Chapter 624: Controversy and box office, of course the latter

However, Lu Yan He, who is closely related to these disputes behind the Golden Tripod Awards, is actually not the producer of *Friends*, so he doesn't know much about these twists and turns.

Yuehu Station is the producer of *Friends*.

It is also the one most concerned about whether *Friends* can achieve something in mainstream awards.

This is not just honor; it is also the station head's political achievement.

Therefore, the person who is really concerned about this matter and has been active in the industry is Xu Senjin.

In order to create momentum for *Friends*, he not only arranged for the rebroadcast of *Friends* on Yuehu Station but also invited major media outlets that are on good terms with Yuehu Station to respond to the articles of Chen Miao, Guan Su Chen, and others, calling for breaking the discrimination and prejudice against sitcoms.

It was noisy and bustling.

Lu Yan He basically couldn't avoid being asked related questions whenever he had public activities.

Long Yan Pictures is also good at hitching a ride.

When Huang Tai was promoting *Can't Even Fake Death*, she said: "Actually, it's not just sitcoms like *Friends*; comedy films like *Can't Even Fake Death* are also not favored by mainstream awards, even if they are directed by talented directors like Liu Bige, they cannot avoid such prejudice. Fortunately, even if those professionals don't like it, the eyes of the market and the audience are very bright."

"..." Lu Yan He had nothing to say about this.

Of course, he wouldn't take the initiative to tear down the stage.

You know, although film awards do have a certain degree of prejudice against comedy themes, and the winning rate of comedy themes is not as high as serious themes, they have never been absent.

But sitcoms have always been the "pearls" of mainstream television awards and have almost never been shortlisted.

Even though Liu Zi's performance in *My Own Swordsman* last year received high recognition in the industry, she didn't get any significant nominations in the end.

Lu Yan He didn't want to be involved in this discussion storm, so he reduced the frequency of going out, and basically pushed away public activities as much as possible. It was clearly the summer file where films were released one after another, and various film screening activities were flying everywhere, and invitations were like snowflakes, but Lu Yan He pushed them all away, only attending two low-budget art film screenings to support them.

During this time, Lu Yan He basically stayed at the *Jump Up* headquarters in Lingyang District every day, accompanying Chen Siqi and writing scripts.

It wasn't until July 12th that *Can't Even Fake Death* was finally premiered.

Lu Yan He booked the venue to invite his fans to watch this film.

As a key film pushed by Long Yan Pictures, under the addition of various promotions, the first-day box office of *Can't Even Fake Death* exceeded 82 million, ushering in a good start.

The second-day box office fell slightly, only 68 million, but by the third day, the daily box office exceeded the 75 million mark again.

In three days of release, the film's box office exceeded 200 million, which met Long Yan Pictures' expectations for this film and also met the trend of romantic comedy films—

Generally speaking, for this type of film, unless the word-of-mouth explodes, the first-week box office can basically account for about 70% of the entire film's box office.

Sure enough, by the fourth day, Monday, although the entire summer file market didn't slide too much, the daily box office of *Can't Even Fake Death*, which is very dependent on holidays, fell to 55 million, which is still a situation where the decline is very well controlled.

But according to the current box office trend, the total box office of *Can't Even Fake Death* should be able to break their goal—500 million box office—without any surprise.

This is the first film starring Li Zhibai, and the box office performance is so good that he has also become a hot young actor in film.

Huang Tai said with a face full of joy at a roadshow: "We are considering the possibility of filming a sequel."

This is a pre-determined promotion plan—

As long as the box office is good, bringing up the reason for filming a sequel will definitely be able to stir up topics.

At the same time, this was also a signal, telling those viewers who hadn't yet gone to see the film—

This film is very good, the results are great, and they're already preparing to film a sequel while it's still in theaters.

It's all a routine.

However, along with the rising box office of *Can't Even Fake Death*, the film's word-of-mouth faced some negative criticism, especially directed at the director, Liu Bige.

Led by Chen Miao, she pointed out very seriously that although it was clearly visible from the film itself that Liu Bige hadn't been perfunctory in shooting it, such a film was not worth Liu Bige spending so much effort to turn into an artistic commodity—the essence of *Can't Even Fake Death* was still a laughable commercial romantic comedy. Every character's appearance and plot progression were full of "deliberateness" and "routines," only masked by Liu Bige in a way that seemed to have "novelty."

Finally, Chen Miao used one sentence to describe her impression of the film—

Liu Bige filming *Fake Death* is like a butcher who could carve an ox being assigned to kill a chicken.

When Lu Yan He saw this last sentence, he almost spat out the water in his mouth.

To be fair, when these media people write things seriously, you can see the sharp, mean-spirited edge in their words between the lines as they hit their keyboards.

However, their criticisms, while seemingly aimed at Liu Bige, were actually still primarily affirmative of him.

What they were truly pointing at was the overly commercialized and routine script of *Can't Even Fake Death* itself.

Regarding these criticisms, Liu Bige did not stand up to make any response.

Neither did Huang Tai.

With the box-office situation looking great, Long Yan certainly didn't want to respond to these things and create greater public opinion and topics that might affect the box office.

What film doesn't have some negative news pop up when it's released?

In the few days after the film's release, Liu Bige and Li Zhibai had basically been running roadshows the whole time.

This meant they had to face unknown questions every day.

None of them knew what kind of questions the audience would ask that day.

And after these controversies about Liu Bige emerged, the entire publicity team was particularly afraid that an audience member at the scene would directly pose these questions to Liu Bige. For this reason, they made many templates of answers and provided them to Liu Bige.

Liu Bige looked at them and said nothing.

Huang Tai had been accompanying them on the roadshows the whole time.

Running roadshows was, first, to fulfill the promises made by the distributor when negotiating with theater chains, and second, to provide a constant stream of new material for the film's promotion.

Now, much of a film's promotional material comes from the Q&A sessions at roadshows.

Among these, there are plants with pre-designed questions, as well as genuine, spontaneous moments on the spot.

At the roadshow, Liu Bige's state didn't seem to be affected by the controversies surrounding him. He answered questions with full emotion, including when a viewer later really asked how he viewed the criticisms against him. He replied gracefully: "My mind is full of roadshow matters right now, and I haven't had time to think about those questions properly. After the promotional period for *Can't Even Fake Death* ends, I will find a quiet place and think about it properly."

That could be considered a very sincere answer.

However, they also encountered viewers who kept pressing the issue, seemingly feeling particularly disappointed in Liu Bige for filming such a movie.

Liu Bige was very embarrassed at the time, so Li Zhibai picked up the microphone and said: "I have to take some responsibility for this. Mainly, for me, acting in this style and role is in my comfort zone, so the director also made many adjustments based on my performance style. If you feel you couldn't find that *Late Spring* feeling because of the style of this film, I apologize to you."

Li Zhibai used this attitude to forcibly interrupt the viewer's questioning, easing Liu Bige's embarrassment.

But the consequence was that someone used this to create a topic—

Li Zhibai admits the reason *Can't Even Fake Death* is not recognized lies with him.

"..."

Lin Suyang was absolutely furious.

But regardless of the controversy, *Can't Even Fake Death* struck a chord with the lower-tier market. According to surveys, viewers between 15 and 30 years old accounted for 75% of the film's audience, an exaggerated proportion.

Among them, Li Zhibai's fans were very effective. Probably because this was the first film Li Zhibai starred in, they put in a great deal of effort: first, by watching the film themselves, and second, by encouraging everyone around them to go see it.

When *Can't Even Fake Death* broke 600 million at the box office in ten days, no amount of questioning could reach Long Yan's ears.

Success at the box office was what they wanted.

At this time, Lu Yan He's *Love Letter* was finally about to hold its special domestic screening.

This time, Lu Yan He still chose to hold the special screening for friends of *Love Letter* at Zhenhua University.