"Our firm's account is planning to distribute some benefits to old readers, right? I think we might as well offer a promotion from Wu Mu's event—one movie ticket plus an eighteen-dollar game discount, and there's even a game achievement title to boot. It's presentable and creates buzz."

Someone suggested.

The others were momentarily stunned but realized it was actually feasible.

It's closely related to their game theme and has buzz—quite fun indeed.

"Why don't we also go watch Wu Mu's new movie for this week's team building event, then everyone can write a review, and in the next issue we can publish a film critique and segue into reports on Wu Mu's new game and his career in game development."

The person suggested again.

As for whether Wu Mu's game would be delayed, or even if it just cashes in and disappears, they, as media, have no worries at all.

In fact, that scenario is even better, because it provides ready-made material.

At that time, they could run "consumer rights" reports every day, and the hype would only keep climbing.

...

It was the insiders who first noticed something was off.

After a busy day of promoting "Moon Landing Plan," the director Yu Chao routinely opened the box office statistics website to check how much his film had grossed today.

"There's been an obvious decline these past few days, a bit of a lack in momentum, but it should still make over 20 million."

For a comedy film with not very high production costs, Yu Chao was quite satisfied with this performance. Recovering costs and earning a small profit was guaranteed.

He opened the ticket sales website, not checking the top-ranking films first but directly scrolling to about seventh or eighth place.

"As expected, still seventh," he was unsurprised to find his film ranked seventh in today's box office charts.

23.2 million.

Lately, they've been consistently in seventh or eighth place.

Yu Chao nodded in satisfaction before starting to care about the performances of his competitors.

The first thing he looked for was the film "Parting," not only because it was highly popular but also because it had consistently overshadowed his film for several days, always ranking one place higher.

A comedy film being outperformed by an art film during the Spring Festival season left a deep impression on him.

"It's just that Wu Mu's trending too high, and his performance is too outstanding, exploding the film's word of mouth." Yu Chao had specifically watched the movie and was particularly impressed by Wu Mu's performance.

He thought it was fortunate Wu Mu had made an art film. If it were a serious commercial film, combined with his current popularity and performance, it could have suffocated them and drained their box office.

Yu Chao conventionally checked the one ranked just above him, but to his surprise, it was not "Parting" this time but another family movie.

Moreover, a glance further showed that neither the fourth nor fifth places were "Parting" either.

Yu Chao's face lit up, "Finally surpassed them?"

For once, the film that had been overshadowing them was now overshadowed by them!

He quickly scrolled downward to check further.

But...

Neither eighth nor ninth had it.

"Falling this much, it seems like they've hit their limit."

Neither tenth nor eleventh nor twelfth had it.

"Art films really don't hold up; after the initial buzz, they plummet quickly."

Still not there in thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth.

"It's collapsed, dropping this much after the first week; it seems Wu Mu's power ends here."

Yu Chao shook his head, feeling a bit of regret for the opponents who had been pressing them hard these past few days.

He continued scrolling down, intending to see just how far this movie had fallen, how much today's box office made—surely just a few million?

But scrolling further down to the twenty-third or twenty-fourth position, he still didn't see "Parting," leaving him befuddled, feeling something was amiss.

Hesitating briefly, he slowly scrolled back up.

Today's box office champion, "Extreme Speed," 100.6 million.

Second, "Parting," 76.2 million.

Yu Chao: "???"

What?

What??

No, what happened!?

76 million??

Wasn't this film's box office just a bit over 30 million yesterday! Normally, it should drop even more today, so why did it climb this much out of nowhere!

Yu Chao was dumbfounded.

This was no collapse; it completely crushed them.

Yu Chao hurriedly clicked into the ranking's comments section to find out what happened, why the film's box office soared unexpectedly.

Upon entering the comments, people were indeed talking about this.

"Whoa, did one of Wu Mu's events boost the box office by this much?!"

"Together with today's projected decline, Wu Mu's event single-handedly spiked the box office by over 40 million?"

"Are you people serious? You actually fell for this scam!!"

But Yu Chao found himself more confused after reading. What did this have to do with Wu Mu? What event from Wu Mu?

...

People online were also slowly noticing something was amiss.

Initially, everyone agreed Wu Mu's event was too unrealistic, too undirected, and nobody would go for it, thinking it screened out all the potential buyers.

At first, the event link indeed was lukewarm, with just tens of thousands pre-ordering, which was not in line with Wu Mu's stature.

Yet slowly, the pre-order number inexplicably became 100,000, 200,000, 500,000.

"1.12 million!?"

"Within less than a day, it shot to over a million??"

"No, are you people for real? Forget the game discount; it's not much money, but can you even use these movie tickets you bought, and do you have anyone to go with!?"

"Weren't they all not buying it, why did it explode!?"

Everyone was bewildered.

Especially the casual fan base, who totally didn't understand what just happened.

Wu Mu's event this time was actually different from previous events; before, whether it was selling merch or endorsement activities, the target group was all sorts of "fans" and outsiders, etc.

But this game discount is visibly something only serious gamers would go for, which is essentially the core base of these casual followers.

Many originally thought that based on past tendencies, Wu Mu's event was doomed to flop. After all, they constantly criticized Wu Mu's various product placement activities and money-grabbing tactics online. Apart from the haters, these casual fans were the most vocal about it.

If Wu Mu's new event showed some sincerity and he apologized, admitting he had neglected the vast audience before, then maybe people would reluctantly give it a chance.

But this event seemed like just another money-grabbing scheme.

So many presumed no one would buy Wu Mu's event.

Yet now with the number over 1.1 million... many had a sudden jolt in their hearts.

Could it be that their casual fan group was similar to those haters, saying they wouldn't buy publicly but secretly lulling others while buying discreetly themselves?

(A shorter one today)

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