“An S+ contract… No wonder things got so ugly. Looks like that pig, Zhu Jianmin, wanted to use you as a stepping-stone to the parent company!”
The moment You Xin heard Su Zhi mention the contract, he understood what had happened.
An S-Tier contract was an equity deal, usually offered to artists who had reached the absolute peak of their field. Artists at that level could practically support an entertainment company on their own. If a company wanted to keep them, it had to offer them shares.
So what was an S+ contract?
It sounded as if it ranked above S-Tier. In reality, it was a trap—a performance-based contract.
You Xin had fallen for one when he was young. For five years, a company had used him as a workhorse. He’d made seven productions at a total cost of just over five hundred million yuan, and they’d earned 2.4 billion yuan at the box office.
And this was 2.4 billion yuan twenty years ago.
According to the contract he’d signed, he had to make five to seven productions for the company over five years, bring in more than 1.5 billion yuan at the box office, and earn the company over four hundred million yuan in profit.
If he managed that, You Xin would receive three percent of the company’s shares and a seat on its board.
Going by the final numbers, it looked as if he’d succeeded. Five years, seven productions, a little over five hundred million yuan spent, and 2.4 billion yuan in box-office sales. There was no way the company hadn’t earned more than four hundred million yuan.
But when the books were finally settled, the company claimed he’d lost more than three hundred million yuan.
That’s right. On paper, he’d lost more than three hundred million. He hadn’t met his target, and he’d worked for nothing for five years.
The blow had left You Xin out of the industry for almost a decade. He’d gone from a super A-list director to a drifter bouncing between the first and second tiers. It wasn’t until he made Battle of Ningcheng and met Su Zhi that he found his inspiration again and returned to the super A-list.
“Ten years, five to ten productions, four billion yuan at the box office, one billion yuan in profit. Sounds so easy~ I hit that target with three movies. I didn’t even need five~ If I’d signed, I would’ve gotten ten percent of Morningstar. What a bargain~”
Once Su Zhi saw that You Xin understood what an S+ contract was, she couldn’t resist mocking it.
To be fair, when the offer had first been put in front of her, she’d been a little flattered. Her head had nearly gone spinning.
Her talent manager had told her it was a way to show the parent company what she could really do—and a way to keep a future superstar like her at Morningstar. The company had even offered to drop many of the contract’s extra clauses and implied that no one would ever force her to play along with the industry’s unspoken rules.
The pitch had sounded sweeter by the minute.
But just as Su Zhi was about to sign, she’d realized something was wrong.
She’d put off signing for two days and looked up news about entertainment-industry contracts. That had been enough to make her realize there was something seriously wrong with the S+ contract.
She hadn’t known exactly what the problem was. But she knew there was one.
The next day, she’d told her talent manager that an S+ contract was too much for her at that stage. She wanted a three-year B-Tier contract instead.
By then, Su Zhi had the popularity and earning power of a super A-list star. A three-year B-Tier contract would mean working for the company for three more years on the cheap. No company would refuse a deal like that.
She hadn’t been testing them. She’d thought it through carefully.
She knew how to be grateful. The company had spent plenty of resources making her famous, and she wasn’t about to act like an ingrate. A B-Tier contract paid enough for her to live comfortably. She’d work for the company for three more years, then try for an A-Tier or A+ contract.
But her talent manager wouldn’t agree. She kept insisting that she was acting in Su Zhi’s best interest and urging her to sign the S+ contract. That only confirmed Su Zhi’s suspicion that there was something wrong with it. She couldn’t sign.
At that point, Morningstar’s current CEO had joined her talent manager in putting on a little double act. In short, Zhu Jianmin told Su Zhi she was rejecting the top-tier contract he’d worked so hard to secure for her, and accused her of looking down on him.
Her talent manager played the conciliator, acting as a go-between.
As though he’d calmed down because of her talent manager, Zhu Jianmin eventually assured Su Zhi that no one would ever force her to submit to the industry’s unspoken rules. Then he sweetened the offer even further.
“Well, after Zhu Jianmin had appealed to both reason and emotion, my answer was: ‘Then shelve me.'”
Su Zhi had enraged Zhu Jianmin completely.
“A potential superstar can earn an astronomical amount between twenty and thirty. Good thing you were smarter than I was back then. Otherwise, you’d have been trapped for good.”
You Xin looked at Su Zhi with mixed feelings.
To be fair, plenty of people in the entertainment industry had been fooled by these contracts. Yet Su Zhi had resisted the temptation.
“That kind of contract must make people hate you. If I was still famous at thirty, wouldn’t he worry I’d break free from the company and come after him?”
Su Zhi asked, genuinely curious.
That was the part she didn’t understand.
“By the time you’re in a position to come after him, the money and reputation he made from you will have gotten him into the parent company. Your problem won’t be his anymore. It’ll belong to whoever comes after him.”
You Xin explained.
Ever since Zhu Jianmin took over, Morningstar had been losing money. Even during Su Zhi’s two best years, the company had barely broken even.
But as far as Morningstar’s parent company was concerned, if Morningstar didn’t lose money, it was making money. The parent company didn’t care about anything else.
And what would it care about Su Zhi’s anger once she’d won her freedom? The parent company controlled forty percent of Great Xia’s movie theaters and was worth a hundred billion yuan, closing in on a trillion. To a company like that, Su Zhi was just one small artist. Her feelings didn’t matter.
“Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs… One day, I’ll string that bastard up from a telephone pole and leave him to dry like a fish.”
After hearing You Xin’s explanation, Su Zhi finally understood why Zhu Jianmin had acted the way he did.
And You Xin was right. Up against a company worth a hundred billion—or almost a trillion—even the biggest star was insignificant.
It was a case of killing the goose that laid golden eggs, but when it suited your own interests, why not?
“But things might be different now.”
Su Zhi looked up at You Xin, an idea coming to her.
“So, if I agree to star in it, how big is the hole in your budget?”
