and Disney+, based on the copyright library of its parent company.
It was mainly based on the online broadcast of the company's self-made movies, TV series, and variety shows, supplemented by the copyright of works from other film and television production companies.
It was a bit like Mango TV, but more open than Mango TV.
There is an advantage to building such a streaming platform now.
That is, the existing online video platforms on the market, whether it is Youku, Tudou, or Liujianfang, have not yet made mobile APPs.
The APP moat on the mobile side of the Internet had not yet been established, that is, the so-called "Ali system" and "Penguin system" had not yet appeared.
For netizens, watching videos on a computer and changing a platform is nothing more than adding one more URL to their favorites. It is not troublesome at all and very convenient.
Users don't have any so-called "APP loyalty" at all.
Changing a URL can directly jump to another video playback website. What kind of loyalty can there be?
The only thing that bothers Wu Yuan is that there is no concept of genuine online videos now, including major websites such as Youku and Tudou, which are all pirated resources and have no copyright fees.
In 2005, Tudou, which imitated Youtube, was established and opened the first year of Chinese video websites.
Due to the lack of strict copyright laws in Europe and the United States in the early days, mainland streaming media developed rapidly through pirated broadcasts.
Around 2006, video websites such as Youku, PPTV, PPS, Ku6, and 56.com developed rapidly, and online video platforms were in chaos.
Movies produced before the era of light and shadow, as well as those TV series, can now be watched by opening these platforms, and pirated resources can be seen everywhere online and offline.
Whether it is digital music, online movies, or TV series, it will take at least until 2012 for the upper echelons to notice the rampant and uncontrollable pirated resources on the Internet.
Since 2014, the phenomenon of pirated broadcasts of film and television content has begun to be cleaned up.
However, this does not mean that the spring of major regular video platforms has come.
After several rounds of "cleaning operations" against pirated resources changed the Chinese Internet environment, video platforms that dreamed of copyright monopoly immediately started a money-burning war in order to squeeze out their opponents.
With the influx of funds, the cost of purchasing copyrights began to soar, rising 8,000 times in 10 years, with a yield comparable to Bitcoin.
Wu Yuan did not intend to intervene in this video platform war, but he did want to make changes to the online piracy environment before the video platform war.
How to change?
Of course, it is to ripen the online video market in advance, so that the top leaders can see how much loss the rampant piracy on the Internet has caused to the National Copyright Administration and the national film and television industry, and then the net clean-up action will naturally start in advance.
It is not to say that online video websites will be fast-forwarded to the level of paid playback immediately, but at least it is necessary to crack down on pirated websites and make genuine TV series and movies purchase copyrights before they can be played on online platforms!
By then, even if the streaming media website of Light and Shadow Era still maintains free viewing, the website will be able to attract huge traffic by virtue of the appeal that movies and TV series of Light and Shadow Era can only be watched on the streaming media website of Light and Shadow Era. By selling advertisements, even if the website is not profitable, it can barely break even.
Yes, Wu Yuan really didn't expect to make money from streaming in China, at least not in the next ten years.
As long as he can achieve not too much loss every year, add an Internet moat to the era of light and shadow, and resist the invasion of future Internet giants, that will be enough for him to be happy.
And the "Soul Ferry" series is the webcast drama he prepared for the company's streaming platform!
Not seeking to make money, just to be popular on the Internet and exert influence!
It would be best if pirated resources are everywhere on the Internet!
In this way, he can cry to the National Copyright Administration and propose his Internet TV drama industry plan by the way, and paint a big pie for the top management!
You know, the future webcast drama is a huge market worth tens of billions!
Taking advantage of the fact that the online video business has just started in the mainland Internet, it is always best to correct the evil trends at the beginning, and fill the loopholes of rampant piracy as soon as possible, so that this industry can develop normally.
Let China Internet enter the video copyright formalization ten years ahead of schedule!