Free movie? Aren’t you going to handle a case? What movie are you watching? Besides, why should I watch a movie with you? I told Hu Zongren this on the phone, but Hu Zongren smiled and said,
In this case, the person in charge of a movie theater called and said that they had not opened their doors for a month in a row. They claimed that they were renovating the movie theater, but in fact there was nothing inside. They said it was haunted and asked us to investigate.
Investigation. I asked Hu Zongren if the price had been negotiated? Hu Zongren said of course it had been negotiated. These people have enough money to spend for a while. I said okay, you can make an appointment.
According to the agreed time, Hu Zongren and I met in that pedestrian street. Since I had been an undercover student in this area before, I came here casually to the delicious food nearby, so Hu Zongren and I did not rush to follow him.
The employer contacted me, but before that, I sneaked into the underground shopping mall over there and happily got a bowl of pickled cabbage and shredded pork rice noodles. This store has no name, but its business is booming. Except for those who are joining in the fun, most of them are
I am a repeat customer who has eaten here before. The boss is a eldest lady in her forties. Their sauerkraut is said to be pickled from the fresh vegetables they bought themselves. The shredded pork is also pressed in a pressure cooker. It melts in your mouth and is fragrant.
Mouthful, with condiments made from large bone soup, the rice noodles are boiled to about 70% hard, drizzled with oil, and sprinkled with chopped green onion. The moment it was served, it made me drool all over the place.
This place is an underground shopping mall on a commercial pedestrian street. Most of them focus on selling relatively cheap clothing. Because it is underground, the rent of the store is slightly cheaper than that of the street store. This place is very lively like Chaotianmen in the 1990s.
The scene, except that the escalator has always been used as a staircase. If it is said to be haunted, this is more like a haunted place. But it should not be the case here, because there is a large pond on the bottom floor.
There are several green turtles raised in the pond. They are very old turtles. Probably when this mall was first built, they chose to raise turtles here for Feng Shui considerations.
After eating a bowl of rice noodles, we walked to the street level and smoked while digesting. After throwing away the cigarette butts, Hu Zongren called his employer. After we told them the location, after waiting for more than ten minutes, there was a man wearing black
The middle-aged man in a casual suit walked up to us, shook hands with us with a smile, and then said that you two are the masters invited this time, please invite us this way.
The man walked in front and Hu Zongren and I followed behind. Hu Zongren muttered to me, this guy is so stingy, he doesn’t even send a car to pick someone up. I asked you, are you sick? This is a pedestrian street, where is he?
Mom, please drive. Probably because I raised my voice a little louder, the man turned around and said to us, "No need to drive, no need to drive, this is very close to our office, just a few minutes' walk away." So I could only smile awkwardly.
, by the way, I have a little contempt for Hu Zongren’s second-rate logic.
Soon we arrived at his office, which is also a building on the pedestrian street. However, this building is relatively old. The ground floor is a shopping mall. Probably because of this, it was not demolished and rebuilt. Sit down
After sitting down, the man closed the door, moved the ashtray from his desk to the small coffee table in front of us, and then handed Hu Zongren and me cigarettes. When I saw the cigarette, it was not cheap. It cost 50.
There was one more pack, so now I was even more convinced that this unit was rich.
After lighting up the cigarette, the man began to introduce himself, saying that his surname was Li, which was the same as mine, probably hoping that I could have a good impression of him. He said that he was the sales department manager of this cinema. Hu Zongren asked
When Mr. Li was called a sales department manager, he said that he was going to buy screening rights, negotiate copyright fees, and work on clearing up channels for the introduction of foreign language films. To put it bluntly, it was the process of moving movies from top to bottom in this cinema.
Within the scope, you need to decide by yourself.
Mr. Li said that in the early days, their cinema was actually a staff cinema and was not large in scale. However, in the past ten years, this area has developed very rapidly. Soon it became one of the most popular commercial pedestrian streets in Chongqing. Due to the commercial
Due to opportunities, many large merchants and well-known brands have settled here, including some well-known large movie theaters. Mr. Li told us that just because of such crowding, the business of the movie theater is declining day by day. Usually,
Those who come to watch the movie are mostly students from nearby schools and retired grandparents. Even if our ticket price is twice as cheap as others, the number of passengers is still not large. Mr. Li emphasized, but even so, we have still achieved good results over the years.
The reason why we didn't collapse is entirely because of the flow of people. If we had moved to another place, we would have closed down long ago.
I asked Mr. Li, you said it was a staff cinema, which factory was it? Mr. Li said, it was the former XX factory. At that time, this staff cinema had the best equipment and the most screening rooms among the many staff cinemas in Chongqing.
, is also the most luxurious one. However, because this company finally began to operate in a market-oriented manner and became a joint-stock limited company, many of the factory's supporting facilities were listed and transferred as equity capital. This is why we
took over this cinema. Mr. Li said that they originally belonged to a larger film industry group in southern China. In addition to filming movies and TV series, this group also has many affiliated projection organizations, some of which are just like them.
, was inherited from other places, but was incorporated into the fabric of that film industry group, operated uniformly, and then the business was divided.
Hu Zongren said to Mr. Li, what you said so much means that you are just one of the contractors of this film industry group, right? Mr. Li smiled and said, roughly speaking, it can be understood this way, it should be regarded as a distributor, with large profits.
Part of it is your own, and you only need to pay the management fee. Hu Zongren said, with such a large flow of people in your area, the yang energy is sufficient, and as far as we know, even the real estate developer who originally built this pedestrian street is
It is well-known in China for its emphasis on Feng Shui, but this cinema is not a mainstream consumer target, so how could it be haunted?
Mr. Li said, "Don't you two come here just to clarify this matter? Think about it, our management fees are paid on a quarterly basis. It has been more than a month. The quarter is already halfway through, and there is no turnover."
, what should we use to pay the fee? And we can't talk about this directly to our boss. In the end, they feel that we are not a good partner. If we cancel this relationship, we will suffer great losses. Hu Zongren said nothing.
Probably this Mr. Li spoke sincerely and was a good smoker. So Hu Zongren said to him, so be it, you can first briefly tell us about the specific situation you encountered.
Mr. Li said that the thing is like this. About a month ago, their theater launched a preferential package. In addition to giving away popcorn and Coke, you can also watch three movies in a row at the price of one movie.
Seamlessly connected. But the time is set at midnight, so it is called "Midnight Show" in order to attract those couples who are in love and let them experience the benefits of our cinema.
Midnight screenings, when I was a child, basically meant the same thing as showing pornographic films. Mr. Li also said that their midnight screenings also differed according to different screening rooms, which increased customers' right to choose.
This event attracted more moviegoers than usual. Usually the number of people in the whole day during the day is not as large as the number of people in a midnight movie at night. In this way, the company's promotion strategy for this matter is actually very good.
successful.
Mr. Li said, but just when everyone was happy about this, we encountered complaints the next day. Some customers seemed very excited, saying that we let everyone in just to make money, and that there was no quality in watching movies.
There was nothing like that. At that time, we had a conflict with a manager on duty. Later, when we learned about the situation, we found out that the reason why these guests complained was because they were halfway through watching the movie.
Some people laughed or cried very rudely, talked loudly, and some even ran to the screen and ran from one end to the other. The audience in the theater was very angry at that time, so they cursed a few times and said who was so disrespectful.
Quality, etc., but the sound lasted for a long time, and people often walked around in front of the screen, which made many moviegoers very angry, so they went to the screening room to complain, and then it appeared
subsequent conflict.
Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li, "Don't your cinemas show any movie-watching instructions before the movie starts? For example, set your mobile phone to vibrate, don't make loud noises, smoke, and block others. Li
The husband said that this is something strictly required by the national cinema. How could it not be shown? But no matter how much it is released, some people will not listen, and there is nothing we can do. Hu Zongren asked Mr. Li how the matter ended in the end. Li
The husband shook his head and said, how else could it end? He asked all the people watching the movie, but no one admitted that it was him. There were no surveillance cameras installed in the cinema, so there was no way to find out who it was.
I suddenly interrupted what Mr. Li was saying. I said, is your projector a rear-projection type, or is it the original player type? Mr. Li said, it is a projector type, but the equipment is relatively new and cannot cope with the current large-scale production.
Some movies are out of the question. I asked him again, do you think there were people running around in front of the screen at that time? Did those people see silhouettes or specific people? Mr. Li said that he did not know this at the time.
I was present, so I couldn't give a conclusive answer, but several things happened after that, which made their employees begin to suspect that the things that caused the conflict that day were not human at all.