1859 Box-office Fraud

He was even reviled harshly by Lin Fengtian. [The gall of him to call our audience fools when he's here to earn our profits! Having an artist like him in showbiz is an utter insult to the fans!]

His action had totally rendered the comedy film's investor aghast and dumbfounded!

As it turned out, that male celeb was neither trying to create hype for himself nor playing to the gallery; he was indeed wholly supportive of the cause to the point that he had burned himself in the middle of doing so!

He had not only incurred the hatred of actors and directors alike but also the netizens. A widespread boycott of the movie, 'The Undercover Agent Next Door,' that he was cast in was called.

Feeling enraged and bitter about this, the investor had the production crew work overnight to remove his name from the movie's promotional posters and edit out his scenes as much as possible. Just like that, the main lead was reduced to just an extra in the show.

However, with the male lead edited out of the scenes to such an extent, there was no longer a point in watching the movie.

Not to mention, that person had seriously hurt the feelings of the mainland audience with his post. It was useless no matter how hard the investor tried to salvage the movie's reputation.

With netizens joining forces to boycott the comedy film, its box-office sales suffered dismal results, only managing to make an utterly embarrassing figure of several million in ticket sales on its release date.

Some netizens were even questioning why that movie was still being shown in cinemas when it had an artist supportive of Hong Kong's independence as a cast; this scared many cinemas into discontinuing the airing of it. The viewing rate, therefore, dropped to naught.

This dealt a huge blow to the highly ambitious investor, who was waiting eagerly to reap the profits after months of preparation. Now, all because of that imbecile, the billing for the movie suffered an all-time low. A total ban from showbiz was, thus, placed on that male artist's head under orders from the furious investor.

A few days later, however, the Internet was abuzz with a sensational piece of news.

According to a moviegoer, she was given a handwritten movie ticket instead of an electronically printed one when she went to the theater to watch 'The Green Apple'. When she consulted the cinema's branch manager regarding it, all she received in response was an eye-roll. Suspecting that the ticket sales of 'The Green Apple' were being stolen, she decided to expose this online with a photo as evidence.

That post garnered many comments from netizens, with some saying that they had received movie tickets for 'The Undercover Agent Next Door' instead of 'The Green Apple', of which the latter was what they originally wanted to watch. Many other netizens expressed facing the same problem as well.

Putting it into figures, it meant that, out of the hundreds of thousands of people who had bought tickets to that movie, only a few hundred audiences actually turned up to watch the show.

How absurd it was for those people to buy tickets for a movie screening that they would not watch!

What did this mean, then?

It meant that, if the allegedly stolen ticket sales were excluded, the movie had likely only sold several tens of thousands of tickets in actuality during its premiere.

Later, the judiciary also stepped forward to look into the matter. According to their investigation, the investor had reached a consensus with a number of cinemas to shift the ticket sales of 'The Green Apple' to 'The Undercover Agent Next Door'. It was all because the investor did not want his movie to be a total flop and, as a corollary, become an utter disgrace in show business.

The production team of 'The Green Apple' then sued the production company of 'The Undercover Agent Next Door' and the cinemas involved in the box-office fraud for compensation of several million yuan.

The entire incident turned out to be a blessing in disguise for 'The Green Apple' as it created lots of buzz for the movie. In turn, it saw a sharp increase in the box-office sales which left people tongue-tied! The movie was well on its way to breaking box-office records!