Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 559: The largest premiere of a Chinese-language film

That soft article from Sina sounded the clarion call for large-scale publicity of "Aftershock".

In fact, the promotion of the movie has been launched long ago, and promotional materials began to be released at the beginning of the summer vacation, but that was just a warm-up.

In July, with less than a month left before the film’s release, full-scale promotion was officially launched.

It was fine in the first half of the month, but after the release of "Transformers 3", almost all the attention was taken away by it, which also greatly reduced the publicity effect of "Aftershock".

Liu Zhouke is very clear about the importance of publicity to a movie, especially in this era of developed Internet and rapid information dissemination, publicity plays a decisive role in the success or failure of a movie.

Therefore, Liu Zhou doesn’t think that “Aftershock” does not need to be promoted based on his fame.

On the contrary, it is precisely because this film has a very good foundation that if it wants to achieve better results and fully release the box office potential of "Aftershock", it needs more publicity.

Golden Harvest attaches great importance to the promotion of every film it produces, not to mention "Aftershock".

As a film directed by big boss Liu Zhou, and also a film that Golden Harvest hopes to hit the billion box office again, Golden Harvest attaches great importance to the promotion of the film.

Now that the movie "Transformers 3" is coming out, many media have already hyped up "Aftershock", or in other words, many people have placed their hopes of competing with Hollywood blockbusters on this movie.

Of course, Golden Harvest cannot do nothing and must promote the film well in the early stages.

"Transformers 3" was such a huge hit in its first week that the promotion of "Aftershock" had to temporarily stay out of the spotlight.

After that, it was less than a week until the movie was released. Although "Transformers 3" was still a sensation, Golden Harvest had to face up to it.

This time, Sina's soft article was not only reprinted by Sina. With the coordination of Jiahe, the other three major portals also reprinted this soft article.

In addition, with the influence of Golden Harvest on the media, they finally managed to regain coverage for "Aftershock".

Liu Zhou also knew that this kind of propaganda method was meant to mobilize everyone's patriotic feelings, but he also put himself forward.

This method of publicity is undoubtedly very effective, but it also greatly increases everyone's expectations of Liu Zhou.

If the movie "Aftershock" is of poor quality and flopped, it would have a greater backlash on Liu Zhou.

Although "Aftershock" is a completely original film by Liu Zhou and there is no example to follow in the original time and space, he still has confidence in it.

Liu Zhou was confident that his film would not be worse than Feng Kuzi's "Aftershock", and he had no choice but to be confident.

If he, as a leading figure in the Chinese-language film industry, did not stand up at this time, perhaps others would not say anything, but everyone would certainly lower their opinion of him.

Sometimes human nature is just like this. Since you have reaped more benefits from the film industry, you must shoulder more responsibilities.

If you didn’t have a movie released at this time, that would be another matter, but now that you have a blockbuster movie released, everyone will definitely be looking forward to you coming out.

In fact, Chen Kexin is similar, but maybe he is not as famous as Liu Zhou, so people's expectations of him are not as high, but no matter what, he is also a big director in China.

Everyone also hopes that his blockbuster "Wuxia" can compete with Hollywood blockbusters and bring some face to Chinese-language films.

But in the end, it was discovered that "Wuxia" was a bad movie. Not to mention saving face, it was good enough if it didn't embarrass itself.

Therefore, the negative impact that Chen Kexin has suffered this time is probably greater than usual. In addition, the fact that he treated investors as fools in the movie "Wuxia" has also greatly affected his reputation.

Therefore, after this movie, his film resources in the mainland were greatly reduced.

In the past, he was able to pull off big projects like "The Warlords" and "Wuxia" with investments of two or three hundred million yuan, but after "Wuxia", he could forget about it.

Even after the two box office hits "Chinese Partners" and "Dear", no one asked him to make movies anymore.

This great director was not present during the most prosperous period of the domestic film market.

In the following week, "Transformers 3" again earned 4.1 million yuan, and the total box office reached 11 million yuan in 8.33 days.

This made some media hype up the movie even more. At this point, not only the media but also many netizens felt that "Transformers 3" might really be able to break the box office record of "Interstellar".

After all, this result is really impressive, even better than "Avatar" and "Interstellar".

If "Aftershock" cannot stop it, then the domestic movie box office record will change hands again and be taken away by Hollywood movies again.

On Wednesday, July 25, "Aftershock" held its grand premiere at the Tangshan Sports Center.

For the premiere ceremony, Liu Zhou arranged hundreds of engineering and technical personnel to build the stage in the sports center's track and field stadium.

The world premiere of "Aftershock" will present the largest stage set in history, which is 40 meters wide.

The world's largest movie screen will be used on the stage for projection, which is 33 meters wide and 15 meters high.

In order to provide the audience with the best viewing experience, Golden Harvest is specially equipped with two Barco digital projectors, which are also the only projectors in the industry that can meet the requirements of digital projection on such a large screen.

Tangshan also attached great importance to this movie. Not only did they give all-round support to the premiere, but even all four teams attended.

Don’t think this is an exaggeration. For those working in the arts, especially the film industry, it is easy to meet leaders if you have a certain influence in the industry.

In the past, some domestic actors or directors were able to be received by several people in Haizi.

Mr. Wu personally took care of movies like "The Decisive Battle" and the Hundred Flowers Awards for Chinese Films.

Therefore, in the country, even if you have a big business, you may not necessarily be able to meet the two leaders in Tangshan, unless they ask you to take your company public.

However, well-known domestic directors, actors or senior executives of some large film and television companies can easily meet provincial leaders.

"Aftershock" was a project that Tangshan took the initiative to approach Liu Zhou to work on. They also wanted to promote Tangshan through this movie, so they were more concerned about it than Liu Zhou's side.

Liu Zhou brought the main creative crew to Tangshan one day in advance. In the evening, he personally checked the conditions of the stage and the giant screen.

In fact, Golden Harvest had checked it several times before, and even rehearsed it two or three times, but Liu Zhou still felt a little worried if he didn't see it with his own eyes.

So after he got off the plane, he didn't have time to rest and went straight to Tangshan Sports Center to let them rehearse again.

Liu Zhou was relieved to see that everything was foolproof. He couldn't help being so careful. This premiere was very grand, and the stage was newly built and the equipment was newly installed. If there was a fork, it would not only be embarrassing for him, but also for Tangshan.

The main leaders were all here and gave such great support, so it would be unacceptable if we still messed it up.

On the morning of the premiere, Liu Zhou had a very friendly exchange with people from Tangshan.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, Liu Zhou led the main creative crew to appear at the Tangshan Earthquake Relics Park to pay tribute to the victims of the Tangshan earthquake. In front of the earthquake memorial wall, they laid flowers and observed a moment of silence in front of the 24 names.

Liu Zhou, Zhou Gongzi, Zhang Yi, Liu Yifei, Hu Jun and other main creators were all dressed in black or white, and the atmosphere on the scene was very solemn.

The entire ceremony lasted nearly an hour. No one spoke much and no one accepted any media interviews.

After the memorial service, everyone returned to the hotel to prepare for the movie premiere in the evening.

At 6 o'clock in the evening, the Tangshan Sports Center was solemn and dignified, with thousands of spectators crowding at the entrance waiting to enter.

Tonight, nearly 15,000 Tangshan audiences will witness the largest premiere in the history of Chinese-language films.

The largest and most expensive movie premiere in the past was Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers", which was originally held at the Workers' Stadium in Beijing.

Beijing Workers' Stadium is of course much larger than Tangshan Sports Center, but the crew of "House of Flying Daggers" did not dare to fill the Stadium and only allowed in a few thousand spectators.

But even with only a few thousand spectators, it was still a huge sensation at the time.

In fact, as the number of people increases, the difficulty of the work increases exponentially, because there are many aspects that need to be considered, especially the most important safety issue.

In fact, for a premiere, this is a bit of a thankless task.

But Zhang Weiping, who was a little inflated at the time, organized a star-studded concert before the movie was screened for the sake of publicity, and he needed so many live audiences.

It was indeed a lively event, but in terms of influence, it was not as good as the premiere of "Hero" held in the Great Hall of the People.

Although there were only over a thousand people, and most of them were journalists and guests, this venue was amazing.

The Great Hall of the People holds a special place in the hearts of the Chinese people.

It was also because of "Hero" that the premiere ceremonies of blockbuster movies in those years were particularly sensational. They were held in the Great Hall of the People, the CPPCC Auditorium, the Beijing Workers' Stadium, etc. The venues were either very solemn or very large.

Later, it was discovered that investing 10 or 20 million yuan in a premiere did not produce as good an effect as expected. Apart from the big gimmick, the quality of the film still matters if it is to be converted into box office revenue.

After all, blockbusters like this have been promoted on a large scale before the movie is released. Such a grand premiere is just the icing on the cake. Perhaps only "Hero", the first to take the plunge, achieved the expected premiere effect.

Therefore, movie premieres are usually held in luxury cinemas. The large screening halls in luxury cinemas have more than a thousand seats, which provides ample space, advanced facilities, and require little layout, and the cost is much lower.

At the same time, it can also attract traffic to the cinema, which is a win-win situation.

Therefore, the premiere of Zhang Yimou's later film "Curse of the Golden Flower", which had a larger investment and a more luxurious cast, was not properly organized. It was just held by setting up a stage in the studio of the Beijing Film Studio.

Despite this, it did not affect the box office of the film.

Later, movie premieres were no longer exclusive to blockbuster films, but they usually premiered in movie theaters.

The reason why Liu Zhou made "Aftershock" so grand this time is because this movie carries many special meanings.

This premiere was not a temporary decision made after seeing the explosive box office success of "Transformers 3". The plan was already in the works as early as the filming of the movie was completed, and then finalized at the end of last year, and it also received the consent of Golden Harvest and Tangshan.

Actually, Jiahe thought about making it a more grand event, but never such a grand one. It was Tangshan that asked for it to be as big as possible, and then the more experienced Jiahe made the planning according to their request.

But now it seems that their demands are really on point.

Tangshan Stadium opened two sides of the stands, and some seats were also arranged in the center of the track and field field, which can accommodate nearly 1.2 people in total.

In addition to some invited guests and some free tickets, there were over 10,000 tickets for sale to the public. When the sale went on, they were all sold out in less than three days.

This time, the tickets were not sold online, all were purchased offline. In fact, it was mainly to cater to the audience in Tangshan.

Despite this, the tickets sold out quickly, and scalpers even appeared the next day.

Now the movie happens to be facing its rival "Transformers 3", so holding such a grand premiere can also boost morale before going to the battlefield.

In order to ensure the safety and order of the premiere, Tangshan dispatched more than 1000 police officers, armed police, and security personnel, 100 medical emergency personnel, 4 ambulances, and 8 fire trucks.

Hundreds of firefighters who had conducted on-site drills were on standby, and there were also 100 volunteers helping to maintain order and lead the way.

In order to guard against possible rainy weather, 2 raincoats were specially prepared on site as backup.

In fact, according to the weather forecast, there was no rain on the night of the premiere in Tangshan, but Liu Zhou still arranged for people to prepare raincoats just in case.

If it is not needed at that time, Liu Zhou is also prepared to give it to his own charity organization and hand it over to someone who needs it.

The total cost of this premiere was nearly 40 million, which is the highest in history, nearly 20 million more than the 20 million of "House of Flying Daggers".

This is the investment made when the venue, security, medical care, fire protection, etc. were all provided free of charge by Tangshan.

If these are also charged, the investment will be even greater.

The reason why so much money is needed is mainly because the two Barco digital projectors are relatively expensive. One costs more than three million, and two cost nearly seven million.

Then there is the construction of the big screen and the stage, etc., all added up, it takes so much money.

Although we can sell some tickets, we can only buy 10,000 tickets, which is just a drop in the bucket compared to the investment.

It is impossible for Liu Zhou to sell tickets for 4,000 yuan each. Not to mention whether anyone would buy them, it would be too embarrassing to justify his greed.

Originally according to Liu Zhou's idea, he was going to offer free tickets, just as if he was inviting the audience in Tangshan to watch a movie.

However, thinking that free tickets would cause unnecessary trouble, they finally decided to charge a fee, but the ticket price was set relatively low, with a unified price of 50 yuan per ticket, which is the price of a movie ticket.

(End of this chapter)