I Know Everything - Chapter 631
Chapter 631: It really failed?
On the road of regret, Gan Liangchen wasn’t the only one.
There was someone richer than him but he was still swallowing the bitter fruit he planted himself.
That man was obviously the second richest man in China and President of Habao Technology, Yang Feng.
Yang Feng has been really depressed recently.
Habao Entertainment’s third TV show also failed after the first two’s failure.
Moreover, this romantic school life drama TV series was starring two famous handsome actors and beautiful actresses was received even worse than the previous two.
The average rating was only about 1% and the highest rating was 1.3%.
When it reached the 15th episode, Yanzhao TV called them to complain.
“President Yang, we really can’t go on anymore. The rating plummeted to 0.71% and we will reach the bottom if we continue, we must stop this!”
Yang Feng couldn’t do anything when faced with an open and honest way of the other party to breach the contract.
He was the one who came looking for them so they also did the same.
Moreover, the reviews of this TV series was indeed terrible as the people rating it lower 3 out of 10!
While ‘Princess Returning Pearl’ got 8.7 out of 10!
Such a gap really made Yang Feng feel ashamed and he really didn’t have the face to tell Yanzhao TV to continue to broadcast the remaining episodes.
Yang Feng knew how to do business as they refunded the fee paid for the remaining episodes to Yanzhao TV to express their apologies.
It couldn’t be helped.
The other party didn’t want to broadcast it even if they lost money so did they even have the face the accept the money?
Habao Entertainment received countless ridicule after that spread out.
Many people laughed at Yang Feng, who commanded over the actions of Habao Entertainment, saying this was the typical outsiders of the industries telling what people in the industries should do.
TV shows were actually nothing.
The most tragic failure of Habao Entertainment was in the Film industry.
When Habao Entertainment was founded, they decided to make 7 TV series, 3 movies and even buy the rights for 2 Hollywood movies.
The two movies were the kid movie ‘Penguin Bureau’ and the somewhat thriller action ‘Legend of Death’.
Those two movies cost them 300 million yuan in buyout.
The result was ‘Penguin Bureau’ was released on June 1st and was released for 20 days for 223 million yuan at the box office.
With the rights for it costing them 120 million and calculating the share they got for the box office, they lost 40 million yuan on it.
And the loss would be at 60 million yuan if they put the 20 million they spent on advertising.
However, that loss was considered small compared to ‘Legend of Death’, which they paid 180 million for.
The strange thing was that ‘Legend of Death’ couldn’t pass regulation in China as the theme, the content inside, dialogues etc… made it impossible.
It didn’t work no matter how they changed it.
The top brass just said no and that there was no need to show it as they completely closed the door to it after three reviews.
Habao Entertainment were completely stunned.
The 180 million yuan fee they spent to broadcast it in China was completely for nothing?
However, the arm couldn’t twist the leg in the end.
The people at the top were determined to be harsh against it and even Yang Feng’s big face couldn’t be used.
This news obviously spread again.
So Yang Feng got mocked again. Who knew how many memes were made to mock him that received many likes?
The movie he bought couldn’t be shown, it was alright.
After all, this was beyond his control.
However, in mid-June when the summer vacation just began, Habao Entertainment took the opportunity to release their first movie, ‘My Youth, Your Life’, in order to recover their decline.
Yang Feng believed in the young people’s impulsive consumption as the movie targeted the people between 18-28.
That group was also main group using Habao.com
They thought that this would be a good target as they would be supporting Habao Entertainment while relating to the stories.
However, the reality gave Yang Feng another resounding slap to his face.
Now it has been in theaters for 7 days and shown across 1,700 screens but the total box office was only 23 million yuan.
Right.
It was just 23 million yuan!
In 7 days!
The first actor they casted for the movie, Little Prince Chi Bin, cost 8 million and another 3 million for the Small Flower Dan Tong Man.
(TLN: In China, people give titles to the most popular and handsome actors that play the handsome guy role, they call them Little Man, I actually avoided translating that since it sounded bad but it comes more often now so I’ll start calling them Little Prince.)
The overall money spent for the cast was 25 million yuan!
This was without mentioning the money spent to film it, advertise it etc…
Actually, many film theaters stopped showing it after the disastrous first three days weekend box office and only around 300 theaters showed it, which was already giving face to Yang Feng.
They spent around 80 million for it but they would be already thanking god if they could make 40 million back.
The investment for ‘My Youth, Your Life’ was 40 million less than ‘Penguin Bureau’ but the loss for it was several millions more than ‘Penguin Bureau’.
How can Yang Feng show his face now?
Yang Feng didn’t scold the top executive in Habao Entertainment unlike Gan Liangchen.
He just held a meeting with them and asked what went wrong.
“Is our approach really wrong? Big investment, adapting good books, getting popular actors, having large exposure and large-scale marketing… Isn’t it the same in Hollywood?” Yang Feng gave a bitter smile to them, “Tell me, where is the problem?”
The group looked at each other but didn’t speak.
Sang Cai, the CEO of Habao Entertainment, was a firm supporter of Yang Feng so he could only speak up when everyone else was silent.
He bit the bullet and said, “Maybe we just didn’t find the audience’s taste? Sometimes, the trends in the movie industry are quite strange. This genre was still very popular when we were shooting it but it became outdated when we released it!”
“Right, right! That’s the reason!”
Jiang Guangge, a vice-president in charge of the film department, nodded repeatedly.
“Your words aren’t correct. How did those many popular filmmakers succeed?” Yang Feng shook his head, “For example, Chu Liuxiang’s ‘Miracle in Cell No.7’, their film was released ten months after the release of the book but it wasn’t outdated!”
“Can our movies be compared to Miracle in Cell No.7?”
Those subordinates couldn’t help but laugh bitterly.
Yang Feng felt bitter just by seeing them not saying anything.
He wondered if his luck was just bad.
After buying and integrating so many companies, not one of them could help him make history.
Seeing Yang Feng getting angry, Zhang Shouzheng, the CEO of Watermelon, was still calm.
He pondered for a bit before he changed the subject, “President Yang, I’m seeing we’re getting frustrated with our films and TV shows recently…I think it’s better if we start the new variety show given to us by Teacher Lu next month and divert the people’s attention, what do you think?”
Yang Feng had little interest in variety shows and others.
In his mind, TV shows and films were what represented the entertainment industry.
However at this time, he had no other way to get rid of their predicament so he could only agree, “Alright, let’s do it! You guys better promote it well, we won’t be able to explain it if we fail after receiving the idea from Teacher Lu!”
“Yes!”
Zhang Shouzheng was fully confident compared to Yang Feng, “Teacher Lu already said that although he couldn’t guarantee anything else, he could guarantee this show would be unique and stylish! When the moment comes, nobody will keep scolding Habao Entertainment like currently anymore!”
Yang Feng didn’t take those words well.
Wasn’t that ridiculing that all his plans failed and they could only save the day by relying on Chen Huan’s variety show?
But he couldn’t say anything against it.
Because Chen Huan already proved himself countless times in the industry while Yang Feng already failed multiple times.
This aggrieved feeling made Yang Feng, who always had a smooth and successful path, feel depressed!