Chapter 370: Light and Shadow Era's Overseas Strategy
Li Dongxu's salary is 500,000 per episode, so how much can Wu Yuan get as the leading actor?
1.2 million per episode, and this is still a friendly price.
Although Guangying Times is his own company, Wu Yuan can't work for the company for free. Normal commercial contracts should be signed and the corresponding remuneration should be paid.
The contract and salary that Li Xiaoping gave Wu Yuan completely matched his worth to that of a first-line male actor in the mainland.
It's not that he only deserves this price, but that the company can only give so much at most.
This year is the first year that the mainland's salary has taken off. First-line male actors such as Huang Xiaoming, Chen Kun, and Lu Yi have received TV drama quotations of around 1.2 million.
By next year, this price will become 2 million because coal bosses have entered the market.
However, "Goblin" is still a good deal.
Because this drama follows the Korean drama model, the length of a single episode is about 90 minutes, compared with about 40 minutes per episode in the mainland, one episode is equivalent to almost 2 episodes.
So although the script has 16 episodes, if it is edited in the mainland, it is actually about 30 episodes.
Although Wu Yuan gets the same pay as a first-line male actor per episode, it is actually half the price, so it is a friendship price.
Not only him, Liu Yifei also gets the friendship price, the same as him, 1.2 million per episode, which is actually half the price of the mainland actors with the same amount of filming.
But Liu Yifei is also quite satisfied with this.
Because she has not caught up with the era of skyrocketing pay for mainland TV dramas.
When she was filming "The Return of the Condor Heroes", she only got 4,000 yuan per episode, and this was because the big bearded man doubled the original offer of 2,000 per episode after "Your Name" became popular, and only gave her a price of 4,000 per episode.
Huang Xiaoming, who acted with her, only got 3,500 yuan per episode, 500 less than her.
After The Return of the Condor Heroes, Liu Yifei has not filmed a TV series again. This time, she returned to the TV series field and was able to get 1.2 million per episode, a total of 19.2 million yuan in pay, which is already a big number for her.
Without Hollywood projects, even mainland movies can't afford to hire Liu Yifei.
It can be seen how distorted the pay in the mainland TV series field is.
This is just the beginning.
In a few years, there will be a situation where a TV series will be invested 200 to 300 million, and the male and female protagonists can take half or even two-thirds of it.
Filming a TV series can get a pay of over 100 million yuan. Even the top movie actors have to shoot at least three or five movies to catch up with this price.
No wonder, even Zhang Ziyi, who is determined to follow the movie star route and never descends to the world, can't help but take on TV dramas in the years when the pay for mainland TV dramas exploded.
It's not that she is not determined, it's just that the drama party gives too much!
Not only him, but also the later three-golden actress Xiao Huangya was also paid to act in several TV series.
After counting, among those "arrogant" movie actors in the mainland, only Gong Li did not condescend to act in TV series under the temptation of high pay for TV series.
It can be seen how outrageous the skyrocketing TV series pay will be in the next ten years.
The layout of TV series in the domestic market of Guangying Times should be fully shrunk in a few years or even give up most of the market.
There is no way. Youku, Tencent Video and Kuaishou often spend tens of billions to make self-made dramas, and the pay for TV series is often hundreds of millions. Wu Yuan really can't compete with them in financial resources.
He just wants to strive to develop Guangying Times' TV series industry to the whole of Asia, and make some Japanese and Korean dramas to be released on Guangying Kuaibo's overseas sites.
Just like Netflix takes root in South Korea and uses Korean actors and crews to shoot dramas for itself.
On the one hand, this is much cheaper than finding domestic actors, and there is no need to fight a money-burning war with Youku, Tencent Video and Kuaishou in the mainland. On the other hand, it is also a localized film and television drama, which is better for conquering the local markets of various countries.
Instead of fighting with Youku, Tencent Video and Tencent Video in the domestic TV drama market, it is better to go overseas to eat the Japanese and Korean markets.
Japanese actors are notoriously cheap, and the production cost of a Japanese drama is only about 10 million yuan.
South Korea is a little more expensive, but the production cost of one episode is only about 3 to 5 million yuan, and a single drama is also controlled within 20 episodes.
However, the profit level of Japanese and Korean TV dramas is very high, and the return on investment can reach 3-5 times.
The production of Japanese and Korean TV dramas is really aimed at making money with low cost and high returns, which is different from the domestic Youku, Tencent Video and Tencent Video, which burns money to grab users and loses billions every year.
Wu Yuan admitted that he would definitely not be able to compete with Youku, Tencent Video and Tencent Video in China, so he decided not to compete with them and find another track.
Going overseas to compete in Asia is at most a fight with Netflix, and Netflix is playing away, so Wu Yuan still has some confidence.
"Goblin" is his first attempt to go overseas with the streaming media of the light and shadow era.
As the saying goes, "the army moves before the food and grass", after instructing Li Xiaoping to contact the crew and production company in South Korea, Wu Yuan was not idle. After eating the melon after Wu Baige's scandal was exposed, he did not forget to do business.
"Mr. Wang, has the Korean site of Guangying Kuaibo been built?"
"Has the branch in Seoul been put into operation?"
"I know that it is indeed a bit unstable to rush to go overseas when the domestic development is not good, but time waits for no one."
"If we don't occupy this market, it will be occupied by others first."
"The Internet industry in South Korea is not developing well, but across the ocean in the United States, the Internet industry is more developed than ours."
"Did you know that there is a company called Netflix in the United States? It is a subscription-based streaming media platform that was established in 1997."
"This year, they have more than 10 million subscribers in the United States, and they are expanding their markets. They will first launch TV and streaming services in Canada, and they will also start building markets in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe."
"Although they haven't had time to contact Asia yet, we can't just sit back and wait."
"While Netflix has no time to develop into Asia, we must first seize the Asian market."
"This Korean site is our first overseas battle!"
"The markets in Japan, Thailand, and Southeast Asia will also be developed step by step."
Upstairs in Light and Shadow Times, on the office floor of Light and Shadow Kuaibo, Wu Yuan was in Wang Xin's office, working tirelessly to brainwash him.
Another middle-aged man, about forty years old and slightly bald, standing next to him, also nodded in agreement.
"Don't worry, just leave the business operations to Mr. Chen. You will be responsible for the technical issues. It won't be too difficult."
Wu Yuan vigorously patted the middle-aged man next to him.
Chen Dewei, a Chinese-American executive at YouTube, Wu Yuan spent a long time with a headhunting company before poaching him with an annual salary of US$2 million plus options to serve as the general manager of Lighting Express.
Although YouTube, a sharing video website, operates somewhat differently from streaming media websites, the general direction is still the same.
With the addition of Chen Dewei, Guangying Qvod's overseas strategy was immediately improved a lot. Wu Yuan can also be a hands-off boss and can rest assured that the company's operations can be left to him.
It was Wang Xin, the partner, who had many objections after learning about Wu Yuan and Chen Dewei's overseas streaming plan.
In his opinion, the monthly active users of Guangying Qvod in the mainland are only two to three million, and even the registered users are barely over 20 million. This is just a new era for the mainland Internet. Get started.
At this early stage, Wu Yuan was rushing to build overseas sites. In Wang Xin's view, this was completely putting the cart before the horse.
What we should do now is to devote all our resources to the expansion of the mainland market, strive to achieve 50 million a year, register over 100 million in two years, and become the leading video website in the mainland, and then consider the issue of going overseas.
But Wu Yuan had a different idea. He wanted to walk on two legs, so that China and overseas countries could go hand in hand and develop together.
After all, in the Internet industry, if you are slow, you will die.
Wang Xin didn’t know, but Wu Yuan knew how fast these streaming media platforms were changing.
In a previous life, on November 12, 2019, Disney’s streaming media platform Disney+, which had been in preparation for three years, was launched in the United States, Canada and the Netherlands.
As of February 4, 2020, the number of Disney+ subscribers reached 28 million.
On March 24, Disney+ was launched in Europe.
On April 3, Disney+ was launched in India.
On April 8, Disney+ had more than 50 million paying users worldwide.
In March 2021, the number of Disney+ global subscribers exceeded 100 million.
By 2022, Disney+ will expand to more than 50 countries and regions
In less than four years, it has expanded to more than 50 countries. This is the mobility and fission speed of the six major Hollywood companies.
In this regard, even though Netflix had already expanded to the world from 2012 to 2014, Disney was the first to arrive and rapidly developed and competed with Netflix.
Wu Yuan does not have Disney's deep copyright library, nor is he as rich as Disney. He spent his money to acquire 20th Century Fox and BAMTech (which operates streaming media technology business), and directly developed a mature streaming media platform.
His only advantage is that he has time to plan early and race against time to develop the Asian market before Disney+, Netflix and other companies have noticed it.
Even so, because he does not have a deep copyright library, he has to develop from scratch in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, which takes time. The earlier he starts, the more likely he is to succeed.
"Mr. Wang, I didn't say that I don't pay attention to the mainland market." He said painstakingly: "In the mainland, Light and Shadow Times also filmed three TV series this year, which were broadcast simultaneously on the Internet."
"Furthermore, "Soul Ferry 2" is already being filmed, and the new solo online drama "Tomb Raiders" series is also in preparation."
"Go hand in hand and develop China Overseas together. Only in this way can we expand the company as quickly as possible."
"You are engaged in Internet technology. You should know better than me the cruel elimination mechanism of the Internet industry that is slow at one step and slow at every step."
"You see, I sacrificed myself to be the leading actor for the sake of Kuaishou's overseas strategy. Isn't it just to break into the Korean market in one fell swoop?"
"It's not just South Korea. The company also plans to produce one or two Japanese dramas next year to test the waters and open a Japanese site."
"I have a hunch that if we wait until after 2012 to plan to expand into the Asian market, it will be too late and we will have to face competition from Netflix."
Wu Yuan's words were very sincere, and Chen Dewei, the general manager in charge of operations, also recognized Wu Yuan's idea and believed that racing against time is what the company should do next.
As an outstanding industry elite, Chen Dewei can see the general trend of global streaming media development and actively agrees with Wu Yuan's idea of early layout and parallel development in China, Japan, and South Korea.
If we really wait until Guangying Times becomes a giant in China before considering overseas development, it will be too late.
Even if we spend money to exchange for the market, we must grab the Asian market as soon as possible before Netflix completes its layout. It is unrealistic to expect fair competition with Netflix. The influence of American companies in Japan and South Korea is no joke.
"Okay." Wang Xin reluctantly nodded: "I'm just a technician, I really don't understand the company's development."
"Since you all support and recognize this development strategy, I will do my best to cooperate."
"The Korean branch has been in preparation for a long time, and the company's technical department has also transferred a group of people to Seoul. They have settled in Seoul and recruited a group of local employees."
"There are templates for domestic software. We only need to do some language translation. The Korean site can be quickly launched within one or two months."
"There are no technical difficulties. As for the specific publicity and operation, it is not my concern. I will leave it to you."
"Don't worry." Chen Dewei nodded confidently, "Leave the publicity to me." (End of this chapter)