Feature Shows Extravaganza - Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Follow the Trend

Jiangchuan, the Blue Sky building.

Pengda Pictures had just moved here and was holding its monthly conference now.

Yan Tao, a member of the production department and the director of Blazing Teens 2, reported the newest progress of his wor.

According to him, the filming of Blazing Teens 2 would be finished in early September when school started, and if the post-production was efficient, the show could be aired in October.

That was already very efficient for a TV show.

After all, Blazing Teens 2 didn’t start shooting until early April, so Yan Tao had to have learned something valuable from Director Meng.

By October, Blazing Teens 2 would no longer affect Explosive Boys’ viewership ratings, because the two shows would have been two months apart by then.

It had been a whole year since Blazing Teens 1 was aired.

After a year, the initial fans had already begun to miss the show, so even if this sequel wasn’t as good as the first one, the viewership ratings still wouldn’t be too bad.

Not to mention that viewership ratings didn’t matter much at all.

The purpose of this sequel was to promote a new yo-yo series. Power Silver and Sprinting Meteor had already gone out of fashion, so if Pengda wanted to make more money, they would have to come up with some new series.

Tapping the desk, Meng Lang said, “We’ll make one sequel of Blazing Teens every year until the viewership ratings are no longer satisfying. As for Balala the Fairies, I want to see the plan of a sequel soon…”

Making sequels was a long-term thing.

When there was a second season, the audience would expect a third one.

A sequel a year would be enough to keep the popularity of yo-yos and the fairy toys. Even if they fell out of favor in a few years, Pengda could still shelf the two shows and make a comeback in five or six years to take advantage of the nostalgic sentiment again.

Everyone knew that they had learned from the best!

Explosive Boys was no exception. Sacred Stone, its sequel, was already under preparation.

The tricky thing was that Sacred Stone was originally a cartoon, so they had to make quite a few changes if they were going to film it as a live-action show.

But Director Meng was going to fix it!

After the sequels, Ma Teng, the COO, reported to Meng Lang on the proceedings revenue Pengda Pictures had received in the second quarter of 2015.

As the copyright owner, Pengda Pictures had no factories of their own, nor did they make any physical product.

All their peripheral products were produced by other licensed manufacturers, while they earned revenue through the proceedings.

The second quarter income had a 30% decrease from that of the first quarter!

But that was only a temporary pain.

Clapping his hands, Meng Lang smiled and said, “Our peripheral products haven’t been selling well in the second quarter, and I think we all know why, but things will turn around in the next quarter.”

The fad of fairies had died down in the second quarter, and the popping balls hadn’t been launched either.

Based on how popping balls had been selling so far, the financial report would be very promising in the third quarter.

Meng Lang was confident that the kids would have his back.

The rest of the financial report wasn’t worth reading at all. There was “net profit” everywhere, and that was so vulgar!

Meng Lang turned the other way so that his employees wouldn’t see the big grin on his face. He then feigned a deep, calm voice and said, “Ahem… Director Ma, we’ve been talking about the domestic market only. How did we do in the foreign markets?”

“Well… it’s been pretty good.”

Rubbing his chin, Ma Teng said, “The Snowy Scale series has replaced the Power Silver series and become the most popular yo-yos overseas. The sales figures of fairy toys are looking good. I think in the first half of the year, we’re going to receive over 200 million USD from the licensed products alone!”

“How much?”

“200 million USD!” Ma Teng repeated.

Meng Lang turned around and asked in disbelief, “Is that for the first half of the year or the predicted revenue for the whole year?”

“The first half!” Ma Teng stressed. “The revenue for the second half would only be higher than that.”

After all, popping balls and cards were to be launched overseas after June, and the second Yo-Yo World Cup was going to be held soon, which would result in an increase in the sales of yo-yos again…

But that was still too scary!

He wasn’t the only one who had been shocked by that figure. “Since when was selling toys so profitable?”

Exactly how many yo-yos had been sold?

Meng Lang smiled. “Well done, everyone! You’ve all worked hard in the past six months, and you’re all going to be awarded accordingly. I’ll have the accounting department run some figures later. Everyone is going to receive a bonus!”

“That’s so generous of you, Director Meng!”

The employees were elated.

…

Pengda Pictures had made money—a lot of it.

That had made a lot of their fellow production companies envious. Many people could help asking themselves a question.

“How could such a crappy show make so much money?”

It was impossible not to feel jealous.

But that wasn’t all they did. Taking advantage of this hype over feature shows, they all set up their own projects.

Sky & Sea Pictures, the well-known production company, had announced that they were planning a new show, which was going to be aired around October.

And the name of the new show was “Light Wave Boys”!

Well…

Because Sky & Sea didn’t reveal much detail, Meng Lang couldn’t tell what kind of a story it was going to tell.

The name itself could provide some hint and he wondered if the boys would emit light waves from their hands.

And that was only one of the shows!

Jiangnan Pictures was going to film “Hurricane Teens”. Rumor had it that they were going to join hands with a toy manufacturer, and the show involved toy pinwheels.

Lia Pictures, a company mainly focusing on film productions, had joined the line as well.

Their project was an interesting one. They were going to remake Candy Girls, an old popular show, into a live-action TV series.

It wasn’t hard to see that Lia’s target audience was similar to that of Balala the Fairies.

These three shows were the largest productions, and also the ones that Meng Lang considered to be the largest threats.

Apart from those, many less famous directors had also set up new projects as well.

They were all feature shows!

With all the newcomers, Pengda Pictures seemed to have a lot of rivals. But in fact, Meng Lang didn’t think much of them.

These people knew nothing!

They could only see Pengda Pictures’s success, but they didn’t know how many companies had gone down doing the same thing.

Meng Lang wouldn’t say for sure that these trend-followers would all fail—maybe one or two of them would turn out all right, but the possibility was too low. Everyone wanted to make a hit show, but only a handful of people would succeed.

Maybe they would only realize it when they actually started working on the show. Kids were as difficult to please compared to their adult counterparts.

Not many live-action shows that targeted teenagers were in the market, and Meng Lang didn’t mind having some competition. After all, even if their shows succeeded, they wouldn’t make as much money as he did.

Why bother making a feature show if they couldn’t make the toys right?

Armored warriors were much more expensive to make than Explosive Boys, but the toys wouldn’t necessarily sell well.

Just because a feature show was well-made didn’t make it a profitable one.

There were more than enough production companies who had lost a fortune after making great shows!