The Preview Screening
The preview screening.
It was a private showing held ahead of the film’s official release.
“Thank you so much for coming!”
“Of course. When Director Hwang Hyeon-seung calls, you show up~.”
Reporters, critics, theater operators—everyone who mattered had been invited. The purpose, naturally, was pure promotion.
He’s fretting about it after all.
Hwang Hyeon-seung, director of Race King Um Bok-dong, had received one particular request from his sponsor.
He wasn’t green enough in the industry to miss what that request really meant.
“I’ll be counting on you.”
“Professional ethics won’t let me write anything too glowing… but I’ll write what I honestly feel.”
“That’s exactly how it should be!”
That was why he had invited the table-tennis specialist reporter, Mr. Kim the Baker. The man only watched movies as a hobby, and the two of them were fairly close. Out of loyalty alone he would never leave a scathing review.
These are the kinds of people he wants me to invite.
A preview screening was a double-edged sword. It generated buzz, but it also invited criticism. You could shrug and say “these things happen,” yet the stakes here were far too high. Two years and fifteen billion won had been poured into this project.
“I’m Critic Kim Half-Honey.”
“Hwang Hyeon-seung. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Director Hwang’s new film—I’ve been looking forward to it already!”
A single trash article could sink the whole thing. A sponsor who had sunk that much capital would be hypersensitive.
Still, box-office success…
Ordinary people believed it scaled with artistic merit. Industry people knew luck played a far bigger role. That was why they still held pig’s-head rituals. Better to avoid any unnecessary discord.
“How’s the screening going?”
“Ah, Representative!”
He had satisfied the sponsor’s demand. The guest list was filled entirely from his own network.
This should be enough to keep him happy.
Representative Park Gwang-jae. He had invested the moment he heard that Um Bok-dong had been a real historical figure. A man of fierce patriotism. But a film was still a business.
“Everything’s proceeding splendidly.”
“And the attendees?”
“No rude critics who make a living off bad reviews. Only people who can be reasoned with.”
“People who can be reasoned with. Music to my ears.”
They needed to make money. He would want nothing but silence from the screening.
A shame. If it weren’t for the Representative’s orders…
Hyeon-seung was itching to know how his film would truly be judged. He decided to put that curiosity on hold. The moment the work’s artistry was revealed to the world could wait.
As long as nothing blows up, we’re fine.
Park Gwang-jae’s real motives, of course, had nothing to do with patriotism.
Paran-Domi Entertainment
20,500 won ▲15,450 won (+305.94%)
[A rough graph showing a steady upward climb over the past six months]
The share price had climbed steadily for half a year—the company of which he himself was CEO. The reason was not that institutions were buying because a massive masterpiece had been produced. Of course not.
“Still, they can’t all be from your personal network, can they?”
“That’s fine.”
“Why?”
“I filled the rest with investors and VIPs—ordinary people who know nothing about cinematic artistry.”
The illicit stock manipulators had moved in. The background that let them pump the price without a care in the world was simple.
Just sit back and get ready to print money.
They already possessed the inside information. He was colluding with them, feeding them the material. Accumulation was finished. All that remained was for the retail ants to stampede in.
“Critic Jeon the Ordinary, at your service.”
“Glad you could make it. The usual review, if you please.”
This screening would be the trigger. He had ordered the director to invite only safe, unremarkable faces. Failure was impossible. Multiple outlets would run glowing articles, stoking buying sentiment.
Then, the moment the ants are frothing at the mouth…
Dump everything in one go. Keep driving the price down right up until opening day. Why? Because the clueless ants would average down, clinging to the ironclad belief that the film would be a hit. Whether it actually succeeded was something he already knew and they did not—an uneven playing field they never even realized they were standing on.
That’s why.
Being rich in Korea is good for more than just having a lot of money.
“Invitation confirmed! May I ask where you’re from?”
“Just a VIP.”
“Ah… yes.”
It is good because you have a great deal of money. That single fact alone brings love calls pouring in from every corner of society.
Invest a little, won’t you?
You get invited to every VIP event under the sun. The preview screening of Race King Um Bok-dong was simply one more of them.
“They just invite you because you’re loaded?”
“In a capitalist society, is there anyone more important than the person who spends the most money?”
“True enough.”
I had come with Sora. We handed over the invitation and walked into the theater hosting the screening. Her chest was heaving with excitement; she clearly wasn’t used to places like this.
“We get to see a film before it even opens?”
“That’s one of the perks.”
“Sounds fun.”
“I only hope fun is all that happens.”
“?”
Of course it wasn’t free. VIPs were invited for one reason: to extract investment capital.
Get suckered into investing and you’ll just torch real money.
Was this even a suitable investment? In the stock market you could dig up information. Here you couldn’t. It was exactly like buying something with no price tag attached.
“Um Bok-dong’s stock has been flying, though?”
“You checked the stock?”
“Of course. It’s usually already priced in via pre-reflection.”
Among the carefully curated investment targets, a plausible-looking company listed on the KOSDAQ had been attached.
So people might think the film itself is solid…
Sometimes the cart comes before the horse. From what I had researched, this was no proper company at all.
“A biotech stock?”
“Yeah.”
“The company name, the business—everything looked like a content play…”
“Those things can be changed whenever they feel like it.”
It happened often enough. Listed companies that rewrote their names and business lines on a whim.
On the KOSDAQ it’s practically routine.
Whatever-theme stock! Whatever-else-theme stock! The exact same company would ride completely different themes to jack up its price. And when people stopped believing? They changed the company name and went dark for a while. Once everyone had forgotten, they resurfaced. Paran-Domi Entertainment was one of those companies.
“That’s insane!”
“It’s a K-stock.”
“Ah. Right.”
Basic due diligence. There was no shortage of such firms among KOSDAQ listings.
Looking at it that way…
Race King Um Bok-dong had a high probability of flopping. Shorting it could be lucrative. But it wasn’t a hundred percent. Film was still a matter of taste.
On the surface it looked decent. They had cast a singer no one in the country didn’t know.
“Oh my god, it’s Oppa K!”
“What, ‘Oppa’?”
“I listened to his songs nonstop in middle school. Everyone called him Oppa, so it just comes out.”
He was handsome. He generated buzz. That alone was enough to create expectations of a hit.
If even Sora knows who he is, that says everything.
As an actor he might be questionable, but as a singer he was top-tier. That fact, however, was separate from everything else.
“Why are you pinching my nipple?!”
“Because I’m pissed.”
Right then the theater lights went out—perfect conditions for groping Sora’s chest.
Has she gotten a taste for adult films too?
The thought hit me hard enough that I was already standing at full attention. I toyed with the nipple that had been so rewarding to train while the film began.
We watched. The premise itself felt reasonably solid. Japanese colonial period. The story of a real historical cyclist named Um Bok-dong.
Plenty of national-pride bait right there.
He wins the bicycle race. He overcomes the wicked schemes of the Japanese empire. Clichéd or not, box-office success should have been guaranteed. That was what I thought—until the actual film started.
“Senior, this is a bit…”
“The pacing’s all over the place.”
“Let go of that already!”
The plot was a mess. Sora’s breasts had every right to be angry.
It’s neither a proper independence-activist story nor a proper cyclist story.
Focusing on just one of those would have been hard enough. Runtime was only about two hours. They tried to run both at once. From the audience’s seat it was pure confusion.
Boom! Baaang!
The CG quality. Not fifteen billion won—more like the level of something you’d commission from a cheap photo-composite gallery for a hundred and fifty won.
“I’d like to call it a matter of taste if I could…”
“It’s pretty bad.”
“Then why isn’t anyone saying anything?”
The film’s future did not look bright. Even an ordinary viewer like me could see that. Yet the experts thought otherwise.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap-clap!
The moment the credits rolled, applause filled the theater.
“Was that actually good?”
“It was just okay…”
“It hit the national-pride notes, so job done!”
The film people. The atmosphere was pure praise. Anyone who didn’t know better started nodding along.
Modern art works the same way.
Anyway, it’s amazing! Pieces sell for tens or hundreds of billions. A film is just as hard to judge at a glance. At least a preview screening can be controlled. Nothing would leak outside.
“Does that even make sense?”
“It’s got the K attached.”
“Ah.”
Public reputation versus actual quality. The gap was everyday reality.
In the Korean stock market, that is.
Ordinary people never find out. By the time they do, they’ve already taken the loss. That reality was something Sora, burning with a sense of justice, apparently could not just sit and watch.
“Let’s just short the hell out of it.”
“Weren’t you the one who hates short selling?”
“Well, I don’t like it… but it has a positive function, right?”
It could even connect to an investment idea. A pure, naïve thought that was pure Sora.
If it were that easy, I’d have done it already.
The stock market does not move that simply. Intrinsic value? Who cares—the illicit stock manipulators can push the price however they like.
“We’re at a disadvantage. The size of the accumulated position is completely different.”
“Ah…”
“That’s true for an investor, anyway.”
“?”
No matter how much money you have, there are things you can do and things you cannot. Markets cannot be moved by money alone.
Which means…
What you need is influence. And Sora, standing right on the border between investor and ordinary person, was capable of certain things that others were not.