Chapter 507: Don’t Have Any Street Smarts

“See. That’s why I called you an amateur,” Manager Zhang sneered. “It’s common knowledge that the plots of such intellectual properties need to be changed to suit our film project.”

Manager Zhang did not mention anything about visual effects since it would be a low-budget show.

They would not spend much on visual effects. They would make do with even bad ones.

“What the fans love is the imaginary world of the novel, the plots, and its main characters. Do you think the fans will still like the show if you change too much of the story elements and derive it further from the original?” Tan Mo asked.

“Why not? It’s good enough that someone actually adapted it into a live-action series,” Manager Zhang snorted. “After waiting all these years, the fans should appreciate the fact that we actually made it into a show.”

“Alright, then.” Tan Mo nodded as she curled up the corners of her lips. “Let’s have a competition and see which of our shows the audience prefers if we happen to release it at the same time. Even if the release dates don’t intersect with one another, we can still compare the viewership with the total views. They’re the same thing.”

Manager Zhang sneered, “That is if you can even finish the filming.”

‘A bunch of fledglings talking big!’

‘Six hundred million for only 20 episodes?’

‘Only a fool would invest in their project.’

“Let’s go,” Tan Jinqi uttered.

Tan Mo nodded and left without greeting the people from Journey Films.

After they exited the door, Manager Zhang scoffed, “Tan Jinqi surely doesn’t know his place. Does he think that he is actually at the level of Director Hou and Director Liu after learning from them and assisting in directing? Director Liu was the one who filmed ‘Legend of Wei and Jin,’ not him. Although he was an assistant director, whatever he did was just random chores, which had nothing to do with directing a movie. You could say he has no directing experience at all.”

“He’s just a newbie without a single work, yet he asked for $600 million to film 20 episodes for his first show.” Producer Gu twitched his lips in disdain. “That’s daylight robbery! I couldn’t believe that he thought a newbie director like him had the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to film a good show. Is there any director who doesn’t want to film a good movie? Did they purposely film movies with unsatisfactory results?”

“If it were either Director Hou or Director Liu who was dealing with us, we could’ve ruminated over it properly,” Chairman Yao noted. “Why should we consider investing in Tan Jinqi, who has no existing work to prove his worth? Moreover, their script was really terrible.

“Besides, why didn’t the Tan family invest in their film project? It’s not like they’re poor or something. Didn’t the family invest a lot in the ‘Legend of Wei and Jin’ back then? Tan Mo was nothing more than a mere scriptwriter for that series. Director Liu is the one who should be credited for the success. Yet, their family spent so much on it that even the director was an outsider. Why didn’t their family invest in Tan Jinqi’s show? Aren’t they just afraid of losing their capital?

“The Tan family should invest in his film project since he has so must confidence in it! The fact that his family didn’t fund his project just goes to show that he doesn’t have faith in himself. In fear of squandering his family’s money, he looked for us to be suckered into his scheme!” Chairman Yao derided, “Did he take us for a bunch of fools? Since his family is rich, they should fund his film project!”

“You said it!” Manager Zhang seized the opportunity to agree with Chairman Yao. “Your remarks were right on the money!”

The others continued to praise Chairman Yao for his brilliance, so much so that he was on cloud nine.

“Alright. We shall adjourn the meeting. In any case, we made the right decision to meet with them. Otherwise, they might have thought that we were a group of petty people who held grudges against them on the ‘Legend of Wei and Jin’ incident.” Chairman Yao stood up and continued, “We said what we could when we met them earlier. It’s up to them whether or not to heed our advice. Once they finish filming and realize it was a poor excuse for a show, they will understand that we were not trying to make things difficult for them earlier.”

After everyone was dismissed, Mr. Zhou followed Chairman Yao back to the latter’s office.

“Chairman Yao, I heard that they contacted Joyous Media and Zhulu Culture,” Mr. Zhou stated. “They’ll be going to Joyous Media this afternoon and Zhulu Culture tomorrow morning.”

Chairman Yao said, “It doesn’t matter who they call or when they meet with anyone. No one will invest in their project anyway.”

“They only planned to film 20 episodes with such an exorbitant budget,” Chairman Yao sneered. “There’s not enough screen time for every actor. If we gave sufficient screen time for the main characters, what about the supporting roles? How many plot lines could we add for the actors from our side if there were only 20 episodes?

“With 40 episodes, we can focus on the main characters for the first half and put the spotlight on the supporting actors who we want to help rise to stardom on the second half. With such a huge budget and only 20 episodes, we can’t possibly get an ideal ratio for the return on our investment.”

“Were they thinking that I didn’t embarrass myself enough previously?” Chairman Yao asked. “Many people made fun of us since we disinvested from ‘Legend of Wei and Jin’ and it became a hit. There was a circulating rumor about the screenwriter and technical advisor of ‘Legend of Wei and Jin’ being the same person back then. At that time, people doubted her credibility. Why didn’t she make any explanation?

“Even if she didn’t plan to do it publicly, shouldn’t she explain to me in private, seeing that I was the biggest investor of ‘Legend of Wei and Jin?’ It doesn’t matter if I want to keep her or not, but she should at least show some sincerity. Yet, who would’ve thought that she’d force Director Liu to choose between her and us.”

“Following the success of the Legend of Wei and Jin, she made her appearance in the Tulip Awards. Even then, she didn’t make an effort to at least say a thing or two.” Chairman Yao snorted with the corner of his lips curled. “She never once said she was sorry. Today, she came here asking for investment as if nothing happened. These siblings must have been used to living their lives as rich kids of the Tan family, so they don’t even have any street smarts.”

Mr. Zhou remained silent the entire time as he thought Tan Mo and Tan Jinqi did nothing wrong.

There was no need for them to apologize to Chairman Yao.

It never crossed his mind that Chairman Yao held a grudge against Tan Mo until that day.

*

In the afternoon, Tan Jinqi and Tan Mo went to Joyous Media.

The other party listened to Tan Jinqi’s entire pitch this time.

However, they also thought that the asking price was too huge for the number of episodes.

“In that case, even the commercial advertisers will make a lot lesser than from the 40-episode TV series.” Joyous Media’s President Gao’s attitude was way better than Chairman Yao’s, and his remarks were spot on. “We can negotiate about the investment amount, but the episodes have to be longer.”

In other words, he was willing to invest less for more episodes.

“A series of this genre isn’t really suitable to be broadcasted on satellite channels, so we need to reduce the budget and consider making it into a web series,” President Gao said. “There are examples of web series becoming big hits before. By word of mouth, there’s still hope to broadcast season two on satellite channels.

“After all, the trend for this genre was already over more than a decade ago,” President Gao remarked. “Mythology movies were trending at that time, with the ‘Legend of Zu’ saga being the classic. But now, things have changed. Some people tried to revive the trend for this genre a few years ago, and they all failed big time. This genre is already outdated in our current market.”

“I’ve watched the entire saga of the ‘Legend of Zu’ before. The background setting of my story is totally different from it. In my story, it has a complete system and sophisticated world-building as if it really exists.”