Hong Kong Entertainment: The King of Kung Fu

It is quite bizarre that a low-budget movie like "Spicy Love" would attract the personal attention of an entertainment mogul like Yang Ye.

They wanted to invite Yang Ye to make a guest appearance, and Yang Ye actually agreed, which was even more bizarre.

Even if this kind of movie can make money, it would only be a few million at most. For Yang Ye, it is nothing.

In fact, for Yang Ye, he doesn’t care about money at all.

Having reached Yang Ye’s level, he is only interested in the things that interested him when he was a child. In short... it is to fulfill his dreams!
This is why he collects female celebrities. I liked them and fantasized about them when I was a kid. Now that I have this opportunity, I want them all...

Outsiders could not understand this reason. For Zhang Yibai and his five brothers, they just felt that Yang Ye was very respectful to them, approachable, and without airs.

When talking about movies, Yang Ye's casual remarks often hit the nail on the head and enlightened them.

So he respected, honored, admired and worshipped Yang Ye more and more.

Among China's sixth generation directors, Zhang Yibai is a little different from the others.

He doesn't have that much to express, he prefers to make commercial films.

He hopes to be a purely professional director and that the films he makes will earn good box office revenue.

He has made several art films, including "Curiosity Kills the Cat", "Shanghai at Night" and "Secret Shore", with a strong cast and a lot of stars, but all of them failed at the box office.

Later he stopped filming, he was obsessed with commercialism and stuck to the theme of youth films.

Although his ability is average and the films he makes don't receive high ratings, he rarely makes investors lose money and makes money almost every time.

In fact, for investors and commercial films, such directors are the best investment targets.

His movie version of "Love is Not Blind" was badly criticized by the audience, who said it was a rehash and a sell-out of sentimentality, but they still bought tickets to see it.

As a result, this movie, which cost 20 million yuan, actually grossed 200 million yuan at the box office.

Later, "So Young" sold more than 500 million yuan, and "Passing by Your World" sold more than 800 million yuan, both making it into the top ten domestic films of the year.

He is also a very good producer. Xu Jinglei's "Go Lala's Job" is the first domestic film directed by a female to exceed 100 million yuan in box office revenue.

From financing, production to publicity and promotion, Zhang Yibai takes care of everything.

Yang Ye is not very interested in the sixth generation directors such as Lou Ye and Jia Zhangke.

Because Baiyang Pictures treats film as an industry and focuses on commercial films.

The purpose of supporting people like Ann Hui to make art films is just to allow the actors to hone their acting skills, and it would be best if they could win a couple of awards to increase their commercial value.

I don't really care about the little profit from the movie itself.

The sixth generation of domestic directors generally pay more attention to expression, and film is just their tool.

They often have no requirements for the film's composition, pictures, performances, etc.

For example, in Jia Zhangke’s movies, the heroine is always his wife.

His wife's acting is terrible. She has been acting for decades but there has been no improvement, but he doesn't care.

Even if Yang Ye asked his own actors to film these people's movies, it would not improve the quality and would be useless.

For Yang Ye, he pays more attention to the film itself. He hopes that the plot, pictures, composition, art, performance, music, sound effects... of a film are all perfect.

I don’t care too much about using movies to express social concepts or profound thoughts.

Because he is essentially just an ordinary person, without any unique, systematic ideological theories.

Even if we borrow things from Shenwei, it would just be copying what our predecessors had done, which is meaningless.

……

Yang Ye was not at all arrogant and chatted very harmoniously with the five brothers.

After accepting their scripts, he invited them to dinner at Maxim's.

These people have not made it yet, so naturally they don't have much money. It is a luxury for them to go to Lao Mo's for a meal of Western food. This is their first time to eat French food at Maxim's restaurant.

A formal French meal takes several hours, and more time is spent chatting than eating.

Naturally, they started talking about the TV series "Love to the End" that Zhang Yibai was planning to shoot.

In the original time and space, this drama was invested by a wealthy man named Pan Shunbao in order to promote his girlfriend Xie Yuxin.

Xie Yuxin played the third female role Xiao Ai in the film. Although she was not the heroine, her character was very good and she was very popular.

What’s weird is that Pan Shunbao is a fugitive whose original name is Shen Junlin.

Shen Junlin was imprisoned for fraud, but later took the opportunity of seeing a doctor to escape.

He went to the south, made a fake ID card, changed his name to Pan Shunbao, and made a fortune again by smuggling and reselling.

I don't know what this guy was thinking. He actually stood on the stage so brazenly, opened a film and television company, played with female stars, and bribed people. He was caught again.

Now that Yang Ye has intercepted the show, this TV series has become less of a topic of conversation after dinner.

Yang Ye asked the five brothers if they had any ideas about the actors in this TV series?
If possible, everyone would like to use big-name actors, so Zhang Yibai expressed on the spot that he hoped to invite actors from Yangji to perform.

Yang Ye thought to himself, you have some good sense.

"Love Is War" is a popular TV series, but Yang Ye feels a little uncomfortable with Li Yapeng, and it's not just because of Wang Fei and Zhou Xun.

CCTV later produced two TV series, "Swordsman" and "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", both starring Li Yapeng. Yang Ye liked these two TV series very much, but did not like Li Yapeng's Linghu Chong and Guo Jing very much, thinking that they were failures.

In short, Yang Ye doesn't like Li Yapeng.

Now that Yang Ye is in control of the project, he naturally has to do what he wants, so he plans to replace this guy secretly.

Yang Ye thought about not letting Zhou Jie and Li Binbin go on the show, but then she remembered that they still had to film "My Fair Princess" in a few months, and Zhou Jie would not have the schedule.

So he said, "How about using an actor from Hong Kong or Taiwan as the male lead? This way, it will be easier for our drama to be broadcast on Star TV and overseas."

Zhang Yibai originally didn't have many options, but when he heard that the show could be broadcast overseas, he was overjoyed and said, "Of course that's great."

Yang Ye said: "How about Sun Yaowei? Although he is from Hong Kong, he speaks Mandarin very well, so it is convenient for you to communicate."

He is one of the members of "F4" launched by Sun Yaowei and Yang Ye, and has been doing well in recent years.

He sings very well, his albums have sold very well, he has also acted in many TV series, and he is also very popular in mainland China.

Of course, it was a blessing for the five brothers to find such a big star to join them.

Moreover, the TV series "Love Is War" was originally created by imitating the idol dramas in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Eric Suen made his debut with Meteor Garden and can be considered the pioneer of idol dramas. It really couldn’t be better.

The five brothers agreed together!
Yang Ye originally wanted to let Li Binbin play the female lead, because the male and female leads couldn't both be from Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Since the male lead is played by Eric Suen, the female lead is naturally his goddaughter Li Binbin.

As he was about to say something, he glanced at Xu Jinglei beside him and thought, never mind, let's stick with her. We can't stray too far away, at least leave some memories.

So he said, "This Miss Xu is from the Beijing Film Academy, right? I think she's a good fit."

Xu Jinglei seemed to be eating quietly, but she pricked up her ears to listen. When she heard Yang Ye calling out her name, she couldn't help but feel ecstatic.

This girl has a wide range of friends and contacts. She knew that Yang Ye had met a lot of people from the Beijing entertainment circle recently, so she followed him when she got the chance.

She particularly likes talented men, and naturally admires Yang Ye very much.

However, she maintained her own noble character. Although she was eager to see Yang Ye, she would not rush to get close to him after meeting him.

She hoped to attract Yang Ye's attention with her temperament, talent and other things.

Unfortunately, the two sides met for most of the day, and Yang Ye kept chatting with the five brothers and didn't say a word to her, which made her quite disappointed.

She didn't even think about it. She just kept pretending to be calm and composed, so of course Yang Ye would fulfill her wish.

At this moment, she didn't know that if it weren't for Yang Ye's change of mind, she would have missed out on a hit TV series.

Being an actor is a profession that requires waiting for opportunities. You cannot become successful just by having good acting skills.

A hit TV series is something you can only encounter by chance.

Even if some people are beautiful and have good acting skills, they may never get a well-known work in their entire life.

If Zhao Ritian didn't have Xiaoyanzi, would she be as famous as Zhao Ritian? Most likely not.

Wen Hui in Love with You is also the work that made Xu Jinglei famous. Without this drama, she would not have become one of the four major actresses.

Xu Jinglei certainly knew the importance of opportunity. When Yang Ye called out her name, she could no longer remain calm.

She tried hard to control her excitement, picked up the wine glass, and said to Yang Ye softly: "Boss Yang, thank you for giving me the opportunity, I toast to you!"

Yang Ye smiled and clinked glasses with her.

Xu Jinglei tilted her head back and drank the red wine in the glass.

Yang Ye nodded and praised: "Looking at your quiet appearance, I didn't expect you to be so generous when drinking."

Xu Jinglei stuck out her tongue and said in a cute way: "Actually, I'm a little reluctant to drink it because this wine is too expensive!"

They were drinking 82 Lafite, which cost more than ten thousand yuan a bottle.

Yang Ye said casually: "If you like, I will give you a bottle when the time comes. I have quite a few."

Yang Ye said this casually. He thought Xu Jinglei would refuse, but unexpectedly she said generously: "Thank you!"

"Yes, you are a straightforward person. I hate those who are shy."

After the male and female protagonists were confirmed, everyone chatted for a while. Seeing that Yang Ye was so easy to talk to, Zhang Yibai went a step further and invited Yang Ye to write a song for the TV series.

Yang Ye said without hesitation: "Okay, but you have to wait two days. Writing a song is not something that can be done in a snap."

Of course there was no problem with that. The host and the guests finished the meal as quickly as possible and then said goodbye and left.

When they separated, Xu Jinglei took the initiative to ask: "Have you been in Beijing recently?"

"How many days do you have to stay?"

"Can I come over and play with you?"

"can!"

Yang Ye casually gave Xu Jinglei a phone number.

But I felt a little amused, thinking, is she going to cheat on Wang Shuo? (End of this chapter)