Chapter 209 Profits from Two Movies

With Gong Yu joining, Sina's senior management staff is basically in place.

President Wang Yan is responsible for wireless value-added services, advertising business and games. It can be said that Sina’s three most profitable projects are currently handed over to him.

Vice President Chen Tong is in charge of the news portal and the new application Zhihu, which is also his main job.

CFO Cao Guowei is responsible for the blog and email projects.

Liu Zhou also revamped Sina Mail, simplifying the interface, removing all advertisements and making it completely free.

Email may seem insignificant, but it is an indispensable application for every Internet company.

The company that did the best in the email business in later generations was Penguin.

In addition to the huge user base of Penguin Group, Penguin Mail is also able to succeed because they invited Zhang Xiaolong to be responsible for the mailbox business.

He created Penguin Mail based on the three points mentioned by Liu Zhou.

At a time when each email service is still operating independently, if Sina Email changes from now on, it is not impossible for it to become the first choice for urban white-collar workers.

This group uses email most frequently.

Although email cannot generate much profit, it can attract traffic to Sina and expand Sina's application matrix.

Finally, there is Sina Video. Liu Zhou had been considering who to hand over this business to, but now everyone has their own things to do.

Later, Liu Zhou decided to find someone from outside to take charge of this matter, and at the same time bring some fresh air to Sina's management.

The more famous people in charge of later video websites are Gu Yongqiang and Gong Yu, but the former has founded Youku, while the latter is still at Sohu.

In order to poach Gong Yu, Liu Zhou not only handed over all the video website business to him, but also gave him the high position of Chief Operating Officer and of course, the salary was also provided.

Gong Yu is a well-known model worker in Sohu. All he does is work and he has almost no life.

The main reason is that Zhang Chaoyang is too independent and has handed over most of the company's affairs to his subordinates.

In response to Liu Zhou's sincere invitation, Gong Yu finally decided to join.

Liu Zhou was of course very happy to have another talented person, but he felt a little sorry for Zhang Chaoyang as he had just wanted to ask him to relax with him.

So in order to express his apology, Liu Zhou specially ordered a sports car for him as an atonement.

I don’t know whether to say that Zhang Chaoyang’s Sohu is lucky or unlucky.

The reason why we say he is lucky is that Sohu has recruited a large number of outstanding talents, and it can be said that it is full of talented people.

The reason why people say he is unlucky is that many talented people have left Sohu.

The most famous one is Gu Yongqiang, who founded Youku and took it public. At its peak, Youku’s market value once exceeded that of Sohu.

Then there is Gong Yu. After leaving Sohu to join Baidu in 09, he founded iQiyi, which later surpassed Youku and became the number one video website in mainland China.

Finally, there is Wang Xiaochuan. The Sogou he created almost caused a war between Penguin and Ali.

Of course, these are all relatively famous ones. There are also people like Li Shanyou, who founded Ku6.com, and Zhang Ligang, Wang Xiujuan and others who are also big names in the industry.

Later, someone did a statistics and found that there were more than 300 Internet entrepreneurs who came from Sohu.

It is not an exaggeration to call Sohu the Huangpu Military Academy of the Internet industry.

So Liu Zhou thought that next time Sina is short of talent, it can go to Sohu again.

After everything was arranged at Sina and things were getting on the right track, Liu Zhou finally returned to Golden Harvest.

Originally, at the beginning of the year, Jiahe would have a high-level meeting to determine Jiahe’s investment projects for the new year.

However, Liu Zhou really has no time as he is always busy with Sina's affairs.

Moreover, Zhang Zhao's performance in the past year has also been recognized by Liu Zhou, so Liu Zhou also delegated authority to Zhang Zhao to handle it.

Although the affairs of Jiahe are handled by the company's senior executives, Liu Zhou, as the boss, cannot just ignore it.

Now that he has time, Liu Zhou is also ready to find out about Jiahe’s situation in recent months.

A few months later, Liu Zhou came to the Beijing headquarters of Golden Harvest Films in the 798 Art District again and felt that there seemed to be more people.

As the boss of the company and a well-known director, Liu Zhou was never stopped from entering.

On the contrary, Liu Zhouyi was recognized as soon as he entered the company gate.

Then everyone in the company ran out and looked at him as if he were a giant panda.

Looking at the faint admiration in their eyes, to be honest, Liu Zhou's vanity was greatly satisfied.

Liu Zhou also knew that they viewed him this way because of his taking over Sina.

This incident indeed caused a huge sensation in the entertainment industry, and also made the employees of Golden Harvest feel proud of it.

In response to the enthusiasm of the company employees, Liu Zhou did not ask his bodyguards to clear the way for him as he did with the reporters. He could only respond to their warm greetings with a smile.

Finally, because of the loud noise, Zhang Zhao was alarmed, and he called the employees back to their workstations, and Liu Zhou successfully came to his office. "Mr. Liu, you are finally back. We were worried that you would stay at Sina forever." Zhang Zhao joked with a smile.

"How is that possible? Jiahe is my base. It's easy to stay here. If I stay over there, I will be scheming all day long."

Zhang Zhao saw that Liu Zhou did look a little tired, and he knew that although it seemed glorious on the surface that he was taking over Sina, it was not easy behind the scenes.

Of course, Zhang Zhao also admires Liu Zhou for becoming the new helmsman of Sina.

But now is not the time to express admiration. Liu Zhou must be busier than before.

"Boss Liu, let me report to you about the recent situation of the company."

"No need to be so troublesome. Just send some documents over so I can take a look. You can go ahead and do your work. I'll call you when there's something else."

"Okay Mr. Liu."

Soon, Zhang Zhao came back with a pile of documents and put them on Liu Zhou's desk.

"Mr. Liu, one part contains documents that require your signature and approval, and the other part contains recent work records. You can take a look at them."

After saying that, Zhang Zhao left Liu Zhou's office first and closed the door gently.

Liu Zhou took a deep breath and then began to review the documents.

Most of these involve the flow of funds. Liu Zhou reads every document carefully and will only sign after confirming that there are no problems.

After finishing all this, the morning was over.

At noon, Liu Zhou asked someone to get him a meal in the cafeteria. After eating in the office, he continued to read another set of documents.

It was not until dark that Liu Zhou finished reading the documents, and he had some understanding of the development of Jiahe Company in recent months.

First, let’s talk about the revenue of two films that Golden Harvest recently released.

"Crazy Stone" was a bit simpler. It earned 86 million yuan in the mainland, and then was released in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The total box office was less than 10 million yuan, only 8 million yuan.

The mainland box office revenue is first deducted by 5% of the film development special fund and 3.3% of the business tax, and then Golden Harvest and the theater chain negotiate that the theater chain’s share is %.

This time, Golden Harvest did the distribution itself, so it could get 41.7% of the box office, which is about million.

In Hong Kong and Taiwan, the film was also distributed directly by Golden Harvest, so it could directly take 50% of the box office, which is 4 million.

Then, relying on Golden Harvest's powerful overseas channels, the overseas copyright of this film was also sold for nearly US$600,000, which is equivalent to RMB 5 million.

Finally, the broadcasting rights to movie channels and some other copyrights such as DVDs were sold, which totaled about three million.

So the total revenue of "Crazy Stone" is 48 million.

The production cost of this film was eight million, and because of the popularity of "The Promise", the publicity cost was not that much, only about five million in total.

Finally, because of the outstanding performance of the film, Liu Zhou and Zhang Zhao discussed and decided to give a total of 5 million bonus to the main creators of the film.

Therefore, the net profit of "Crazy Stone" was as high as 30 million, which was a huge profit.

Nowadays, it is rare for a movie to earn 30 million, which is even higher than the annual profit of most film and television companies.

It’s no wonder why so many people want to recruit Ning Hao. He is simply too attractive.

However, although "Crazy Stone" made a lot of money, it was nothing compared to "New World".

"Crazy Stone" has almost no market outside the mainland, while "New World" was not only released in various regions in Asia, but also distributed in the United States.

The overseas release of "New World", including in Asia, was based on profit-sharing through Golden Harvest's distribution channels, rather than a direct copyright purchase.

First of all, it is the largest film market in Asia, which is also the best film market for Golden Harvest overseas.

One of the most popular books is about kung fu movies, especially those by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.

Up to now, the highest-grossing Chinese-language film released is Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon", which grossed approximately 50 billion yen.

It was the 1s, and the exchange rate between the RMB and the Japanese yen was around 30:40 to .

Due to different purchasing power, many things here are difficult to calculate, but even so, the data is still very terrifying.

Jackie Chan is equally impressive. His series of movies including "Project A", "Wheels On The Road", "Police Stories" and so on have all achieved excellent box office results.

Just like the "New Police Story" released in Japan two years ago, the box office was about 18.6 billion yen, which is about 1.3 million yuan in RMB.

This ranked in the top 17 in the box office of overseas movies released last year, second in Asia, only behind Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers", and slightly ahead of "Kung Fu" which grossed billion yen.

Although "New World" is not a kung fu film that the audience particularly likes, it has many Hong Kong superstars joining in, plus Toho's powerful publicity and promotion.

So the movie still attracted a large number of audiences to watch it.

"New World" eventually grossed over 9 million yen at the box office, which translates to nearly 7000 million yuan.

Although the result is not outstanding, it is still very good for a gangster film to achieve this result in one book.

(End of this chapter)