A Parallel Universe

It was the middle of summer in Jiangchuan.

Outside an industrial Zone in the suburbs, an orange scooter nimbly drove around a bend, then stopped steadily next to the security post of a "Pengda Toy Factory".

After parking the scooter and taking out the key, Meng Lang looked up at the big sign that read "Pengda Toy" on top of the factory building and felt at ease.

It had been nearly a month since he woke up in this parallel universe!

In the past month, Meng Lang was first alarmed, but gradually became surprised and wild with joy. The change in his mentality was tremendous.

He had been a most common director of TV series and thought he would live this life sucking up to investors and directing cheesy soap operas. Transmigration was the last thing he had ever expected!

He probably had a little too much to drink with his producer the other night and the street lamp was flickering overhead. He stepped onto a watermelon peel when he wasn't looking… Yes, a watermelon peel! Suddenly, he slipped and fell backward. The back of his head landed on a sharp brick on the sidewalk…

When he woke up, he was astonished when he realized that he was in the body of a young man in a parallel universe, who had just graduated from college.

The young man was called Meng Lang, which was identical to his original name. He had graduated from the computer science department of Jiangchuan University and was about to go back to his hometown to inherit the toy factory from his old man.

During the past month, Meng Lang combed through his current social connections and thanks to the convenience brought by the internet, he was able to find out the difference between this universe and the one he came from.

In simple terms, this world was identical to the one he came from in every way except for the literary and art circles…

Through some online research, Meng Lang was surprised to discover that some of the literature, movies, TV series, and animation works that existed in his universe were unheard of here. Instead, he found works here that he had no knowledge of.

He was pleasantly surprised when he found out that different universes worked differently. This world attached great importance to intellectual property rights and piracy had been cracked down on to the point that these businesses had been wiped off the face of earth all together.

It gave him an opportunity to become the ultimate plagiarist!

After discovering that, Meng Lang could only think of one thing, which was to take advantage of the countless classic works he remembered and recreate all the literature, movies, and TV series in this world. That way, he would become an eminent writer and a great director who would get all the attention!

Once he was ready to put his plan into action, he realized something in embarrassment.

The premise of becoming a great plagiarist was that he could remember everything about his old world, which included reproducing verbatim all the books, songs, and scripts.

But… he wouldn't be able to do that.

Take the books for an example; he had read more web novels than he could remember, but could at most only recall the general plot. It was impossible for him to make a complete copy of any of them.

"Break through the Sky" was an awesome novel, wasn't it? He replayed the part where the protagonist broke off his engagement over a dozen times, but he couldn't even come up with a full paragraph.

So, bye bye to recreating books. But what about songs?

"What? I have to learn stuff first?"

That immediately discouraged Meng Lang. In fact, if he really were to go down the lane of music, with all the classic songs he could remember, he could create hit song after hit song with only general knowledge of them.

The problem was that recreating songs wasn't profitable enough. He couldn't create tunes, so he couldn't sing them himself. If he were to sell a song, he would need a talent scout first, or he would only sell the songs for cheap.

After much consideration, Meng Lang finally decided what he would plagiarize!

Scripts! He would copy classic film and TV works from his previous life! He would be a writer-director!

It was the line of work he had been in. Although he was a director, he knew enough about screenwriting. After all, most of the time, the director who transferred words into images was the one who understood the script the best, rather than the screenwriter himself.

Copying scripts wasn't difficult for Meng Lang, since he had watched ample films and TV works. Even if he couldn't recreate them to a tee, he could at least make 80% look-alikes.

After determining that he was going to become a "great director" by recreating existing scripts, Meng Lang began to consider what script would be the best.

Movies?

It wouldn't work! He had watched the movies of this world. They weren't inferior by much to those made by Hollywood, if not of the same standard. Moreover, the script or story-telling wasn't even that important to a movie. The promotion campaign was the top most priority.

So what if the story was great? Without investment and promotion, the best film would remain unnoticed.

What if the film's hype was passed on by word of mouth? Could that lead to a soaring box office?

Who was he kidding? As someone who worked inside the circle, he recognized the sign of paid online ghostwriters promoting a film when he saw "great word of mouth".

It was possible for a film to reverse its box office performance because of excellent word of mouth, but as far as he knew, most of the sudden outbursts of public praise of films were false impressions created by PR, which derive from the fact that the production company lacked confidence in the films at an early stage and the PR decided to give it a trial run. If the trial indicated a great likelihood that the film would succeed, the PR would increase the promotion effort immediately, creating the aforementioned false impression.

He could get into films after he had earned some capital, which was something he didn't have at the moment.

The TV series became Meng Lang's first choice.

Big-budget productions were definitely out of the question. He wanted a low budget but high return.

Did such TV series exist?

The answer was yes!

"With the perfected copyright protection, peripheral products of films and TV works will definitely work!"

Ever since he knew how copyrights were so well protected in this world and that piracy had been destroyed once and for all, Meng Lang chose three scripts that would suit his plan the best!

Balala the Fairies!

Blazing Teens!

Explosive Boys!

But why did those three domestic feature shows have cheap special effects? The answer was simple.

It was because of their low costs and high returns!

The low cost was easy to obtain. After all, they were teen-friendly feature shows and the actors and actresses were all kids. It would cost him a couple hundred thousand yuan to hire all of them and he could also go easy on the already cheap special effects, making it even cheaper.

Most people probably didn't understand the "high return" part, but with a toy factory as his "family business", Meng Lang had a thorough understanding of peripheral products of films and TV works in this world.

Meng Lang's father, a.k.a. the boss of Pengda Toy Factory, had told Meng Lang once:

"In comparison, the manufacturing of toys makes so little money. All they need is grant authorization of this image and us, toy makers, will make the toys. No matter what the cost is, we'll have to give them 20% of our sales revenue…"

Take the core product of Pengda Toy Factory, a toy figurine known as "Kitaro", as an example. The cost was 10 yuan each with a retail price of 30 yuan. However, the animation company who owned the intellectual property rights of Kitaro didn't have to do anything. They received a net income of 6 yuan on each toy sold just by granting Pengda Toy Factory the authorization.

What about Pengda Toy Factory?

With the cost of 10 yuan, plus the distribution channel, transportation, tax, labor cost, etc., although the toys were sold at 30 yuan each, they earned less than 5 yuan for each toy sold!

A world without piracy was just this frightening!

Meng Lang had decided to produce those three teen-friendly feature shows because of that realization.

Explosive Boys and Balala the Fairies had too many special effects. Even if they were all cheap effects, the expense would still be immense.

In comparison, Blazing Teens was the most ideal one. All that had to be done was to add some shiny effects to the yo-yos and throw in an embarrassing narrator, then the show was done!

Making the show itself wouldn't be all that profitable, but some friends would be made in the process. "I don't care if you watch it. As long as you buy my yo-yos, we're the best buddies!"

That thought settled Meng Lang's mind. With the script of Blazing Teens in his hand, he walked in.