The Omega's Vow: Never Marry a Mama's Boy Alpha - Chapter 53

With an outstanding original work, superb acting from the cast, the director’s unique narrative style and filming techniques, coupled with overwhelming publicity and promotional materials, the box office performance of Rivalry showed an impressive upward trend.

On its opening day, the film broke the million-yuan mark at the box office, earning four-star ratings on both Douban and Maoyan. Comments flooded in, praising it as a masterpiece that surpassed the original, with exquisite visuals and excellent production truly a must-see.

It could be said that the film achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim.

With Christmas, the end of the month, and New Year’s Day approaching, if this trend continued, surpassing a billion yuan at the box office seemed entirely possible.

In China’s film industry, a box office revenue of over a billion yuan is not just a simple statistic, it serves as a benchmark, a standard that distinguishes between good and bad movies.

A film that earns over a billion yuan is considered a crowd-pleasing success; conversely, no matter how much one claims it to be highbrow and unappreciated by the masses, it would still be regarded as a flop.

Money talks.

Qin Xia, having just returned from the hospital, immediately threw herself into catching up on her remaining work compiling data, tracking box office numbers, and posting celebratory announcements online. She was so busy she wished she had three heads and six arms.

Thanks to the popularity of Rivalry, numerous variety shows and interviews extended invitations, including offers from the highly popular Watermelon TV and Mango Video Network.

Unfortunately, Gu Lin’s childhood trauma made him deeply uncomfortable in front of the camera, so he declined to participate.

Instead, the female lead Wen Yan, male lead Han Lu, and supporting actress Xu Wei took part in many popular variety shows. The popularity and recognition of all three soared along with the film’s success.

Then, a premeditated smear campaign began.

First, a massive number of paid trolls flooded Douban and Maoyan with half-star ratings for Rivalry. If not for the platforms’ specific rating mechanisms, they might have even given negative stars.

The comments were uniformly negative: “Not worth watching, wasted my ticket money,” “Overhyped, I fell asleep halfway through,” “How can they praise this acting? Wen Yan made me cringe,” “Fans, stop controlling the narrative, it’s really not good.”

The previously high-rated Rivalry quickly saw its reputation tarnished, even confusing potential viewers who were still deciding whether to take their girlfriends to see it over Christmas.

Next, gossip accounts on Weibo, such as the influential “Weibo Rabbit Group,” posted screenshots of the trolls’ half-star ratings and published a post:

Real reviews from ordinary viewers are in. Has a certain actress been overmarketing herself?

Soon after, affiliated marketing accounts immediately reposted or published similar content, deliberately stirring up a wave of backlash.

Wen Yan had recently become so popular it almost backfired. Despite having no other notable works, she constantly dominated Weibo’s trending topics, which naturally irritated fans of other celebrities.

Especially among actresses and stars who saw her as competition, some agents even instructed their key fans to join in bashing Wen Yan.

Thus, the comment sections erupted into another frenzy of harsh criticism against her.

When fans rate, it’s genuine; when ordinary viewers rate, they’re called trolls. Seriously, the double standards of goddess fans are truly legendary.

What acting skills does a painter-turned-actress even have? Her company and fans keep embarrassingly hyping her up. Wouldn’t it be better for her to just be a runway model? Oh, wait, I forgot your sister isn’t tall enough for that.

Back when everyone was bashing An Ran, they said she got replaced because her acting wasn’t good enough. But looking at Wen Yan’s performance now, it’s not much better either. Is the director blind?

Enough already. Who knows how she landed the female lead role? She’s always marketing herself as some rich, beautiful second-generation heiress. For all we know, she slept her way to the top. Disgusting.

Reading these comments one by one, Qin Xia was fuming, itching to roll up her sleeves, track down these scumbags through their IP addresses, and give them a good beating.

With such a huge uproar, Jin Yin, the agent, naturally took notice.

But in her eyes, these were nothing more than sneaky, petty tactics. Paying PR firms to spread negative rumors about rivals was the lowest strategy in the entertainment industry.

Because even bad publicity is still publicity, if you’re not famous, no one would bother to attack you. In this industry, they’re not afraid of being criticized or condemned by thousands; what they truly fear is being ignored and forgotten.

If you buy into smearing your competitors, and they manage to clear their names later, it’s essentially free promotion for them.

Utterly foolish.

Jin Yin let out a cold laugh, pulled out her phone, and sent a message to her assistant.

[Release the previous court verdict and find out which PR firm took this job.]

From now on, they’ll be blacklisted from any collaboration with the Gu Corporation.

[Got it, Sister Jin.]

The court verdict was from the first time Wen Yan faced online bullying, when she sued the netizen “Just a Throwaway Account.” The judge’s ruling was straightforward: compensation of 100,000 yuan for reputational and emotional damages, plus a public apology video.

Wen Yan donated the entire sum to the government’s “Hope Primary School” project. For this, the government issued a commendation letter and a donation certificate, which the assistant posted using the official account of Summit Entertainment.

Summit Entertainment v: The case has been handed over to our legal department. Please await the court summons. Any compensation awarded from the lawsuit will be donated in full to the “Hope Primary School” project, just like last time. Thank you to all the anti-fans for your support of national education efforts.

Thank you.

[Image][Image][Image]

In one word: Savage.

So savage that Wen Yan’s fans, who had been outnumbered and overwhelmed just moments before, suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline. They almost forgot how badly they had been beaten down earlier and charged back into the battlefield of the marketing accounts, howling with renewed vigor.

Bring it on, haters! We can fight for another 300 rounds!

Among them, “The Little Prince’s Fox,” a netizen who had just received a movie ticket from Wen Yan, led the charge, posting several Weibo updates and viewing impressions while tagging the unscrupulous marketing accounts.

The power of money is truly remarkable, it can make the healthy blind and the mute speak.

This was a clear jab at those accounts for taking bribes to deliberately smear Wen Yan and the movie Rivalry.

Under pressure from their own companies, the marketing accounts began deleting their previous posts, a clear signal of retreat and surrender.

After all, not everyone can withstand the pressure from Summit Entertainment and the Gu Corporation.

Even though the battleground had vanished, the war among the various fanbases was far from over. Han Lu and Xu Wei were inadvertently dragged into the fray, nearly sparking a full-scale “hundred-regiment battle” among fan communities.

To fight this war of smear campaigns and counterattacks, fan group leaders went all out, using voice interaction tools like YY and coordinating unified comments to control the narrative. For a while, the scene was lively, with completely neutral onlookers happily munching on popcorn and enjoying the drama.

Among them was an employee from the studio, who had meticulously compiled the entire sequence of events into a detailed document and sent it to Assistant Qin.

After reading it, Qin Xia forwarded it directly to Gu Lin, asking what they should do.

Gu Lin…

Gu Lin didn’t reply, it was uncertain whether she had even seen the message.

?

What was Fifth Miss so busy with?

Qin Xia was baffled. After a moment’s thought, she sent a message to Wen Xiu.

[Is Director Lin with Miss Wen?]

Wen Xiu replied quickly.

[Yes, Sister Lin is here.]

So, she’s gone to Hengdian again to see her girlfriend.

Qin Xia felt a bit helpless. The fact that her boss had no interest in work and only wanted to focus on romance was making things difficult for her, the little assistant.

[Could you ask Director Lin to check her phone? I need to discuss something with her.]

Wen Xiu glanced back at the tightly closed van door and, for some reason, her cheeks flushed slightly.

[I’m afraid that won’t be possible.]

The two of them were alone together, who knows what intimate things they might be doing at this moment!

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