598: Chapter 598 Comparison

Yang Xiaozhou wanted to film the "mythology universe." To be honest, Lin Chuyan couldn't find anyone more suitable than Yang Xiaozhou—among directors in the animation field, besides him, who else was worth entrusting with such a task? Perhaps there were others, but they required observation and time to build chemistry. Therefore, he wouldn't consider them for the early stages; Lin Chuyan certainly wouldn't risk such an important project.

These days, Yang Xiaozhou called Lin Chuyan almost every day to report on his work, with a frequency that rivaled Lin Ruan's long-distance relationship back in the day.

"If you're willing, for the early projects, as well as the most crucial 'Yang Jian' series, to be safe... why don't we just direct them ourselves? Let's not look for anyone else," Lin Chuyan said casually.

"Sure!" Yang Xiaozhou looked as if he were afraid Lin Chuyan would change his mind. "The animation production team in Chengdu has finally been whipped into shape by me. Given time... once I finish filming 'nezha 2', their technical capabilities will definitely improve significantly."

Jade needs to be carved to become a masterpiece, right?

Come to think of it, if they could really be put through the wringer by Yang Xiaozhou, the client, using the entire 'ne zha' trilogy, the overall animation production level in Chengdu might truly experience a qualitative leap.

In the long run, this was huge good news. If combined with the scripts currently being slowly polished within Yanyu Animation, as well as the various original art in progress... Director Yang Xiaozhou wouldn't need to "spend three years sharpening a sword" for every project in the future.

Beyond the long-term plans for the future, the current 'ne zha' was obviously more worthy of attention.

Lin Chuyan's marketing strategy began to take effect—the word-of-mouth for the 'ne zha' preview screenings was excellent, so good that it far exceeded Director Yang Xiaozhou's expectations.

What was it Lin Chuyan had said before? A 90% positive rating was guaranteed? The reality was that the positive rating was over 95%!

On September 15, after the first preview screening, the number of effective daily comments across the entire internet soared from single digits to over 1,000. Among them, 997 were positive. This was monitored and counted by dedicated personnel; the 'ne zha' production team hadn't hired any fake reviewers at all—it was all organic word-of-mouth!

[Damn, I actually cried watching this. This is the real new hope for domestic animation!]

[Complete world-building! Father and son, mother and son, master and disciple, brothers, enemies and friends... How was every single relationship handled so well?]

[Damn, what did I just see? The art, editing, score, and action design all have such highlights? Even the comedy parts aren't just acting foolish! The creators were so thoughtful!]

[Soaring imagination, first-class production quality, worth a second watch! Honestly, I think it's a four-star movie, but there are just too many merits; I'm giving it five stars to encourage it and recommend it!]

[Yang Xiaozhou? Never heard of him... Has he directed any movies before?]

[I only know that the producer's name at the beginning of the film is written in big characters: Lin Chuyan.]

The positive reviews gave Yang Xiaozhou confidence, and the team began the second round of preview screenings. The cities for the screenings gradually expanded to third, fourth, and fifth-tier cities, and the number of screenings was also gradually increased.

According to the number initially set by Lin Chuyan, the final total number of preview screenings was 23,000... This number wasn't exactly large, nor was it small, but it was enough to generate buzz.

The name 'ne zha' began to pull ahead of other films in the National Day movie season even before its official release.

Other films naturally held preview screenings too, but certainly no one had started them half a month in advance... In other words, the dividend of positive word-of-mouth from this wave of preview screenings was completely gobbled up by 'ne zha' alone.

For example, the excellent word-of-mouth caused the number of people wanting to watch 'ne zha' on major apps to rise sharply; and as for theaters, because of data like the high occupancy rate of 'ne zha', they planned to adjust its share of screenings after the subsequent official release.

Yes, while other studios were still releasing various videos and featurettes, 'ne zha' was already being recommended everywhere by the audience; it had gained organic word-of-mouth.

To be honest, starting the preview screenings so early had left the other films a bit stunned: It was supposed to be the National Day movie season, so what was the meaning of starting previews half a month early? 23,000 screenings! If it were a bad movie, that would be one thing, but the positive rating was over 95%! If they waited for all your rounds of preview screenings to finish, would the other films even have a chance to survive?

On various platforms, the buzz for 'ne zha' became unstoppable.

What does this trending search on Weibo mean? Can someone explain what an "Ou Bing CP" is?

Over on Douyin, it was even more extreme; everyone was playing with the 'ne zha' sticker? Every time I opened Douyin, I could see videos of people using this sticker; some influencers weren't satisfied with just the sticker and started dressing up as 'ne zha' directly, and the number of likes was super high.

Under the constant impact of this popularity, some production teams couldn't take it anymore and finally started their own preview screenings a week in advance; others moved their premiere dates up by one day to September 30; of course, some chose to release normally, like 'new year painting boy'.

Preview screenings actually require conditions, and that is "pre-screening buzz."

Like with 'ne zha', the three characters "Lin Chuyan" already explained everything. A single sentence, "Lin Chuyan's new movie has started preview screenings," was more effective than anything else.

And what about your trailers? Posters? Viral videos? Featurettes? Topic marketing? Trending searches? If you don't conduct media pre-heating and fail to give the audience an initial understanding and expectation of the movie, you'll end up with a preview screening that achieves nothing.

Speaking of which, the production team for 'new year painting boy' wanted to cry: Damn it, I have all of these, but they were all released during the Spring Festival Movie Season! I can't just do another wave now, right? The promotional budget was mostly spent during the Spring Festival Movie Season!

With the remaining money, they could only find some movie bloggers to help advertise and tell everyone that 'new year painting boy' was back!

As for the effect, I can only say it existed, but not much, because a new problem had emerged.

The problem now was that, who knows which studio released a smear campaign, attacking two films at once, directly hitting both 'ne zha' and 'new year painting boy'.

With over 100,000 reads, the title read: Domestic animation has yet to rise, but the protagonists of domestic animation are becoming increasingly ugly.

[The so-called "ne zha" created by Lin Chuyan and Yang Xiaozhou is undoubtedly a desecration of the classic image. Gapped teeth, garlic nose, crooked eyebrows and slanted eyes, huge dark circles like he's wearing smoky makeup, and his looks strangely resemble Lin Chuyan's artist Wang Yongqiang—is this intentional? If you tell me he's a street hooligan, I believe you. You say he's the righteous and brave little ne zha? Pfft! Being so deliberately novel and different, changing the classic character image until it's unrecognizable, and using an ugly appearance to attract attention is simply disrespectful to traditional culture, and it has no aesthetic or artistic value whatsoever. It's truly unacceptable!]

[And who doesn't know that this 'new year painting boy' stuff, which pulled out of the Spring Festival Movie Season, has quietly landed in the National Day movie season? And who doesn't know that the protagonist of this film has a pair of slanting, squinting eyes, and eyes spaced so wide apart you could row a boat between them? I just want to ask the production team, does this conform to mass aesthetics? Why are you using this kind of weird appearance to attract attention? This kind of character design doesn't make me feel any charm; it only makes me suspect that the creators are catering to Western stereotypical aesthetic prejudices against Orientals.]

[Domestic animation rising? Before it rises, can you please make your characters look better first? Don't offend the audience's eyes!]

Yang Xiaozhou called Lin Chuyan again, mainly because he was afraid public opinion would affect the box office.

"This is too malicious. Attacking 'new year painting boy' is one thing... but isn't little ne zha cute?"

Director Yang Xiaozhou was encountering this situation for the first time, and he was somewhat at a loss.

However, Lin Chuyan had been smeared all the way for the past few years; what hadn't he seen? He was long past being surprised: "Don't worry too much. Do you believe me when I say this won't affect us at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"The contrast is too sharp." Lin Chuyan was very calm. "You can first compare the eyes of little ne zha and the male lead of 'new year painting boy' to see how many times larger his are; then compare the various versions of ne zha to see how big the difference is; and when the movie is officially released, finally compare how many times our box office is compared to theirs."

Yang Xiaozhou was once again infected by Lin Chuyan's confidence.

Lin Chuyan on the other end of the phone was laughing: "Director Yang, you also need to have confidence."

"What?"

"Do you think there's a possibility: in the past, when people mentioned ne zha, everyone thought of that classic image who committed suicide; in the future, the first thing everyone thinks of will be exactly that street hooligan in the eyes of some people who are currently cursing him."