September 1998.
The Asian financial crisis was escalating, spreading its turmoil across the entire Southeast Asia region.
Hong Kong was hit with tremendous impact.
Starting in July, foreign capital funds led by Soros launched frequent short-selling attacks against the Hong Kong dollar.
Under these speculative attacks, the stock market plummeted, leaving countless people ruined overnight.
The stock market crash even affected ordinary people.
Prices skyrocketed, housing prices suffered a bloodbath, money lost its value...
Zhou Ziheng's Hengyu Cinema Circuit also took a hit.
Entering this year, fewer and fewer people came to the theater to watch movies.
Even though Hengyu lowered ticket prices to a certain extent, it still failed to win back audiences.
Seeing the market suffer such a massive shock, Zhou Ziheng immediately took countermeasures.
Not that it was much of a countermeasure—he simply minimized production volume.
This was also the approach taken by other cinema circuits.
During this period, the entire market shrank drastically.
It was not as if producing a good movie would automatically guarantee box office success.
Affected by the economic crisis, people had no spare money for movies; no matter how good the film was, without an audience, it was all for naught.
However, Zhou Ziheng did not stop at merely cutting back on production; he also began gradually shifting the focus of Hengyu Film to Beijing.
In other words, the headquarters of Hengyu Film would gradually reloc…
Chapter 265