Chapter 802 - A Reversal!
Chapter 802: A Reversal!
“Legend Of Wu Zetian” was the hottest TV series at the time, hence many celebrities and companies were jealous of it.
Therefore, when the negative topics were published, those who were jealous of “Legend Of Wu Zetian” and Han Yi’s company were happy to hear about it.
This caused the matter to blow up and spread.
Among them, Mango TV and Sky Blue TV were the ones most affected.
When Su Yang first started spreading the news, he mentioned that the prices offered by the two TV channels were too high. They were state-owned enterprises, and they were sensitive to such things.
Therefore, he couldn’t hold on any longer and wanted to discuss the contract with “Legend Of Wu Zetian”.
Meanwhile, the other three online platforms saw that negative news was flying all over the place, and started to feel uncertain about the performance of the TV series. They also knew that the two TV channels wanted to renegotiate the agreement, so they wanted to come over and have a chat as well, possibly lowering the price at the end of it.
Actually, these platforms had already internally reviewed “Legend Of Wu Zetian” previously, and they all believed that it had the potential of being a big hit. Therefore, the expectations were high, so were the offers.
Mango TV had offered 270 million yuan, while Sky Blue TV had offered 150 million yuan, and the three online platforms had added up to a total of 180 million yuan. Thus, this was a huge deal worth 600 million yuan.
Even in the eyes of a publicly listed company, a project of this amount would be classified as extremely important, let alone Jiadian Pictures.
Therefore, Jiadian Pictures panicked and contacted Zhao Licheng and Li Zijun again.
As the firm’s anchor, Zhao Licheng and Li Zijun could still take on great responsibilities, so they immediately gave Jiadian Pictures a reply. ‘We can still negotiate. Invite these five companies to negotiate separately, and also invite Tangna Pictures to participate in the negotiations as well.
Tangna Pictures was the original producer of ‘”Legend Of Wu Zetian”‘, and Su Yang had gotten his share from them. They also had a 40% share of ‘”Legend Of Wu Zetian”‘.
A project of this level was a big deal for every company, so after receiving an answer from the Jiadian Group, several companies sent people to Shanghai to discuss the matter.
The first to arrive were the people from Sky Blue TV. The moment they arrived, they were a little aggressive. They felt that the Jiadian Group had violated their contract and demanded a lower price.
When Tangna Pictures heard their request, they looked at Li Zijun, the representative of Jiadian Group, with a troubled expression.
After all these years of experience, Li Zijun’s aura became stronger and stronger. She shook her head nonchalantly and said that it was impossible to lower the price. At most, she would terminate the contract.
This time, it was Sky Blue TV’s turn to have a headache. They were the secondary broadcasting stations, so their prices were not very high to begin with. Coupled with the publicity resources that they had invested earlier, if they terminated the contract directly, it would be a huge loss for them.
At the end of the day, they still believed in the quality of “Legend Of Wu Zetian”, so they wanted to broadcast it. However, if these negative news were to be released, it would definitely affect the TV series and increase the chances of its failure. Hence, at that moment, they were not as confident as before.
After the failure of the surprise attack at the beginning, Sky Blue TV also changed their negotiation method and started to take a more friendly approach.
They also raised their bottom line, which was to reduce the price by one-third. From 150 million yuan to 100 million yuan.
However, no matter what their price was or what attitude they had during the negotiation, Li Zijun still refused to cooperate. She only said one thing, “There’s no way we will lower the price. At most, we’ll cancel the contract.”
Thus, the negotiations ended on an unhappy note.
Following that, the negotiations between the three online media outlets and Mango TV were more or less the same. Li Zijun was backed by Jiadian Group, and the TV series was indeed good. Thus, they were not at the point of falling out and still had the upper hand.
However, everyone knew that Li Zijun was just trying to gain the upper hand in the early stages of the negotiations, and would definitely give in in the future.
The conditions offered by each family were about one-third to half the price to reduce the risk, which was a reasonable demand. There was too much negative news about the TV series, especially since it was related to money laundering, so they were under too much pressure.
Because of these negative news, the viewership ratings of the TV series might not be guaranteed, so they hoped to reduce the risk.
In one day, after the negotiations with all five companies ended, Li Zijun started the sixth round of negotiations, the negotiation with Tangna Pictures.
During the sixth round of negotiations, Li Zijun listed the negative news that had been spreading online, especially the money laundering rumors. She asked Tangna Pictures to return the money that Jiadian Group had used to buy the film project as publicity.
Faced with Li Zijun’s unreasonable request, Tangna Pictures naturally rejected it without hesitation.
Right after that, Li Zijun went for the next best thing, intending to return 60% of the shares of Jiadian Pictures to Tangna Pictures at a reduced market price.
After deducting one-third of the market price, 60% of the shares of Jiadian Pictures was worth about 200 million yuan.
And Jiadian had invested 130 million yuan.
In other words, after filming the TV series, Jiadian Pictures would have earned a net profit of 70 million yuan.
However, Tangna Pictures were not fools. They sold the shares to Jiadian for 130 million yuan, and now they bought them back for 200 million yuan. And there were potential future risks, could they possibly be that insane…
Therefore, they refused without hesitation.
After two consecutive proposals were rejected, Li Zijun finally revealed her true motive, or rather, Su Yang’s true motive. In this situation, they wanted to go head-on with the five big companies. Hence, in order to prevent Tangna Pictures from surrendering and stabbing them in the back, they requested to reduce the market price and buy the remaining 40% of Tangna Picture’s share.
The people from Tangna Pictures did not think that there would be such a way to deal with it, so when Li Zijun mentioned it, they were stunned.
Then, they requested for some time to have an internal discussion.
After Li Zijun left, Tangna Pictures analyzed the current situation. “The price for “Legend Of Wu Zetian” will definitely be reduced. Judging from the current situation, it would decrease by at least one-third.
“The most important thing for a TV series is its premiere and the secondary broadcast, so with this being a one-time deal, our profits would be fixed.
“If Jiadian Pictures is willing to foot the bill, it would actually be a good thing for us.
“After all, since all the copyrights have been sold, there’s no risk to us.”
Therefore, after asking and discussing for a while, Tangna Pictures decided to sell everything to Jiadian Group. Their only problem was that… The price should be higher.
Therefore, after three hours of negotiation, both sides decided to buy the remaining portion of Tangna Pictures at 75% of the current price.
And this sum of money was worth 200 million yuan. Coupled with the 50 million yuan that Tangna Pictures had previously received, it was equivalent to them investing 80 million yuan with a return of 250 million yuan in half a year, which was a huge profit.
Hence, Tangna Pictures was happily eliminated from the picture.
On the second day, Li Zijun held the 100% shares of “Legend Of Wu Zetian” and started a new round of negotiations with the five companies.
During this negotiation, Li Zijun changed her strong attitude and started to use the soft approach. She agreed to lower the price immediately, saying that she was measuring the risks of the various companies. She even waved her hand and said that she could lower the price by half.
Hence, all the companies were stunned by her generosity.
‘Lower the price by half?
‘That’s equivalent to directly wiping out 300 million yuan!
‘This morning, we’ve also heard that Jiadian Pictures had bought all of Tangna Pictures’s investments, which is worth 200 million yuan.
‘Just one piece of negative news and Jiadian Group has thrown out 500 million yuan?
‘Are they crazy?’
Of course, Li Zijun was not crazy. After proposing such a price reduction, she immediately made her own request. Because she had lowered the risks for everyone, she had to give the company an explanation.
Thus, she requested for “Legend Of Wu Zetian” to be paid according to its viewership ratings of the TV channel.
To show her sincerity, she even charged a very high fee for this payment plan.
Based on last year’s CSM50 City viewership ratings ranking, if the viewership ratings reached 1.2 and were placed in the top 25 last year, they would get 50% fee (the original price being 100%).
Meanwhile, if the viewership rating was 1.3 and ranked in the top 15 last year, they could receive 60%, 70% if ranked in the top 10 instead.
Furthermore, if the viewership rating was 1.5, and ranked top five, they would receive 80%. If the viewership rating was 1.7, and landed as the second highest ranking in the country, they would receive 90%. If the viewership rating reached 2, they would get 100%.
After that, the average viewership ratings increased by 10% (0.2), and the fees increased by 10%.
When the viewership ratings reached 3, they could get 150% of the total fees.
All in all, this was a very reasonable payment plan.
The five companies’ had predicted that the viewership ratings for “Legend Of Wu Zetian” was originally around 2%. It was considered one of the top three shows in the country and had the highest potential. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have offered such a generous price.
Now, even if the viewership ratings reached 2, they would only have to pay for the full amount of it.
The main purpose of this negotiation was to control the risks. Now, the minimum cost was only 50%, and it still satisfied them greatly.
Therefore, other than Galaxy, the other four companies decided to cooperate.
Mango TV, which was more reliable, even called their director to ask for his opinion. After getting his approval, they signed the new contract.
Galaxy’s seat, on the other hand, was not left empty. After Li Zijun talked about the four companies, she turned around and looked for IQiyi.
IQiyi Entertainment and Jiadian had always been working together. Until now, IQiyi Entertainment’s online distribution box office was still thanks to Jiadian.
With this connection and the very generous terms, after watching the broadcast of “Legend Of Wu Zetian”, the production team decided to collaborate with Galaxy.
Soon, eight companies made an announcement about the collaboration. ‘Jiadian Pictures have bought the remaining 40% of Tangna Pictures, Galaxy has terminated their contract, replaced by IQiyi Entertainment. The five major platforms used the staircase payment plan to determine the viewership ratings of “Legend Of Wu Zetian” as the base, The bottom price being reduced to 135 million yuan, 70 million yuan, and 30 million yuan respectively.
The announcement caused a huge uproar.
When there were so many negative news articles, suddenly, several big companies backed off. It was obvious that “Legend Of Wu Zetian” was completely finished with so many price reductions.
The people in the entertainment industry were especially sensitive. Everyone knew that the guarantee represented the importance of the TV station and their resources. This was regarding the life and death of a TV series!
Now that “Legend Of Wu Zetian” was suddenly faced with such a situation, the possibility of it being a big hit instantly became negligible. Therefore, countless people were gloating at that moment.
All of a sudden, the entertainment industry began to sing songs of criticism and scorn of companies that were under Han Yi and Jiadian.
They felt that Han Yi did not have the honor of being able to become an A-list celebrity, and they also felt that the entertainment companies under Jiadian Entertainment were going to suffer heavy losses that time.
However, at that moment, Su Yang, who was devising a strategy, was not anxious at all. In fact, he even felt like laughing. ‘How would you know what my plan to kill three birds with one stone actually is?’
So, very soon, there was news that an employee of Jiadian Entertainment was suspected of bribery and rumors that caused a huge loss to the company spreaded, leading to an investigation being conducted.
Soon after, many companies in Shanghai received a few investigative reports. The investigation report clearly listed the whole story of a few employees who left the company and started spreading rumors about the original company. It also included all the information about these employees. In the name of the Jiadian Group, they hoped that the companies would consider these employees.
To put it bluntly, these employees were being blacklisted.
With Jiadian Group’s current status in Shanghai, these companies instantly remembered these people and blacklisted them. It was not only because of Jiadian Group’s request, but also because of their professional ethics.
After the companies these employees were in received the information, they all found a reason to fire them.
Initially, these employees did not know anything about this, but in the following few interviews, they finally realized that something was not right. They also found out that the Jiadian Group had issued a blacklist order…
Hence, they were panicking. They wanted to look to the Wangs for help, but they realized that the people who had contacted them had all disappeared without a trace.
Thus, they were all left… Desperate.
After purging all the “traitors”, Jiadian Group held a press conference. Su Yang, Han Yi, the general manager of Jiadian Pictures, Tan Mei, and even the A-list celebrity, Sister Mi, attended the press conference.
The press conference was still being broadcasted live by Shasha’s mother on Shanghai TV. All the online media outlets were present, including Mango TV, Sky Blue TV, and a few other major video platforms. It was a grand occasion.
During the conference, Su Yang, Han Yi, and Sister Mi took out the video of their conversation and exposed a shocking fact… Han Yi had paid the compensation for the breach of contract herself.
When she heard that her agency was about to collapse, she had paid 20 million yuan to terminate her contract and return to her original agency.
After Sister Mi found out about Han Yi’s feelings, she hesitated for a long time before finally giving in.
This touching scene of repaying kindness, coupled with the conversation record, part of the video recordings, and the transfer recordings were extremely realistic.
For a moment, the entire Internet was shocked…
Right after that, Su Yang revealed another piece of shocking news.