“That Su Zhi… Give her an inch and she takes a mile. One night… She ate seventeen Australian lobsters, four king crabs, two emperor crabs, three geoducks, eight boxes of sea urchin, and a pile of matsutake mushrooms. Does she think I have no temper? Just wait until you renew your contract. I’ll show you what I can do! You want to make a comeback? You want an A-Tier Contract? If I let you off easy, I’m not Zhu Jianmin!”
After sleeping off a night of drinking, Zhu Jianmin had barely settled into his office chair when the restaurant’s bill arrived.
His own table had only run up a bill of about six thousand yuan. When he saw what Su Zhi’s side had cost, his blood pressure shot through the roof. For a moment, he was tempted not to pay at all.
But he couldn’t afford to lose face, so he paid up.
Getting fleeced was one thing. If word got out, he’d be a laughingstock.
The whole affair only deepened his resentment toward Su Zhi.
If she’d signed the contract three years ago, he wouldn’t have been reprimanded by the parent company. Another year or two, and he might even have made it into the company’s upper ranks. Then Morningstar’s mess wouldn’t have been his problem, and he wouldn’t have had to swallow his pride in front of Su Zhi.
As far as he was concerned, Su Zhi was entirely to blame for the pressure the parent company was putting on him now.
“Forget it. I’d better figure out how to turn the numbers around.”
Once his anger had cooled, Zhu Jianmin turned to the company’s financial report, which his secretary had brought in that morning.
Excluding the losses on the three films funded by the parent company, Morningstar had produced seven films that year. Four had lost money, two had lost a great deal, and only one low-budget family comedy had turned a profit.
And that profit wasn’t enough to cover the losses. People were even joking that anything with Morningstar’s name on it was guaranteed to be garbage.
Morningstar had invested in four TV dramas, too. Two anti-Japanese war dramas had made money, one had broken even, and one had lost money.
The two profitable shows had brought in tens of millions altogether. The one that lost money had lost tens of millions.
More or less a wash.
The biggest problem was the talent. In the three years after Su Zhi, Zhu Jianmin had pushed child stars in a bid to recreate her success and prove himself to the parent company.
The first year had gone fairly well. He hadn’t reached Su Zhi’s heights, but those child stars had at least helped reduce the company’s losses. Then the cultural bureau issued a ban on the excessive commercialization and objectification of minors, and his whole plan was crippled.
Other people thought his company had only been fined a few hundred thousand yuan.
But that fine had hurt him more than losing tens of millions.
With his child-star strategy in ruins and other companies squeezing him out, Morningstar hadn’t produced a single Super A-List star in three years. It had managed only one First-Tier star, while its Super A-List talent came from the old roster—and their popularity was fading fast.
There were still a few top-tier stars, but they were all veterans with little interest in staying active. They also had too much clout for him to order around.
For Morningstar Entertainment, supposedly one of the entertainment industry’s Big Three, this was disastrous. Without the parent company’s resources propping it up, it would already have been overtaken by newer rivals.
If he wanted to change things, he needed someone who could break the deadlock. Su Zhi had been that person. But he’d tried to get her under his thumb once and for all, and the two of them had fallen out. Three years had gone to waste.
“I hope she really can become a sensation all over again.”
After reading the report, Zhu Jianmin realized that Morningstar was rotten to the core. What had looked like Su Zhi rising from the ashes had been more like a last flicker of life.
He didn’t know how to save Morningstar. But he did know how to make a company on the verge of collapse look as if it were thriving.
Once he made it into the parent company’s upper ranks, he’d pass Morningstar’s mess to the next person and wash his hands of it.
If the bomb went off in someone else’s hands, it was their problem.
His predecessor had done the same thing. So had he.
“Boss, we’ve got a problem.” The head of the film investment department hurried into Zhu Jianmin’s office. “You Xin sent a notice ending the collaboration. He’s rejected our casting arrangements. He even said he’d let us pull out of the project without penalty if we don’t agree.”
“What did you say? Say that again.”
Zhu Jianmin stared at him, stunned.
Since Battle of Ningcheng had been a hit, You Xin hadn’t had a single failure. He was one of the top directors in the industry.
But that wasn’t even the main issue. Loophole was crucial to Morningstar—and, more importantly, to Zhu Jianmin.
He’d been counting on the project to bring Su Zhi back to the top. If it succeeded, he could use it to boost several of the company’s First-Tier stars, too. Even if they didn’t stay popular forever, the project could give Morningstar one last burst of life and show the parent company what he was capable of.
If Morningstar couldn’t get into Loophole, the consequences would be severe.
And the biggest problem was Su Zhi.
She needed a sure-fire hit and a lot of exposure to make a successful comeback. Aside from Loophole, Zhu Jianmin couldn’t think of a single project guaranteed to do the job.
“That can’t be right. I was talking to You Xin just fine yesterday. Why would he change his mind today?”
After the department head repeated himself, Zhu Jianmin immediately pulled out his phone and called You Xin.
“I never said Morningstar couldn’t invest. But you can’t meet the extra terms in the original investment contract. Plenty of other people want the remaining roles in Loophole, and I have better options. I told you yesterday: if there’s another project down the line, I’ll get in touch.”
You Xin made himself perfectly clear.
Under the original plan, Morningstar would have received seventy percent of the major roles in Loophole.
Why? It wasn’t because of Morningstar’s sixty-million-yuan investment. It was because Morningstar had Su Zhi. You Xin knew that only Su Zhi could make the project a success on an unprecedented scale.
He had bigger ambitions than simply making a good film. He wanted to make history.
Now that Su Zhi had left Morningstar for good, You Xin could trade the roles he’d originally planned to give the company for other benefits and pave the way for his project’s success.
“But Su Zhi is our—”
“Su Zhi’s contract with your company is over. She also made it very clear to me that she wouldn’t go back even for an S-Tier Contract. Of course, if your company manages to win her back, I’ll admit publicly that I was wrong.”
Zhu Jianmin had been about to use Su Zhi as leverage, but You Xin cut him off before he could even try.
