Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 502: The Smoke of Spring Festival
"Interstellar" earned 13.4 billion yuan, "Let the Bullets Fly" earned 6.3 million yuan, "If You Are the One 2" earned 3.82 million yuan, and "The Orphan of Zhao" earned 24.5 million yuan. The total box office of these four movies combined is as high as billion yuan.

Add to that some other movies released during the Lunar New Year period, their influence and box office may not be as great as the above four, but the box office of these movies combined is over 100 million.

In other words, the total box office revenue generated by the 2010 Lunar New Year holiday season was nearly 26 billion.

If this had been put ten years ago, it would have been higher than the annual box office for the whole year. Even if it had been put last year, it would have accounted for one-third of the annual box office. But now it is only the box office for a period of time.

Although this is related to the rapid expansion of the domestic film market, the fact that the Lunar New Year period can contribute so much box office revenue will inevitably overdraw some subsequent box office potential, and the 2011 Spring Festival period is the first to bear the brunt.

Apart from Liu Zhou, other senior executives of Golden Harvest did not expect that this Lunar New Year period would be so crazy, but this also made them even more grateful for the decision not to schedule blockbusters to be released during the Spring Festival.

In fact, not only the outside media and netizens, but even the entire Golden Harvest team did not expect that "Interstellar" could break the box office record of 13.2 billion set by "Avatar".

In their view, the biggest success would be for a movie to gross over 1 billion at the box office.

Now, not only has "Interstellar" achieved this goal, but Jiang Wen's "Let the Bullets Fly" has also been a box office hit, earning more than 600 million yuan, which has directly expanded this year's Lunar New Year box office.

But no matter what, it doesn’t have much impact on Golden Harvest.

Moreover, there is only one film, "Modern Times" by Xu Zheng, released during the Spring Festival, so Golden Harvest can rarely be so busy.

Golden Harvest had an extremely brilliant year in 2010, winning the box office championship from the Spring Festival period to the May Day period, the summer vacation period, the National Day period and finally the Lunar New Year period that just passed.

There are one or two blockbuster movies released in every period. In 2010, Golden Harvest alone accounted for almost half of the mainland's annual box office.

This is an unprecedented achievement for a company.

But behind this glory is the hard work of everyone in Jiahe Jiahe almost all year round.

This is how film and television companies are. They are busier during holidays and may be less busy during weekdays.

Although the salary offered by Jiahe is not low, people are not machines after all, and they still need a break after a busy year.

Therefore, the Spring Festival period also allows most of the company's employees to go home and celebrate the New Year.

Apart from that, Golden Harvest was glorious in 2010, but it was too glorious. If your company alone can match the sum of all other film and television companies, it will definitely arouse everyone's envy and even become the target of public criticism.

Your Jiahe is indeed very strong, but you can't eat all the cakes. If you really don't care and don't need anyone to collude with you, everyone will unite to deal with you.

Therefore, Golden Harvest needs to be more low-key during this Spring Festival.

The scheduling of Modern Years into this period not only satisfied Xu Zheng, but also the company’s employees and peers.

But we are not fools. Golden Harvest is aware that this year's Spring Festival period may not be so prosperous, and some other companies can see the same thing.

Therefore, most film companies have not arranged blockbusters for the Spring Festival.

This also resulted in the 2011 Spring Festival period being the quietest in recent years.

There is only one blockbuster, and that is the action blockbuster "New Shaolin Temple" produced by China Film, Bona, Huayi, Shaolin Temple Culture Media, Yu'nan, and Yinghuang.

This blockbuster, starring Jackie Chan and Andy Lau and gathering many stars from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, has become the most anticipated blockbuster during the Spring Festival.

Originally, this movie was planned to be released during the Lunar New Year holiday, but the competition during the holiday was too fierce. Apart from the box office bomb "Interstellar", none of the works by the other three big directors seemed to be easy to deal with.

Although "New Shaolin Temple" has a strong star lineup, the past decade has proved that the appeal of superstars is not as strong as that of some big directors.

Moreover, several producers of this film were also important producers of those four films, so after discussion, they decided to avoid the fierce competition of the Lunar New Year period and release the film during the Spring Festival period.

In addition to "New Shaolin Temple" and "Modern Times", there is also a regular in the Spring Festival period, "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Best in the Year of the Rabbit", which is the third animated film in the "Pleasant Goat" series.

The performance of this series of animations can be said to be very good. The first one did not break 100 million but it was over 60 million, and the second one directly broke 100 million.

If Liu Zhou remembers correctly, except for the first film which did not break 100 million yuan, the box office of subsequent "Pleasant Goat" series films have all exceeded 100 million yuan, and the number is getting higher and higher.

The "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" series and the "Boonie Bears" series have become regular players in the Spring Festival period every year. The basic market is very stable, and occasionally one or two movies can even earn over 1 billion at the box office.

The production companies behind them have made a fortune from these two series. The cost of these animated films is not tens of millions like "Ne Zha" and "The Return of the Great Sage".

The cost of producing them may be only 10 or 20 million, so they are making money almost every year.

In addition to "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Best in the Year of the Rabbit", there is another animated film during the Spring Festival, "Old Master Q" produced by Hong Kong Yongshengxing, which is adapted from a Hong Kong comic.

The style is similar to Hong Kong movies, with action, comedy, and a strong sense of failure.

There is also a movie version of "Wulin Waijia". This phenomenal TV series can be regarded as a model of full copyright operation. Before the movie version came out, the game, web game, comics and various peripheral licenses were all sold.

With the success of the movie adapted from the well-known cartoon, the producers of "Wulin Waijia" will obviously not miss out on the revenue from the movie version.

I heard that the cost of the movie version of "Wulin Waijia" was less than 20 million yuan and the shooting time was less than a month, but considering the influence of this IP, the box office will not be too bad, and it is very likely to exceed 100 million yuan.

Finally, there are two Hong Kong films with good casts. One is "I Know Women's Heart" starring Andy Lau and Gong Li, and the other is a costume comedy "Magic Couple" starring Koo Tim-lok and Sandra Ng.

Although the casts of these two films are good, it is obviously impossible for them to get good box office results. Currently, the only type of Hong Kong films that still have a market in mainland China are police and gangster films.

Later on, we saw that the only Hong Kong movies seemed to be police and gangster movies. In fact, it was not that no one was making other types of movies, but that only police and gangster movies could generate good box office sales in the mainland.

Hong Kong police and gangster films do have a certain audience in the mainland. The mainland cannot produce films of this flavor, and if the story is set in Hong Kong, the censorship standards will be more relaxed.

In mainland China, police are not allowed to be villains.

……

February 3rd, the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, Golden Harvest International Luxury Cinemas.

Golden Harvest Group held a premiere ceremony for Modern Times, and Liu Zhou also took time to attend the event. Not only Liu Zhou, but also Wang Zhongjun, Yu Dong, Wang Changtian, Song Ge, Li Ming, and other CEOs of major film and television companies also came at the invitation of Golden Harvest.

The circle is so small. These people also attended the celebration party of "Interstellar" two days ago, and now several of them appeared in the same event again.

However, it is only Golden Harvest that has the face, otherwise it would not be able to get so many big names to attend the premiere of a medium-budget movie together.

Xu Zheng was very satisfied with this. He felt that Jiahe Group attached great importance to him. As the protagonist of today, he had a smile on his face all the time.

Liu Zhou and Xu Zheng chatted briefly and then found their seats and sat down.

"Haha, Mr. Liu, you've been making a lot of big moves recently. Interstellar has just been released, and I heard that you're going to adapt Ghost Blows Out the Light again?" Wang Changtian asked with a smile.

Obviously he didn't take "Modern Times" very seriously. When he saw Liu Zhouyi sitting down, he asked questions unrelated to the movie.

"Mr. Wang is well-informed and has indeed been preparing." Liu Zhou did not hide it.

As early as two years ago, Golden Harvest had been thinking about adapting "Ghost Blows Out the Light" into a movie, but due to the censorship reasons at the time and the fact that Golden Harvest had no shortage of projects, it has been in preparation.

Now Liu Zhou feels that the time is ripe in all aspects, and he also asked Zhang Zhao to formally launch the project of "Ghost Blows Out the Light", which will also be a key project next year.

"This film is not easy to make. Are you sure it can pass the censorship?"

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"As long as everything can be explained and there are no ghost stories or anything, it should be no problem to pass the review."

Everyone was chatting casually and was in a good mood during the New Year.

Huayi and Guangxian have been relatively stable since their listing, while Wanda Pictures seems to have not made any moves after acquiring MGM. However, everyone knows that they are accumulating strength this year, and next year will be the time for them to show their prowess.

Pony.com is preparing for its IPO, and Big Dog is in a good mood.

Perhaps the only one who is in a bad mood is Yu Dong, and netizens are still scolding him.

But he couldn't express it in public. Cracking down on piracy was a good thing for them. All major companies in the industry were involved, and he was the one who took the initiative to take the lead.

Soon, the main creators of the crew walked in from the red carpet outside. Wang Zhongjun actually lowered himself and took the initiative to greet them and started chatting with Xu Zheng.

Looking at Wang Zhongjun who was chatting with Xu Zheng over there, Wang Changtian couldn't help but say:
"Boss Liu, it seems that Wang Zhongjun thinks highly of Xu Zheng. I heard that they met privately a few days ago."

"Mr. Wang values ​​talents, don't you, Mr. Wang, too?" Liu Zhou said with a smile.

Seeing that he looked nonchalant from beginning to end, Wang Changtian was confused. Could it be that he really didn't care about Xu Zheng, or was he so confident in himself that he was sure that Xu Zheng would not leave?
Wang Changtian shook his head secretly, and could only attribute it to Golden Harvest's own confidence. Now Golden Harvest has four great directors, Liu Zhou, Zhang Yimou, Xu Ke and Ning Hao. As for emerging directors like Xu Zheng, Jiahe is not afraid of them leaving.

However, Golden Harvest doesn't care much about it. But other film companies are different. They are very eager for directors like Xu Zheng who have achieved success.

Now is not like the future, when many people cross over to become directors, and the movies they make do pretty well at the box office.

But even at that time, directors who could achieve results would be wooed or even snatched away by major film and television companies, let alone now.

Directors who can make movies that do well at the box office are even more scarce nowadays. Although Xu Zheng has only made one movie, "Lost on Journey", its box office has exceeded 100 million yuan.

Although the value of the title "billion-yuan club" has been reduced a lot, it is still a very high threshold and the goal that many directors in the industry strive for.

Therefore, Xu Zheng was still wooed by many companies. I wonder if Wang Zhongjun was stimulated by the rise in Huayi’s stock price due to "If You Are the One 2" and he actually wooed Xu Zheng so blatantly.

Liu Zhou was really not worried about this. If Xu Zheng was in a clear mind, he would not have agreed to join Huayi under Wang Zhongjun's request.

Even if Xu Zheng was really lured over by Huayi, he would not be worried. Xu Zheng, who had not yet been hailed as a god by "Lost in Thailand", was not that valuable.

Anyway, the copyright of the "Lost" series is now completely in the hands of Golden Harvest, and there is no dispute. If Xu Zheng wants to make a sequel to "Lost on Journey", he can only turn to Golden Harvest.

If he dared to shoot the film without permission, Golden Harvest was not Huaqi and could sue him until he went bankrupt. Even if he made the film, Golden Harvest could prevent it from being released.

Soon the premiere began. Xu Zheng, the director and leading actor, seemed full of confidence and shouted the slogan of a box office of 300 million!

Then the movie opened, and the plot remained unchanged. The "father-daughter pairing" of Xu Zheng and Zhang Zifeng was the main line, but the daughter was two years younger than originally.

Almost all the laughter occurs in the conflict and communication between the two people. In this setting, the gap between the two people in age, personality, outlook on life, etc. makes it easy to create dramatic conflict.

More importantly, a daughter is the reason and meaning for the male protagonist to rebuild his real life and inner world.

Just like in Andy Lau's 100th film "Ah Hu", the confused Andy Lau decided to have another good fight after knowing that he had a daughter. In "Modern Times", the third-rate con man played by Xu Zheng decided to perform a magic trick seriously for his daughter.

There are a lot of laughs and gags. Basically everything that should be there is there, and everything that should be said is said. Generally speaking, it is a process from laughing to crying, and ends in a perfect ending.

But it's not that amazing, it's just an okay comedy.

Some viewers who came to see this movie with the expectation of watching "Lost on Journey" may be disappointed.

"Modern Times" is obviously quite different from "Lost on Journey", the latter of which makes people laugh almost from beginning to end.

However, Xu Zheng did not seem to think so. He seemed very satisfied with "Modern Times". After the screening, he came over with great anticipation and wanted Liu Zhou to give him a brief comment.

Seeing Xu Zheng's excitement and anticipation, Liu Zhou certainly didn't want to pour cold water on him. He complimented him a few words and left.

Xu Zheng didn't feel that Liu Zhou was just being perfunctory. Liu Zhou now had a huge halo. After all, "Interstellar" had just been released two days ago.

Therefore, Xu Zheng was very happy about Liu Zhou's affirmation, and he was more confident about the box office of "Modern Times".

Liu Zhou certainly had no idea about Xu Zheng's feelings, and he didn't take the movie "Modern Times" seriously at all.

This year, like most of the employees of Golden Harvest, he was finally able to have a good Spring Festival.

(End of this chapter)