Millennium director

Beijing.

The Guangying Times Cinema, which was once very lively and prosperous, is now a scene of depression.

It is already the beginning of March, and the posters that should have been updated long ago are still the ones released before the New Year, and they are all posters for the release on December X.

The few posters scheduled for the Spring Festival have signs of damage, and they are torn off in a hurry.

But compared with this depressed appearance, the closed door of the cinema is more chilling.

A Mediterranean man wearing a suit and an N95 mask stood at the tightly closed door of the cinema with his hands behind his back and sighed.

"Our cinema, which we built with our own land, can still insist on closing, but what about those rented cinemas?"

"Every day of suspension, the company will lose hundreds of thousands!"

Just as the Mediterranean uncle was sighing, another Audi A6 slowly drove over, and a handsome uncle who looked to be in his early 40s got out of the car and walked over quickly.

"How is it?" Ye Yun asked.

The middle-aged uncle with his hands behind his back immediately turned his head and bent down slightly and said: "Mr. Ye, at present, all cinemas across the country have stopped working. Everyone is gritting their teeth and holding on. Our situation is still good."

"Just looking at this trend, maybe we will have to stop working for several more months. It's okay for cinemas like cinemas that own their own land, but cinemas that rely on renting and franchising may find it difficult to hold on."

"Even if you can't hold on, you have to grit your teeth and hold on." Ye Yun shook his head and said firmly: "Believe that difficulties will always be overcome!"

Ye Yun, he is the second general manager of Guangying Times Cinema.

It was also in his hands that Guangying Times Cinema truly became one of the top five cinemas in the mainland with more than 300 cinemas.

However, the unexpected black swan event occurred, which dealt a heavy blow to Guangying Times Cinema, no, it should be said that it dealt a heavy blow to the entire cinema industry.

If we talk about the industry that is most affected by the epidemic, it must be the service industry.

For example, restaurants, bars, KTV, etc.

And cinemas are also part of the cultural service industry.

To watch a movie, you first have to go out, go to public places, and stay in a semi-enclosed screening room with a lot of people.

My God, in the current situation, this is absolutely a disaster.

So cinemas are among all industries, along with KTV and bars, listed as the first batch of industries to be forced to close.

As early as late January, major cinema chains across the country had no movies to show.

All the movies currently being shown have been taken off the screen, all the movies scheduled for the Spring Festival have been withdrawn, and all subsequent movie release arrangements have been cancelled.

And there is no definite time for when it can be resumed.

This is undoubtedly a disaster for the film industry.

After all, the operating cost of opening a cinema is very high.

How many cinema chains can build their own cinemas?

It can be said that except for Wanda Cinema, which is already engaged in real estate, 90% of the cinemas under all other cinema chains are rented in business districts for operation, rather than self-built.

In this way, once the cinema is forced to close, the rent must still be paid as usual. Although the employees do not need to be paid in full, at least half of it must be paid to maintain the family life of the employees.

The larger the cinema chain, the more money it will lose every day in the face of this shutdown crisis, and it is still a net loss, 0 income.

Who can bear this?

Even if the Light and Shadow Times Cinema Chain is Wu Yuan's brand, it can't bear it!

In addition to the nearly 30 cinemas under the Light and Shadow Times Cinema Chain, which were built by buying land by themselves, other cinemas across the country are also rented in business districts!

Now there are more than 300 cinemas under the Light and Shadow Times, and the rent for one month alone is at least eight figures!

Faced with this serious loss crisis, Wu Yuan, who learned the news, was also helpless.

He had no choice!

This crisis caused by force majeure cannot be saved by human power at all.

As far as he knows, cinemas can be said to be one of the industries that will be hit hardest in the next two years.

Like the well-known Dadi Cinema Group, which has multiple sub-brand cinemas such as Dadi Cinema, Orange Sky Golden Harvest, Freeman, and Zhongrui, it still has more than 500 cinemas across the country in 2019. It is the second largest cinema investment company in China after Wanda Cinema and is at the peak of the industry.

However, by 2024, after the black swan event, the number of cinemas that can still buy tickets normally on the official ticket purchasing platform of Dadi Cinema has dropped to 163, a decrease of nearly 70% from the peak period.

Although the reasons for the decline of Dadi Cinema are complicated, one of the important reasons is that it has to close a large number of stores due to the impact of the black swan event.

Except for Wanda Cinema, which is rich in its own real estate, other cinema chains have closed a large number of stores and cut employees in this black swan event, and have been hit hard.

This kind of thing is inevitable for the Light and Shadow Times Cinema.

Wu Yuan is not in real estate, and he can't give his own cinema a land where he can open a cinema for free.

So he was actually prepared for the fact that his cinema company would lose a lot of money this time.

Even in extreme considerations, Wu Yuan was prepared for 300 stores to close down and only 50 were left.

There was no way, this kind of heavy asset was so "heavy" and the ability to resist risks was relatively low.

This is also the reason why most people don't like to do business in the past ten years, and prefer to do Internet companies. The former is really that the former invests more, earns less, and has a high risk!

If it weren't for the purpose of mastering the upstream cinema resources and ensuring that his own movies would not be blocked, Wu Yuan would never do the cinema industry.

So he had no choice but to accept this difficult situation.

However, no matter how helpless he was, because the cinema itself was not Wu Yuan's core industry, he was still in the mood to make fun of it and mock it a few times.

"Xu Guangtou is still ruthless. When he saw that the cinemas would not be able to operate in the short term, he immediately put "Lost in Russia" online for free broadcast."

"But his operation also offended people."

"Now all the major cinemas hate him, the investors behind him are also dissatisfied with him, and his peers in other film production companies are also dissatisfied with him."

"This move of free online viewing directly turned the table over. Xu Guangtou will not be able to continue to mix in the circle in the future."

Wu Yuan didn't know how much money Douyin gave Xu Guangtou to let him get the movie that was about to be released in theaters to premiere for free on the short video platform.

This operation is too ruthless. It is not as simple as an ordinary business behavior. This is completely a table-turning, and even an act of destroying the entire industry.

It is impossible that other movies scheduled for the Spring Festival at the same time as him did not receive such an invitation, but they did not dare to do so. They honestly withdrew the schedule and waited for a scheduled release later, for fear that they would make money but offend the capital in the circle and the upstream cinemas.

As a result, Xu Guangtou dared to do this. He can only be said to be a ruthless person! (End of this chapter)