Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 507 Planning for the Next Year
According to Golden Harvest's plan, this year may not be as brilliant as last year, but it should not be bad either.

"Aftershock", "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate" and "The Flowers of War" were all directed by three major directors, Liu Zhou, Xu Ke and Zhang Yimou, so the box office performance was guaranteed to be good.

In the original time and space, "The Flowers of War" and "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate" were also released during the 2011 Lunar New Year holiday, and the entire Lunar New Year holiday was dominated by these two films, with other films not even daring to enter.

After all, the film not only stars Zhang Yimou, the director with the strongest box office appeal, but also the rising international superstar Christian Bale, who is the talk of the town.

The other director, Xu Ke, may be slightly inferior, but with the participation of domestic first-line superstars such as Jet Li, Zhou Gongzi, Chen Kun, and Li Yuchun, and the potential influence of "New Dragon Inn", it also has the potential influence of "New Dragon Inn".

More importantly, "Flying Daggers of Dragon Gate" is the first martial arts film shot and produced in China in 3D, and it is not just a cheap 3D conversion, so it is also quite a gimmick.

So after the two films were scheduled for the Lunar New Year holiday, other films didn't dare to compete at all.

Of course, part of the reason is that there are not enough movies of sufficient weight to compete. After all, like last year, after "Interstellar" was scheduled for the Lunar New Year holiday, there were also movies competing for the Lunar New Year holiday, but they gave up half a month.

But no matter what, there were only these two blockbusters competing in the Lunar New Year box office that year, and because the two films were released very close to each other, there was a sense of tit-for-tat.

The 2011 Lunar New Year movie season had a huge impact because the producers behind the two films, New Picture and Bona, created real fire. Strictly speaking, it was Zhang Weiping and Yu Dong who created real fire.

At the beginning, the two of them should have had a tacit understanding to promote together, but later Zhang Weiping, the big mouth, kept talking nonsense, and with Zhang Yimou's support, he was used to being arrogant and used some upper-level tricks.

At that time, Yu Dong was not bragging. Seeing that the other party did not take him seriously, he also fought back.

So at that time, the two sides fought a big battle, from online verbal battles, smear campaigns, and rumor-mongering to offline disputes over screening schedules and theaters.

But no matter what, the two sides completely ruined the reputation of the two films.

"The Flowers of War" and "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate" are also two excellent domestic blockbusters, so their results are also very good.

In the end, Zhang Yimou was slightly better. "The Flowers of War" raked in more than 600 million yuan at the box office, while "Flying Daggers of Dragon Gate" also raked in more than 500 million yuan, which was tens of millions less than the former.

Now, because of Liu Zhou, not only has the domestic film market become bigger, but the influence of Zhang Yimou and Xu Ke is also much stronger than in the original time and space.

Especially for Zhang Yimou, without the movie "Movies and TV Series" to affect his reputation, he would not have so many haters to criticize him, and with the bonus of the Olympics, if Liu Zhou had not just broken the box office record of "Avatar", Liu Zhou would have to temporarily avoid the spotlight in terms of box office appeal.

Therefore, Golden Harvest will be responsible for the distribution of these two films. Liu Zhou feels that "The Flowers of War" may even hit the 700 million box office, and "Flying Daggers of Dragon Gate" should have no problem breaking the 600 million box office.

These two movies should be able to match the performance of "Interstellar".

However, there are still relatively few blockbusters released by Golden Harvest this year. Apart from these two, there is only "Aftershock".

As for "Painted Skin 2", "Ghost Blows Out the Light: Mojin: The Legend" and Ning Hao's science fiction film, they will definitely not be released this year and should be considered next year's projects.

But "Aftershock" is an uncertain factor.

The outside world and the company are quite confident about "Aftershock", and many people see it as a billion-level movie.

Many media and self-media also stated that "Aftershock" could even break the box office record of "Interstellar" and hit a box office of 1.4 billion.

To be honest, Liu Zhou doesn't have much confidence in this. The reason why he thinks the box office of this movie is an uncertain factor is because he himself doesn't have much confidence.

It’s not that he thinks this movie will flop. With his influence having just set a record for film and television box office, the audience will pay special attention to his next movie.

In addition, Liu Zhou is confident in the special effects of the film. Even if the plot is not liked by the majority of the audience, the box office will not be too low. At least the minimum box office is guaranteed to be 500 million.

But for a blockbuster, especially for a blockbuster shot by Liu Zhou at this time, a box office of 500 million is not a flop, but it is also somewhat unsatisfactory and far from meeting the expectations of the outside world.

The original Feng Kuzi version of "Aftershock" earned 6.5 million yuan at the box office, which was an excellent result at the time.

However, Liu Zhou's version of "Aftershock" has the same name as Feng Kuzi's version, but the plot is completely different. It can be said that these are two completely different movies.

Therefore, Liu Zhou has no reference for this. This movie can be said to be a brand new movie that has never appeared in the original time and space, and it is also a movie that truly belongs to Liu Zhou.

Therefore, he doesn't know how much box office revenue this movie will earn.

But based on Liu Zhou's experience over the past decade, the overall quality of his "Aftershock" is absolutely fine.

If nothing unexpected happens, it should not be a problem for the movie's box office to exceed 1 billion, but it should be difficult to break the box office record of "Interstellar".

Even though the domestic film market seems to have entered the billion-dollar box office era, there are only two films at most, so it is still very difficult to break the billion-dollar box office.

Just look at the current movie box office rankings and you will know that Interstellar's 13.4 billion has dropped to second place with only over million, and the next ones with over million, million, million, or even over billion are all missing.

Therefore, it would be a huge success if a movie could break 1 billion. If you want to break the box office record of "Interstellar", you really need the right time, place and people.

In order to make "Interstellar" break the record of "Avatar", Liu Zhou and Han Shanping put in countless efforts and even used some means outside the rules.

This time, "Aftershock" will definitely not be able to use those methods, and without the investment of China Film, Han Shanping and China Film will definitely not put in any effort to help.

They have no obligation to help. Even if they lend a hand for Liu Zhou's sake, they would just do it out of convenience and not put in any effort like in "Interstellar".

Therefore, it is difficult for "Aftershock" to create a new box office record, unless the quality of this film is very attractive to the audience and then the box office is a huge hit.

However, the combined guaranteed box office of these three blockbusters this year should be able to generate 1.7 to 1.8 billion yuan. If Aftershock performs better, it could reach more than 2 billion yuan.

Although this is not as horrific as the 38 billion box office of several blockbusters last year, this result is undoubtedly excellent.

Together with the Hong Kong film "Cold War", this is the best series of Hong Kong films since "Infernal Affairs".

The first part of the original time and space has been somewhat buried. Perhaps because people are used to the fact that Hong Kong films can only have a box office of tens of millions, Bona didn’t spend much effort on promotion and marketing.

After the meeting, Liu Zhou felt it necessary to remind Chen Guofu to pay more attention to "Cold War", as the box office of the movie would surely not be just tens of millions by then.

There will definitely be no problem breaking 100 million, even breaking 200 million is not impossible.

With the success of Ip Man, Golden Harvest has become less contemptuous of Hong Kong films. This is especially true of Golden Harvest's general manager, Chen Guofu, who is Taiwanese and has a better understanding of Hong Kong films and has a stronger affection for them, so he will also pay enough attention to them.

Liu Zhou chose him to be the general manager of Golden Harvest Films with this in mind. Although Hong Kong films are becoming increasingly less popular, they will not disappear all of a sudden.

From time to time, one or two excellent Hong Kong films emerge, especially police and gangster films, which have a large number of regular audiences among mainland audiences.

If Hong Kong films want to be saved, it is definitely impossible to save them. However, Golden Harvest started out as a Hong Kong film company and was once a long-established film company in Hong Kong. Continuing to invest in Hong Kong films can be regarded as Golden Harvest fulfilling its responsibility to Hong Kong films.

"By the way, has the main cast of 'Mojin: The Lost Tomb' been finalized?" Liu Zhou couldn't help but ask.

"The male lead Hu Ba has been confirmed, Liu Ye has been temporarily confirmed, and the other two have not been confirmed yet."

"Okay, let's choose him. When I wrote this novel, the image of Hu Bayi was based on him."

Liu Zhou was telling the truth. He remembered that Tian Xia Ba Chang also portrayed the image of Hu Bayi based on Liu Ye. Liu Ye were both his good friends at the time, so he simply wrote the character based on his image.

When Liu Zhou promised Liu Ye that he would be the leading actor in a movie, he was thinking of this one, and even the entire "Ghost Blows Out the Light" series of movies was given to him.

When the original time and space was filming "Mojin: The Lost Tomb", Tian Xia Ba Chang actually strongly recommended Liu Ye, but he was not famous enough at the time and had never proven himself in the field of commercial films.

For a movie with an investment of more than 100 million yuan, the original author did not have much say. According to market conditions, the investor would definitely not choose Liu Ye, so they chose Chen Kun, the top middle-aged male actor in mainland China at that time.

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In this life, for various reasons, Liu Zhou and Liu Ye never had the chance to work together after graduating from university, and the timing for adapting "Ghost Blows Out the Light" was not ripe at that time, so it was delayed.

Later, Liu Ye joined Golden Harvest, and Liu Zhou fulfilled his original promise and prepared the movie "Interstellar" specifically for him.

Liu Ye's fame has skyrocketed after "Interstellar", and he also had the accumulation of "Moon" and "Chinese Partners" before. This time he can be said to be soaring to fame.

At this time, he could already compete with Qin Hao for the title of the number one male actor in mainland China. Whether in terms of fame, box office or awards, he was no longer inferior to Qin Hao.

Therefore, it is more than enough to let Liu Ye be the male lead of "Mojin: The Lost Tomb" now.

Seeing that Liu Zhou seemed to be somewhat concerned about the cast of "Mojin: The Lost Tomb", Chen Guofu couldn't help but say:
"Mr. Liu, you wrote this novel. Shirley Yang and Fatty Wang, do you have any suitable candidates in mind?"

Liu Zhou pondered for a while and said:

"Let Liu Yifei play the role of Shirley Yang, and Huang Bo can play Fatty Wang."

Liu Zhou has always felt that Liu Yifei is quite suitable for the role of Shirley Yang. Not only is she beautiful and famous enough, but most importantly, her fighting scenes are very good.

As for the role of Fatty Wang, Huang Bo played it very well in the original version, but perhaps the Fatty Wang played by Jiang Chao in the drama version is more popular.

But movies have to sell, and Liu Zhou can't possibly ask Jiang Chao, who doesn't have much box office appeal, to play one of the main characters.

"Okay Mr. Liu."

Chen Guofu immediately agreed to Liu Zhou's arrangement. He felt that these three people were quite suitable. Now that they were decided on, he wouldn't have to go through the headache of choosing.

But at this time Zeng Jia suddenly said:

"Mr. Liu, Huang Bo's agency contract with our company will expire next year, and he doesn't seem to have any plans to renew it."

Huang Bo signed with Golden Harvest in 2005 after he became a little famous for his role as Hei Pi in "Crazy Stone" with Ning Hao. The contract was for seven years and will expire next year in 2012.

Liu Zhou also understood Zeng Jia's meaning. Huang Bo will no longer be an artist under Golden Harvest next year, so there is no need to give him such good resources. Besides, there will be more than one film of "Ghost Blows Out the Light".

The film copyrights of the original time and space "Ghost Blows Out the Light" are relatively scattered, so after filming "Mojin: The Lost Tomb", there are no remaining theater movies, but there are quite a few online movies.

If Penguin hadn't collected the online copyright of "Ghost Blows Out the Light", we might not be able to watch that series of web dramas.

However, for Liu Zhou, he doesn’t care much about whether the actors in key projects are artists under Golden Harvest, but whether they are suitable.

Of course, if the situations are similar, he will definitely give priority to artists under Golden Harvest.

"Forget it, there's no need to be so petty. Huang Bo has been in our company for seven years, so we have some ties to each other anyway.

Let's give him the role of Fatty Wang. Just think of it as a gift from us to him. I wish him a bright future. "

Seeing Liu Zhou say this, Zeng Jia stopped talking. Although she felt it was not worth it and unnecessary, she would definitely not object if Liu Zhou made a decision.

"But the 'Ghost Blows Out the Light' movie is a series after all, and I am confident in this series of adapted movies. So Mr. Chen, you need to communicate well with Huang Bo and sign a contract with him for three films first." Liu Zhou continued.

The next six or seven years will be Huang Bo’s most glorious time. His title of billionaire movie star was accumulated over the past few years.

Huang Bo had no idea about leaving Liu Zhou, and he also knew that he couldn't keep him, so it would be better for them to establish a good relationship with each other. Besides, his fame would be a great positive factor for the movie.

However, "Ghost Blows Out the Light" is a series of movies after all. If the box office is good, at least eight films will be made. Other roles can be replaced, but the protagonists must not be replaced.

Otherwise, the audience will definitely curse and even boycott the movie because of the changed cast.

Liu Zhou has high hopes for "Ghost Blows Out the Light". It is not only a movie, but also an important theme project in the film and television park.

If you want this theme project to be popular, the movie must be successful, as the movie is the beginning of all other copyright operations.

Therefore, Liu Zhou must first lock down the main characters to ensure that no accidents occur.

He asked Chen Guofu to sign a three-film contract with Huang Bo first, not to take advantage of him, but to ensure that there would be no accidents in the first three films.

If the first three movies had been successful, Huang Bo would have become a billion-dollar movie star, and it would have been difficult for him to give up the "Ghost Blows Out the Light" series.

After all, this is the guarantee that can maintain his position as a top-tier actor, just like "Mission Impossible" to Tom Cruise.

(End of this chapter)