"Old woman, after I found the contract you signed with Yuewen last time, you didn't even come see me yourself. You just sent an underling to brush me off. Let's see if you can still act so arrogant now." Lin Jia was delighted.
Chen Yuanguang asked, "What are you thinking?"
Lin Jia smiled brightly. "Isn't this the perfect opportunity?
This is the best opportunity. We can use it to take back all the rights to Kuala Lumpur Affairs 2 and the subsequent installments.
Let the bullets fly for a while.
First, contact the Gates Foundation and tell Trevor not to make any public statements yet. Then go on Weibo and stubbornly deny it a few times, saying the Gates Foundation staff are lying.
Goose Factory definitely won't be able to sit still, especially since you hung up on that old woman. They'll surely want to invoke the breach-of-contract clause, claiming you caused enormous losses to the film's release and demanding compensation from us.
Compensation? Fine. Our proposed solution will be to buy Kuala Lumpur Affairs 2 and all subsequent series rights as a package.
There's less than a month until its year-end release. In their desperation, they'll definitely make the most rational decision."
Chen Yuanguang asked, "The most rational decision? Sell the entire package to us?"
Lin Jia shook her head. "No. Sell most of the revenue rights to us and retain a small portion themselves.
That way, they can both recoup their costs and enjoy some returns. What if the movie is really good? This negative news might not be enough to completely crush it.
So, selling most of the equity to us while retaining a small portion is the most rational decision.
Of course, we can't rule out the possibility that the old woman will fly into a rage and sell all the equity in one package.
But no matter what, we can turn a bad thing into a good one and make Goose Factory suffer a silent loss.
That's called an information gap."
Chen Yuanguang first posted on Weibo:
"I wasn't lying. I did receive an invitation from the Gates Foundation. The position they offered was Chief Scientist."
"Still bragging? Now it's Chief Scientist? What does a charity organization need a scientist for?"
"Can you stop making things up? They already said no such thing happened. Why are you still being so stubborn?"
"Are all scientists in our country this kind of trash? No wonder Chinese scientific research can't compare to foreign countries'—they can't even manage basic honesty and integrity."
The latter was the classic sort of comparison and denigration. Chinese people's problem was always extending individual cases to the whole: if one individual was bad, then the entire group was bad. But foreign individual cases remained merely individual cases. No one ever concluded that the entire Japanese scientific community was fraudulent just because a Japanese scientist committed fraud.
Being strict with oneself and lenient toward others was the norm in China's public discourse.
This matter could be viewed from different angles. From certain perspectives, it was a good thing. Citizens' rare right to oversight was being expressed through Weibo. If oversight were any less stringent, there would be even more chaos.
Besides, Japanese research being a mess had nothing to do with Chinese people or Chinese netizens. At most, everyone would watch it for entertainment, and they would rather Japanese research became even more chaotic.
After Chen Yuanguang made his Weibo post, Chinese netizens quickly sent it to the replies beneath Kate's Twitter post. Kate was like a hyena spotting a corpse whenever he saw trending traffic. This was all money.
Thanks to this incident, his followers increased by ten thousand—and they were ten thousand active followers. He knew exactly how valuable that was.
On Twitter, with ten thousand active followers and three posts a day, the monthly earnings would be between four hundred and five hundred dollars.
Kate was eager to use this incident to draw in more Chinese followers. "Is this Chinese man dreaming?
How could the Gates Foundation possibly invite a Chinese person to serve as Chief Scientist? That's impossible."
Once the tweet was posted, those netizens didn't feel offended. Instead, they treated his words like an imperial decree and spread them back onto the domestic internet.
Public opinion instantly exploded even further, with influential accounts of every kind jumping out to offer their views.
Some believed Chen Yuanguang was wrong in this matter and shouldn't stubbornly refuse to admit fault, but they could not deny his talent and contributions in scientific research.
Others said that because he had acted wrongly in this matter, his research might also have been fraudulent, then extended that conclusion to all Chinese scientists being incompetent.
Quite a few old-school theorists even linked the matter to Chinese education, believing it resulted from a lack of integrity education in China.
Chen Yuanguang practically dominated Weibo's trending list.
Zhifei Biological's official Weibo account also stepped out to ride the wave. Its post roughly stated that Chen Yuanguang had issues with integrity, and that no matter how many achievements he had in scientific research, Zhifei Biological would not consider cooperating with him.
As soon as the post went up, justice-minded netizens eagerly reposted it. Zhifei Biological's official Weibo, which had never received more than a hundred reposts before, saw its repost count reach thirty thousand for the first time. The junior editor in charge of new media operations couldn't stop grinning.
This was a trending topic that had fallen straight from the sky.
Because they needed to fool Goose Factory, Chen Yuanguang brushed off calls from everyone at Jiang University, from the president and deans to the professors, with vague responses.
Goose Factory couldn't take it anymore. Jenny flew directly to Shanghai to meet Chen Yuanguang:
"Ms. Lin, how should this matter be resolved? Our contract clearly stipulates that if Party B's actions cause losses to the film's release, Party B must bear all responsibility.
The movie is scheduled for release next month, and Chen Yuanguang has stirred up unprecedented negative public opinion.
It's not that I'm asking him to apologize. He should apologize. This doesn't just affect the movie's reputation—it affects his reputation as well.
He actually said he didn't care." Jenny was truly furious. Goose Factory Pictures had finally produced a breakout series IP, only to run into a viral outbreak.
They had finally waited until the domestic outbreak was under control and the second installment was ready for release, only for the original author to start causing trouble—trouble on this scale, no less.
Isn't he just screwing with me?
Thanks to the success of Kuala Lumpur Affairs, Jenny had previously been vice president of Goose Factory Video's Content Production Department. Now, the "vice" had been removed from her title.
Now, Chen Yuanguang's negative public opinion could very well destroy the entire IP. If Goose Factory's only self-developed original IP was ruined, she would not only lose her full president position—she might not even be able to keep the vice president position.
Lin Jia smiled. "That's right. Isn't it normal for scientists to speak through their results? Public opinion is just icing on the cake for scientists. It doesn't matter if they don't have it."
Jenny was about to faint from anger. "What do you mean by that? The film was originally projected to gross at least three billion. Because of this incident, it will take at least a fifty percent hit—perhaps even fall to a tenth of that."
Lin Jia said, "Those are all your projections, not facts."
Jenny stood up and left. "Then we'll see each other in court after the movie is released."
Lin Jia tried to stop her. "I have another solution."
Jenny sat back down. If they went to court, she would also have to wait to be thrown out by Mark. "Go ahead."
Lin Jia held up two fingers. "Two hundred million. I'll spend two hundred million to buy this movie and all subsequent rights as a package."
Jenny was tempted. The movie's box office would clearly suffer severely now, but two hundred million was far too low. It was not even one-tenth of their projected box office.
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