Adding Hua Xia elements into Plants vs Zombies Online became the top priority for the entire team.
Chen Tong, who came from a cultured background, had a keen sense of culture, as well as a unique understanding of it. Li Mu only hoped that Plants vs Zombies could become a famous game produced by Hua Xia, and that the characters in the game could become a famous cartoon character produced by Hua Xia. However, he had never thought of adding elements from Hua Xia culture into the game, especially the suggestion of a "cartoon Hua Xia zombie", which was very exciting.
In order to deepen the brand, Li Mu requested Chen Tong to take the lead and set up a team of spin-offs. This team would work with toy manufacturers to design and produce toys, dolls, ornaments, dolls, figurines, and other interesting daily necessities for each cartoon character.
Li Mu came up with a few ideas. For example, a peashooter that could actually shoot plastic peashooter bullets. This toy could be designed to be the size of a key ring, and could even be made into a key ring with a chain and a key ring.
The Nut Wall could also be made into a key ring, and the Nut Wall itself could be made into a small pocket-sized roly-poly toy. At the same time, the Nut Wall that had been beaten up would have tears in its eyes and a determined expression, making it look cute and adorable. It would be loved by young girls, and would have the aura of a responsible and cute boyfriend. Therefore, the Nut Wall could also be made into a pillow or doll, targeted at young female customers.
Apart from that, every image could be experimented with. As long as they put in the effort and did a good job with quality control, the products would definitely be loved by the users.
However, Li Mu also reminded the head of the PR department to do a good job of fighting piracy. They had to use the strong influence of Makino Technology, as well as their good reputation and relationship with the government, to monitor the small merchandise industry in the market. If they found any illegal merchants pirating Plants vs Zombies, they had to be resolute in their actions.
In the end, Li Mu threw out a grand plan that no one dared to think of before. If the offline promotion of Plants vs. Zombies and the spin-off products were done well, he would work with Hollywood in the second half of the year to produce an animated movie of the same name. He could work with Spielberg's DreamWorks, Disney, or Pixar. He would work with whoever could bring out the best animation of the game.
If Angry Birds can earn three hundred million in the box office, why can't Plants vs. Zombies do the same? As long as he had enough influence, it was entirely possible.
The movie plan gave everyone a huge boost. No one dared to imagine that a game could be turned into a movie and put on the big screen. However, they believed in Li Mu. As long as Li Mu said it could be done, it would definitely be done!
Li Mu didn't have to worry about making money anymore. In a few years, his current company, as well as his investments in Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, would bring him at least a few hundred billion US dollars in wealth. Under such circumstances, Li Mu didn't have to think about just adding money, but converting it into something else.
For some merchants, earning money to a certain extent would become boring and boring. They might even feel that earning a few billion a month was painful, but they would still continue to earn money while feeling the pain. Li Mu didn't have such thoughts of showing off. Earning a few billion a month, or even tens of billions wouldn't make him feel pain, but if the money he earned was just a number in his bank account, then it would really make him feel pain.
Therefore, Li Mu planned a lot of things and responsibilities for himself in the future, including helping Hua Xia export culture to the world.
If he wanted to export culture to the world, he first had to have a super IP as a weapon. The so-called IP, in a written sense, was intellectual property. Marvel's Iron Man was an IP, and Li Mu's "Old Man Ding" was also an IP. However, the difference was that Iron Man could gain more than a billion fans around the world, and "Old Man Ding" was probably something that even three-year-olds were tired of. Therefore, to really talk about strategic IP, it had to have a strong fan base, and the fans had the potential to pay for it.
Nowadays, the concept of "IP" and "IP derivatives" had not been created, but "IP derivatives" had long been a way to make money in the European, American, and Japanese entertainment industry. The first to play with IP derivatives was Disney. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had been popular around the world for decades, and then various derivative products with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck images began to sell in the global market. When Li Mu was young, half of his kindergarten classmates carried Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck school bags. Although they were all pirated, in a mature market environment, all similar derivative products were helping Disney make money.
Disney's most powerful IP derivatives were its theme parks. The first theme park opened almost fifty years ago. The elements in its theme park were all its own super IP, which was those popular cartoon characters around the world, including Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Cinderella, and Winnie the Pooh. These super IP could not only directly convert fans of its own cartoons, but also make them unique in the global market. This was indeed very powerful.
On the other hand, Hua Xia, until Li Mu's rebirth, did not have a theme park that was born based on Hua Xia's IP. On the contrary, when Disneyland in Shanghai opened, its business was so good that it made Disney doubt its life. Mr. Wang, the richest man in the world, once said that with Wanda, Disney would not be able to make a profit for twenty years. However, Disneyland in Shanghai had already made a profit in the first year of its opening. This showed how stable and powerful a company with a history, a mature model, and a strong IP support was in the market.
In Li Mu's eyes, if Wanda Theme Park did not have a strong IP support and the ability to continuously create high-quality IP, then Wanda Theme Park would never be able to compete with Disney. At most, it could compete with pure amusement parks like Happy Valley and Fante in terms of hardware and management level.
However, Wanda Theme Park would never be able to catch up with Disney's soft power. Even three-year-old children knew that they could see Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Cinderella at Disneyland. There were even fairy tale worlds, entertainment facilities, characters, and wonderful performances that belonged to these characters. This was something that Wanda Theme Park would never be able to catch up with.
Li Mu hoped that, in addition to making money in the future, he could use the money he earned to create some super IP for Hua Xia that could take the world by storm. Plants vs. Zombies was only the first. In the future, there might be phenomenal super games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Temple Run. If Hua Xia's online literature developed, he could also help carry forward the online literature IP, allowing Hua Xia's classic online literature to be exported to the world in the form of excellent films and TV shows.
In Li Mu's opinion, it had always been a huge regret that an Eastern adventure-type IP like Candle Blowing Ghost could not be exported to the world. Hua Xia's classic sci-fi, The Three-Body Problem, could not be made into an excellent film and exported to the world. There were many reasons for this regret. For example, the overall strength of Hua Xia's film company was not enough, the level of the employees in Hua Xia's film and TV industry was still lacking, the capital and courage of Hua Xia's film and TV industry was not enough, etc. But in the end, it was still a matter of money.
For an independent project, no capital was willing to lose money, because if an independent project lost money, it was almost impossible to earn it back. Film and TV production was a standard independent project. The story of Candle Blowing Ghost was indeed very good, but the presentation cost was too high. The film and TV company and the film and TV fund first considered whether they could earn back the cost. Under this premise, they either did not shoot it, or only invested a small amount of money to shoot a bad film. That was why there were so many trash films with 50% special effects. Candle Blowing Ghost or Grave Robber's Chronicles, even the domestic audience could not accept it, so how could it be exported overseas?
However, if Li Mu was in charge, there would not be such a problem. In the future, his assets might be so much that he could not finish spending it. If he had a budget of 200 million US dollars in 2010 and hired the world's most professional team to shoot Candle Blowing Ghost, it would definitely be able to push Candle Blowing Ghost to the international market. If he could invest 500 million US dollars in the "The Three-Body Problem" trilogy in 2015, this Hugo Award-winning Hua Xia sci-fi masterpiece would definitely become a world-class sci-fi IP. But why did Candle Blowing Ghost and The Three-Body Problem not achieve great success in the film and TV industry? At the end of the day, it was because of the lack of money.
Hua Xia did not lack people with money, but it lacked people who were willing to pay for the spread of culture, regardless of the return. When Hua Xia's movie box office was just starting to improve, all kinds of capital rushed into the film and TV industry, but none of these capital was for culture itself. They all treated culture as a business that could make quick money. They organized a film and TV fund, invested in a few film and TV projects, incubated them for a few months, and then released them. They hoped that the box office would exceed 100 million, 500 million, or even 1 billion.
In order to achieve the goal of making money, a considerable number of these so-called "cultured people" would do anything to make money. Some plagiarized other people's stories, some infringed other people's copyrights, some treated the audience as fools, and some hired all kinds of Internet Water Armies to create hype, even to smear their competitors, buy box office, or even steal other people's box office. Therefore, the group of people in the cultural industry in Hua Xia had a lower professional ethics than the real estate speculators. After all, the real estate speculators wanted everyone to stir up the real estate market together. No one hoped that other people's real estate would collapse because of an accident, and no one would blow up other people's houses …
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