Chapter 374: A Miracle in the History of Huaxia Cinema!

Two weeks later.

*Fireline Rescue* premiere day, Yanjing.

Chu Chen did not go to the premiere; he had never liked that kind of occasion to begin with.

Flashes, red carpet, reporters holding microphones crowded together; everything was a chaotic mess.

The premiere started at seven in the evening at the largest IMAX theater in Yanjing's Ganda Cinema, with all five hundred and twenty-seven seats filled.

The red carpet stretched from the cinema entrance to the curb, both sides packed with fans and media; the noise was so deafening that traffic on the nearby streets was paralyzed.

Xu Ke stood on stage wearing a black suit, the microphone gripped so tightly in his hand that it was burning hot.

He spoke about his inner journey during the film's preparation and the hardships and obstacles encountered during the filming process.

When he reached the end.

He paused for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the shining eyes in the audience.

"Here, I want to especially thank Mr. Chu Chen. Thank you for joining us. If not for his help, perhaps this film would not have been able to meet everyone so quickly..."

Thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

Long Shu took the microphone. He was wearing a dark blue Zhongshan suit, his hair combed meticulously. Standing on stage, he possessed the composure and gravitas unique to old-school Hong Kong stars.

He first said some polite remarks, thanking the crew, the investors, and every member of the production staff, then changed the subject—

"Why didn't that kid Chu Chen come today?"

Someone in the audience laughed.

"I specifically urged him that he had to be here today, but he stood me up again," Long Shu said with a laugh.

"Just kidding. He actually doesn't like these kinds of occasions. Smart people are always mavericks; I can understand that. Director Xu Ke just said that without him, this film might not have met everyone so quickly. His joining really is of great significance to this film. You'll see when you watch it. Believe me, his performance will absolutely make you remember it for a lifetime!"

Long Shu's words pushed the atmosphere of the premiere to an unprecedented high.

And the reality was exactly as he had said.

After the premiere ended, when the audience walked out of the theater, the expressions on their faces were remarkably consistent!

Excitement mixed with a daze, and within that daze, a sense of thrill!

Some took out their phones at the theater exit to start posting on social media; others were calling friends while walking, speaking so fast that it was hard to hear what they were saying, only catching fragmented words like "Holy shit," "Too awesome," and "You absolutely wouldn't believe it" popping out of the receiver!

A young man in a black hoodie said during a random interview: "I thought the trailer had already shown the most exciting parts. But I guessed wrong. That Parkour segment in the actual film has another part on the rooftop that's even more intense than the trailer. He jumped directly from one building to another with a street in between. When I saw that scene in the cinema, I literally bounced out of my chair."

A girl with glasses next to him chimed in: "I was gripping my boyfriend's hand the whole time; he was almost pinched to tears. But I really couldn't help it. That kind of tension is stronger than any action movie I've ever seen. Because he didn't use wires, didn't use a stunt double; every movement you see on the screen is real. Real things are always more impactful than things that are made."

At eleven o'clock that night, the first-day box office data began to scroll and update.

On the Maoyan Professional data panel, a number was jumping rapidly—80 million, 100 million, 120 million, 150 million.

By exactly twelve midnight, the data settled on a number that made the entire industry go quiet.

237 million.

What kind of concept is this?

In Huaxia film history, the record holder for single-day box office is a certain Spring Festival blockbuster, with 290 million on its first day.

*Fireline Rescue* is an August summer-slot Hong Kong film, without the backing of a super IP, without an all-star cast—Long Shu and those traffic stars, while first-tier, are far from being "box office nuclear weapon" level draws.

It is a film driven purely by action design and word-of-mouth fermentation, and its first-day box office almost touched the ceiling of film history.

But the truly shocking thing about this number is not how high it is, but its composition.

The Maoyan Professional data analysis report was released at one in the morning, showing that among the first-day audience for *Fireline Rescue*, 62% of viewers checked "because of the Parkour segment in the trailer" as their reason for watching.

And in a sample survey of viewers who watched it twice or more, 87% clearly stated that "Chu Chen's performance is worth watching again."

Even more exaggerated is the pre-sale data—in the three days before the premiere, the film's pre-sale box office had already exceeded 150 million.

And this number was only around 30 million before the trailer was released.

In other words, Chu Chen alone, within three days, drove over 120 million in pre-sale box office!

The trending searches on Weibo were completely occupied by this film on the night of the premiere.

Ranked first was "Fireline Rescue breaks 200 million on first day."

Second was "Chu Chen Parkour full version."

Third was "I've already bought tomorrow's ticket for a second viewing."

Fourth was "Chu Chen's box office appeal"—this search term itself explains the issue quite well.

If not for his joining, this film would absolutely not have received such a report card on its premiere day!

The next day, Saturday, the box office data continued to soar!

The single-day box office for the whole day exceeded 310 million!

This is already the fifth-highest single-day result in Huaxia film history.

Following that on Sunday, the box office data did not fall but rose instead, reaching 340 million!

Over the first three-day weekend, the cumulative box office of *Fireline Rescue* exceeded 880 million!

Every predictive model in the industry was broken on this day!

An analyst at a data agency wrote on social media: "Our previous model predicted this film's total box office would be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion, but now it seems this prediction was conservative by at least half. Because its trend is not a normal box office curve—a normal film's box office peaks on the first weekend and then decreases day by day, but *Fireline Rescue*'s box office remained at a high level in the second week, which shows its word-of-mouth fermentation effect far exceeded normal levels."

The Douban rating stabilized at 8.7 after the first weekend.

In the sequence of Hong Kong films, this score can already stand shoulder-to-shoulder with classics like *Infernal Affairs* and *A Better Tomorrow*.

But the style of the comment section is completely different from those classic Hong Kong films—the focus of the audience's discussion is not on the plot, not on the acting, not on the director's technique, but is all concentrated on Chu Chen's forty-plus seconds of Parkour.

One hot comment received over thirty thousand likes: "I give the plot seven points, I give Gugu and Afeng's acting eight points, I give Xu Ke's directing eight points. But for Chu Chen's Parkour, I give it one hundred points. Not because he acted well, but because he made me feel in the cinema what I felt when I first watched a Long Shu movie as a kid—mouth hanging open, unable to close, eyes staring until they ached, with only one thought in my brain: 'Is this something a human can actually do?'"

Another comment was shorter: "I've watched it twice. Third time, let's go."

After the second week's box office data came out, the entire industry was completely speechless!

Tuesday, single-day box office 210 million!

Wednesday, 200 million. Thursday, 180 million!

Friday, 230 million!

Saturday, 360 million—this figure directly refreshed the single-day box office record in Huaxia film history.

Sunday, 340 million!

The cumulative box office for the seven days of the second week reached 1.72 billion.

Adding the 880 million from the opening weekend, *Fireline Rescue* has broken 2.6 billion in total box office after only ten days of release!

This figure has already surpassed the box office curve of *Wolf King 2* during the same period back then.

The entire internet has gone crazy!

The Weibo trending list saw an unprecedented spectacle that day—out of the top ten, nine were related to *Fireline Rescue* or Chu Chen.

Except for a "Typhoon Landfall" squeezed into sixth place, the rest were all swept up by this movie!

On TikTok, the topic #Chu Chen Parkour reached over 8 billion views within ten days.

Clicking on any random video, they were all trailer clips from different angles and AI imitation videos.

A fitness influencer posted a video of himself in the gym imitating Chu Chen's vaulting movements, with the caption "I tried it, fell five times, ribs have hurt for three days, respect," and it received 3 million likes.

On Bilibili, film and television content creators have all started making analysis videos.

Some analyzed the technical details of that parkour sequence frame by frame, calculating that Chu Chen completed seventeen movement nodes in forty-three seconds, with each movement taking less than two and a half seconds on average, and the maximum instantaneous speed reaching 45 kilometers per hour.

Some analyzed the set structure of that old street, pointing out that the swing movement Chu Chen used while vaulting over the clothesline utilized the elastic deformation of the pole, and the magnitude of that deformation was precisely controlled within the safety threshold—"This means he had already calculated the physical parameters of every pivot point before filming. He wasn't improvising; he turned the entire street into his chessboard."

A content creator with a million followers named "A-Liang Talks Movies" said something in a video that flooded the screen with bullet comments: "Many people are asking, why does this parkour look different from previous action movies? I can give you the answer—because in previous action movies, fighting is fighting, running is running, jumping is jumping, and there are pauses in between. A shot is finished, cut, then run, then cut, then jump. But with Chu Chen, it's continuous. From the entrance of the tea restaurant to the utility pole, there are no breaks, no cuts, no wires, no stunt doubles. He completed a whole set of continuous physical movements in real time and real space. In the history of cinema, this is the first time ever."

The four characters for "first time ever" appeared repeatedly in the bullet comments hundreds of times.

By the third week, due to the continuous fermentation of word-of-mouth, the box office trend saw the single-day box office hitting new highs repeatedly!

Monday, 1.06 billion.

Tuesday, 1.05 billion.

Wednesday, 1.04 billion.

Thursday, 1.02 billion.

Friday, 1.01 billion.

Saturday, 1.08 billion.

Sunday, 1.05 billion.

The cumulative box office for the third week was 1.21 billion.

Seventeen days since release, the total box office has broken 9.91 billion!

On the Huaxia film history box office chart, the one originally ranked first was a certain animated sci-fi blockbuster, at 15.69 billion!

According to the current momentum, *Fireline Rescue* still has a release window of nearly three weeks; although the box office will decline week by week, breaking 15 billion is almost a certainty!

The only question is—how far can it go.

And what truly makes the industry feel terrified is not the box office figure itself, but the return on investment of this movie!

The publicly announced production cost of *Fireline Rescue* is 120 million.

This is a mid-to-upper-level production budget for a Hong Kong film, far from being a blockbuster.

If calculated using a box office of 3.8 billion, its rate of return has already exceeded thirty times.

In the history of the film industry, only a very small number of dark horse cases that win big with a small investment can achieve this!

But *Fireline Rescue* cannot be considered a true dark horse—it has a "nuclear weapon" level variable, and that variable is called Chu Chen.

An in-depth analysis article published in *Film Industry Observer* named this phenomenon "Chu Chen Premium."

The article used data to argue a core point: after removing all shots of Chu Chen in *Fireline Rescue*, the remaining part of the movie is a qualified, above-average Hong Kong action film, with an expected box office between 800 million and 1 billion.

But with those forty-three seconds of parkour, the movie's box office expectations were raised by at least four times.

The term "Chu Chen Premium" quickly became popular within the industry.

Investors of all kinds started frantically inquiring about Chu Chen's contact information!

Previously, what they discussed at dinners was where to find good scripts, but now it has almost all turned into "how can I invite this person to film my movie"!

Agency bosses stared at the box office curves on their screens in their offices, the greed and awe in their eyes mixed together, like a group of hunters seeing the rarest prey in the forest.

But Chu Chen himself was indifferent to all of this.

The day the box office broke 3 billion, Long Shu called him.

On the other end of the phone, Long Shu's voice carried the restrained joy of an old man who had seen it all, and he said: "A-Chu, how have you been lately? Have you seen the news? Our box office, it really exploded this time! Breaking the record is a certainty!"

Chu Chen was in his training room, doing one-armed pull-ups, his tone flat: "I saw it, congratulations to you all."

"Congratulations to us?" Long Shu laughed on the other end of the phone, "Half of this box office is yours. You're congratulating me?"

"I only had those few shots, it's not that big of a deal, Long Shu."

"Those few minutes of shots you had contributed at least several billion to us. I'll tell you the truth, I've been in this circle for forty years, I've seen the popular ones, the explosive ones, and those who stood at the peak overnight. But I've never seen anyone like you—one movie, a few minutes of footage, and you changed the entire ecology of the film industry. Do you know how many people are looking for you right now?"

"I know." Chu Chen dropped from the pull-up bar and wiped the sweat off his face with a towel, "But I don't want to film."

Long Shu was silent for two seconds, then said: "I understand you, you're different from them."

Chu Chen smiled: "Thank you."

"Alright then, you get busy, when you're free, I'll come find you for tea."

After hanging up the phone, Chu Chen glanced at his phone, and the messages were already so many they wouldn't pop up—they were all stranger friend requests, and the note fields were filled with various titles: producer of such-and-such film company, vice president of such-and-such agency, marketing director of such-and-such brand, director of such-and-such variety show.

Chu Chen didn't open any of them, directly cleared all the request records, and threw the phone back onto the sofa.

He walked to the window, looking at the sky gradually darkening outside, and what he was thinking about was not the box office figures, not those overwhelming praises, nor those opportunities crazily rushing toward him.

He was thinking about the next thing.

The topic for the third episode of "Simulated Crime"!

Because the day the show starts airing is almost here.

Three days ago, Zhang Yiwen sent him a message saying that the planning for the third season had already been completed, and that the station had given the go-ahead, so the scale this time would be much larger.

The specific proposal would be released in a few days.

During these days waiting for the show to air, the discussion about Fireline Rescue on the internet continued to boil.

New trending topics surged one after another, the screening rate in cinemas remained high, and every day new viewers joined this carnival on social media platforms!

And it was precisely because of this carnival that the speed at which Fireline Rescue climbed to the top of the Huaxia film history box office rankings was directly accelerated!