Caught in Affairs with Superstar

Chapter 444: Chapter 348: Wait for Me to Come Back (Part 2)

Before I watched the news, I often saw reports saying directors were temperamental and prone to anger. But the directors I’ve worked with are all pretty even-tempered, none of them were quick to anger.

Gu Huaichun: ”You probably don’t know him, an unknown director, I don’t even remember his name.”

”Okay.”

Gu Huaichun continued, ”Wait, Song Chi is also going, right?”

”Yes.”

”It’s going to be so awkward, one rumored boyfriend and one official boyfriend,” Gu Huaichun said, though sounding like he was looking forward to the drama, ”The reporters will be so thrilled.”

Zhou Yun cursed, ”Fuck off, if anyone should feel awkward, it’s you.”

Gu Huaichun: ”Forget friends upon seeing a lover, dumped me for Song Chi, haha.”

”Stop farting around.”

After hanging up, Zhou Yun told Zhou Lan, ”One ticket for Gu Huaichun.”

Zhou Lan said, ”The company plans to have Li Ci go to support you too. This is your most important movie, and you are carrying the box office on your own. If Li Ci goes, even a post from him could bring his many fans to the cinema to watch the movie.”

Zhou Yun immediately thought of Li Ci’s familiar yet self-absorbed demeanor.

”Please do,” Zhou Yun said, ”Just don’t arrange for Xu Siyao to be there.”

”You shouldn’t even mention it, the company had that idea, but don’t worry, I rejected it,” Zhou Lan said. ”This premiere is crucial, the film’s reception has been tested and is solid, but we still need to build hype domestically and maximize word-of-mouth to draw more viewers to see it, and right now pre-sale ticket sales aren’t great.”

”How are the pre-sale tickets?” Zhou Yun asked.

Zhou Lan said, ”Currently, the pre-sale for the first day is only two million. Everyone knows this is an art film, and although many are paying attention to you, they don’t necessarily want to see this film. We can only make efforts in publicity.”

”I’ve been running around a lot for promotions these past few days,” Zhou Yun sighed.

Zhou Lan: ”Don’t be disheartened, movies are like this. Every cinema ticket is paid for by the audience in real money. Ultimately, it’s about how many are willing to buy tickets and enter the cinema. We can’t do commercial promotions since this is a low-budget art film, we can only hope the reputation can improve ticket sales, at least so the box office doesn’t drop below fifty million.”

In the current domestic film market, reaching a billion or two is common, fifty million in the box office doesn’t seem significant.

But for an art film with just a few million in costs, fifty million in the box office would be a good achievement.

What Zhou Lan is trying to do now is to prevent the film’s box office numbers from being attacked as box office poison.

Sometimes, although people in the industry understand the situation, having such a label for an actor is definitely detrimental to her future development.

Zhou Lan said, ”At the premiere, I’ll release some promotional articles stating that the film has already recouped its cost by selling distribution rights in other regions at the Venice International Film Festival, fearing some people might manipulate box office reports to show that you caused investors a huge loss.”

”I’ll leave it to you,” Zhou Yun said with a smile.

In these matters, Zhou Yun fully trusts Zhou Lan’s capabilities.

It could be said that the most important event this November is the release of ”Life.”

To spread the word about this movie, Zhou Yun took on many self-media interviews, despite her already full schedule.

These interviews were unpaid, but the self-media hosts all hold millions of followers.

This was the promotional strategy set by Zhou Lan.

”These bloggers were all picked by me, they usually pay a lot of attention to you and generally praise you in their posts. Even though each holds just a few million followers, collectively, that’s a significant number, and I’m confident in the film’s reception, so our main task now is to ensure a good start, preventing too low a box office on the first day which could affect later screenings.”

Of course, Zhou Yun followed Zhou Lan’s lead.

Thus, among nine self-media platforms, Zhou Yun utilized her meal and transfer times to complete interviews with them.

Some of these interviews were in text, some in video.

Chengqian Entertainment and New Shield marketed these nine interviews, focusing on various topics.

To promote ”Life,” Zhou Yun squeezed in two more show recordings, just to maximize the movie’s publicity before its release.

Unable to coordinate her time, the last two shows were recorded late at night.

In this non-stop schedule, pre-sales for ”Life” finally started picking up and gradually increased.

The day before the premiere, a topic surfaced on Weibo: How hard Zhou Yun worked to promote ”Life.”

This topic wasn’t operated by her company but was a summary by her fans, who created a lengthy graphic listing Zhou Yun’s recent schedules, expressing their sympathy for her.

Only after seeing this graphic did Zhou Yun realize that she had at least three engagements a day lately.

Perhaps she was numbed to it, not even realizing it herself.

Since the premiere was tomorrow, Zhou Yun finally finished her work before nine tonight.

She took a bath, comfortably lay in her bed, around ten, Song Chi came back.

He had a meeting with some project leaders in the company and only returned now.

Suddenly, Zhou Yun remembered, almost every time it was Song Chi waiting for her to come back, but this was the first time in a while she was waiting for him.