Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 503 Spring Festival Gala

February 4th, New Year’s Eve.

Although fireworks are banned in the capital, the New Year atmosphere is not as strong, but as the most important festival in China, it is still more lively and festive than usual.

This year, Liu Zhou's family still celebrated the New Year in Beijing. His parents and grandfather came to Beijing before the New Year's Eve.

This year's Spring Festival, there is obviously a lot more laughter and joy at home.

Because there is a new baby in the family this year.

In the south, especially in eastern Guangdong, people attach great importance to having a baby.

In areas like Chaoshan where this is most important, even if you are a billionaire, if you don't have a son, you won't be able to hold your head up.

Although it is a new society and a new century, such customs are difficult to change.

Although this was not the case in Liu Zhou's family, because his line had been a single-line inheritance for three generations, and in the fourth generation there were finally two brothers, his grandfather and father's smiles became brighter.

It can be seen that they also hope that Liu Zhou can expand and spread out.

On New Year's Eve, Grandpa and Dad were teasing Liu Zhou's two children, while Zeng Li and Mom were busy preparing the New Year's Eve dinner.

Although Liu Zhou wanted to have a good rest, as the boss of two listed companies, it was impossible for him to stay at home all the time. He just didn't have to be so busy, and there were still some things that he needed to handle personally.

Even on New Year's Eve it was the same, but fortunately there wasn't much to do and I was back around four in the afternoon.

When he got home, it was almost time for the New Year's Eve dinner.

Liu Zhou particularly enjoys this moment every time, as his family is reunited and happy. This is also his definition of happiness.

After dinner, as there were no card-playing partners and my parents were too lazy to go out, we stayed at home and watched the Spring Festival Gala together.

The current Spring Festival Gala is still not declining and there are still a lot of people watching it.

There are three chief directors for this year's Spring Festival Gala, one of whom is Ma Dong, who is familiar to many people in later generations.

He is the son of the famous crosstalk performer Ma Ji. He is also a well-known host and TV producer. The ratings of his programs are quite good.

Later, he also served as the Chief Content Officer of iQiyi, and created popular online variety shows such as "The Rap of China" and "Summer of the Band".

It is worth mentioning that Liu Zhou had been poached twice. Once was when Golden Harvest Group established a variety show department and wanted to recruit him to serve as the deputy general manager of Golden Harvest production.

Another time was at the beginning of last year, when Sina Video launched a new variety show channel and wanted to recruit him to be the director of the channel.

But at this time Ma Dong was very comfortable at CCTV and was highly valued by CCTV, so he had no intention of leaving CCTV and politely declined the successive invitations from Golden Harvest and Sina.

Everyone has their own aspirations, and Liu Zhou did not force him. It was impossible for him to visit Zhuge Liang three times, even though he was not the one who personally invited him the first two times.

However, it must be said that this year's Spring Festival Gala was quite popular under the operation of Ma Dong and other three directors. Since November, major news about this year's Spring Festival Gala has been published by the media one after another.

Not to mention language programs, although they are the biggest attraction of the Spring Festival Gala, there is generally no discussion about them before the Spring Festival Gala.

The most popular programs are singing and dancing. The most popular ones are the first combination of Wang Fei and Eason Chen and Xiao Zhou bringing sister Zhiling to the Spring Festival Gala.

Especially the latter, some entertainment media dug up a lot of inside information.

It is said that Sister Zhiling went on the Spring Festival Gala, ostensibly as a dancer, but in fact, there was a local Taiwanese boss who wanted Xiao Zhou to help her.

This should not be groundless. In recent years, Sister Zhiling's resources have been extremely good, not inferior to the four major actresses. This period is also the time when she was the most popular.

Especially her unique voice and proud figure made her become the goddess of domestic otakus.

So the Spring Festival Gala program team saw that Sister Zhiling was quite popular and it would be pleasing to the eye to see her dancing on stage, so they did not refuse her from performing on the Spring Festival Gala.

In addition, there is Han Geng, who returned as a solo member from a South Korean boy group. These years have been his most popular period.

Han Geng can be said to be the earliest traffic idol in mainland China. His appearance on Happy Camp was like going home for dinner, but unexpectedly, he later broke up with Shonan TV.

After the breakup with Shonan TV, Han Geng began to fade away rapidly. People knew him again after the unexpected hit of "Ex-Files 3".

From this we can also see that although traffic idols are very popular, their status in the circle is actually not high. Even in the era of traffic, most traffic stars are almost tools for capital to make money and reap profits.

Han Geng's popularity at that time was no less than the following four top stars, but he offended Shonan TV, so it was still difficult for him to survive.

Of course, this is also related to the weak strength of the agency behind Han Geng. Shonan TV certainly cannot dominate the entertainment industry, but the agency is not only unable to cope with Shonan TV, but also unable to provide Han Geng with high-quality resources.

Just like this year's Spring Festival Gala, Han Geng, the popular idol, could only come to open the show because the team and agency behind him are not strong enough.

If he had signed with Golden Harvest, even if he couldn't get a solo, he could still have a duet program, instead of having to open the show with multiple singers and dancers.

At eight o'clock in the evening, the Spring Festival Gala began on time.

Liu Zhou had originally watched the film with some expectations, but was still somewhat disappointed after watching it.

Feng Gong's daily performance was quite normal, Chairman Jiang's group crosstalk made Liu Zhou's grandfather expressionless, and the other sketches were even a little awkward.

Even Zhao Benshan's sketch "You, My Deskmate" is much worse in quality than in previous years.

It can be seen that from this time on, the quality of the Spring Festival Gala programs plummeted.

Or rather, with the rise of the Internet, people's horizons have been broadened, and the degree of surprise in many programs has been greatly reduced.

Especially in language programs, they would just tell some old jokes and everyone would laugh along.

But nowadays, many young audiences who surf the Internet extensively are exposed to all kinds of jokes and memes online, and it is difficult for them to be amused by some outdated or ordinary gags.

Many people later complained online that previous Spring Festival Galas created new memes, while current ones just bring old memes from the Internet to the Spring Festival Gala stage.

But it is undeniable that in later generations, it has become very difficult to create some new jokes, and people's sense of humor has increased significantly.

When short videos became popular, comedy shows emerged in an endless stream, and joke tellers competed fiercely, the Spring Festival Gala became completely useless.

To put it bluntly, even if Zhao Benshan returned to the screen at that time, he might have been able to stand out with his profound comedy acting skills, but the quality of the script would have been difficult to satisfy many audiences.

Although the language programs were somewhat disappointing, this year's song and dance programs were still quite a highlight.

The first is Jay Chou's "Lanting Preface", this excellent ancient style song is matched with Sister Zhiling who is at the peak of her beauty, the stage effect is full. In addition, Wang Fei and Eason Chen's collaboration "Because of Love" is also very good. The latter song directly became a hit and became one of the Spring Festival Gala's golden songs.

However, although the show "Because of Love" was very popular and widely reported by the media, it was a live performance and Wang Fei's singing was off-tune and his breathing was disordered, which caused some controversy.

Some professional musicians pointed out that the female part of this song is indeed much more difficult to sing than the male part, especially for a voice like Wang Fei's. If the tone is not lowered and suppressed, the voice will easily float.

But some people argued that although this song is difficult to sing, it should not be sung like this by Wang Fei, considering that she is famous for her voice.

Liu Zhou felt that Wang Fei might have been nervous about the live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala, but the main reason was that her singing skills had declined.

As she gets older, coupled with bad habits such as smoking, drinking, staying up late, and not paying attention to protecting her voice, her singing skills have declined significantly compared to her peak period.

This kind of situation has happened to her before in her concerts or some public events, but the influence may not be as great as the Spring Festival Gala, and coupled with the tolerance of her fans, there is not much controversy.

But this time it was a off-tune performance during the Spring Festival Gala, and the impact it caused was not so easy to eliminate. For this reason, Wang Fei also made a special apology on Weibo.

But Wang Fei was not the worst sufferer. The worst sufferer was the Rain God Xiao Jingteng.

He happened to have a bad cold at the time and his throat was in poor condition, but he insisted on singing live, resulting in a terrible performance.

To be honest, there were quite a few performances that failed miserably during the Spring Festival Gala, but Rain God’s performance was definitely among the best.

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So this leads to a controversial topic later, which is whether the Spring Festival Gala should have live singing.

Later, the Spring Festival Gala program team may have been afraid of being held responsible for any accidents, and also expressed their attitude. Almost all the song and dance programs of the Spring Festival Gala were lip-synced to ensure that the gala was foolproof.

Of course, this may also be due to the fact that many actors and young actors will come to sing in the following Spring Festival Galas, and those who know their singing skills will understand.

The issue of lip-syncing during the Spring Festival Gala has been hotly debated in the music industry. Some people even take sides. For example, Cui Jian publicly criticized lip-syncing, and because of this he had conflicts with a number of singers including Queen Na.

But no matter how many noisy aspects of this year's Spring Festival Gala there were, it could not prevent related news from dominating the headlines again the next day.

The current Spring Festival Gala is still a grand event that attracts attention from people across the country, but it will take a few years for its influence to decline significantly.

However, although the news about the Spring Festival Gala is overwhelming, some entertainment news also occupies some space, especially the Spring Festival movie schedule which is gaining more and more influence.

Although this year's Spring Festival movie schedule is not as lively as last year, it also has the blockbuster "New Shaolin Temple" starring Jackie Chan and Andy Lau, who are both veteran superstars.

However, despite the big hype, the box office performance of this movie was not very impressive.

The box office revenue barely exceeded 5 million in the first five days of the week. The result looks good, but it obviously still fell short of everyone's expectations.

You should know that this movie gathers many stars from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, and is jointly distributed by China Film, Huayi and Bona Film Group, and is released during the Spring Festival period.

The box office revenue only reached 100 million in five days, averaging 20 million per day. What made them even more upset was that the box office revenue on the fifth day was just over 10 million, and the box office revenue was declining.

Apart from the small movie "New Shaolin Temple", the best performing movie was "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The Best in the Year of the Rabbit", which raked in a total of 67 million in the first five days of the Spring Festival, and breaking the 100 million mark is not a problem.

This made some senior executives of film and television companies very jealous, including the Xiang family of Yongsheng.

Because the box office of their animated film "Old Master Q" on the first day was less than 50, they allowed the film to remain in theaters for three days for Xiang Huaqiang's sake. The box office exceeded one million, and then it was directly cut by the theater chain.

The movie version of "Wulin Waijia" earned 1600 million on the first day, and million in five days. Due to the quality issues of the film, it lacked stamina, but there is no problem that the box office will exceed million in the end.

Then came the costume comedy "Magic Couple" starring Louis Koo and Sandra Ng, which only earned 25 million in box office in five days. It was a typical Hong Kong comedy and was criticized as trash.

This type of film still had some market in the past two years, but now not many people watch it. However, for Hong Kong's film and television companies, they make such films to make money, just for the first week's box office.

As long as you can make 20 or 30 million, you can make some money. With some other channels, it is easy to make several million from a movie.

So even though the media and netizens are scolding them, they are happily counting money in secret.

"I Know Women's Heart", starring two popular superstars Andy Lau and Gong Li, also performed poorly, earning only 30 million yuan in box office in five days, which is only slightly higher than "Magic Couple".

And the last one, "Modern Times", attracted a lot of attention because of a slightly grand premiere.

But as Liu Zhou expected, this movie not only had a bad reputation, but also had a bad box office.

After the movie premiere, some media published some negative reports.

"The style of Modern Times is similar to that of previous comedy films, with similar embarrassing plots, but the whole film is completely lacking in originality!"

"All sorts of familiar plots are mixed into a lame story that makes absolutely no sense."

"Nearly half of the reviews were negative. Many viewers are extremely disappointed with Xu Zheng!"

……

If Golden Harvest had not suppressed the negative news, there might have been even worse consequences.

This is also a bad point about holding a movie premiere. If the quality of the movie is not good, it will easily be exposed by the media, unless the distribution company behind you is strong.

However, even with the support of Golden Harvest, the quality of the film is there and the results are not very good.

Twelve million on the first day is not bad for a medium-budget comedy movie. In the past, movies that made over 10 million on the first day were all blockbusters.

In fact, Jiahe was somewhat satisfied with this, but Xu Zheng was very dissatisfied.

During the premiere, he had shouted out the slogan of a 300 million box office. But with the result on the first day, it would be difficult to even break 100 million, let alone 300 million.

This undoubtedly poured cold water on the ambitious Xu Zheng.

I had originally thought that if Modern Times was a big hit at the box office, I could then sell it at a higher price, and even when facing Golden Harvest, I would be able to speak louder.

It seems that now, not only will you speak louder, you will be more likely to be controlled by others.

Xu Zheng still held out a glimmer of hope, wondering whether the subsequent box office would start low and end high, but he was obviously thinking too much.

"Modern Times" only earned 42 million yuan in box office revenue after five days of release, ranking fourth among all the movies released during the Spring Festival.

Moreover, after its large-scale release, word of mouth spread thoroughly, and at this time, Golden Harvest could no longer spend resources to control reviews.

This also completely dispelled Xu Zheng's last bit of hope.

(End of this chapter)