Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 547 Industry News
I wish all my readers a happy New Year's Eve!!!
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Since Liu Zhou acquired Sina Group, except for the first two years, to be honest, he has not spent much time and energy on Sina.

The main reason is that Liu Zhou took over Sina Group through a business war, so in order to prevent others from doing the same thing as he did, he has a tight control over Sina's board of directors.

Those who can enter the board of directors are his confidants or his new people. As for the shareholders' meeting, there is no need to worry. Except for his 35.5% of the shares, Sina Group has no other shareholder who owns more than 10% of the shares.

Therefore, almost all the power of Sina Group is concentrated in the board of directors, or to be more frank, in the hands of him as the chairman.

After all, Duan Yongji is a veteran in the industry with a high status and long experience. Liu Zhou's expulsion of him from Sina Group still received some criticism. Even within Sina Group, there were many people who did not trust Liu Zhou.

After all, Liu Zhou was too young at the time, only twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Many people at this age had just graduated from college, but he was already the helmsman of a well-established Internet giant.

Moreover, Liu Zhou crossed over from the film and television industry.

Liu Zhou had no choice but to accept the result.

Anyway, Liu Zhou has obtained the controlling rights of Sina. As long as he is not as arrogant as Duan Yongji and keeps a tight control on the company, he will not have to worry about being pushed out by others.

So after Liu Zhou took over Sina, he also began to take drastic actions.

The first thing was to clarify Sina Group's main business and cut off all those marginal businesses that followed the trend.

Then he used his influence in the film and television industry to make Sina Blog the leader in the industry, and then made it the only one in the market.

Through this incident, Liu Zhou completely gained the new employees of Sina and took complete control of Sina.

As Sina's various businesses are developing rapidly and the Internet industry is entering a golden period of development, Sina Group's stock price has also been rising steadily.

This also made Liu Zhou famous in the business world, and the previous criticisms suddenly decreased a lot.

Later, Liu Zhou developed a video website business in one fell swoop, and the Weibo business also achieved industry monopoly with his strong support.

After that, Sina Group's stock price soared. It not only became the leader of the three major portals, but also the fourth largest Internet company in China after BAT.

Later, Liu Zhouzheng became the richest man in China, and no one complained about his aggressive acquisition of Sina anymore.

Sina Group also bears his profound imprint, just as when people mention Sohu they think of Zhang Chaoyang, when they mention Penguin they think of Pony Ma, and now when they mention Sina they think of Liu Zhou.

It is precisely because Sina has achieved a series of achievements under his leadership that his position within the group has become more solid.

Even though he doesn't spend much time and energy, he is not afraid of losing power.

Of course, Liu Zhou is not a hands-off boss. He usually takes a look at the company's affairs. Not only that, he also arranged Zhong Lifang, whom he trusted the most, to join Sina Group.

Zhong Lifang, the first executive he discovered, had been following him since he was a small director.

Later, when Liu Zhou acquired Jiahe Group, she also helped him to sort out the company.

However, after acquiring Sina Group, in order to take control of Sina as soon as possible, he also assigned Zhong Lifang to Sina Group as senior vice president. Except for specific business, she was in charge of almost all other affairs.

Zhong Lifang can be said to be the most powerful person besides Liu Zhouhe and the group president.

And she did not disappoint Liu Zhou's trust. With Zhong Lifang in charge of Sina, Liu Zhou took control of the company more quickly in the early stage and ensured his control over the company in the later stage.

Liu Zhou did not treat her unfairly and gave her a lot of options. Now she personally owns no less than 2% of the shares. According to the current stock price, this is worth nearly US$500 million, equivalent to more than 4 billion yuan.

It’s a pity that there is no list of the richest women in the country now, otherwise she would at least be ranked in the top ten in the country.

In fact, not only Zhong Lifang, but also those who followed Liu Zhou were treated well by him. For example, the senior management of Jiahe Group are all billionaires. There are also some artists who not only gained a lot of fame, but also made a lot of money through Jiahe's listing.

Therefore, Liu Zhou is also very famous among the working people. Compared with others who just make empty promises, he shares real money.

However, now that Liu Zhou has gained momentum and his career has been established, it will no longer be possible to get rich and achieve class advancement by following him.

So they could only look at Zhong Lifang, Zhang Zhao and others with envy and jealousy, regretting why they did not follow Liu Zhou earlier.

Even so, because Sina Group and Golden Harvest Group are well-known companies in the industry for their relatively good welfare benefits, they are also very attractive to talented people.

This is also one of the reasons why Sina and Golden Harvest have been able to develop so fast, because almost every department of the two companies is composed of elite talents.

So now Toutiao is about to be launched, and this is the key to whether Sina Group can take off again. Although Liu Zhou cannot do much, he still trusts Sina's management.

Other Internet giants have not paid attention to this track. As for Xiao Zhang in the original time and space, let alone that he has not started yet, even if he has started, Liu Zhou does not believe that a large group like Sina will lose to a small company like the other party.

Although this situation has occurred many times in the business field, it is more common for small companies to lose completely.

The reason why such situations where the weak defeated the strong are so famous and remembered is mainly because they are relatively rare.

What's more, Sina will not commit the sin of arrogance. Although Liu Zhou cannot do much in the specific business, at least he can make Sina go all out.

Letting Sina Group follow the original ByteDance's path is the key for it to overtake others and stand on equal footing with Ali and Penguin, and it is also the last chance.

Therefore, Liu Zhou attaches more importance to Toutiao than to all current businesses of Sina.

But now he has done everything he can and can only wait for the results after Toutiao goes online.

So after dealing with the affairs of Sina Group, Liu Zhou also came to Golden Harvest Group.

Currently, after the high-level meeting at the beginning of the year, all businesses of Golden Harvest Group are progressing steadily.

After the Spring Festival, the domestic film and television market suddenly became deserted.

In March, the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster "Battle Los Angeles" landed in the mainland market. Unlike usual releases, this mainland version was not converted to 3D.

Maybe the film producers have considered doing this, but this movie is not suitable for conversion into 3D.

The director of this movie is quite serious. The aliens in the movie are made by combining model shooting and CG production. In order to make the picture more realistic, most of the shots are shot by hand-held photography. The hand-held photography has obvious shaking. When converted into 3D, half of the audience in the cinema may vomit.

The movie is actually OK, the special effects are pretty good, and as for the plot...

Forget about the plot, Hollywood blockbusters are never about the plot.

This is also a standard American theme movie. With the music, the atmosphere is majestic. The aliens are not good enough at all. If their combat power is not higher than that, they will become trash. In the end, it is a standard sensational ending.

However, the domestic box office was quite good, with 3 million in three days in the mainland. This result in the off-season for movies is indeed commendable.

But the film's performance in North America was mediocre, with $3600 million in the first weekend and $10 million in 6000 days. It is unlikely to break the $ million mark.

In addition, a domestic art film "Guanyin Mountain" was released, which also performed very well, earning more than 30 million in box office in ten days.

For an art film to achieve this result, it can be said to be excellent, and it also makes director Li Yu proud.

Li Yu and Fan Xiaopang are good friends. After the original Xiaopang left Huayi, the movies she took were either produced by Bona or directed by Li Yu.

Fan Xiaopang has collaborated with Li Yu on three films in succession, "Apple", "Double Exposure" and this "Guan Yin Mountain".

"Apple" was nominated for the Berlin Golden Bear, "Guan Yin Shan" won the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the Eastern Film Festival, and Fan Xiaopang also won the Eastern Film Festival Best Actress Award for this movie.

She has won the Hundred Flowers Award at home and the Eastern Jing Award at international level. She has won both without making any noise. This can be considered as Fan Xiaopang’s biggest asset.

Moreover, the two are very good friends. At the celebration party of "Guan Yin Shan", they kissed in public, and it was a French kiss, the kind that was very close.

In this life, Fan Xiaopang joined Golden Harvest early on and was highly promoted, so he had no worries about film resources at all.

Although Fan Xiaopang benefited a lot from the collaboration with Li Yu, it has to be said that it was also a helpless choice for her. You have to know that Fan Xiaopang invested in several of Li Yu's films.

It can be said that she has no other resources and can only support herself.

Now she obviously doesn't have to worry about resources, so Fan Xiaopang has a good personal relationship with Li Yu, but he has not cooperated with Li Yu.

Although this meant that Fan Xiaopang lost an Eastern Best Actress trophy, she gained another Best Actress crown at the Hong Kong Film Awards, not to mention that she is now quietly becoming the number one female star in China.

Given Fan Xiaopang's fame, Li Yu could no longer afford to invite her to star in her movie.

She herself doesn't think much of Li Yu's films. Li Yu is well-known in the field of art films, but the explicitness of her films is quite high, especially "Apple". The uncut version allowed Fan Xiaopang to give her most explicit performance.

At that time, many media said that she relied on large-scale exposure to attract attention.

At this time, Fan Xiaopang had a much higher vision and broader knowledge. He did not have such a strong filter for art films. In addition, he did not have to worry about resource issues, so he had no feelings for Li Yu's art films at all.

Therefore, the famous scene of the two people drawing the thread unfortunately did not appear.

Although the film market is relatively quiet during this period, the film industry is quite lively.

I don’t know if it was influenced by the billion-dollar box office of “Interstellar” or the stimulation from the Golden Harvest Group’s announcement of new projects, but several other companies have also been making frequent moves.

First of all, there is Guangxian, which launched three films at one time: "Taiwan Palace", "The Four", and "Speed ​​Angels", all of which are big productions.

Then Bona was not willing to lag behind and also announced three film projects: "The Great Magician", "Great Shanghai" and "The Lion Roars 2". It can be seen that Bona's film production currently still mainly relies on the Hong Kong film team.

In fact, there was also a heavyweight blockbuster "Flying Daggers of Dragon Gate" in the original time and space, but now this movie is in the hands of Golden Harvest.

Huayi's influence is slightly less with Feng Kuzi taking a break, but it also invested in two movies, "Tai Chi: From Zero" and "Soldiers of the Yang Family".

In addition to these old big companies, some new forces have also begun to get involved in the film industry.

Huace Film & TV, the first listed company in the TV drama industry, also invested in movies for the first time, and the move was quite big. They teamed up with Wanda Pictures and Meiya Entertainment, and also invited the famous Hong Kong directors Mai Zhaohui and Zhuang Wenqiang to partner up.

At the same time, the popular Kung Fu star Zhen Zidan was also invited to start the project of filming "Guan Yunchang". The film has a huge investment and is a definite blockbuster.

Juli Film and Television invested in "Legend of White Snake", invited Jet Li to partner with Huang Shouyi, and Yangzi personally took part in the film, but this movie will also be the last glory of this couple.

Xingguang International invited Li Rengang and superstar Leon Lai to adapt "The Legend of the Hongmen Feast".

Dadi Cinemas has also entered into film and television production and will remake "A Chinese Ghost Story".

After obtaining financing, the wealthy Xiaoma Pentium also found Wang Jing and a pair of Hong Kong stars to start the project of filming "Beauty Secret".

There was originally a movie called "The Great Gold Robbery", but Ning Hao never thought about filming this movie while he was at Golden Harvest. This also saved him from criticism, after all, the reputation of this movie was not very good.

Of course, this is not the most eye-catching thing about Pony. What makes people admire Big Dog the most is that Pony is actually preparing for the famous Hollywood special effects company, Digital Domain, which was founded by James Cameron himself.

Although Xiaoma Pentium was also well-known before, it could not be compared with film and television giants such as Guangguang, Bona, and Huayi. I didn’t expect that Xiaoma Pentium, which is not very famous, is so bold.

Although it has not been solved yet, this matter has still caused quite a stir in the country.

In the end, Pony.com won the digital field, and it was Zhong Lifang who took care of it all. But it was obvious that Big Dog was too optimistic and didn't know how much money the special effects company was burning.

Even James Cameron couldn't handle it, let alone Pony.com, a medium to large film and television company in mainland China.

After acquiring Digital Domain, Pony.com was unable to support the company's operations at all, and it could almost be said that it was a failure.

Of course, Big Dog’s acquisition of Digital Domain was not for the purpose of acquiring a special effects company, but for the gimmick. After all, he had signed a bet agreement with the capital.

If the bet fails and Pony.com fails to go public, he will suffer huge losses. Therefore, the most important task for Big Dog is to get Pony.com listed.

But going public is not that easy, which forces Big Dog to take an unconventional approach to create hype.

In the end, Big Dog unfortunately passed away, and then Pony Gallop also fell apart.

(End of this chapter)