China Entertainment started from Nortel 2002

Chapter 759 Ticket refund controversy, Maoyan’s insider manipulation?

"What a difficult guy."

Netflix, Jerry Zhang pushed open the door of his office, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and muttered, "I hate these people who are both directors and bosses the most."

Jerry Zhang knew very well that the reason why Li Mu had been wrestling with him was that Li Mu was a world-renowned director and the person in charge of the film.

Having enough confidence made him feel very uncomfortable. This was almost equivalent to being invincible in the negotiations, because there would be no pressure if he refused, but he was the one under the greatest pressure.

"Jerry, is Lee's movie done?"

The head of the streaming media resource delivery department happened to pass by and couldn't help but ask. After all, this movie was included in the resource delivery plan, and as senior executives they all knew it.

"Oh, not yet. He's really hard to deal with. We're stuck in a price range dispute and have to send people to negotiate with his company."

Jerry spread his hands helplessly.

"That's really not good news. This seems to be the most difficult person you have ever met in the Chinese region."

"Yes, and he also made a request that requires the allocation of corresponding resources. This requires signing an agreement. Perhaps you will also need to be present on the day of the contract signing."

"."

The next morning, Li Mu and Guo Fan walked towards the studio together.

"Brother, will they agree to this?"

On the way, Guo Fan was stunned when he heard Li Mu talking to him about yesterday's bidding and conditions.

Because Li Mu said 50 million plus a commitment to resource investment, this is not an ordinary condition.

“The price can be negotiated, but the investment of resources is necessary. Otherwise, if they buy our film and put it in cold storage, although we get the money, it will be disadvantageous for our cultural exports.
You should be able to do things according to your ability, and this is something that needs more thought.”

Li Mu smiled faintly. He didn't want his movie to be bought and then nothing would be done with it, just leaving it there. It would be better to find someone else.

"No way, they have already spent money, why would they just leave it there? That would be a loss."

"There are reasons why they are willing to spend this money. One of the reasons is our Chinese market. Otherwise, why do you think they have cooperated with our domestic streaming media over the years and have been purchasing some of our film and television resources?"

“It’s not easy for Netflix to enter China.”

“That’s not something we two should discuss.”

"Too!"

"."

"Mr. Li, I understand. We will be ready." Liu Weijuan said respectfully.

At noon, Li Mu also gave the order. The price range of 40 million and 50 million could be negotiated, but Li Mu had set the condition of resource allocation.

Leave the rest of the work to the professionals in the company. Otherwise, if you have to do everything yourself, you probably won’t be able to shoot the movie and will just die of exhaustion.

As time goes by, the May Day holiday is approaching, and the movies in the schedule are also fighting for pre-sales. After all, pre-sale results are quite critical to the movie's screening schedule in the first few days.

"Us and Them", released by Maoyan, has been leading the way with pre-sales exceeding 100 million yuan, which is quite impressive.

On the 28th, movies during the May Day period began to be released one after another.

Just in the evening of that day, Li Mu received calls from the heads of major cinema chains.

"Director Li, what's going on? The ticket refund rate is too high."

"Director Li, is there something wrong with Maoyan's program?"

"Director Li."

Li Mu was talking to Liu Xiaobin, the head of Wanda Cinemas at the time, because Wanda had also received an unusual number of ticket refunds, and the movie with the largest number of refunds was "Us and Them".

"Director Li, please take a look at this matter."

Liu Xiaobin was too embarrassed to say anything. After all, Wanda and Mengying Media had a good relationship in recent years.

However, this time, Wanda had 9 tickets refunded, making it truly the hardest-hit area.

"Mr. Liu, I will handle this matter as soon as possible. You know that Mengying Media and Guangguang Media are not short of this little money. There is no need for Maoyan to use this method. We have plenty of profitable movies."

Li Mu's words left Liu Xiaobin on the other end of the phone speechless.

If someone else said this, he would have to make some ambiguous remarks, but when Li Mu said this, he was really envious, as he was so confident.

"Understood, Director Li. I'll wait for your news. However, I expect this matter to be quite serious, so you have to prepare in advance."

Liu Xiaobin gave a final reminder and was about to hang up the phone when he was stopped by Li Mu.

"Boss Li, if you have any behind-the-scenes gossip, please let me know."

"Uh, haha, okay, Director Li."

Liu Xiaobin was stunned for a moment, then smiled. He certainly knew what Li Mu meant. It meant that someone was manipulating all this behind the scenes. As for whether it was true or not, he was also very curious.

Li Mu had just hung up the phone when Wang Changtian called.

"Director Li, you have received the message, right?" Wang Changtian said calmly at this moment.

"Well, it involves quite a few theaters."

“I have also received a lot of feedback from theaters.”

The two of them spoke in a calm voice. After all, being anxious wouldn't solve anything. At the same time, the Cat's Eye Building.

CEO Zheng Zhihao, COO Kang Li, CTO Chen Qingyang and others are in the conference room.

"Old Chen, can't you find out what's going on?"

Zheng Zhihao's face looked a little unhappy.

“Nothing can be found. According to the track analysis, it seems to be normal user behavior. At most, a lot of scalpers have been found.

Now, scalpers may behave very similarly to ordinary users, making them difficult to identify. These fake orders are spread across cities, a network of small-scale organizational behaviors that can be found everywhere on the Internet."

"Lao Kang, you should be more careful about external affairs, and..."

Before Zheng Zhihao finished speaking, the cell phone on the table rang.

The call above is from Li Mu.

"Mr. Li's phone call"

"Director Wang also sent a message."

They looked at each other and had no choice but to accept it.

"No need to explain yet, let's talk about the response plan and specific measures first, and we can talk about the problem later."

Seeing that everyone was there, Li Mu suppressed his anger and said calmly.

"Mr. Li, Mr. Wang, we have discovered that about 38 tickets have been refunded due to malicious ticket purchases. Our technical support department has urgently shut down the refund function. We expect to be able to publish the data in the early morning of the 29th, which will not affect subsequent data.

Moreover, according to Mr. Zheng's request, the technical department is already developing a function to query the 'refund rate and number of refunds'.

Through this function, users can view the overall number of refunds and refund rates of online movies, as well as the number of refunds and refund rates generated on the Maoyan platform. It is expected to be launched during the May Day holiday."

The CTO was the first to speak out.

Li Mu nodded slightly and said, "Remember to provide benefits for employees who work overtime during holidays."

"Understood, Mr. Li."

"Director Li, all the data has been packaged and is ready to be submitted to the relevant departments. We have also found director Rene Liu, and they will cooperate in responding to this incident. Maoyan will also hold a meeting during the May Day holiday, and Conley will attend to give corresponding explanations."

Zheng Zhihao added that although the incident is still known to the industry, it is almost inevitable that it will become a big deal. It is very suspicious in itself, and it is conceivable that public opinion will definitely take the lead tomorrow.

"Okay, let's do this for now. Pay attention to the words you use in the meeting and the statement. Don't do anything weird. If you do, it will be all shit."

Li Mu looked at COO Conley, after all, Conley was in charge of this area.

"Understood, Mr. Li, I will strictly control this aspect."

"."

"Okay, you guys continue to watch and do the important things first, and we will deal with the rest later."

Li Mu saw that they were physically and mentally exhausted, and the most important thing at the moment was not to conduct a comprehensive analysis, so he asked the three of them to adjourn the meeting quickly and do what they needed to do.

After the three people left, Wang Changtian seemed to be thinking about something.

"Director Li, I don't think this was done by the cinema chain. I'm afraid it was done by our mortal enemy."

Wang Changtian directly pointed the finger at the cinema chains and Tao Piaopiao, a stakeholder.

After all, it’s such a big operation and most people can’t do it.

Although cinema chains are now closely connected with platforms, cinema chains and theaters have grievances. It is well known in the industry that they have been dissatisfied with third-party platforms for a long time.

Even when Li Mu opened his Moments, he saw some complaints from the cinema.

Because the impact that Maoyan, as an Internet distribution platform, has had on traditional film distribution is self-evident.

In the past, if film producers needed high box office, then cooperation with theaters was the only way. In the early days, rebates and buying box office tickets were popular. The former was to give rebates to theaters in exchange for higher screenings, and the latter was for film producers to pay for movie tickets themselves - no matter what, they could not avoid theaters.

But after the Internet came into play, everything changed.

Assuming that the film company still has such a demand, it is very likely that the cinema can only get some "handling fees" and "road and bridge fees", or even no "road and bridge fees".

"Let's wait and see. We don't have any news yet. We can only wait and see if there is any feedback from the bureau after we submit the data."

Li Mu did not refute what Wang Changtian said, but there was no evidence at the moment, so he could only wait.

"I think it's difficult. We don't have any inside information, and the bureau is even less likely to have any."

Wang Changtian obviously did not place his hopes on the Film Bureau.

At this time, the incident was rapidly fermenting and seemed to be caught in a vortex of public opinion. The topic of ticket refunds appeared in major media and on Weibo.

"There was a large number of ticket refunds for Us and Them, involving nearly 4000 theaters. Most of the refunds occurred on third-party platforms, with Maoyan seeing the highest number of refunds."

"According to a movie blogger, after pre-selling movie tickets for Us and Them, they took advantage of the cinema's refund policy and refunded the tickets before the movie was released, thereby raising the movie's pre-sale box office and locking in the theater's screening schedule.

The data hyped up word of mouth, and the vacant seats after the ticket refunds were immediately filled by moviegoers. The ticket refund operation was equivalent to leveraging the box office without spending any money. This was a shady operation!"

"The ticket refund incident for Us and Them is very bizarre. It is reported that the refund rate for Us and Them in some theaters has even reached 15%, while the normal refund rate for a movie is 2% to 3%. Is this an insider operation of Maoyan?"

"."

(End of this chapter)