Recently, Chau Tinh Tri's martial arts comedy "The Kungfu Women's Football Team" was involved in a scandal related to box office revenue fraud.
What surprised many people was that this time, in addition to the production unit and management agency, there was also a group of Stephen Chow fans who directly stood up to fight against this behavior.
On July 16, Stephen Chow posted on social networks handwritten photos of tickets to watch "Women's Kungfu Football Team", accompanied by three question marks.
This move is considered Tinh Gia's attitude of outrage at the situation that some cinemas have used handwritten tickets, blank tickets or issued tickets without official distribution systems to "steal box office revenue".
Later, some cinemas explained that this was just a "misunderstanding", claiming that the ticket printing paper was damp and could not be printed with ink. However, this explanation could not soothe public opinion.
The real turning point came from a long article by Stephen Chow's Fan Association. On the evening of July 17, this association posted an article specifically naming the act of stealing revenue from some cinemas.
These are ordinary fans, with data, evidence and all their enthusiasm, who have personally regained more than 1.6 million CNY (about more than 6 billion VND) of box office revenue that belonged to the Kungfu Women's Team from revenue thieves," Stephen Chow's fan club wrote.
At the end of the song, they also texted: "Kungfu Women's Football Team, we are always here. Tinh Gia, we are always here!".
It's not just a slogan, but behind it is a very methodical investigation process.
The incident started when a spectator scanned the code on the ticket of "The Kungfu Girl", but the system displayed information of another movie. This unusual thing made fans who had closely followed box office figures suspicious.
After checking, they discovered that there were 2 films with few viewers, which had been in theaters for many months, and had very low daily revenue, but since July 11, the time "The Kungfu Girl" premiered, the revenue of these 2 films suddenly skyrocketed. The coincidence in the timing made them decide to investigate to the end.
Fans then began collecting a series of paper tickets and screenshots from the ticketing system. These evidences show that many cinemas, after collecting money from audiences, did not issue official tickets for "The Kungfu Girl", but secretly printed tickets for movies with few viewers and then imported them into the system, thereby transferring the revenue of "The Kungfu Girl" to other movies.
Facing these signs, Stephen Chow's fans not only expressed outrage online, but also took a more drastic action. They systematized all data on unusual revenue, fake tickets and backstage photos, created a detailed denunciation file and sent it to the Chinese film market management agency, the cinema system management unit and the producer.
The file provided by fans has finally been noticed by functional agencies. After receiving the complaint, the management agency compared each photo, each ticket and quickly conducted field inspections.
The investigation results confirmed that more than 90 cinemas across the country were involved in the incident. All violating cinemas were required to rectify violations and compensate for all embezzled revenue.
A total of more than 1.6 million CNY in box office revenue has been recovered and updated to the official revenue of "The Kungfu Women's Football Team".
In parallel with that, the producer also implemented technical measures. From July 17, the film officially applies encryption technology for release in stages. Accordingly, instead of issuing release locks for the whole month as before, locks will be issued daily or weekly.
If a cinema is found to have violations, the distributor can immediately stop issuing locks for subsequent screenings, thereby minimizing the possibility of revenue fraud.
Meanwhile, as of July 18, "The Kungfu Women's Football Team" has surpassed the revenue milestone of 1.1 billion RMB at the Chinese box office.
