In the suburbs of Huizhou, outside a rolling shutter door by the roadside, Zhong Lan looked at a sign pasted on the wall with hard foam board that bore the words "Peak Culture Media Co., Ltd.", wearing a knowing smile.
"As expected, no matter which world you are in, money is always the most convenient shortcut."
Zhong Lan had to admit that agency companies were still quite reliable. After making a phone call in the morning, she had only put forward one requirement: to set up a company as cheaply and quickly as possible, and to obtain the license and official seals!
The agent guy did not disappoint her either. Among the street-facing shops in the suburbs, he found a location qualified for business registration. Although it was very far from where she lived, and the place was just a rundown single room with a toilet, she couldn't argue with how cheap it was! The money she saved was just enough to pay the expedited fee, allowing her to successfully obtain the license and seals that afternoon.
Bracing herself with anticipation, Zhong Lan carefully entered her bank account details, made sure there were no errors, and sent them directly to Lu Chen.
After waiting for about five or six minutes, Lu Chen sent back a link to a signed electronic contract, along with a message.
[Lu Chen: Take a look at the contract. If there's no problem, sign it and let me know, and I'll transfer the money immediately.]
Opening the link, Zhong Lan didn't care whether the ground was clean or not, sitting cross-legged right on the steps of the rolling shutter door to carefully examine the clauses of the contract one by one.
Personal favors were personal favors, but business was business. When it came to money, she was always exceptionally attentive.
The contract wasn't very long, and the wording in it was relatively fair, without any obvious bias toward either party. Zhong Lan read it for thirty minutes, and the part concerning the division of shares took up the most attention.
Her movie was destined not to be suitable for theatrical release and could only be shown through online platforms. However, in the vast entertainment market of Hua Nation, web movies shared many of the same rules as theatrical releases. For instance, regarding box office earnings, there was always a 10% non-divisible box office portion, which included the Hua Nation Film Development Special Fund, business tax, and so on.
Since there were no actors, there was no need to hire certified actors through actors' unions, nor were there theater chains to deal with—all of that money was saved. If it were a theatrical film, given the prosperous grandeur of the Hua Nation entertainment circle, theater chains would take away at least 60%, leaving the producers and creators with only 30%. Without those middlemen, Lu Chen, as an independent producer, and she could equally split the remaining 90% of the box office revenue, each taking 45%.
Zhong Lan checked repeatedly to make sure she hadn't read the numbers wrong. She couldn't help muttering softly to herself:
"He's actually a pretty good guy."
Under normal circumstances, as the financial backer, the producer would take the vast majority of the remaining revenue share, leaving even less for the production team and the director. Since Lu Chen was willing to split it fifty-fifty, what was there to hesitate about?
She decisively signed her name and sent it back to Lu Chen.
[Zhong Lan: Done.]
[Lu Chen: Hang on a second.]
A few minutes later, her phone emitted a "ding" text message notification. It was a bank alert.
"One, ten, hundred, thousand... hundred thousand, million!"
Zhong Lan's slender fingers trembled slightly, almost causing her to drop her phone on the ground. One million! A full one million had truly arrived in her account!
Even though she wanted to feign composure, her trembling body still betrayed her current mood. To be honest, let alone this lifetime, she had never seen this much cash in her previous life either.
"Calm down, Xiaolan, you need to calm down!"
Staring at the balance before her, Zhong Lan began to ponder her subsequent plans. Experience from her past life told her that the more surprising something was, the more cautiously it should be handled. Therefore, how to spend this money required careful planning.
After closing the rolling shutter door, Zhong Lan picked up her bag and walked toward the bus stop. After several transfers and nearly two hours of travel, she finally returned to the residential complex.
Lu Chen seemed to have gone out; his room door stood wide open and unlatched.
Before returning to her room, Zhong Lan subconsciously glanced into his room. The bookshelf she had originally used for potted plants was now filled with all sorts of long novels. Not only that, Lu Chen had set up a simple stand in the corner of the room, on which sat a tablet and a vinyl record player. Below them was an acoustic guitar.
"I didn't expect him to be a music enthusiast."
Zhong Lan muttered to herself quietly before returning to her own bedroom without giving it much thought.
As a qualified corporate drone in her past life, born during the boom of the internet industry, she was quite proficient with certain computer applications. Opening a spreadsheet application, Zhong Lan dove straight into the task of budgeting this one million.
In her original plan, securing 100,000 in investment would have been enough. She would allocate 40,000 to hire online freelance voice actors to mimic the characters' voices, and then set aside another 40,000—equivalent to the production cost—as promotion funds to buy traffic on internet platforms. As for the remaining 20,000... hehe, that would naturally serve as her director's fee!
After all, while the script was certainly a good one, she wasn't 100% confident that this method of presenting a movie would guarantee a profit, and a certain degree of risk remained. To mitigate that risk, her own interests had to be secured.
Yet the situation now was vastly different from before; she was holding a million in hard cash. If she could make the movie more polished, she might just be able to stamp out those potential risks and ensure absolute success!
Thinking of this, Zhong Lan felt as though the boundless strength within her had awakened. The calculations on her computer ran faster and faster, fueled by momentum.
***
At noon the next day, inside a chain coffee shop near the film studio:
"Xiaolan, you actually secured investment?!"
"When you told me last month that you wanted to make a movie, I thought you were just joking."
Before the coffee was even served, the moment she sat down, Zhang Jiajia stared straight at Zhong Lan with an expression of astonishment.
Looking at those chubby, round, and cute baby cheeks, Zhong Lan couldn't resist reaching out and pinching one: "Of course. I'm not that jerk Qian Jiang, I wouldn't lie to you."
As her closest girlfriend from college, Zhong Lan had thought of her immediately when planning this film shoot. Zhang Jiajia was a major in accounting, which would be helpful for handling the company's accounts in the future. Furthermore, because Zhang Jiajia had a soft and adorable voice, she had been recruited into the dubbing club during college and still knew quite a few people in the dubbing circle.
When she originally chose *Calls* as her first script, apart from its low cost, this had been a very important reason.
"Don't bring him up. Who knows if he's even been reincarnated yet." Zhang Jiajia pouted, then asked with keen interest, "Right, Xiaolan, how much money do you plan to set aside to find voice actors, and how many people do you need? So I can contact them based on your budget."
"Here, this is the spreadsheet I made last night. Take a look."
Zhong Lan opened the document saved on her phone.
Zhang Jiajia lowered her head and zoomed in. When she saw the expenditure amount in the first column, she was shocked all over again.
"What?!"
"Director's fee: 200,000?"