Chapter 401: Not a Single Penny Put Into the Household

The movie "Lucky Key," which has been screening for over a month, has now been pulled from theaters.

Its final box office was 762 million!

Compared to "Shen Du Long Wang"'s 600 million, it's over 100 million higher, though the movie fell apart terribly in its later run.

If not for the early-period rebate support, it wouldn't have hit 600 million — no way around it, it was just too bad.

In contrast, "Lucky Key" had its plot on point, its acting on point, it was funny, and the audience still loves watching comedies.

Its leads Xiao Yang and Yu Hewei also became hugely famous in the industry because of this film.

If no film in the New Year Slot surpasses it, then "Lucky Key" can rank third in this year's box office history — first is "Journey to the West: Demon Subduing," second is "Now You See Me."

This year Jade Rabbit's other high-grossing film, "Partners," also reached 700 million.

And "Lucky Key" also performed very well at the South Korea box office.

According to data released by the Korean Film Council: "Lucky Key" mobilized over 6 million viewers, broke viewing records multiple times, with a cumulative box office of 48.91 million, equivalent to 340 million soft sister coins."

Jade Rabbit's share is roughly 68 million.

This data quickly made the front page headlines of major domestic media — this is another hit work in South Korea following "Big Character."

"The Power of Culture! 'Lucky Key' Tops the South Korea Box Office Chart."

"'Lucky Key' Overseas Box Office Breaks 100 Million: The Bumps on the Road of Chinese Films Going Overseas!"

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Mainstream media are all reporting on this, though of course there are sour ones too — the South Korean media are quite sour, saying Chinese film and television should be banned from entering South Korea and so on.

It's just that only their Korean Wave can come to China, while the Chinese Wave can't enter South Korea — typical of wanting only the benefits.

Jade Rabbit and CJ's co-production "International Market" will also be released in South Korea on December 17. Right now the two countries' relations haven't reached that point yet — squeeze out what you can while you can.

This film uses a script from Jade Rabbit, with Best Special Effects also provided by Jade Rabbit. It took over a year to produce and is finally about to be released — it was originally made to develop the South Korea market and to find orders for Best Special Effects.

Now there are orders from China, the US, and South Korea.

"Let's Get Married" doesn't air on Friday or Saturday — those two days are Variety time. "Dad Where Are We Going" is still on fire, with ratings reaching 3.851%.

If nothing unexpected happens, it'll break 4 next week!

That's an extremely rare figure — later only "In the Name of the People" reached that rating.

That buzz can be said to have had an enormous impact on society, and now "Dad Where Are We Going" has already achieved this kind of effect.

It has struck a chord with the public and drawn extensive media coverage — for example: the man works outside, the woman works inside — is that reasonable? Why can't the woman work outside and the man work inside?

I don't know what the point of discussing this is — you still have to look at the problem based on each family's situation.

Whoever earns more, that person supports the family, of course.

For example, Liu Tianxian earns a lot. Now that the weather's cold, she's afraid Fang Hong will freeze, so she bought him thermal underwear, a down jacket, a hat, gloves, and warm shoes — spending several hundred thousand.

She also bought some food and daily necessities for his mother, supporting both families.

Fang Hong hasn't put a single penny into the household — and what of it?

"Let's Get Married" will only air its fifth and sixth episodes on Sunday. After these two episodes aired, the ratings jumped straight to 1.772%.

Compared to the previous ratings, that's an increase of 0.2 percentage points!

After that the ratings climbed day by day — 1.857%, 2.117% — and by the time episodes 17 and 18 aired, ratings broke 2.

It was insanely hot too, with extremely high discussion buzz. A media outlet reported: "Second in buzz, ratings break 2! Wangyi: The only urban romance in recent years that you don't fast-forward has appeared."

In other words, apart from "Dad Where Are We Going," the most-discussed show is this TV drama.

A Wangyi called "Er Dong Mu Nan" commented: "'Let's Get Married' is truly a blood-and-tears history. Seeing older leftover woman Yang Tao's mother pressuring her to marry feels just like watching my own mom act."

Wangyi "Tian Jue Jue" commented: "The dialogue is so real, every line hits me right in the heart — it's funny to listen to but makes you want to cry."

There were also professional film and television critics weighing in. A critic named Sima Pingbang commented: "The very title of 'Let's Get Married' carries a gentle yet powerful social provocative force. Compared to movies, TV dramas are life — more down-to-earth. Every viewer can see themselves in it."

"The more open society becomes, the more people advocate freedom, equality, and independence. The harder it is to pair up men and women with these kinds of thoughts — that's also one of the social reasons leftover men and leftover women come into being."

Wangyi also reprinted this passage and reported: "Today, the number of single men and women of marriageable age in society has exceeded 100 million. Whether leftover men or leftover women, they should face life with an optimistic and open mindset. Dare to marry, be willing to marry — list it as a top priority. And dare to have children, be willing to have children — list it as a life goal."

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With this TV drama's huge popularity, the two leads Guo Jingfei and Shuchang naturally saw their popularity rise with the tide.

Especially Shuchang — her career has bloomed into a second spring. Commercial performances, endorsements, events — one after another, she's returned to the public eye, reminding people of this childhood goddess.

For example, the Foolish Girl from "Magic Phone" left a deep impression.

Two consecutive hits gave the Chang'e Video Platform a massive flow of traffic — high view counts, and ad fees shooting up too.

But this also made the audience complain endlessly — damn it, watching a TV drama you sit through 30 to 60 seconds of ads at the start, and halfway through there's freaking more ads — so many ads.

If you don't want to watch ads, there's not even an option to open a membership — ridiculous.

It's like this now — not only is the internet full of ads, you can see ads on TV too. At least online you can open a membership to make things easier.

But Chang'e Video still doesn't have a membership system.

The ads were too annoying, so I went to Youku and Bilibili to look for free resources, only to find all the free resources had been deleted. Not only did Youku delete Chang'e's, Chang'e also deleted Youku's — this left those freeloading viewers completely unable to adjust.

They could only search everywhere, but at most found some clip content, and that content wasn't complete — it couldn't affect viewing of the full episodes.

Other legitimate video sites were the same — it was very hard to find complete versions, all deleted, at most finding a few clip contents.

At this point in time, clip content and film commentary, unless deliberately targeting the other party, hadn't yet reached the stage of affecting long-form video — it hadn't exploded to that phase yet.

Later it blew up across all platforms, and after over a hundred film and television companies boycotted, it finally subsided a bit.

Honestly, film commentary really does affect long-form video — that's also why later the boycotts were so severe, and those commentators could only go comment on foreign films and television or old films and television.

Mainly because they're afraid of being sued.

The current situation is obvious — Chang'e and Youku have negotiated, mutual non-aggression.

They just haven't announced it publicly — if they did, wouldn't that be admitting to copying and pirating each other's content?

This quiet, soundless arrangement is the best — let things rest.

Those internet video platforms, and the film and television circle in general, basically all know the two sides have ceased hostilities. This fight looks like a draw, but actually the Principal still won.

You have to know that behind Youku stands the giant Alibaba!

Some people were quite disappointed, sighing: "Why didn't they beat each other to a pulp?"

Seems they all hoped the two sides would beat each other to a pulp, best if both died and gave up their ecological niche — that would be perfect.

Wishes are beautiful, reality is bony.

After both sides stopped fighting, the audience couldn't see the freebie content they wanted, and had to flow back to their respective video platforms to watch content.

And Chang'e Video currently has three hits: "Let's Get Married," "Dad Where Are We Going," and "Lucky Key," which had finished its theatrical run and gone online.

These three hits can only be watched on Chang'e Video, which led to another wave of surging traffic for Chang'e Video.

But to plug the hole, Chang'e Video plastered pre-roll ads everywhere, which made people very irritated watching it.

So some viewers couldn't hold back and went to customer service to curse: "Damn it, at least give us a membership option, it's all fucking ads, how are people supposed to watch?"

"Sorry for the inconvenience, we sincerely apologize. The membership feature is coming soon, please stay tuned!" the customer service replied.

"Stay tuned my ass, you think I can't afford it? Hurry up, right now, immediately," Wangyi cursed.

There were many such curses, cursing everywhere online, because Chang'e Video's damn pre-roll ads were too many, seriously affecting the viewing experience.

Getting cursed was purely deserved.

Some even called Chang'e Technology: "Just launch a membership to skip ads, everyone else has one except you, can you be more proper?"

"If it weren't only you guys who have 'Dad Where Are We Going' and 'Let's Get Married,' I would've uninstalled your garbage software long ago."

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This overwhelming wave of cursing quickly reached Chang'e's upper management, which they hadn't anticipated.

There were even people begging the platform to launch a membership — wouldn't it be better to let them watch for free?

The main reason was Jade Rabbit's hit after hit at the end of the year, while Chang'e Video's ads were infuriating everyone.

No choice, most of the money had to be split with the producers, and the advertising sponsors had to be kept happy — without a membership, this was the only way.

Otherwise, how would they split money with the producers?

Fang Hong hadn't expected this either — he thought everyone liked freeloading, freeloading doesn't cost money, what's the harm in watching some ads?

It's true everyone likes freeloading, but some impatient people just find it annoying.

In this world there's a group that lacks money; and there's a group that doesn't lack money — you can't lump them all together.

So to accommodate those who don't lack money, the membership system originally planned for January 1st launch was moved up to December 12th, about a little over half a month away.

That's around when "Dad Where Are We Going" and "Let's Get Married" were about to finish airing.

This was to give some buffer time — those advertisers certainly didn't want the membership system to launch so quickly, because launching membership meant most people would skip ads.

Hard to reconcile, so they gave a period of buffer, bear with it, it's almost here anyway.

Also, Chang'e Video was upgrading its algorithms — the membership algorithm and the ad algorithm both needed technical upgrades and interface redesigns.

The previous version of Chang'e Video was very simple, very crude, not aesthetically pleasing, and needed an upgrade.

After all, that version had been thrown together casually at the time.

Some worried that after "Dad Where Are We Going" and "Let's Get Married" finished airing, membership buyers wouldn't be as many as expected.

No need to worry about that — Jade Rabbit is currently running movies, TV dramas, and web dramas on three fronts; after the new year there's "The Heirs" and "Soul Ferry," two of them.

The former stars the already hugely popular Zhao Xiaodao, held back for a long time to stagger the buzz; the latter needs to hit screens quickly to cash in.

Because that drama has "ghosts"!

So there's no worry about lacking hits — this was all planned out by Zhang Nan and Chen Zhixi.

As long as there's no strong opponent, they can't suppress Chang'e Video, and thus can't suppress Jade Rabbit; as long as Jade Rabbit has content, Chang'e Video has traffic.

Chang'e Video has traffic, Jade Rabbit has content — the cycle repeats, endlessly.

(End of chapter)