Feature Shows Extravaganza - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Shocked!

Translator: Henyee Translations

Editor: Henyee Translations

The reason for Meng Minghui rejecting Inception could wait. Compared to that, Meng Lang was more curious about where his old man found the two scripts that Meng Lang had already abandoned.

“Don’t look at me! Your mom found it when she was cleaning the room. I had a look. The stories are great! I never knew you had this talent in you. Your writing was mere trash when you were a boy.”

“Hey! That’s not even the point here!”

Meng Lang didn’t believe that his old man was qualified to say whether a script would have good market prospects. If Meng Minghui could do that, Pengda Toy Factory would never have fallen to the verge of bankruptcy in the first place.

If the old man wasn’t all that visionary, then what made him decide to support Meng Lang in shooting Balala the Fairies and Explosive Boys without hesitation?

Something had to have gone wrong!

After the initial surprise, Meng Lang picked up the two bound-up scripts and probed without batting an eyelid. “Do you mean that you found these two shows promising?”

“Yes!” Meng Minghui nodded.

“If you don’t mind me asking… Why?” Meng Lang asked tentatively.

Instead of answering the question directly, Meng Minghui began to talk about the miracle Blazing Teens had made.

It was the monthly viewing rate champion!

Yo-yos had won over all the primary and middle school students across the country, becoming a national hit!

In less than a fortnight, over 100,000 people had rated Blazing Teens on Sprout, the rating website.

Meng Minghui seemed to have paid more attention to Blazing Teens and yo-yos than Meng Lang, the director and creator of yo-yos.

Halfway, Meng Minghui heaved a sigh.

“Do you know how shocked I was when you came to me and told me that you wanted to become a director and make TV series? Frankly, I didn’t find Blazing Teens promising at all back then. I even thought that I had invested a few million for nothing…

“But so what! You’re my son. If I don’t support you to chase your own dreams, then no one will.”

Meng Lang looked pleasantly surprised and asked immediately, “So, Inception…”

Before he could finish, Meng Minghui cut him off. “Of course, I’ll support you to go after your dreams, but you can’t reach for what’s beyond your grasp!

“It’s like in the old sayings. You can only make one step at a time, the way you can’t chew more than one mouthful each time…”

Hence, Meng Minghui moved from the success of Blazing Teens to his sadness when he had to sell a house to support his son’s dream. Before he even finished, Meng Lang realized that he couldn’t find a reason to say no.

Seeing the wavering look on Meng Lang’s face, Meng Minghui was satisfied. Taking the opportunity, he said, “If that Inception is your dream, what about Balala the Fairies and Explosive Boys? Aren’t they your dreams, too?”

“It’s not the same…”

“Of course, it’s the same!”

Meng Minghui resorted to sophistry. “Since you’ve already written the scripts, deep down, you must want to transfer the words into moving pictures! Plus, TV shows are as much an entertainment as movies and both are for the people. If that’s the case, then neither one is more noble than the other! You need to listen to me this time. I’ll wire you 10 million later. Let’s do Balala the Fairies!”

Huh?

Meng Lang was baffled when he heard this. “I thought I could choose one between the two?”

“Explosive Boys will do, too! It’s just that the factory will have to purchase some magnet…”

Meng Lang was about to nod when he realized what had happened.

Holy crap!

What a cunning old man. He had excluded Inception for good!

“No! I want to shoot Inception!” Meng Lang refused his old man adamantly.

…

“Ouch! That hurts!”

“Dad! I’ll do as told…”

“Stop hitting me! You’re going to kill me…”

That day, all employees of Pengda Toy Factory who had walked past the general manager’s office all heard their young boss’s loud wails.

Hearing the news, Meng Minghui’s wife arrived at the factory and joined in the “physical education”. Once that started, the passing employees weren’t the only ones who could hear Meng Lang’s cry. It was said that the senior workers in the production department 500m away could hear him, too.

With the couple teaching their son a lesson together, they finally smacked the movie plan out of a certain wastrel’s head and he no longer wanted to spent hundreds of millions on a movie about “a dream within a dream within a dream”.

Frankly, if his mother hadn’t shown up, maybe Meng Lang could have resisted a bit longer.

However, he gave in as soon as his mother expressed her objection openly.

As for why his mother objected to the idea, well, she had obviously been frightened by Mr. Old Meng, who had been fanning up the flames of trouble, talking about “an investment of hundreds of millions”.

Even tens of millions was out of question, let alone hundreds!

“Let’s say we do have that much money for you to put into a movie, but even if we do, you can’t waste it away like that!” Li Shufen tried to talk some sense into her son as she rubbed some pain-relieving old onto his back.”

Over on the other end on the leather sofa, Mr. Old Meng, who was reading a newspaper, interjected suddenly. “Actually, we do have that much money!”

What?

The mother and son turned their heads in unison toward Mr. Old Meng, who was reading a newspaper on the sofa.

“I’m not kidding!”

Folding up the newspaper, Old Meng put it back onto the shelf, then rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “Our yo-yos are selling great at the moment. The machines in the factory are running around the clock and we’ve delivered over 3 million pieces so far! Even if most of them have been sold to distributors at wholesale prices, the factory already has over 100 million working capital on paper!”

“How can there be so much money?!” Li Shufen was surprised and suspicious.

She knew about the yo-yo, which was supposed to be some toy her husband and son came up with that was selling well.

After all, Li Shufen hadn’t taken part in the actual running and managing of the factory and didn’t know what the actual sales figures were.

Meng Minghui chuckled. “We have exclusive rights in yo-yos. Without having to pay sales proceeds to any copyright owner, our profit rate is very high! Several of our senior workers have made strict requirements over the production process and we’ve been able to keep the production cost at lower than 5 yuan.”

Lower than 5 yuan?!

That was an astonishing figure!

Yo-yos were retailed at 50 yuan each at least. If the unit cost could be kept under 5 yuan and without a copyright owner to take any proceeds away, the profit rate would be incredibly high!

Fetching a calculator, Meng Minghui made a rough calculation for the mother and son. His conclusion was —

Ever since yo-yos were launched, after deducting expenses such as cost, salaries, and taxes, the net profit the factory had earned had reached an unprecedented record of 6.325 million yuan!

And they were only getting started!

Confined by the number of injection molding machines they had and their production capacity, Pengda Toy Factory couldn’t earn as much as they wanted at first, even if they had an exclusive product.

However, as Pengda Pictures gradually sold the license of its patented yo-yos to the manufacturers all over the country, the yo-yos were welcomed by numerous toy manufacturers. After the production volume reached a considerable scale, Pengda could earn hundreds of millions from the sales proceeds alone!

And Meng Minghui had pointed out that those hundreds of millions were their net profit after tax!

One shouldn’t have underestimated the scale of the toy market.

Of the explosive spending powder of children, who wanted to buy their favorite toy!

Or the market of peripheral products of movies and TV works in this country with 1.4 billion people, and where knock-offs were despised, and piracy had been wiped off the face of earth!