Published at 10th of November 2020 09:11:47 PM
Chapter 255
Chapter 255: Super Rich .
Shanhai Streaming headquarters was at Huajin but if they wanted to film ancient era TV show, the best place was obviously in Hengdian in Zhejiang .
After decades of development, there was an entire industry chain formed over there .
There were many ancient themed buildings around and more than ten thousand people from the showbiz industry .
There were as many as hundreds of movie and TV shows filmed in Hengdian every year .
If it was a small cost production, they only needed to bring the director, the male and female leads and the camera as they could find anything else in Hengdian .
‘Water Margin’ that was broadcasted during the Spring Festival this year was the largest TV series in history and half of the scenes were filmed in Hengdian .
But less than half a year later, ‘Young Di Renjie’ broke the record .
Not mentioning else but the budget of 1 million per episode without counting the salaries was the highest of all TV series production costs .
According to some insiders, Shanhai Streaming gave an ‘offer that couldn’t be refused’ to cast the small heavenly queen Bu Yiyi .
As for how much it was, some people guessed it was 5 million, 8 million and some people even said it was 10 million .
The thing was that it was already revealed that Lan Xin received 3 million while the director Zhou Pu received 10 million .
Just by looking at those precedents, they knew that Bu Yiyi as the female lead took one fat check .
Then there was Sister Xiaofeng who everyone loved .
After ‘Love Letter’, there were numerous youth movies that wanted to cast him as the leading actor and they remembered that the biggest of them offered a 5 million contract .
But Chen Huan refused them all as he didn’t even answer their phone calls and texts .
Later, they saw how much Sister Xiaofeng made in the music industry and knew why he wasn’t interested in the 5 million .
2 million for a song, didn’t he earn money much faster than acting?
By the time Chen Huan donated about 50 million with the album of ‘Life’s Only Love’, all the producers from film companies knew that they couldn’t persuade him with money .
However, nobody expected that Shanhai Streaming would announce Chen Huan as the male lead of ‘Young Di Renjie’, it was the most handsome teenager Chen Huan and the noblest Sister Xiaofeng .
Those producers and film companies’ bosses as well as those TV series producers cursed in their mind .
Goddamn it!
How much Shanhai Streaming used to hire Chen Huan!?
20 million?
30 million?
Or was there another condition?
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Chen Huan, who didn’t like to show his face to the public, would definitely not agree if it was only money .
But no matter what, after the announcement of ‘Young Di Renjie’ and that Chen Huan as well as Bu Yiyi was joining the cast, the people who took a subscription for Shanhai Streaming and booked a VIP pass for ‘Young Di Renjie’ rose to 6 . 2 people .
After Chen Huan’s ‘Basketball Prince’ journey was posted online, the total views for all the videos exceeded 10 billion and the number of people subscribed for VIP rose more than 10 million people . Even though it would be broadcasted in TV stations, they could remove the advertisements in the streaming platform . There were also some extra episodes that the TV station wouldn’t have so the people took the VIP to watch the entirety of it .
In China, there were many companies doing Video streaming services .
Even if it burned money at this stage and it rarely made any profit, after seeing the possibilities of the internet working with the real world, those companies that weren’t qualified to open a TV station spent their time and money on this .
The two largest video streaming websites were Shining Technology’s Youyi and Zheng Rongrong’s Shanhai Streaming .
But the development direction of the two were different .
Youyi was a pure video streaming website as they relied on their large amount of videos with their more than 2 billion registered users . That was why they had obtained their 100 billion USD evaluation when they did their IPO and went public .
Later, they followed Shanhai Streaming’s way of making their own TV series so their market value reached 120 billion USD now .
This was only the beginning as after discovering a way to increase their market value, Shining Technology would obviously increase their investment and strive to surpass Shanhai Streaming in this respect and become the number one in China .
If they reached that point, their market value would definitely reach 200 billion USD!
As for Shanhai Streaming, although they imitated Youyi as the video sharing website at the beginning but she started to take some ideas from abroad after two years .
She immediately started to have Shanhai Streaming buy exclusive online broadcasting rights for TV series and movies from various countries and China .
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This operation caused them a lot of funds at the beginning and almost made them run out of liquidity .
But after a year, the money they gained from it was very limited .
However, in the second year, the country issued new Internet regulation and vigorously cracked down on copyrights infringement activities so many free sources on the internet were wiped out, let alone those video sharing websites that had some works in them .
Countless websites received heavy losses after the raid but Shanhai Streaming, which had a lot of copyrights under their belt, had a good harvest as they added 5 million new VIP users .
It was also at that time where the princess gained a foothold in the enterprise and became the sole master of the company .
Next, Zheng Rongrong tried her best to have Shanhai Streaming create their own TV series to increase the numbers of VIP users .
From their first few TV series to 20 to 30 series per year and even a few TV films, this reflected the ambition of Shanhai Streaming .
Because of Shanhai unique way and the high quality products made at high price, even if the evaluation of Shanhai Streaming was only at 40 billion USD and not even half of Shining Technology, but they twice the amount of VIP users of Youyi .
Shanhai Streaming had 22 million registered VIP users with an annual fee of 180 Yuan . They could watch their program, TV series and Movies that they owned the copyright as well as their own produced TV series too .
Youyi had only 12 million VIP users while their annual fee was only 120 Yuan .
Shanhai Streaming was far agreed on this regard .
That was why Shanhai Streaming stepped up their effort and must produce quality TV shows and even movies .
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Wouldn’t they be stupid if they didn’t keep developing their own advantage?
What else could they do when Shanhai Streaming had 50 million VIP users?
‘Young Di Renjie’ wasn’t released yet but there were already 10 million new VIP users that just subscribed . It showed how promising it was .
Even if they would lose some of them after the release, the VIP users they would attract into staying over this period would definitely be higher than the amount they would lose!
Besides, there was another set of data from Shanhai Streaming .
One month after the announcement of Chen Huan and Bu Yiyi in ‘Young Di Renjie’, Shanhai Streaming new VIP users increased by 1 million and was 300k more than usual .
If these VIP users came because of them, it shouldn’t be a problem to add another two to three million VIP users when it was released .
People tended to follow trends when they subscribed to a service and as long as the competition wasn’t a major upgrade, 80% of the people would basically stay with the one they had .
For example, newspaper subscribers were like that .
If not for the rapid development and diversity of mobile news that replaced the classic newspaper, newspaper would be the first choice for families even in the era of computers .
So if a TV series could bring Shanhai Streaming a few millions of long term VIP users, it would be very cost effective to them .
Not to mention that ‘Young Di Renjie’ would also be broadcasted on two TV stations .
With the popularity and expectation of it, the first broadcast right would also be an astronomical figure