"Amazing!" Hastings felt greatly impressed. Although he knew he was usually quite unprincipled, he never expected that the truly important figures would be even more so.
This strategy completely convinced Hastings. He immediately reached an agreement with the old man, promising to do his utmost to transfer the salvaged resources to another new company.
At the same time, the old man stated that he would heavily invest in this new company and leverage the entire US film and television resources to support it, making this new enterprise the world's number one online streaming company in a short period.
Meanwhile, the reputation of Piao Miao Zhi Lu (飘渺之旅) was spreading across the globe, quickly reaching astonishing levels. Although the Piao Miao Zhi Lu trilogy had previously grossed over $2 billion worldwide, that was for films, and the number of viewers was always limited. However, television dramas were different. While some countries, due to import policies, could not broadcast Piao Miao Zhi Lu immediately, most countries were airing the Piao Miao Zhi Lu drama simultaneously, and it became unstoppable.
Regardless of the various positive or negative evaluations of Piao Miao Zhi Lu's plot, character design, or other aspects, one thing was certain: its achievement in special effects was unparalleled. The special effects of Piao Miao Zhi Lu could even crush all current blockbuster movies worldwide, so in television dramas, it was naturally a killer. Coupled with the fact that the Xianxia (仙侠) genre could maximize the advantages of special effects and expand human imagination, the dissemination effect of the special effects was naturally excellent.
Putting aside the special effects, the television drama version of Piao Miao Zhi Lu was meticulously crafting a worldview. A team of hundreds of people enriched the entire worldview, setting the details of every plant and tree in each world, all of which were reflected in the details of Piao Miao Zhi Lu. It could be said that in terms of world-building, Piao Miao Zhi Lu was not inferior to Middle-earth, which had a history of fifty to sixty years.
To be fair, even with The Lord of the Rings, due to the time constraints of the film version, the world-building was still very perplexing. Many viewers couldn't understand much of the plot. For example, the relationship between the human nations of Gondor and Rohan was inexplicable, and the origin of the large army of the undead in the later stages was never elaborated. Of course, this wasn't the director's incompetence, but the film version had to make compromises.
However, as a television drama, Piao Miao Zhi Lu didn't have so many limitations. It could continuously use a large amount of time to enrich the worldview and clearly explain what cultivation (修真) was to all viewers. It even provided basic cultivation methods within the drama, which were written in the Daoist canon (道藏). Discussions with many Taoist masters confirmed that these methods could indeed induce physical changes in humans, which was why Zuckerberg was still cultivating at Longhu Mountain. Speaking of which, that guy should be returning to the US soon.
Finally, and most importantly, was the excellent localization. Many television dramas or films, when imported, did not pay much attention to translation work, often just finding a few people to translate the lines. Many imported films even recruited students from foreign language schools as cheap labor for translation to save costs. The translations, while not necessarily wrong, often failed to convey the intended meaning.
To give a simple example, many people might find the name Chang Kaishen (常凯申) inexplicable and wonder what it's about. This was mainly because when a foreigner was writing a document about China, Chiang Kai-shek (蒋公) was transliterated as "Chiangkai-shek," a spelling in the Wade-Giles system. It wasn't wrong for foreigners to translate it that way. However, when a Tsinghua University professor translated this document, he directly converted it to Chang Kaishen according to normal Pinyin mode.
Some might say that this was just an accidental occurrence of a name, and it's normal for a professor not to know the original name behind the transliteration. But the problem is that this name appeared frequently in the document, and related contexts included Chang Kaishen selling off how much northeastern assets, Chang Kaishen dispatching investigation teams to the Northeast for investigation, Chang Kaishen holding talks with Russians to discuss the border issues between China's Northeast and Siberia, and so on. Damn it, was there someone named Chang Kaishen in the world who was so formidable? If a university professor could translate it into such a mess, one could only imagine the results of handing over many movies and TV shows to students for translation.
Boss Huang understood this very well. When he was creating Piao Miao Zhi Lu, his intention was to promote Chinese culture to the world. Therefore, as soon as the film was completed, Huang He directly invited authorities in various Chinese languages and also engaged experts from relevant countries as consultants. For each language, there were at least 10 experts forming a related group for translation, resulting in translated versions in 13 of the world's most spoken languages.
Furthermore, considering that film dialogue alone sometimes couldn't explain the background and culture behind the film, Huang He specifically produced some animated short videos to introduce the Chinese cultural background behind these terms. When the drama encountered cultural backgrounds that were difficult for other countries to understand, these animated short clips would appear to provide simple explanations. These short clips were not long, with the longest being only 45 seconds, but the total duration of the short clips produced for various countries exceeded 686 minutes, which shows the extent of Huang He's meticulousness in refining Piao Miao Zhi Lu.
These efforts were perfectly reflected when the drama was broadcast, allowing audiences to watch the drama with virtually no barriers and understand the plot and its underlying meanings, thus avoiding negative consequences due to cultural differences. Conversely, when the animated short clips from various countries were posted online, netizens were astonished to discover the production company's dedication to Piao Miao Zhi Lu, and positive reviews poured in like a tidal wave.
When the Tomato Network, the world's largest film and television rating website, opened the rating for the television drama version of Piao Miao Zhi Lu, the score consistently remained at a high of 9.8. This was an unimaginable height, as the second-ranked TV drama only had a score of 9.5. Although the difference was only 0.3 points, it was a gap like heaven and earth. Moreover, the second-ranked TV drama was a very niche one with only a little over 30,000 ratings, while the television drama version of Piao Miao Zhi Lu already had 1.86 million ratings, and this number was still increasing, yet it managed to maintain such a high score of 9.8. Yes, although there were quite a few people who directly gave a 0-star rating upon entering the page, these were undoubtedly paid trolls. Tomato Network was very decisive in not recording these ratings, ensuring that these trolls' scores would not ruin an excellent work.
Within a week of the drama's premiere, the entire internet was filled with discussions about Piao Miao Zhi Lu, especially on social media. If you didn't comment on Piao Miao Zhi Lu, you were considered completely out of touch.
Then, many Americans found themselves in a predicament. Those with computers could log onto websites to watch Piao Miao Zhi Lu. However, those without computers had to find ways to sneak into friends' homes to use their TV boxes. They then discovered how magical these TV boxes were, allowing them to directly order various TV dramas on television. At this time, Los Gatos Television had already aired a full five TV dramas and introduced a content-based selection page instead of a playback time-based one, making the viewing experience quite pleasant.
Furthermore, many TV dramas that were not broadcast by the television station but could still be selected for playback were added to the TV box. Although these dramas were older, having more choices was better than having no choice. After experiencing this TV service, which seemed to be from another era, these users rushed to Atari's business halls to try to reserve a TV box. After all, there were only two ways to obtain a TV box at the time: one was a Netflix membership, and the other was to make a reservation on the official website and then pick it up at Atari's business hall. Later, a new method was introduced: users of Atari's mobile network could also get priority in receiving this magical TV box. Since Atari also offered broadband internet services, many people who didn't have internet at home simply signed up for both internet and the TV box. Of course, our Boss Huang was not doing charity; the box could be given away for free, but the membership fee still had to be collected.
So, all network TV box members saw a notification from the television station during their viewing breaks that this network TV box service would be charged. However, the charging model was divided into three types.
The first type was the premium membership model. By paying a monthly membership fee of $12.8 to Atari Communications, one could become a premium member of Los Gatos Entertainment and enjoy all services. This price was basically the normal cable TV fee, not too expensive.
The second type was the dual membership model. If you were an Atari Communications or Netflix user and paid your monthly fees normally, you could get a 50% discount, paying only $6 per month for membership.
The third type was the free model. Without paying, you could still continue to use the TV box, but you could not access content on demand or select playback, and could only watch programs that were currently being broadcast.