Chapter 111: Partnership Proposal

While the Cannes Film Festival was in full swing, Zhou Ran was also busy with his own affairs. After The Drummer had successfully screened at Cannes, their promotional work could finally draw to a close.

What came next was waiting for news from Cannes about the selection list. If the film made the cut, then they would have to head to Cannes to prepare for the awards process and related duties. As long as they got onto the list, no matter how the rest went, there would at least be a nomination.

If they failed to be selected for Cannes, then their most important task afterward would be to work hard to erase the film’s unfavorable reviews.

After all, the buzz around The Drummer had already been whipped up. Zhou Ran and Zhang Xiaofeng had spent nearly half a month promoting it, and online it had come close to becoming a name everyone knew. Part of that was due to their publicity, and part of it was because certain people had helped fan the flames. Some were simply waiting for the film to fail so they could kick it when it was down.

Two days earlier, Zhou Ran had received an unexpected collaboration request, sent by Zhang Yuan’s company.

The general idea was that she had a program called Voices of Heaven that needed to be recorded, and every singer on the show had to invite a collaborator to join them. Zhang Yuan had chosen Zhou Ran, hoping he would record the program with her.

Under normal circumstances, Zhou Ran would never have agreed. The intention was obvious: they wanted him to write songs for Zhang Yuan. Where in the world would there be such a good deal? Zhou Ran’s songs, at this point, were the sort you could not buy even if you had the money. But very quickly, he was stunned by the terms Zhang Yuan offered.

Her side was willing to pay two million for each song, and as for any later profits from those songs, they did not want a single cent. They only needed Zhou Ran to grant them the public performance rights. If they wanted to produce an album later, that could be discussed separately.

It was the first time Zhou Ran had ever seen a contract with terms like these. It was absurdly generous. To be honest, he was tempted, because in general the later earnings from a song are shared between the original singer, the lyricist, and the composer. Yet Zhang Yuan was simply giving up that portion of the money.

What was more, his own agency, Huayu Entertainment, had quietly brought it up with him as well, hoping he would take the collaboration.

The reason Zhang Yuan’s company was willing to propose such a contract was, in truth, not much different from gambling. They were betting that the songs Zhou Ran wrote for Zhang Yuan would be worth the price. They needed Zhou Ran’s songs to help push Zhang Yuan toward the throne of the female pop diva.

They wanted to strip Zhang Yuan of the title of “little diva” once and for all and make her a true, genuine diva, elevating her into the ranks of Huayu Entertainment’s top-tier female singers. If they could succeed, then the contract with Zhou Ran would be worth every penny.

Because the costs they were investing could be slowly earned back during the years Zhang Yuan stood at the top as a diva. One had to know that the difference between a first-tier singer and a diva was enormous, and the gap in endorsement fees alone could be several times over.

Not everyone was a freak of nature like Zhou Ran, able to become a top star not long after debuting. In his case, becoming the king of Chinese pop was only a matter of time, as long as he kept up this pace.

After receiving the collaboration proposal, Zhou Ran thought it over and ultimately decided to accept the contract. He had already been considering letting other people sing his songs. After all, there were so many songs in his mind that one person alone could never perform them all. Since Zhang Yuan had brought herself to his doorstep, he gladly accepted. Besides, he could also earn a few more favors this way.

Once he agreed to the collaboration, Zhou Ran immediately switched into work mode. He discovered that there were actually several songs in his memory whose style matched Zhang Yuan quite well, and this was the perfect opportunity to let her sing them.

On Zhang Yuan’s side, when they received Zhou Ran’s reply, they were instantly astonished. They had not expected him to agree at all. When they sent out the request, they had not really believed he would say yes; they had only thought they might as well try.

The moment Zhang Yuan received his agreement, she felt as though half of her plan had already been secured. The diva strategy that she and her company had devised was finally within reach, no longer just empty words on paper. With Zhou Ran joining in, everything looked far more solid.

In fact, Zhang Yuan had first come up with the plan after taking something of a blow at the last Chinese Golden Melody Awards. That disappointment left her thinking long and hard about her future.

When she brought the idea to her company, they were also in need of a female representative singer for the music division. Among all the artists under their label, Zhang Yuan was the one with the best chance, so they approved her idea.

Any request like this had to go through the company. Without their approval, she would never have been able to make the proposal at all. For a singer of Zhang Yuan’s standing, many things were constrained by the management company.

The program Zhang Yuan invited Zhou Ran to join, Voices of Heaven, was a music competition show. Each season, they invited one singer to participate, and that invited singer then had to bring along a musical partner. Zhang Yuan was the invited singer this season.

Their plan was to use the six episodes of the show to test the waters first. If Zhang Yuan performed well over those six episodes, they would continue inviting Zhou Ran to write the next six songs. Then they would bundle them into an album and formally launch a bid for the diva throne.

If the six episodes did not go well, they could simply end the invitation after the program finished and cut their losses as much as possible.

After all, no one could guarantee what the quality of Zhou Ran’s next song would be. They could only estimate and predict based on his previous achievements. If one judged by the songs he had already written, then the chances of this plan succeeding were extremely high, because the quality of his work was right there for everyone to see. If the songs were not good, they would never have won those Chinese-language Golden Melody Awards in the first place.

Songwriting, after all, depends entirely on inspiration. It is not like an industrial product that can be churned out on an assembly line.