Chapter 58: Box Office and Filming

On September 16, *Dead Silence* was officially released. Benefiting from the fame generated by *Lurking* and Wei Jin's promotional efforts, the film opened on over 2,500 screens on its first day, with a box office of 8.7 million. The box office for the first three-day weekend reached an exaggerated 27.44 million, and the senior executives at Summit Entertainment were already preparing to pop champagne in celebration.

But Wei Jin knew that this was merely the result of morbid curiosity; he was not particularly optimistic about the film's box office. There was no other reason—it was simply too terrifying.

Sure enough, the box office for the second week was 16 million, a direct halving.

Public opinion also began to shift. Some media outlets accused such a terrifying film of not being suitable for release, and there were even reports that some audience members had fainted directly in the theater, demanding compensation from the producers.

After emergency public relations by Summit Entertainment, the matter was quickly quelled, but a shadow had been cast over the film's prospects.

However, these things no longer had much to do with Wei Jin; he had already joined the crew of *The Conjuring* to begin filming.

Filming a movie in North America gave Wei Jin the greatest feeling of all: boredom.

Because the entire crew was assembled temporarily, neither the staff nor the actors were very familiar with each other, and the filming process was simply unremarkable.

Fortunately, James Wan was there, so he could chat with Wei Jin about film creativity and some interesting anecdotes about Hollywood.

James Wan also looked at this Eastern director, who shared the same ancestors as him, with new eyes. He had originally thought he only had creativity in his head, but after personally entering his crew, he discovered that Wei Jin seemed to have the finished film already in his mind; his filming precision was extremely high, and his efficiency was frightening.

At the same time, after reading the sequel scripts for Wei Jin's *Dead Silence* and *Lurking*, James Wan also officially agreed to become the director for the sequels. As for the specific method of cooperation, that would still need to be discussed with Summit Entertainment.

Having secured a qualified "tool man," Wei Jin was in a very good mood.

Seemingly influenced by the director, the entire crew operated faster, and the filming progress even exceeded Wei Jin's expectations.

The film *The Conjuring* tells the story of the 1970s, when Roger and Carolyn, a married couple, moved into an old house located in Harrisville, Rhode Island, with their five cute and beautiful daughters.

Although the house was old, weathered, and had a long history, it allowed the Perron family to experience the happiness and joy of returning to a pastoral life.

Who would have thought that the good times would not last long? One strange event after another appeared in succession, causing the girls to scream in terror and stretching the nerves of the Perron couple to the breaking point.

For this reason, they searched around and found the most prestigious Warren couple at the time, which triggered a series of terrifying conflicts, and in the end, this house became their nightmare.

Ten years later, everyone had become distraught and finally decided to move away from Rhode Island.

With Wei Jin at the helm this time, the film's budget reached 10 million USD, a much larger investment than the previous few films. Of course, the ambitions of Wei Jin and Summit Entertainment were also greater, hoping to use this film to achieve a global box office of 200 million or even 300 million.

For this film, Wei Jin's salary reached 3 million USD plus a 5% priority box office share. Business is business, and personal is personal; in this regard, Wei Jin would not shortchange himself.

Regarding this, the senior management of Summit Entertainment had no objections; Wei Jin had already proven his strength.

During the filming, Scarlett also came to visit the set. She had been busy filming the movie *Match Point* previously, which is a crime-romance film about an extramarital affair. At present, the "Black Widow" had not yet found her own path and was quite fond of these types of films with artistic attributes.

After filming ended, knowing that Wei Jin was filming a new movie in North America, she put down all her work and came to the set to visit.

The two had not seen each other for nearly half a year; once they met, it was naturally like dry tinder meeting a raging fire, ignited at a single touch. To express her gratitude for the song Wei Jin gifted her, Scarlett satisfied all of Wei Jin's requests almost unconditionally. For such a good thing, Wei Jin naturally did not refuse, trying many new ways to play, including but not limited to various positions and scenes that would be "404'd."

For several consecutive days, Wei Jin felt refreshed and invigorated, but good times do not last long; Scarlett ultimately had other schedule arrangements and could not always explore the true meaning of sex and love with this strong man.

A week later, Scarlett drifted away, and Wei Jin made up his mind that this time when he returned to the country, he would hire a bed-warming Assistant no matter what.

During the time Wei Jin was filming his new movie, news also came from the country from time to time.

*Drawing Sword* had already landed on CCTV for its premiere in mid-September. Once broadcast, it was met with rave reviews, and its peak viewership rating even reached 13.7. Many media outlets predicted that *Drawing Sword* would be the viewership champion of 2005, and for a time, major satellite TV stations scrambled to buy the second and third round broadcast rights.

Wei Jin knew that this was just the beginning. For many years to come, this show would always exist on the broadcast schedules of various local satellite TV stations; the long-tail effect was truly incomparably powerful. This could also be considered the most successful investment by Wei Jin Fengliu Film and Television Company: an investment of 5 million, holding 30% of the shares, which would bring tens of millions in profits to the company in the future.

In addition, benefiting from the dazzling results of *Drawing Sword*, *Lurking*, which had been backlogged by the company, was also successfully spotted by Mango TV. They purchased it at a price of 800,000 per episode and expected to start broadcasting in November, clearly wanting to ride the wave of popularity of Anti-Japanese War period dramas.

In fact, the TV series *Lurking* had long since completed all post-production, but for a long time, the major TV stations had no strong desire to purchase this show, and the price never went up, so Wei Jin made the final decision not to sell it for the time being.

Because Wei Jin knew that spy-war dramas would soon rise, and the reason, naturally, was the market void caused by the reduction in crime-investigation dramas.

In 2005, the authorities issued a series of requirements regarding crime-investigation themed TV series. In short, crime-investigation dramas had been too popular in the country over the past few years, and there were criminals who learned and applied what they saw, causing a bad influence. Therefore, starting in 2005, crime-investigation dramas were greatly reduced, a phenomenon that would only improve after Sky Net was gradually popularized.

And as the best substitute for crime-investigation dramas, spy-war dramas officially stepped onto the stage, simply because these two types of themes shared a common characteristic: they both watched how the side of justice fought wits and courage with the side of evil. Therefore, it was no surprise that spy-war dramas began a path of explosive popularity lasting more than ten years.

Wei Jin could not predict the viewership ratings of *Lurking*, but what he could predict was that Ceng Li should become very popular this year.

In addition, the Huayi earthquake, which had lasted for more than two months, also officially came to an end. Most of the artist teams, led by Wang Jinhua, left collectively to join Orange Sky.

But what was intriguing was that Fan Bingbing, Li Bingbing, Ren Quan, and others, whom Wang Jinhua had single-handedly made famous, actually did not leave with her, but chose to stay at Huayi.

However, Huayi was, after all, a top-tier large company in the industry, and there were still many Agents and artists. They were currently rushing to fill the gaps left by Wang Jinhua and her group. For those artists who decided to leave, Huayi also swiftly withdrew resources, announcements, endorsements, or film contracts.

In order to stabilize the few remaining artists under its banner, Huayi also began to officially distribute original shares to bind the artists, laying the groundwork for creating a large number of multi-millionaire stars for its later listing.

In terms of movies, *The Myth* was released on September 23. Since there were no competitors in the same period, it dominated the National Day Slot alone.

But its performance was poor. After being released for more than a month, the Mainland China box office stopped at 97 million, and the Hong Kong box office was over 17 million. One wonders how much the investors would lose on a cost of 160 million Hong Kong dollars.

The disturbances in the country did not affect Wei Jin. On October 25, after finishing the filming and post-production of *The Conjuring*, Wei Jin had officially boarded the flight back to the country. At the moment, he was happily calculating his earnings on the plane.

*Dead Silence* had officially ended its run a week ago, with a North American box office of 72.8 million and a global box office of 108 million. Regarding this, everyone at Summit Entertainment felt a bit regretful; if not for the media's reckless reporting, the box office could have grown by another 10 or 20 million.

The box office share for *Lurking* had arrived. After deducting promotion and distribution expenses, the distributable box office was 68 million. Wei Jin's private share was 20%, which was 13.6 million USD. This portion had already been remitted to the country. With a bloody profit of over 100 million from a single film, at this moment on the plane, Wei Jin just wanted to ask: who else is there!!

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