Chapter 369: Big but Not Strong

Actually, this can't be blamed on Fang Hong — he just isn't from this industry; he only had a forward-looking eye, without any decisive advantage.

These past few days, Uncle has been staying at Liu Tianxian's home, and Liu Xiaoli would also ask Uncle why he'd come again.

Uncle only said he had official business, and didn't mention the matter of lending money to Fang Hong — if he had, she would certainly have asked for the details.

So he didn't say, and Liu Xiaoli didn't ask either.

Once the loan agreement was completely signed, Uncle returned to Wuhan, and the disbursement of funds would naturally be handled properly.

Meanwhile, Liu Tianxian needed to be busy for a few days — attending events, doing endorsements for brands, taking some nice photos for fashion editors to put in the September issue; September would be here very soon.

Every year at this time, Liu Tianxian was at her busiest, busy working — the golden September, silver October, after all!

On August 16, Ex-Files was released. The success of this film — its opening day box office was only 5.99 million yuan, simply miserable to behold.

Since Those Years, this was the lowest opening-day box office among Jade Rabbit's films.

Those Years was a few years ago, with an opening day of 5.45 million yuan; Ex-Files was only a little higher.

But Unbeatable was fierce — 13.44 million on opening day, more than double Ex-Files.

This was normal — Unbeatable had big names like Zhazha Hui and Peng Yuyan, and had even won awards; its reputation had long been established.

Ex-Files, on the other hand, just went through the motions, without any blitz-style publicity or gimmicks.

Yu Pangzi was quite pleased seeing this and started showing off and mocking: "Some companies simply lack class — they think throwing a low-budget trash film at Unbeatable to ride its coattails will get them box office. The facts prove it's pure blind arrogance."

This guy really wouldn't shut up, and loved to argue; Boss Xiao Wang wasn't so talkative — he preferred to play dirty.

People who talk too much are really annoying.

"Whether it's blind arrogance or not, we don't know — whose box office is higher will only be known when the films leave theaters. It's too early to say anything now." Chen Zhixi also enjoyed clashing with him.

The two sides went back and forth, and Wangyi just watched the show.

The box office trends over the next two days — Unbeatable climbed steadily: 18.42 million on day two, 17.29 million on day three.

Ex-Files just held at four or five million, showing no sign of change.

This made Yu Pangzi's primordial urge to roast people impossible to hold back again, and he yapped again: "I think Unbeatable doesn't need to wait until it leaves theaters — we've already won."

This time Chen Zhixi didn't bother with him, only because she didn't have much confidence either. Ex-Files not only had poor box office, its reputation was also a mess — online it was a chorus of criticism:

"Four screenwriters couldn't come up with a single normal story that could happen to a real person."

"The Performance Department was terrible!"

"The whole thing is over the top, the story is rough, the acting is collectively desperate!"

"A genuinely rotten film!"

"I've seen boring movies, but never one this boring — a waste of time!"

"."

Basically all the comments were cursing the film for being trash and the acting for being trash — this left Wang Ran and Li Xian quite depressed.

Even more depressed was Li Xian — being criticized made him feel like he couldn't act at all.

But over the next few days, something seemed a bit off — Ex-Files' box office stabilized at over five million, and on holidays could even surge to six or seven million, achieving a counter-trend rise.

Meanwhile, Unbeatable plummeted all the way: day four 10.14 million; day five 7.28 million; day six 6.29 million; day seven 6.41 million; day eight it dropped straight below 3.8 million.

In just a few days, it fell from over ten million to a level even worse than Ex-Files' few million — simply the fastest box office drop in history.

Unbeatable's rating was still very high, at 7.9 — it could be called a classic.

But the box office just kept falling, impossible to stop.

It's simple — little fairies don't like watching this kind of film; they love watching romance films like Ex-Files.

Little fairies not only loved watching, they were especially emotional — crying their eyes out in the theater, and they loved bringing their boyfriends along.

If they didn't have a boyfriend, they'd watch alone quietly — watching and laughing, watching and crying again, and after finishing, going quiet once more.

Afterward, they didn't want to be alone anymore — they wanted to fall in love!

That's just how this film was — and many men went to watch it too, not for any other reason than to hit on little fairies.

This kind of thing really happened — someone watching the film actually got to know a girl.

But it depended on luck — the person sitting next to you might already have a boyfriend, hard to say.

In any case, as long as a film caters to little fairies, even if it's trash, it definitely won't lose money — this was an iron rule Fang Hong had stated from the start. It was also the audience demographic for the film market over the next ten years.

Not only was the film market like this — all other markets were the same.

Actually, if men don't have women accompanying them, they don't like watching movies — they'd rather play a round of Hero Glory at home!

Just like Fang Hong — he'd rather play games than bother accompanying Liu Tianxian to watch a movie.

Seeing that his film's daily box office couldn't match Ex-Files, Yu Pangzi shut his mouth and stopped yapping.

At this rate, his film really might be overtaken — it was hard to stomach; he truly hadn't expected such a phenomenon.

Not only did he not expect it, others in the entertainment industry hadn't expected this either — they had assumed Ex-Files would slowly decline.

They hadn't expected it to stay so steady — neither high nor low!

During this period, Fang Hong didn't pay attention to this matter — it couldn't pique his interest. He had been researching the Option Pool and the matter of partners.

He also wasn't in a rush to discuss the acquisition with Chen Tianqiao — for him, it wasn't that urgent anymore.

Constantly adding divisions would only leave the company in a state of being big but not strong, like Canada and the Russians — the two with the largest territory.

Yet they gave people an impression of not being strong, of being hollow.

A situation like this easily fell apart, becoming a scattered mess — it had to be changed.

He needed to readjust the structure, find partners, establish the top-level framework, and adjust the entire structural system of Chang'e Company.

If the top level wasn't united, all flashy and empty, how could this company possibly be any good?

Fang Hong first arranged to meet Zhang Lidong, and discussed with him the matter of inviting him to be a partner, fulfilling the promise made when he had originally poached him.

When he had originally invited him, he said he would give him shares and let him be in charge of commercial operations — it was just that Fang Hong hadn't brought it up later.

He had wanted to wait until the company was bigger before distributing, but now that might not work.

Choosing him over Zhang Nan is because he can help Chang'e Technology make money—commercial monetization. Before Zhang Nan is cultivated, he's at most just an executor.

In the past half year, Bilibili's commercial monetization has also shown results, with revenue reaching 131 million.

Game revenue was 86 million yuan, advertising revenue was 19 million yuan, and the rest was livestreaming revenue.

All of this is Zhang Lidong's doing!

Game revenue takes the lion's share, mainly from promotion and distribution for major game companies, taking a share of the revenue.

Mobile games and PC games are both popular now, so this portion of revenue is very high.

This platform already has a large base of ACG users and game users, and is gradually forming a unique cultural ecosystem for young people, with very high stickiness.

Advertising revenue is just miscellaneous ads—this portion is small and doesn't fit the platform's character, because many young people would rather play games than spend more.

But it can't be absent either; having a little doesn't matter.

Also, knowledge-based paid content is being heavily promoted now—some Up Masters publish professional knowledge, and people who need to learn can buy a membership to watch.

Of course, this knowledge needs review; it has to be hardcore, to prevent people passing off mediocrity as quality and damaging the platform's reputation.

Additionally, a game merchandise mall is being promoted—after all, with an IP like Hero Glory, they can sell figurines, T-shirts, and other merchandise.

None of this affects the platform's development direction, and it can achieve monetization; it's all being pushed forward bit by bit by the team.

Although there's revenue, there's also a loss—currently the loss has reached 372 million, still far from Fang Hong's target of losing one billion this year.

Actually, it's already lost 500 million; it's just that revenue offset some of it. When he set this target initially, Bilibili had little revenue.

The losses are mainly from Up Master content expenditure, servers, bandwidth, operations, ACG anime licensing, and the like.

For ACG content, buying licenses is non-negotiable—that's the platform's nature. The Data Center can't handle it; the user base is too large, so they can only rent.

Now Bilibili's monthly active users are very stable, at 15.4 million—the platform with the largest MAU under Chang'e Technology.

At this scale, by today's standards, it's already a decent content platform; Meituan only has fifty million.

It also developed early, benefiting from a series of traffic-driving moves by Fang Hong back then, as well as the strategy of having Up Masters create content to earn money, which took effect.

At the very least, users can see watchable content on it; as for whether they can see the content they want to see, that requires the Recommendation Algorithm to be refined.

Fang Hong and Zhang Lidong chatted for a long time, from morning until dark—a heart-to-heart of sorts.

(End of chapter)