Hong Kong Entertainment: The King of Kung Fu

In the original time and space, the movie that really made Zhou Xingchi take off was "God of Gamblers".

Yang Ye just finished filming "God of Gamblers" last year, and Zhou Xingchi is now filming "The Saint of Gamblers", which is a good opportunity to take advantage of his popularity, play with his jokes, and also facilitate the promotion of the movie.

However, "God of Gamblers" is about special abilities, which contradicts the theme of "Mojin: The Lost Legend" that Yang Ye is currently filming.

Yang Ye's filming of "God of Gamblers" was tantamount to slapping himself in the face, so Yang Ye asked Liu Zhenwei to come out.

After discussing his ideas with him, Liu Zhenwei quickly came up with the script.

In the original time and space, Liu Zhenwei wrote "God of Gamblers" and completed the whole scene in four hours. He is really a genius of his generation.

After the script came out, Yang Ye refused to sign his name, but Liu Zhenwei felt that it was not good to take advantage of Yang Ye and insisted that he sign his name.

Finally, Yang Ye said, then I will use a pen name, and then sign it as... "Rapeseed"!
Youcai is really talented. Liu Zhenwei couldn't help laughing when he saw it.

Later, Yang Ye invited Liu Zhenwei to be the director of "God of Gamblers", and Liu Zhenwei readily agreed.

However, he could not use his own name openly as that would result in him being banned in Taiwan, so he also used a pen name.

Liu Zhenwei’s pen name is... Jian!
In order to catch up with the Spring Festival schedule, after discussion, the film was co-directed by Yuan Kui and Liu Zhenwei.

Yuen Kwai was in charge of the fighting scenes, while Liu Zhenwei was in charge of the comedy scenes.

In the end, this strange "God of Gamblers" became produced by Yuen Kwai, co-directed by Yuen Kwai and Ji An, and co-written by You Cai and Ji An.

The protagonists of the movie are basically the original cast, with Stephen Chow playing Ah Xing and Ng Man-tat playing the third uncle.

Since Zhang Min went to play Zhao Min in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre and had no schedule recently, Yang Ye asked Rosamund Kwan to take over.

There is no difference, they are all the same. The heroines of this kind of movie are just vases, responsible for beauty.

Yuan Kui was in charge of the action part of "God of Gamblers", so Yang Ye was relieved and didn't need to pay too much attention to it.

He is more focused on the comedy part because that is the key to success.

As the film will be released during the Spring Festival, Zhou Xingchi is under a lot of pressure and is a bit unable to relax.

However, after being encouraged by Yang Ye several times, they had more and more fun.

……

Yang Ye was filming "Mojin: The Lost Legend" during the day and watching the rough cut of "God of Gamblers" at night. He was so busy that he had no time to play with his new recruit Li Jiaxin.

In this busy manner, 1987 passed.

During the Christmas season, "Swordsman" co-starring brothers Jet Li and Zhen Zidan sold 3500 million in local box office and then sold out the overseas copyright.

"Prison on Fire", which originally ranked second in the Hong Kong box office in 3100 with a box office of 1987 million, was forcibly suppressed by "The Sword of Three Young Masters", and its local box office barely exceeded million.

Of course, there is another important reason why the box office of "Prison on Fire" was low, that is, Zhou Runfa in this time and space is not as popular as in the original time and space.

Without Brother Ma and Chuan Tou Chi, his box office appeal is greatly reduced.

The fact that "Prison on Fire" has a box office of 20 million is already impressive, and the movie is indeed well made.

Looking back at the Hong Kong box office rankings in 1987, Yang Ye's "Terminator 2" topped the list and broke the record with a box office of 4500 million.

Chen Long ranked second and fourth with "Dragon Brothers" and "Project A 2".

Jet Li and Zhen Zidan's "The Swordsman" won the third place.

In addition, Yang Ye's "Diary of a Real Man" and Zhang Guorong and Wang Zuxian's "A Chinese Ghost Story" also made it into the top ten.

The reason why "Diary of a Real Man" ranked among the top ten in terms of murder scores was mainly because Yang Ye used the movie to reflect the fact that he had two wives. As a result, it caused widespread discussion and the box office soared.

The film's overseas statistics were very average, the lowest in Yang Ye's career.

The reason why "A Chinese Ghost Story" made it into the top ten is not only because of its clever scheduling, but also because of the higher popularity of Wang Zuxian and Zhang Guorong in this time and space, and the better special effects of the film.

"A Chinese Ghost Story" achieved outstanding results overseas, allowing Zhang Guorong to successfully enter the Japanese and Korean markets.

Of the top ten annual box office hits in Hong Kong, the Yeung family alone occupied six spots.

Golden Harvest took a seat with "One House, Two Wives", D&B took a seat with "The Rich", Cinema City took a seat with "Prison on Fire", and Mak Dang-hung's production company took a seat with "Ghost Bride".

The fact that Yang Kee has 6 out of 10 films in Hong Kong is actually a small matter. Its overseas performance is even more terrifying. Although the company has produced only a few films, each of them is popular in Asia.

Especially "Terminator 2", which grossed $ million worldwide and topped the world's annual box office champion.

Yang Ye fought hard in North America for twelve years, and finally with "Terminator 2", the single-film box office exceeded 1.5 million for the first time, reaching million US dollars.

This box office is ranked third in North America in the year, only behind the comedy "Three Men and a Baby" and the thriller "Fatal Attraction".

Although the box office of Yang Ye's version of "Terminator 2" was 2 million US dollars less than the original "Terminator ", it was made up by the Chinese market opened up by Yang Ye.

Thanks to the appreciation of the Japanese yen, Terminator 2 grossed $ million in Japan alone.

The box office revenue lost in the European market was made up by the Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian markets, resulting in the final box office revenue being only 20 million US dollars less than the original time and space.

1987 was a bad year for Hollywood, with the box office champion being a comedy. Comedies are generally only popular in the domestic market and fail abroad.

The global box office of "Three Men and a Baby" was less than 2.5 million US dollars, only half of "Terminator 2".

A Hong Kong movie beat Hollywood and topped the global box office, causing a sensation in North America, and all major news media reported on it extensively.

This kind of report actually further boosted the box office performance of "Terminator 2" in North America.

This is free hype for Terminator 2!
Originally, everyone expected that Terminator 2 would be good enough to make over million in North America. But, due to the crazy hype of the North American media, the box office increased by tens of millions, which is really hilarious.

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, Americans always asked Run Run Shaw: "Are you going to challenge Hollywood?"

Run Run Shaw was really annoyed by the question, and he said: "We have our own way, which is different from Hollywood, but not worse than Hollywood."

When Yang Ye went to the United States, someone also asked him this question, and Yang Ye's answer was:
"In the field of action movies, Hong Kong is the world's top. American directors need to learn from Hong Kong when making action movies. So there is no challenge!"

……

The entire Baiyang Company was filled with joy.

ATV’s New Year’s Eve concert is its annual flagship event and is held at the Hong Kong Coliseum at the end of every year.

Not only does it have high ratings, but it can also make a lot of money from selling tickets.

This year, the company directly booked the entire theater and invited thousands of employees and their families to watch the show for free, which caused a sensation!
Yang Ye treated his employees well, and was praised for his kindness. The dream of many people was to be able to work for Yang Ji.

Other film companies in Hong Kong, while envious, can’t help but sigh!
Yang Ji has become so powerful that they have lost the desire to challenge it. The next thing to consider is how to survive.

What’s interesting is that everyone’s ideas are surprisingly consistent.

That is to compete with Yangji in a differentiated way, focusing on comedy, and also making efforts in horror, erotic and other themes.

For example, Category III films are a good area.

Unfortunately, after the release of Yang Ye and Sophie Marceau’s “The Lover”, the Hong Kong government suddenly realized that Category III films were very dangerous, so they immediately added regulations to limit the scale of screenings of Category III films.

In other words, "The Lover" is the only Category III film that was released without restrictions in Hong Kong. After it was released, the Hong Kong government welded the door shut.

Later, due to restrictions on the scale and time of screening, it was basically difficult for the box office of Category III films to exceed 10 million.

……

"Mojin: The Lost Legend" and "God of Gamblers" were being filmed as planned when suddenly a piece of news broke out.

Wong Jing and Chan Wing-mei formed a new company, Xin Bao, and launched their first film, "Eight Stars Reporting Happiness", which was mainly released during the Spring Festival period.

Chen Rongmei is a rich second-generation, nicknamed Prince Chen. He owns two cinemas, the New Po Cinema in Mong Kok and the Kerry Cinema in Tuen Mun.

In the original time and space, Chen Rongmei directly left the Golden Princess Cinemas and formed the Xinbao Cinemas.

However, Hong Kong is currently adopting the cinema alliance model, and Chen Rongmei is also a member of the cinema alliance.

Therefore, there is no way to talk about breaking away from Golden Princess, and there is no need to set up our own cinema chain.

Since Mai Jia and Shek Tim hold shares in Cinema City, Wong Jing has to share a share of the money from overseas distribution of the films he made at Cinema City.

Wong Jing was unhappy, and besides, these two guys were now busy with one speculating in stocks and the other in real estate, and they were no longer interested in the movie.

When he asked them about how to fight against Yang Ye, they didn't take it seriously, so Huang Jing didn't want to play with them anymore.

Wong Jing thought, as the boss of the company, you, Mai Jia, still went out to film "The Lucky Stars", so I might as well go out and have some fun.

So he asked Chen Rongmei to open another company and put "Eight Stars Reporting Joy" under that company and no longer go with Cinema City.

You guys always take advantage of me!
Other companies also focus on comedies, Golden Harvest's is "One Wife, Two Husbands".

Their movie "One Husband, Two Wives" sold over 20 million last year, and today they are hyping it up again.

Debao is the sequel to last year's "The Rich and the Powerful", "The Rich and the Powerful".

Wang Jing of Yongsheng also made a movie called "The Romantic Comedy".

It's all a comedy!

It’s the Spring Festival, so it’s normal to have fun.

Everyone is asking what kind of movie Yangji is planning to release during this Spring Festival.

As we all know, in the second half of last year, Yangji’s big-name stars all had movies released.

The people at Yangji are very slow in producing films, partly because they were banned and there are not that many films to make.

On the one hand, the overseas market has been well developed, and in order to maintain their reputation, they are more willing to take their time and do a good job.

So, theoretically speaking, Yangji has no more films to show.

Even his female action stars, Kara Hui and Moon Lee, had movies released in the second half of last year.

……

Golden Harvest!

Ho Kuan Chang said, "Yang Kee's promotional posters have already been released. Their Spring Festival movie is called "God of Gamblers", starring Stephen Chow and Rosamund Kwan."

Zou Wenhuai said: "Zhou Xingchi, I remember he is a TV star, right?"

Ho Kuan Chang said, "Yes, I heard that Yang Ye personally supported him this time and even asked Rosamund Kwan to play with him. It seems that Yang Ye is creating a star again."

Zou Wenhuai was silent for a moment, then said, "Now all the most popular stars in Hong Kong movies are in Yang's. Even Sanmao has been called back by Yang Ye. Ah Chang, I think... we should change the way we play."

He Guanchang was stunned for a long while before he said, "You mean...giving up the Taiwan market?" (End of this chapter)