Chapter 1654 - 817: Reversal

Chapter 1654: Chapter 817: Reversal

Zhou Yun explained, "The word of mouth is pretty polarized. The people who like it really like it, and the people who don’t like it just don’t like it."

"If the narrative pace of the film could be a bit faster, it might be much better," Hugh Redman said. "This kind of film isn’t really the type I usually enjoy watching."

Chris Pine, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly said, "Actually, I quite like it. It’s like a small fire burning quietly; I gradually got drawn into it, and then I could feel what this film was talking about. It’s actually always, in a very veiled way, talking about a person’s loneliness, and how to live with one’s own loneliness. I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding it, but while I was watching this film, I kept thinking of when I was at university in Denmark. I was often by myself, had lots of those moments when I had to be alone with myself—lonely, yet with no way to dispel that feeling."

Zhou Yun cast a surprised glance at Chris Pine.

"Now that you put it that way, I have that feeling too," Lew Xi suddenly said. "But maybe because my work environment isn’t quite like in the film, my resonance isn’t that strong. My work environment is actually brutally competitive and huge, unlike Treasure—her environment, whether at work or in life, is like a pool of still water. I’ve never had that kind of state."

Chris Pine suddenly said, "This film is like a confession letter written to people who suffer from loneliness."

The sentence Chris Pine had just spoken swept over Zhou Yun’s heart like a blizzard.

In that moment, Zhou Yun finally grasped the film’s true intention.

Zhou Yun said, "Chris, I’d like to use that line you just said as the publicity tagline. Would that be okay?"

"Of course," Chris Pine nodded.

After the screening event ended, Zhou Yun returned to the hotel and carefully went over everything everyone had just said.

She opened her inbox and wrote an email to Ning Yao.

...

The director of Treasure, named Zhu Wenju, was a man in his thirties.

He’d been working in the film and television industry for a long time, but had never directed before. One Day, he submitted one of his scripts to a project pitching session for a youth film fund, and Ning Yao took a liking to that script.

Ning Yao put in a huge amount of effort to help him get this film made.

Zhu Wenju was very grateful to Ning Yao.

Although the box-office performance of this film was not very good, and Zhu Wenju lost everything on it, not earning a single cent, he was still quite satisfied.

Because he had finally made the first film of his life.

When Ning Yao told him that she had asked Zhou Yun to handle overseas sales for this film, he didn’t pin too much hope on it, because he himself knew that the subject matter and type of film weren’t the kind that are easy to sell.

In fact, if Ning Yao weren’t starring in it, the box office for this film might have to drop another zero from what it was now.

The film hadn’t gone off screens yet, but now its daily box office was only a few hundred thousand, with basically no room for growth.

Zhu Wenju had already finished the film’s roadshow, and had no more interviews, variety appearances, or other publicity work lined up.

He slept until he woke up naturally, scratched his hair, picked up his phone, and saw that the promo group for Treasure actually had "99+" unread messages.

How come there are so many?

He had no idea what had happened.

He tapped into the chat and saw that everyone was excitedly talking about one thing: today’s box office had unexpectedly bounced back against the downward trend, and including presales had already passed one million.

For a theatrical release, that figure is quite low.

But for Treasure, it was an enormous pleasant surprise.

Then he learned that the reason the box office had suddenly rebounded like this was because Zhou Yun had posted a Weibo late last night.

The Weibo was some of her thoughts about Treasure.

...

"Tonight, I held a private screening of Treasure for the crew of Killing Song. My original intent was to ask everyone to help me see whether they liked this film or not, and give me some suggestions on how I should recommend it to overseas distributors afterwards. Unexpectedly, after the screening ended, their opinions were highly polarized.

Tim said that if he were the one editing this film, he would re-edit it, change the way the story is told, and make the pace faster. Hugh also said this isn’t the kind of film genre he usually likes. Lew Xi said she almost fell asleep watching it.