Chapter 1858 - Box-office War
The production team, thus, began the nationwide promotional road tour majestically. Their first stop became very successful and sensational, based on the multitude of attendees. From the initial mere thousands of audiences during the premiere, their fanbase grew so large in scale that tens of thousands of fans were present at their chosen venue, Jinghua University.
In addition, with the spontaneous publicity from the netizens and the constant stream of good reviews about the movie, even many of the non-moviegoers had become aware of this high-rated film, dropping by the cinema to check it out eventually.
As the film officially entered the New-Year season’s movie battle, the respective production companies started working hard to promote and create hype for their films. It was one hell of a tough fight as everyone wanted to make more than just a share of profits during this golden period.
This resulted in a box-office war to be launched.
Signs of a drop in ticket sales, which Lin Fengtian was concerned about, did not appear in the days to come after the premiere.
Instead, there was a breakthrough to the 500-million mark on day five of its release and even a steady increase toward the one-billion mark, which would probably make the film become the director’s best-performing work in his career history!
In the past, teen flicks would usually receive critical acclaim but would do poorly in terms of box-office sales. Given his years of experience in producing films of this genre, box-office sales would usually range from tens to hundreds of millions. Those that could break past the billion-mark were practically hailed as masterpieces.
Nevertheless, he had high hopes for this piece, and as such, he put more effort in its publicity campaign.
It was even more so for the production team who did their best toward the road-tour performance, full of excitement and motivation.
There were new movies released in cinemas after the Christmas period, but most of which were just lousy-made productions that were rushed out by investors to reap profits during the golden period. Regardless of the movie genre—comedy, action, or horror thriller—each film was exaggeratedly advertised as though all had been made painstakingly produced.
In truth?
How could a finished piece possibly be any good when its entire production was wrapped up in just a couple of months?
Without a good script or even the slightest bit of logical flow to the story, those production companies merely roped in several acclaimed actors and worked hard to rush the movies’ release just so that they could rake in profits over the New-Year period.
It was a tried-and-tested method that had yet to fail.
This time, however, a few of those commercial films suffered a great defeat under the converging attacks from ‘The Green Apple’ and the other Hollywood blockbusters.
What was even more interesting was that, among those commercial films, a war was sparked between the fans of ‘The Green Apple’ and the production team of a comedy film.
It all started from a certain, Hong-Kong male celebrity, who was a cast in the said comedy film. It was unknown whether he was trying to create hype for himself or playing to the gallery, but before the movie’s release, he actually created a hashtag on Twitter about supporting Hong Kong’s independence, all along insulting mainland China. His tweet went: [The viewers in mainland China are all fools to support artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan who go there to make profits. Even though I support Hong Kong becoming independent, there are still audiences supporting the movies that I’m cast in.]
That scandalous speech sparked an outrage in the entire mainland showbiz arena.
Yun Shishi was no stranger to that male artist, who was previously invited to record a program that she was in as a guest.
While they were backstage, that lecher actually attempted to cop a feel of her, only to receive a slap from her in return.
In his fit of anger, he resorted to using Cantonese to curse and insult her.
In short, the man was a celebrity with a vile character whom she had nothing but repulsive feelings for.
To think that he would actually post such a brainless remark.
It prompted many critically acclaimed directors and actors to step forward and launch tirades at the moronic artist.