Chapter 42: Fortunately I Have Your Cheating Brain

After a while, Li Wenyu and Fan Bingbing got into a car from the underground parking lot of a commercial building in Central and sped away. On the way to the seaside, Fan Bingbing asked curiously, "Why are you so optimistic about NetEase?"

By now, he had invested 8 million Hong Kong dollars, and Fan Bingbing had chipped in 3 million, planning to slowly and steadily purchase shares over the next few months.

Half a year ago, these sums were astronomical fortunes to both of them! Having made the plunge, Fan Bingbing was naturally full of questions.

Li Wenyu lit a cigarette. "What I'm optimistic about is online gaming. If you happen to pass by internet cafes on your daily routine, you should take a look, or have your assistant observe and tally how many gaming-addicted youths there are across China."

"Ding, the founder of NetEase, is doing all right when it comes to making games. Keep this to yourself though; just the two of us need to know."

The female driver and assistant driving the car chimed in with a slightly speechless tone, "Director Li, I heard that too."

She was arranged for Fan Bingbing by Wang Jinghua, fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, much like the errand boy Leslie Cheung had sent to help Li Wenyu.

Fan Bingbing chuckled, "You heard it, but you have to keep it confidential too. If you're interested, you can invest a little bit yourself, but you really mustn't go blabbing about it."

Li Wenyu nodded. "Drivers and assistants have always been the professions that require the tightest lips. Just do a good job following Bingbing, and there will definitely be no shortage of small perks."

"Let's go. We still need to go to the beach to shoot a thank-you video. Once Bingbing wraps up her core scenes for *Wonder* and finishes filming, we'll head back to the mainland."

"I've been frequently chatting and talking on the phone with Teacher Liu on OICQ recently."

He had sent Yu Bo, Ye Jing, and Han Xiao from Shanxi to Niangziguan to find Liu Cixin on the 3rd, and the mission went smoothly. Liu Cixin, still an electric power plant engineer, contacted and met them by phone on the 4th.

Liu Cixin was still preparing to take an extended leave to go to Beijing for a face-to-face meeting with him. Taking advantage of the other party's pending leave, Li Wenyu had also come to Hong Kong to ramp up investments and help Fan Bingbing buy in.

And by the way, finish shooting and wrap up the movie *Wonder*!

Over the previous week, box office numbers in the mainland and Hong Kong continued to explode, with Taiwan accumulating 19 million Hong Kong dollars, bringing the total for the Greater China region to 104 million.

South Korea accumulated 75 million Hong Kong dollars, and Japan 79 million. One shouldn't find this exaggerated. Around the millennium, the Japanese box office market typically saw blockbuster films grossing 100 million or 200 million US dollars; last year, *Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone* grossed 150 million US dollars in Japan alone.

*The Shallows*' opening weekend plus the subsequent two weeks yielded 79 million, which was just around 10 million US dollars.

Yet, this meant they had already charged forward with 258 million across China, Japan, and South Korea!

Europe and the United States added up to 36 million US dollars, translating to another 280 million Hong Kong dollars!

Driven by various viral marketing campaigns and gimmicks, with multiple factors stacking and laying the groundwork, *The Shallows* genuinely mirrored the box office trajectory of the original version.

Today, aside from the stock investments, the goal was to have Fan Bingbing shoot another version of a thank-you short video celebrating crossing 500 million Hong Kong dollars, to be uploaded online to thank netizens and moviegoers.

This was also a crucial link in the marketing chain!

Just like internet marketing armies fabricating little stories, netizens all over China showed off how they invited female friends or the girls they were pursuing to watch *The Shallows*. Because of the tense, thrilling suspense, coupled with various gorgeous ocean views and scenery, the next step in their relationships naturally fell into place.

This was a tactic to lure young men into becoming the primary consumer demographic for moviegoing.

From the release period until now, mainland internet culture had developed a trend: watching *The Shallows* to confess one's feelings, or going to watch it even without a confession and successfully ending up together, and then showing off their romance on Tieba...

The marketing army paved the way, crafting over 800 short story case studies, while in reality, netizens were also succeeding in winning over their crushes at the cinema and flaunting their real-life success stories online!

In Fan Bingbing's Tieba forum on Tencent, such examples truly exceeded a thousand cases.

Eighty percent were fake, and twenty percent were real, which bizarrely transformed Fan Bingbing's personal Tieba forum into a matchmaking and dating-themed screen-flooding hub akin to Baihe.com or Zhenai.com.

This was all part of the marketing strategy.

The thank-you short video posted by Fan Bingbing used her registered account to make a post, prompting netizen replies... Her previous thank-you post had garnered over 300,000 total replies, and this one was completely organic, without the marketing army!

Fan Bingbing's account was handed over to her assistant, who would occasionally bubble up in the comment threads to interact with netizens.

This resembled the verified superstar accounts and fan interactions on future microblogging platforms.

Before the rise of microblogs, the sense of isolation between mega-stars and ordinary fans/moviegoers was immense, primarily because they were too far apart and lacked channels for communication. Writing a letter to an idol and waiting for a reply had a probability comparable to winning the lottery.

That was why microblogging could rapidly rise and dominate as a platform.

Fan Bingbing's account posting her real-life thank-you video was equivalent to an official website verification. Interacting slightly with fans and flaunting the box office results of *The Shallows* served as a powerful booster for the film.

Outside of mainland China, following the opening weekend and two weeks of screenings, *The Shallows* was undoubtedly entering a late-stage downward slope. The box office revenue would dwindle day by day, and the screen allocation rate would steadily decline.

However, the mainland could continue to surge because the dating economy among young men and women held countless billions of wealth. *The Shallows* took the lead in creating the massive gimmick that watching a movie makes it easy to hold hands.

With thousands of netizens sharing successful cases on Tieba...

There would be no shortage of male internet users repeatedly watching *The Shallows* in reality, inviting one or multiple different girls to see it.

Fan Bingbing's activity in the Tieba forum and her interaction with netizens also gave the public their first taste of how down-to-earth this superstar really was!

Thus, accumulating 43 million RMB in the mainland over 16 days meant it could still enjoy a long theatrical run and truly break 100 million in box office earnings. Past films like *Titanic*, *A Choice of Death*, and Jackie Chan's *Who Am I?*—which surged past 80 million—all followed this exact trajectory.

After all, the number of big screens was limited.

As for anti-piracy efforts, all teams had been working tirelessly to this day.

Everyone was well aware that having done it once, they could replicate it a second time, pioneering a successful path for mainland-Hong Kong co-produced blockbusters to compete with Hollywood films at the box office.

Originally, *Hero* had succeeded first. As for just how high a number *The Shallows* could ultimately detonate in mainland theaters, anti-piracy was the ultimate moat. Over 6 million in bounties had already been distributed to numerous whistleblowers.

The more than 60 ordinary citizens who collected the bounties and got a little taste of wealth were practically becoming the first generation of internet influencers.

Prompted by his words, Fan Bingbing became extremely excited. "It's getting close to 600 million! I wouldn't even dare to dream of this. Do you think if I walked the streets of Hong Kong right now without any disguise, it would cause a traffic jam?"

Seeing the eager look on her face, Li Wenyu directly tapped into her conscience. "You'd better use your brain. If you really do that, it won't just be a traffic jam—it might trigger a stampede."

"Once people die in a stampede, no matter how famous you are right now, the public backlash will make your downfall catastrophic."

Fan Bingbing was dumbfounded. After dozens of seconds, she awkwardly muttered, "Good thing I have you as my cheat-code brain."

"By the way, the mainland and Hong Kong combined have reached 86 million. Doesn't that mean Brother Rong will pocket at least 30 million to start with? As it keeps going and gradually catches up to the fourth and fifth weeks, he'll literally make over 100 million from the box office and overseas rights alone, and DVD sales will last even longer."

"Is our celebration banquet going to be held in Hong Kong too?"

With everyone watching Leslie Cheung's profits safely land in his pockets, Li Wenyu's own future film shoots and developments across various regions would proceed even more smoothly.

He chuckled, "Anywhere is fine. They're already starting to assemble the crew for my next film, *Embracing Happiness*. The female lead hasn't been decided yet. We'll be shooting this movie in fits and starts while waiting to make a run for Cannes."

Amidst laughter and banter, the car arrived at a seaside location.

A small team had been waiting for a long time—a van equipped with professional video recording equipment, along with photographers and makeup artists standing by.

Li Wenyu quickly got to work with Fan Bingbing.

At the dawn of the new year 2002, she had truly transformed into the top-tier female mega-star of the post-millennium era. Her contract with Huayi Brothers still ran until the end of 2005, but persuaded by Wang Jinghua and out of respect for Li Wenyu as a master director, Huayi would grant Fan Bingbing an 8-2 or 9-1 profit split.

After all, Huayi was still begging to cooperate with him on new projects!