Chapter 165

The live broadcast of the celebration banquet reached a new peak of popularity after Ji Yan and Jie Xichao made a bet.

When Xie Xichao posted a Weibo that day, all the comments were about cat ears. Pei Yiman was shocked by the dazzling array of cat ears. He saved the post and was amazed. He asked Fang Qingqing, "Are you really wearing them?"

Fang Qingqing: “…”

I was just wearing cat ears and dancing a girl group dance, but this person made it feel like I was forced into prostitution.

She said: "If I can reach it, I will definitely jump. Xi Chao has never been a person who goes back on his word."

Pei Yiman blinked his eyes, full of longing:

"Can we get there?"

Fang Qingqing said indifferently: "I don't know."

He turned to Xie Xichao and immediately changed his expression: "Come on, Xichao, let's take a look at the box office."

The box office growth is encouraging, but the growth rate always remains slightly ahead of the second place.

Compared with the countless miracles created by Jie Xichao himself, this box office is somewhat mediocre.

When "The Player" was first released, many film critics and bloggers praised it highly. But at the same time, it was mentioned in unison, either implicitly or bluntly, that this might be a film that would be well-received but not commercially successful.

In fact, it’s not just them, Jie Xichao also feels so.

Having been immersed in the entertainment industry for many years, he has seen too many phenomenal hits. In his opinion, in the field of film, there are basically only two situations to achieve excellent results at the box office.

The first type is that the director or main creators have absolute box office appeal. The second type is that the movie itself can attract audiences of all ages, and the most typical representative theme is comedy. Furthermore, the second one has infinite priority over the first one.

The first type of Jie Xichao is barely relevant.

After the Cat Ears Girls' dance convention came out, it became quite popular on the Internet. Not only fans, but also people who come to watch the fun. Xie Xichao can be considered a national idol and he is good-looking, so everyone would not want to feast their eyes on him.

But as for the second type, Xie Xichao was very clear that he and Xuan Yang had not tried to please all the audiences.

From the beginning, they knew that their audience would only be young people who were at the forefront of Internet surfing. Moreover, the overall quality of these young people should not be too poor, and they should be able to empathize and understand the true core of this movie which is disguised as a game.

The high popularity of secondary creations proves that they have achieved their intended goals and captured the audience, but they don’t ask for too much else.

When the box office exceeded 2 billion, Xie Xichao published the short essay he had prepared.

He has no special skills in writing short essays. For science students, logic and rationality constitute concise records in each sentence. He outlined the days and nights of the filming of this movie, and the every bit of effort made by everyone from the main creators to the staff. Every word was full of sincere gratitude.

While fans were moved, some also sensed a sense of finality in the film.

This is a signal. This means that the main creators represented by Jie Xichao have set the expected target for this movie to be 2 billion.

Maybe lower.

This is also in line with the current box office trends. The Spring Festival holiday has ended long ago, and the Lantern Festival is only in these two days. With the arrival of working days, the box office market will continue to decline.

According to estimates, the final landing point of "Player" will be around 2.7 billion or 2.8 billion.

This is an amazing achievement for an art film. But if you want to leave your name in film history, it's really not good enough.

Someone lamented: "Ahhh how could this happen... We've obviously done our best TT and it feels like a lot of money was spent on the special effects, kid! This is not the way to spend a lot of money!"

Of course, some people also expressed appreciation for Xie Xichao's attitude:

"I think Jie Xichao can indeed be regarded as a pillar of the domestic entertainment industry. If he really has this kind of personality, I hope he will be popular forever. If he can play this character for a lifetime, I will also admire him.

To be honest, given the subject matter and narrative style of "The Player", it was already a pleasant surprise that the box office could surpass that of the Spring Festival period. It is really difficult to leave a name in film history. This is not a problem with the film itself, but a limitation of objective conditions. But many similar creators don’t think so. Some people even star in commercial films without any core, but still feel that the poor box office performance is owed to them by fans and audiences. I really think that it is so rare for the domestic entertainment industry to have such actors who are neither arrogant nor impetuous, who are down-to-earth, sober, and always grateful. ”

This passage was quickly forwarded by a large number of Jie Xichao's fans.

As Xie Xichao's reputation rose to a new level, everyone also tacitly agreed that the final result of "Player" should be around 2.5 billion.

That's it.

——This is what most people, including fans and the team themselves, think.

On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the movie’s box office exceeded 2.2 billion.

The Spring Festival holiday is over, and cinemas are experiencing a slow decline after the climax.

The next day, the box office of the other two movies in the Spring Festival period dropped sharply.

What was surprising was that although "The Player" also saw a decline, the decline was far less than that of the other two films.

The afterglow of Jie Xichao's flag is still there. In the past two days, more and more people seem to go back to the cinema to watch the movie for the second, third, or even fourth time.

On the fourth day after the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, a secondary creation video about "Player" on a certain video website unexpectedly became popular. The content of this video was Narcissus, the character played by Jie Xichao himself. He Miao and Tao Yan, two characters with very different personalities, were brought together across time and space in the video, and the effect was unexpectedly good.

The ruffian young man used black technology to hold the shoulders of the boy in white and kissed him on the forehead. The barrage was filled with screams.

This video became popular, but the extent of its popularity exceeded the expectations of Xichao Studio.

Since the video author himself is also a UP host with a lot of traffic and the video quality is very high, it quickly became popular. Not only did it have over three million views in just a few days, it was also directly forwarded to the homepage of Xichao on Weibo.

Jie Xichao gave a thumbs up to the big account, and in the past few days, both the box office of "The Player" and the number of views of "Tao Xia" have increased significantly.

In addition, the box office of "The Player" still remains on a steady curve.

If the aftereffect of "The Player" is like a pot of mellow and long-lasting wine, then what happened afterwards was like a thunderclap that caught everyone off guard.

-

In fact, Xie Xichao had heard of the directors of the other two films in the Spring Festival.

Although he is called a famous director, in fact, half of his reputation is just empty talk. At least the more down-to-earth seniors that Xie Xichao met in the circle were disdainful of associating with them. It was an accident that he collided with them during the Spring Festival, and Xie Xichao had no intention of getting involved in their fight.

But obviously, this is not something he can decide.

There are many films during the Spring Festival, so the competition for screening is fierce. There will inevitably be vicious competition.

This business is well known in people's hearts, but when it is really exposed, it is a completely different matter.

When the recording went viral, Xie Xichao was filming.

After he came back, he resumed work on all lines. Although the quantity is less than before, the quality is far better than before. Plus, he would do live broadcasts from time to time to make up for the exposure, and his fans were very satisfied.

This time he shot the cover of a top domestic entertainment magazine.

In order to make an appointment with him, the editor-in-chief made a special issue for him. He and his cat were invited.

Against the black backdrop, the young man in a pure white shirt and the light golden cat together create a warm and leisurely atmosphere and tone.

After the filming, Chinchilla was surrounded by people. Xie Xichao was drinking water nearby. Fang Qingqing came to him with her phone and lowered her voice: "Something happened."

She handed the phone to Xie Xichao to look at. Xie Xichao saw the key words and raised his eyebrows:

"It's disrespectful to the elderly."

He was very familiar with the name reported, one of the players in the Spring Festival battle. By now, his name was associated with sexually harassing young girls. And this famous director is already over sixty years old this year.

"That's right." Fang Qingqing said, "There's more."

what else?

In private occasions, younger generations in the industry say that new directors are "hanging out with actors, and the two are in cahoots with each other." It's obvious who they are talking about. It's a pity that it would be fine if he was really aloof, but coupled with the solid evidence that he squeezed out the screening schedules of "Wolf" and "Coyote", one can only say "if you can't eat the grapes, you just say they're sour."

The impact of this incident was unexpectedly great.

It's not just because of the hidden and dirty rules in the entertainment industry, it's also not just because of the jealousy of the seniors who are criticizing the juniors.

When you pull out a radish, you bring out the dirt. The final outcome of this fight was that many dirty things in the circle were laid out on the table.

So, the whole nation was watching the show and the official media named and pointed out the matter.

The incident made headlines for two days, and people from all walks of life in the film industry were in a panic. In the midst of this mess, everyone suddenly realized that among all the villains, there was a pure and innocent victim.

Whether it is Xuan Yang, Jie Xichao, or even the entire production team of "The Player", they are like a group of little sheep living in a den of wolves.

Either you are oppressed by this unscrupulous capital, or you are excluded by that.

Just like that, the long-dormant popularity of the Spring Festival period has been rekindled. And Xie Xichao's fans did not miss the popularity given to them by God.

Tap water Amway, secondary creative pictures and clips, under every hot search for memes that show sympathy for Jie Xichao, you can see them trying hard to sell Amway.

As the film continued to sell, the box office sales went up even more.

A month later, the battle for the Spring Festival box office officially ended.

The box office of "The Player" finally lived up to expectations, barely passing the 3.5 billion mark on the last day and ending perfectly with an excellent result of 3.57 billion.

*

On the final day, Xie Xichao received countless messages.

The super topic seems to have experienced a second year, with box office screenshots and film history box office rankings everywhere. Of course, although the past achievements are brilliant, today’s cat-ear girl group dance is even more exciting.

In Xie Xichao's private messages, comments, and even in his live broadcast room, there are people repeating "cat ears" and "girl group dance".

There was a sea of ​​joy outside. This time, even the black fans who usually loved to mock Jie Xichao didn't say a word.

The victory of "The Player" is not only a victory for a good movie, but also a victory in the fight against unscrupulous capital. Xie Xichao was able to reach the top despite the suppression with such works. It's nothing but awesome.

Everyone was speaking in unison, waiting for the protagonist to come out and say something... He could have said it while jumping, but Jie Xichao, who had spent 2 billion yuan writing short essays very diligently, did not come online on the final day.

At this moment, the protagonist of a certain legendary story was sitting on the sofa among a pile of cat-ear headbands, eating ice cream. In front of him was the latest hit single of a popular girl group. He ate ice cream while dancing with his eyes, and even found time to call Fang Qingqing: "Sister Qing, what did you just say?"

"I say!" Fang Qingqing's voice was so strong that it seemed to pierce his eardrums, "We received an invitation from the Chenxi Film Festival! Xichao, you are nominated for Best Actor!"