Chapter 181.2 – “Sheng”

Originally, there was still some depressing atmosphere, but because of Shen Huai’s words, it became full of fighting spirit again.

When everyone got the assignment and left the conference room, Shen Huai breathed a sigh of relief as he sat in his chair. His neat hair was messed up, and even his collar was torn open by him.

Pei Ran, seeing this, went aside to get him a glass of water.

Shen Huai took it and said thank you.

Although Shen Huai has always been very calm in front of others, he was uncertain in his heart.

Even if the media responds well to the movie, word of mouth can ruin it after the movie was released. The tastes of the public are far more unpredictable than the stock market.

He chose to expand the screening scale and shift the focus of publicity to third-and fourth-tier cities. If the final result was not satisfactory, “Sheng” would meet an even worse fate because of his wrong decision.

In this way, he will need to apologize not only to Pei Ran but also the staff who worked so hard for this movie.

Pei Ran saw his worry and didn’t persuade him. He just smiled and said, “Do you remember the words of Sheng and Qian Ru?”

Shen Huai was stunned.

Pei Ran was talking about the plot of the movie. After being fired by Wuxing after the financial crisis in Hong Kong, Sheng, the main protagonist of the movie, has to go to various studios to be a group performer and/or physical worker in order to support himself. His life was even more humble than when he was in Wuxing, but he became even more upright.

Later, Qian Ru, a girl he liked, asked him, “Do you think this kind of life is good?”

Sheng replied, “It’s better to have a clear conscience. Anyway, tomorrow will be better than today.”

Shen Huai immediately understood Pei Ran’s intention. His nervous tension relaxed a little as he said to Pei Ran: “Thank you.”

Pei Ran gently patted him on the shoulder, everything went without saying.

As this scheduled war was gradually coming to an end, National Day was also coming quietly.

In this half month, all the movie companies have tried their best. Especially in the first tier cities such as Zhongjing and Dongjiang, which were called “big ticket warehouses”, several film companies fought for them until the end.

In the fierce competition, “Sheng” began its first official screening.

Xiao Lin was a big fan of Ye Cang. Although her God often doesn’t come out for business, Xiao Lin still paid close attention to him.

Ye Cang producing the soundtrack for movie “Sheng” already caused a stir in their small circle. Later, Ye Cang also sent a Weibo recommendation for this movie, making Xiao Lin immediately decide to go to the cinema to support her male god.

So after learning the news of “Sheng” screening, Xiao Lin immediately made an appointment with her best friend who likes to watch movies to go to the cinema together.

The screening time for this movie was not very good, and her friend felt a little helpless. “You are really obsessed. I used to invite you out for movies, but now you are running to the cinema just for a man at this point.”

Xiao Lin smiled and held up her hand. “Maybe in the future I will fall in love with watching movies.”

Her best friend rolled her eyes, and the two girls walked noisily into the cinema with popcorn and coke.

At first, Xiao Lin and her best friend ate some popcorn and laughed at the movie, but later, they both stopped their movements and looked intently at the screen.

By the time the movie was over, the two of them regained their mind. The Whole bucket of popcorn was still left and they didn’t even touch the coke.

However, the two of them didn’t care about this kind of thing anymore, because their mood was still immersed in the movie at this point.

Xiao Lin sniffed: “It was really funny before, but it became really uncomfortable later. I don’t know why when I saw Sheng, I thought of myself. Although I didn’t know what it is for, I still want to live so desperately.”

Her best friend also wiped away her tears. Her feelings were actually deeper than Xiao Lin. The movie that made her fall in love with movies was a Hong Kong movie. Over the years, Hong Kong films gradually declined, and she felt very sad in her heart. But now when she saw Ah Sheng, she was very surprised.

“The next time it’s officially released, let’s come and see it again.” Xiao Lin asked with a thick nasal voice.

Her best friend nodded hard, and then suddenly remembered something, “By the way, I’m going to recommend this movie to our movie appreciation group.”

With that, she turned on her cell phone and began writing messages.

Xiao Lin also thought. “Yeah, I’ll post a moment, too.”

Under the same sky, there were not a few people who had the same behavior as these two people. The number of people who scored “Sheng ” on Douban, which used to be a lonely place, is on the rise, and most people give five-star evaluation.

As “Sheng” reputation continued to ferment, the time quietly moved to the end of September.

Almost all companies that were paying close attention to arrangement. When the result came out, Guanrui’s 33% movie arrangement beat all other competitors and won the top place.

The living space for other films has been compressed to the extreme. “Sheng” movie has been arranged in less than 10% of cinemas, which was quite shabby. However, no one noticed that “Sheng” movie arrangement rate in the third and fourth line cities was far higher than that in Zhongjing and other cities, reaching 30%.

At the same time, Sheng’s word-of-mouth had finally reached its peak in social networks such Weibo.

On the first day, the attendance rate o f“Twilight Jilling Machine” was at 33%, with scheduling rate at 412; the scheduling of “Sheng” was 98, with the attendance rate at 55%.

The next day, the “Twilight Killing Machine” scheduling rate was 341 with attendance rate at 29%. Sheng schedule rate was at 12% with attendance rate at 63%.

The evaluation of the two sides was even more different.

So before Guangrui could even be happy for a few days, they were stunned by a wave of bad reviews.

[What the God said was good? It’s total trash and a waste of my money!!]

[What the hell is “Twilight Killing Machine”? It’s just boring and childish. I don’t even want to know what the director wanted to express.]

[Is Fu Cheng retarded? I can’t believe he gave up “Red actress” for this shity movie.]

[I’ve been a fan of Fu Cheng for several years, but after watching the “Twilight Killing Machine”, I think I might want to take off my powder.]

{edit: take off my powder means stop being a fan.}

[Really, I haven’t seen this kind of rotten film with lots of plot holes and standard plot twists in many years.]

[How can it have comparable meaning to “Red Actress”??]

[In fact,“Twilight Killing Machine” is not without advantages. After all, I slept soundly and cured my many years of insomnia.]

In addition to the audience’s rant, the movie had been supported by most of the major official accounts and bilibili films. It can be said that every day there were various kinds of parody videos and assessment videos coming out, and the number of views was probably even higher than that of the actual movie.

{edit: bilibili films is a Chinese video sharing website.}

The attendance rate of “Twilight killing Machine” dropped from 412 on the first day to 17, which was beyond everyone’s expectation in the golden week schedule. The managers of the major cinemas were about to scold their own mothers, as they hurriedly reduced the arrangement of “Twilight Killing Machine” and improved the arrangement of other films, especially “Sheng”. In the past few days, although the arrangement of the movie was not very good, the results were dazzling and outstanding.

After three rounds of screenings, “Sheng” had received a lot of tap water to promote the movie. The viewers spared no effort to promote “Sheng” in their circle of friends, Weibo and major forums.

{edit: most probably means that Sheng accumulated a lot of materials for discussion.}

This kind of “marketing” was far better than the hard work of the movie companies, so after a few days, although “Sheng” screening time was abusive, the attendance rate was frighteningly high, Some places were even so full, the tickets couldn’t even be bought at all.

The audience complained a lot, but many fans in third-and fourth-tier cities proudly showed off that “Sheng” screening schedule was very high here, and many people have seen it twice and even went for the third time.

As a result, many people noticed that in just a few days, “Sheng” box office has reached 500 million yuan, far more than other recent movies.

The cinema began to urgently adjust the layout, “Sheng” was like a giant beast that had been dormant for a long time, finally showing its real strength.