Millennium director

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 is 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 have been completed." 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 has reached 20% after excluding the burning cost.

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 eliminated 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, probably 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 wave of artists canceling contracts and leaving in 2012, setting up studios, and the entry of major Internet companies, there is only the film production business, without the Internet matrix moat, nor the support of physical theaters. The production company was soon beaten to pieces by the Internet giants.

Huayi, which had the best business, simply turned away from film production and turned to real estate. It claimed to be in the film peripheral industry, but in fact it couldn't survive in production.

The big and small kings who were originally the richest in the industry pale into insignificance compared with the two horses and one king. Spending money cannot defeat Internet companies, so they can only choose to leave the game with dignity.

As we all know, as long as Internet companies enter any industry, the big fish will eat the small fish, and the small fish will eat the shrimps. Soon there will be only a few Internet giants fighting each other, and there will be no other small and medium-sized enterprises. room for the company to survive.

Because the Internet giants have always pursued this kind of culture, and they are used to eating alone.

Wu Yuan wants to ensure that after Internet companies enter the market in the future, he can still maintain the existence of the light and shadow era, and even compete with him in the film market, so he needs to start building his own moat from now on.

The downstream needs to be a physical theater chain to protect the scheduling rate of its own movies. The upstream needs to be its own online streaming media platform to ensure that in the future, its own TV series and movies will not be exploited by Internet giants at extremely low prices. Purchase the rights to broadcast online.

Of course, Wu Yuan didn’t want to be a video platform like Youtengai.

He doesn't have tens of billions of money to burn, even if he raises financing, he can't afford it.

The video platform war is completely a money-burning war, and the money-burning intensity is more terrible than that of taxi-hailing software.

A video website like this can make billions of dollars a year. Even the three major Internet giants were so burned that they couldn't afford it after more than ten years of burning, so they started to increase membership prices.

Wu Yuan, with his small arms and legs, could only scrape together a billion dollars if his hands were stretched to death, but he didn't want to jump into this bottomless pit.

The streaming media platform he wants to build is a streaming media platform similar to Netflix and Disney+, based on the copyright library of its own parent company.

It mainly focuses on the online broadcast of the company's self-produced movies, TV series, and variety shows, supplemented by the copyrights of other film and television production companies.

It's a bit like the Mango TV run by Mango Channel, but it's more open than Mango TV.

There is an advantage to doing this kind of streaming media platform now.

That is, the existing online video platforms on the market, whether it is Youku, Tudou, or Liujianfang, etc., have not yet developed mobile apps.

The APP moat on the mobile side of the Internet has not yet been established, that is, the so-called "Alibaba system" and "Penguin system" have not yet appeared.

For netizens, using a computer to watch videos, changing platforms is nothing more than adding one more URL to their favorites, which is not troublesome at all and is very convenient.

Users have no so-called "APP loyalty" at all.

If you change the URL and you can jump directly to another video playback website, what kind of loyalty can you have?

The only thing that troubles Wu Yuan is that there is no concept of genuine online videos now, including major sites such as Youku and Tudou. All sites are pirated resources without any copyright fees.

In 2005, Tudou, which followed the example of Youtube, was established and marked the first year of China’s video website.

Due to the lack of strict copyright laws in European and American countries in the early days, mainland streaming media developed rapidly through piracy.

Around 2006, video websites such as Youku, PPTV, PPS, Ku6, and 56.com developed rapidly, and online video platforms were in chaos.

Movies and TV series produced before the light and shadow era can now be watched on these platforms, and pirated online and offline resources can be found everywhere.

Be it digital music, online movies or TV series, it will be at least until 2012 that the upper management will notice the proliferation of uncontrollable pirated resources on the Internet.

Only after 2014 did the phenomenon of piracy of film and television content begin to be cleared up.

However, this does not mean that the spring of major formal video platforms is here.

After several rounds of "clearance operations" of pirated resources changed China's Internet environment, video platforms that dreamed of copyright monopoly immediately started a money-burning war in order to squeeze their opponents.

With the influx of funds, the cost of purchasing copyrights began to soar, rising 8,000 times in 10 years, with a rate of return comparable to Bitcoin.

Wu Yuan does not intend to intervene in this video platform war, but he does 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 higher authorities can see how much damage the proliferation of piracy on the Internet has caused to the National Copyright Administration and the national film and television industry. Then the Internet cleanup operation will naturally start in advance.

This does not mean that online video websites will be fast-forwarded to the level of paid broadcasting immediately, but at least we must crack down on piracy websites, so that genuine TV series and movies must purchase copyrights before they can be played on online platforms!

By then, even if the streaming media websites in the light and shadow era still maintain free viewing, relying on the attraction of movies and TV series in the light and shadow era that only streaming media websites in the light and shadow era can attract huge traffic, relying on By selling ads, even if the website is not profitable, it can barely break even.

Yes, Wu Yuan really doesn’t expect to make money from streaming media in China. At least don’t think about such a thing in the next ten years.

As long as he can not lose too much 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 secretly happy.

The "Soul Ferry" series is the webcast drama he prepared for the company's streaming media platform!

We don’t seek to make money, we just seek to become popular on the Internet and spread our influence!

The best thing is that pirated resources are everywhere on the Internet!

In this way, he can complain to the National Copyright Administration and propose his Internet TV series industry plan to give the top management a big pie!

You know, the future of online dramas will be a huge market worth tens of billions!

Taking advantage of the fact that the online video business has just emerged on the Internet in the Mainland, it is always best to correct evil trends at the beginning and fill in the loopholes of rampant piracy as soon as possible, so that the industry can develop on a regular basis.

Let China Internet enter the formalization of video copyright ten years in advance!