Tycoon: I Have an Unlimited Modifier novel Chapter 460

Chapter 460: Chapter 246: Qi ’Midas Touch’ Sheng

Starting from July 13th, Nezha: Birth of the Demon Child began its large-scale advanced screenings.

At Qi Sheng’s request, the number of screenings exceeded 1,000.

An advanced screening of this magnitude was extremely rare in the domestic film industry.

If word-of-mouth failed, the box office would surely be a miserable failure.

But Qi Sheng, having seen the future, knew just how astonishing the final box office for Demon Child would be.

The advanced screenings grossed 61.83 million yuan.

This was somewhat unexpected, even for Universal Entertainment, which was in charge of marketing and distribution.

By convention, the opening day box office should be at least double that of the advanced screenings.

Thanks to these screenings, right up until the official premiere,

Demon Child maintained an unprecedented level of positive buzz on all platforms for a domestic animated film.

Besides a 93% recommendation rate from major Weibo influencers, a 9.7 on Maoyan, and a 9.5 on Taopiaopiao,

even the notoriously picky netizens on Douban gave it a high score of 8.8.

This was a significant lead over the 8.3 score of Return of the Great Sage.

Hailed as the new hope for domestic animation, Demon Child officially hit theaters on July 26th.

Theaters naturally increased its screen share.

Other films released during the same period suffered miserably.

Just one and a half hours after its release, Demon Child’s box office hit 100 million yuan.

When the official first-day box office numbers were released,

the figure of 138.5 million yuan sent shockwaves through the entire entertainment industry.

Demon Child even surpassed Despicable Me 3 to become the domestic box office champion for an animated film’s opening day.

After that, it was as if the film had cheat codes enabled.

Not only did it make up for the regret of Return of the Great Sage stopping short of the 1 billion mark,

but it also shattered the 167 million single-day box office record set by Zootopia.

In just three days, Demon Child ruthlessly surpassed it,

raising the bar to an unprecedented 280 million!

On its eighth day in theaters, Demon Child officially surpassed Zootopia’s total box office of 1.53 billion yuan,

becoming the highest-grossing animated film in Chinese cinema history.

This time, even the mainstream media couldn’t sit still.

Various official media influencers personally jumped in and began to lavish praise on Demon Child.

People’s Daily Online: "If you don’t let the audience down, the audience will promote you."

Xinhua Net: "A new era for domestic animated film. Congratulations to Demon Child for surpassing Zootopia in total box office!"

Guangming Daily: "Cheering on Demon Child, 2 billion is in sight!"

...

Seeing that the box office forecast for Demon Child had already reached 3 billion,

Light, the company that had previously sold the rights, was kicking themselves in regret.

Although the 300 million they received had earned them a small profit,

watching Demon Child’s box office explode was more painful than death.

But what was done was done; it was too late for regrets.

As the behind-the-scenes powerhouse, Universal Entertainment became famous overnight.

Though that description wasn’t entirely accurate.

After all, Universal Entertainment was a long-established film company.

But in the mainland, it had truly blown up thanks to Demon Child.

Universal Entertainment wasn’t the only one celebrating Demon Child’s massive success.

Over at Pop Mart, cheers were erupting constantly.

Scones, in particular, breathed a huge sigh of relief, finally able to relax completely.

He no longer had to worry about selling off the 400 million yuan worth of stockpiled merchandise at a loss.

Even though counterfeiters would soon follow, Pop Mart had more than enough time to reap huge profits.

Universal Entertainment even made an official announcement through its verified account:

Only merchandise sold by Pop Mart was officially licensed for Demon Child.

Riding the movie’s popularity, Pop Mart’s 400 million yuan worth of merchandise

sold out completely with almost no effort.

Scones immediately sent the profits, which had barely warmed his hands, to the partner factories.

He told them to speed up and continue production at full capacity.

You could say they were in a race against time with the counterfeiters.

The merchandise market was only so big.

The more they earned, the less the counterfeiters would.

Before Demon Child even left theaters, Little Nezha, with his two small topknots and dark circles under his eyes,

had already become Pop Mart’s most sought-after IP.

Compared to a national-level animation IP like this,

even Molly had to step aside.

Qi Sheng certainly wouldn’t miss a money-making opportunity.

He injected an additional 200 million yuan of investment into both Universal Entertainment and Pop Mart.

With its 200 million, Universal Entertainment further expanded its marketing and distribution efforts.

The previous 60 million in marketing costs, plus this new 200 million,

meant nearly 300 million was thrown out there, and the effect was naturally incredible.

You couldn’t open an app without being bombarded with news of Demon Child’s release and its latest box office numbers.

Hailed as the new hope for domestic animation, Demon Child lived up to Universal Entertainment’s spare-no-expense promotional campaign.

All sorts of celebrities and major influencers also jumped on the bandwagon,

either by reposting or showing off their ticket stubs.

This helped push Demon Child’s box office to climb higher and higher.

Over at Pop Mart, they put down another 200 million yuan in deposits,

demanding that the major factories run at full capacity to produce another 600 million yuan worth of merchandise.

One billion yuan was probably the limit of Demon Child’s popularity.

There might be room for profit later on,

but it would only be a slow and steady trickle.

Even so, Scones was already extremely satisfied.

From this 1 billion in merchandise revenue, Pop Mart’s gross profit would be at least 400 million.

Learning from the experience of designing merchandise for Return of the Great Sage,

Pop Mart had specifically targeted fashion-conscious young adults in their twenties as the main audience when designing products for Demon Child this time.

On their official Taobao flagship store,

the Demon Child merchandise they released was almost always in a state of being sold out.

Seeing how incredibly popular the Demon Child merchandise was, the counterfeiters were practically drooling with envy.

But they couldn’t get around the fact that they needed to design everything from scratch.

Add in production time, and they would be at least a week behind.

Qi Sheng didn’t let his legal department stay idle either.

Any merchant who dared to sell counterfeit Demon Child merchandise online was immediately reported and sent a lawyer’s letter.

Whether it was effective or not, they absolutely couldn’t lose on intimidation.

As of 5:00 PM on August 8th, Demon Child’s box office reached 3 billion yuan.

It officially squeezed out Crazy Alien to rank third in the annual box office.

It even had a chance of surpassing The Wandering Earth and Avengers: Endgame.

...

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify