Chapter 426 Have you heard of the cycle?

After the wedding, Zhang Ruoyun and Tang Yixin were going on a honeymoon trip, and the rest of the people packed up and went back to their homes. Meng Bai and Li Qin were not in a hurry to leave, and stayed in Ireland for two days.

The climate in Ireland in early summer is still quite good. It's a pity that Li Qin still has a movie to shoot, otherwise she could stay a few more days.

After flying back to China, the two rested in Shanghai for a day before parting. Li Qin went to Chongqing to continue filming "The Silent Truth", and Meng Bai returned to Beijing.

Unexpectedly, before he went to the company, he received good news.

"Mr. Meng, congratulations, hahahaha..."

As soon as the call was connected, Dai Ying's jubilant voice was heard: "It's worthy of being produced by Arclight. We thought that the performance of this drama should be good, but we didn't expect it to be so successful!"

"Uh, Mr. Dai, you're welcome." Meng Bai responded first, and then asked: "It sounds like a good thing, but could you please tell me about it first, what's the specific situation?"

"Ah? Mr. Meng, haven't you paid attention to the new drama that has been aired recently?" Dai Ying asked in surprise.

"I've been abroad for some time and just returned to China today."

"Oh, that's no wonder." Dai Ying suddenly realized, "I was thinking that Mr. Meng was so patient, and the new drama's performance was so successful, but it was so quiet."

Then, she explained to Meng Bai.

It's actually simple to say. Just one day before Meng Bai went to Ireland, the first part of the "Zijin Chen Trilogy" co-produced by Arclight Films and Qiyi TV, "The Hidden Corner", was launched.

Because of the label of "Arc Light Production" and the vigorous promotion of Qiyi TV, it attracted a large number of viewers before it was broadcast.

When they first watched it, many viewers didn't care much. At most, they felt that the production level of the whole drama was very high and the acting skills of several young actors were also very good. However, for the drama produced by "Arc Light", this is no longer a worthy advantage.

It is normal to have this quality, and it will feel strange if it doesn't.

In the first half of the first episode, there are actually not many explosive points. It just introduces the identities and backgrounds of the three little protagonists, and also introduces the line of "Zhang Dongsheng" played by Qin Hao. However, because of the distinct rhythm and the excellent performances of the actors, it does not make people feel boring.

Until the end of the first episode, Pupu, the youngest girl among the main characters, raised the DV recorded during the day. The picture on it showed that they happened to shoot the process of "Zhang Dongsheng pushing his father-in-law and mother-in-law down the mountain". Seeing this, the audience instantly felt a creepy feeling in their minds.

After the horror, facing this new drama full of weird atmosphere, the audience immediately became excited.

Qin Hao plays the male lead, Zhang Dongsheng, who has attracted many audiences with his contrasting acting skills. At the same time, the lines derived from this role, such as "Let's climb the mountain together" and "Do you think I still have a chance?", have become the material for many people to play with memes. After

only one week online, "The Hidden Corner" has been on more than 20 hot searches, and the popularity value data of Qiyi TV has directly exceeded 11,000.

According to the current unified understanding of the three major platforms, a popularity value of over 10,000 is a standard "breakthrough masterpiece". Now there are 1,000 more data on the standard, so you can imagine how popular this drama is now.

In the next second and third episodes, the plot and popularity continue to open high. Many viewers have become "salesmen" and recommended this new drama to their friends.

In this way, relying on the suspenseful plot, super high production standards and the wonderful performances of the actors, "The Hidden Corner" has become the first hit drama in the field of online dramas this year after more than a week of broadcasting.

"Is this drama so popular?"

"Of course, Mr. Meng, you don't know how much the data volume of our website backend has increased recently."

Meng Bai smiled and said, "That is indeed worth congratulating."

"Yes, I estimate that by the end of the show, the popularity value will exceed 12,000." Dai Ying sighed, "No matter whether it is us or Tencent Youku, there has not been such a popular drama so far."

The growth trend of the three major platforms has slowed down in recent years, and each company is competing very closely with each other. Now that Qiyi TV has taken the lead, she, as the vice president, is naturally quite excited.

After hanging up the phone, Meng Bai couldn't help but sigh twice.

Speaking of which, Meng Bai himself actually likes "The Silent Truth" the most in the "Zijin Chen Trilogy". Although he also thought "The Hidden Corner" was good during the preparation, he really didn't expect it to be so popular.

Back to the company, Meng Bai spent the next few days processing the documents accumulated some time ago while devoting some energy to paying attention to the development of this drama.

In fact, there is no need to pay too much attention to anything. Under the condition that the quality of the whole drama remains unchanged, the popularity will naturally increase every day. By the way, the popularity of several leading actors has also increased significantly.

Needless to say, Qin Hao, who plays "Zhang Dongsheng", has now become the king of the new generation of emoticons, active in the chat boxes of various audiences and the ghost videos of B station.

Then there are the three young actors, who are also praised by the audience for their excellent acting skills. In particular, Wang Shengdi, who plays "Pupu", is regarded by the audience as a new generation of "Internet daughter" with his "cute and black-bellied" image.

As for other supporting roles, such as Zhang Songwen, who has few roles but is very eye-catching, Wang Jingchun, a policeman who is rough on the outside and delicate on the inside, and Li Meng, who makes people wonder if she is acting in her true colors... A popular hit drama, as long as the role is outstanding, the supporting roles can also enjoy the dividends.

For the audience, the emergence of a hit drama has given everyone new topics to talk about in this hot summer. But for video platforms and capital markets, such an unexpected out-of-the-box work also represents huge traffic and popularity.

Taking advantage of the hit of "The Bad Kids", Qiyi TV also announced that the number of paid members on the website has officially exceeded 100 million, becoming the first website among the three major platforms to "break 100 million".

As a listed company, it is impossible for such super good news not to be reflected in the stock price. With the release of Qiyi TV's announcement, the US stock market soared. In just five trading days, Qiyi TV rose by 20%, and its total market value exceeded 20 billion, and the trend has not slowed down at all.

Since the cold winter of the film and television industry last year, the stock price of Qiyi TV has also fallen. From the highest point of 30 billion, it has fallen to about 16.5 billion in the first half of this year.

I thought it would continue to fall, but I didn't expect that a new hit drama would not only stop the downward trend, but also turn around and rise.

Now the other two companies can't sit still. We were all in the same boat, but Qiyi TV secretly made progress. Isn't this forcing us to be scolded by the board of directors? It

's just a hit new drama in the summer. Who doesn't have it yet?

Just when "The Secret Corner" swept the major hot searches and communities, Tencent Video and Youku also released their own new dramas that are about to be broadcast.

On the Tencent Video side, it is "The Untamed", which has aroused many expectations as early as when the project was established, bringing together two new generation traffic Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo. Coupled with the hottest BL theme in the past two years, a group of female audiences can't wait.

As for Youku, it took out the historical power drama "The Longest Day in Chang'an" starring the "old generation" traffic Yi Yang Qianxi and Lei Jiayin, who has a good reputation in recent years.

Just looking at this lineup, you can see that both companies have pulled out their trump cards this year.

At this point, the incremental wind outlet has gradually disappeared, and everyone has to start competing for the stock market. The three major platforms have finally broken the "peaceful atmosphere" of the past few years and entered a new stage of traffic fighting.

Under this situation, the status of content creators who can provide high-quality works has been further improved, and major platform capitals have also begun to bet on the outstanding film and television teams in recent years.

Arclight Films is naturally the first choice for everyone. Even if the main team cannot intervene, branches such as Apocalypse Entertainment, Arclight Films and various cooperative studios can always intervene.

The first to take action was Evergrande, which had been hesitating for some time.

"Mr. Meng, congratulations, the new drama is a big hit."

In the meeting room of Ruyi Pictures, Zhou Cheng congratulated Meng Bai with a little admiration on his face.

"Haha, thank you Mr. Zhou for your good words." Meng Bai said politely, "Actually, I thought this project would perform well, but I didn't expect it to be so popular."

"Mr. Meng is too polite." Zhou Cheng sighed casually, "Sure enough, the popularity and influence of the film and television industry come quickly. We build houses and sell things, and I'm afraid we can only get such high attention when there is an accident."

"Haha, then we'd better hope that Mr. Zhou doesn't get any attention."

Ke Liming and Chen Zhixi, who were sitting next to him, also smiled when they heard this.

Taking advantage of this topic, everyone finally started to talk about business.

After seeing the benefits brought to Qiyi TV by the hit "The Hidden Corner", especially the increase in stock prices, Evergrande immediately put the acquisition plan of "Ruyi Pictures" at the highest priority.

Before, I only thought that the film business was a cash cow, but I didn't expect that the associated streaming platform would also be a treasure pot once it was put into operation.

In addition, there is Arclight Films, a team that has created miracles, to provide content. Evergrande, which originally felt that the offer made by Ruyi was a bit high, now feels that it is very affordable.

So Zhou Cheng came here this time to determine the specific merger and acquisition plan and conditions.

The film business is relatively mature, and both sides know each other's psychological price, so there is no dispute. The most discussed issue between the two sides is the construction of a streaming platform.

First of all, if Evergrande really wants to be a streaming platform after the merger, then the "copyright-free dramas" on the website that are skirting the rules must be removed. But this brings a new problem, that is, where the empty resource library comes from.

"Don't worry about this, we have discussed it with Tencent internally before." Zhou Cheng has a plan for this. "After the merger is completed, Tencent Video will open their copyright library to provide resources. The new platform will become one of the channels and pay a certain channel share for the shared resources."

It is indeed a good way for the new platform to make up for the lack of underlying inventory as a channel station and then produce exclusive dramas at the top to build a brand.

What's more, the new platform and Tencent Video have different operating models, which can be regarded as a differentiated track.

Although several video platforms in China currently exist in the form of "free + advertising + membership", no one can say whether the paid platform has a future.

It just so happens that there is a new platform to experiment with, and Tencent is willing to divide a part of the traffic to make an attempt, not to mention that it is not free.

However, these copyright stocks are just to make up for the foundation. To really attract users, we still have to rely on high-quality new content.

"Mr. Meng said before that after the new platform is established, a new series of projects can be provided." Zhou Cheng looked at Meng Bai, "I wonder if Mr. Meng is convenient to introduce it to us first."

"Of course."

Meng Bai nodded and asked the staff beside him to bring a few project books.

"This is a new series that our Arclight has prepared recently. I personally call it the 'Retrospection Trilogy'."

"Retrospection Trilogy?"

"It means 'time traversal'." Meng Bai explained, "These three projects are said to be a series, but in fact there is no content connection between them. The reason why they are put together is mainly because the subject matter is relatively close, all of which are suspense themes with time travel or cycles."

Meng Bai put the three project books on the table, and everyone's eyes immediately looked over curiously. I saw three project books with the name of a new drama written on each cover -

"Want to See You", "Twinkle Twinkle Star", "Beginning"

"Uh, Mr. Meng." Zhou Cheng looked at the project book in front of him, "I want to ask, are these stories all scripts you are responsible for?"

"Of course."

Hearing this, Zhou Cheng, Chen Zhixi and Ke Liming's eyes lit up instantly.

Although the quality of so many works produced by Arc Light over the years is good, they can still be divided into high and low.

Now, among the audience fans, the works "produced by Arc Light" are also divided into four grades.

The highest level is naturally the label of "screenwriter Meng Bai". This part of the drama represents the top configuration that was personally produced by Mr. Meng and has full specifications in all aspects.

The middle level is that Meng Bai only has a title such as "producer" or "supervisor", but there are works by top directors such as Wu Bai and Wang Wei. The production level may be slightly worse, but the quality is still no problem.

The next level is that Meng Bai is named, but the director is some new directors who have not worked together much before. The quality of these works is also excellent, but most of them are inferior to the top ones. However, there are occasionally some masterpieces, such as the recent "The Secret Corner".

And at the bottom, there are projects that are not named, but simply produced or co-produced by Arclight. This type of drama is still of better quality than those outside, but overall it is just average and can only be regarded as an ordinary masterpiece.

In the past two years, with the expansion of Arclight's scale, the "highest-end" works have been slowly decreasing, and more are still in the second and third tiers.

Now Meng Bai suddenly took out three "highest-end" projects that he personally took action on, which shows how much he values ​​the new platform.

Zhou Cheng, Chen Zhixi and others took the project book and passed it around to each other and read it roughly. Because it is not a complete script, there is only a rough outline of the story. But even so, everyone still praised these three projects.

Especially the themes and settings of these three works, compared with the current dramas on the market, can be said to be very novel.

"Mr. Meng," Zhou Cheng said, "Can these works achieve the results of The Bad Kids?"

"I can't say that. The performance of a drama is related to too many factors." Meng Bai spread his hands, "I can only say that Arclight will try its best to ensure that the production level and quality of each drama are above the standard."

"With Mr. Meng's words, we feel relieved."

Zhou Cheng smiled, stood up and looked at Meng Bai and others opposite: "Then, I wish us a happy cooperation."

"Happy cooperation."

"I have another suggestion." Meng Bai said: "Since you are planning to create a new platform, it's better to change the name of 'Pumpkin Movie'."

"Well, Mr. Meng's suggestion makes sense. The current name is indeed a copycat. And after all, we have played some tricks before. Changing the name can also reduce the risk." Ke Liming also agreed.

Zhou Cheng thought about it and felt that it was indeed right: "Mr. Meng, do you have any good name ideas?"

"It depends on what everyone wants." Meng Bai said indifferently: "Even if you want to call it Arc Video or Arc TV, I have no objection."

(End of this chapter)