Chapter 311 - 240: Zog Film Studio’s Big Failure? (2)

Chapter 311: Chapter 240: Zog Film Studio’s Big Failure? (2)

It didn’t require any Illusionists, the crew was small, and the shooting schedule was very short.

Theoretically, the biggest expense would have been renting a luxurious manor as the main filming location. But Sir Gordo contributed that part; out of artistic idealism, he let the crew use his estate free of charge.

He also took care of the crew’s lodging, and even provided them with food and drink.

To put it simply, the money it took to film one *Holy Mountain Journey* could have funded fifty-six productions of *Beyond Reach*.

To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that Sir Gordo’s physical condition left very few roles suitable for him, Zog would have loved to cast him in every single Shadow of Evil.

"We’re not doing a simultaneous, continent-wide release."

Zog explained the plan for this Shadow of Evil to Elsa.

"First, we’ll do a limited test run in a few Magic Cinemas in major cities to gauge the reaction."

Zog’s idea was to use the positive reviews from a small initial audience to let word-of-mouth build. He hoped to attract organic promotion from fans and then, once the buzz grew, expand the release to more theaters.

This would avoid the embarrassing situation of a wide release right out of the gate, only to be met with a bunch of empty theaters.

"As for the trailers on Demon Vision, we’ll reduce their broadcast frequency and run them in less popular time slots."

With something like promotion, you get diminishing marginal returns.

The larger the scale of the campaign, the higher the cost of acquiring each new customer.

This brought to mind a certain *Dream Star*.

’Man, the scale of that production really made you marvel at how much money they threw around.’

And so, with this promotional and release strategy, *Beyond Reach* hardly felt like a Zog Film Studio production. With almost no fanfare, it premiered quietly in just a handful of Magic Cinemas.

If you weren’t a die-hard enthusiast who followed Shadows of Evil closely, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed its existence.

However, this was precisely the effect Zog wanted. These die-hard enthusiasts were also the viewers most willing to write reviews and voice their opinions in newspapers, on forums, or on message boards.

They were the "yeast" meant to get the word-of-mouth "fermenting."

However, to Zog’s surprise, the plan to stage a comeback fueled by word-of-mouth was not going smoothly.

A week after its release, Zog stared at the box office statistics and public reception reports, his brow furrowed.

’How could this be?’

The box office report glaringly displayed a big "10."

The unit was Gold Coins.

Just Ten Gold Coins.

He didn’t even want to look at the numbers after the decimal point.

The Zog Group’s cash flow in the time it took Zog to take a single breath was more than this.

With an average ticket price of Five Copper Coins, only a little over 20,000 people had gone to a theater to see this Shadow of Evil in its first week.

In contrast, other Zog Film Studio Shadows of Evil would draw millions of viewers in their opening week, run for several months, and end up with a final box office of tens of thousands of Gold Coins.

On top of that, there were the profits from subsequent broadcasts on the Magic Vision Device and various merchandise sales, adding another large sum.

That’s right. The profit from a single Shadow of Evil was, at most, in the order of a hundred thousand Gold Coins. This was why Zog’s expression had changed in a flash when the Bishop of the Twin Towers City had casually thrown down a Million Gold Coins for a game.

’It was an absurd amount of money.’

And now, looking at this Ten Gold Coins...

It was too painful to look at.

The number was so pathetic Zog couldn’t bear to look at it any longer.

’Sure, part of it was because *Beyond Reach* was only showing in a limited number of theaters.’

’But it shouldn’t be *this* low, right?’

’Was all that effort really worth this little money?’

’Even if the main goal of this Shadow of Evil wasn’t to make a profit...’

’But still, but still...’

Zog couldn’t find a way to justify it to himself.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

And with viewership this low, he wouldn’t even be able to achieve his goal of improving the Tieflings’ public image.

’So where exactly did things go wrong?’

Zog carefully studied the statistics in the box office report. In the first two days, attendance had been quite good. Of the little over 20,000 total viewers, nearly 15,000 of them had come in those first two days.

After that, attendance began a steady decline.

A decline in attendance is a perfectly normal phenomenon for a Shadow of Evil. If a Shadow of Evil sold out every showing, every single day, it would only prove one thing: not enough showtimes had been scheduled.

Any theater manager who wasn’t an idiot would know to add more showtimes in that situation.

It was just that the slope of *Beyond Reach*’s decline was a bit steep.

Judging by the results, it seemed that once the initial wave of enthusiasts who followed Shadows of Evil had seen it, there were no new viewers.

The word-of-mouth hadn’t taken off; the dough was dead.

’That shouldn’t be happening.’

Over the past week, Zog had been closely monitoring the critical consensus for *Beyond Reach* in various newspapers, forums, and on rating platforms.

The reviews were extremely high.

It was rated far higher than any other Shadow of Evil released at the same time—it was in a league of its own.

Logically, when casual viewers saw a Shadow of Evil with such great reviews, they should have gone to see what all the fuss was about, if only out of curiosity.

That was how Zog himself had discovered many movies and TV shows back in the day.

That was how those highly-acclaimed works had staged their comebacks.

Huh?

A thought suddenly struck Zog. ’Is it possible that the opinions of casual viewers are the complete opposite of the enthusiasts’?’

It wasn’t uncommon for a work to be viewed very differently by its core fanbase versus the general public.

For a work to break into the mainstream, it had to find a delicate balance between pleasing casual viewers and not alienating its core fans.

Zog opened the Shadow of Evil forum.

Nowadays, there were two main places to rate a Shadow of Evil.

The first was the official rating platform launched by the Zog Group. It was professional and rigorous, with one prerequisite: to submit a rating, you had to have seen the Shadow of Evil and verified your ticket stub.

The second was the Shadow of Evil forum. Here, a small group of forum members who knew Magic had cobbled together a rating spell.

’Of course there are people on here who can do anything.’

On this platform—a place where forum members entertained themselves, had no need for profit, and allowed anyone to post a rating without having seen the work—there were even more active users than on the Zog Group’s official site.