Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 576 The Summer Vacation Ends

As time comes to the end of August, the summer vacation season officially ends.

This year's summer season in mainland China can be described as the most unbridled year for Hollywood movies. If it weren't for Liu Zhou's "Aftershock" which saved some face, domestic filmmakers would have lost face.

The first half of this year was completely dominated by imported blockbusters. Starting from May, several blockbusters such as "Kung Fu Panda", "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and "Fast and Furious 5" were released one after another.

By July and August, before the audience had recovered from the shock, "Transformers 3", "The Smurfs" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part " gave everyone another taste of Hollywood blockbusters.

Needless to say, "Transformers 3" was the third movie in China to break the billion-yuan box office. It was released in late August and ultimately grossed 11.52 billion yuan.

So far, the "Transformers" series is undoubtedly the most successful Hollywood blockbuster series in the mainland. Apart from "Avatar", almost every movie can break new box office records.

After "Transformers", the "Fast and Furious" series and the "Avengers" series will become the representatives of Hollywood blockbusters.

Marvel is still laying the groundwork for the latter, but the "Fast and Furious" series has already begun to show signs of life.

The most well-received "Fast & Furious 5" in this series of movies has already been released, and the vegetarian family has taken shape and will begin to become a world-famous series.

At the same time, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two" grossed 400 million yuan in nearly 20 days since its release, setting a new domestic box office record for the series.

This movie will also be the last in the Harry Potter series. Without this hit series, Warner will begin to decline.

"The Smurfs", which was released just half a month ago, has grossed over 200 million yuan, making it the highest-grossing animated film in China, and it was produced by the little-known Sony Animation.

Compared to Hollywood blockbusters that have box office revenues of several hundred million, domestic films are much more modest.

There were only three movies with box office revenues exceeding 100 million yuan during the entire summer season, namely Wang Jing's "The God of Wealth Inn" in May, Chen Kexin's "Wuxia" and Liu Zhou's "Aftershock".

The rest of the movies pretty much just became cannon fodder.

For example, the love movie "Butterfly on the Shoulder" directed by Jiang Zhiliang and starring Chen Kun, with the team and main creators of a commercial blockbuster, cost up to 8000 million and only earned 1600 million at the box office, creating the biggest box office disaster in recent years.

This movie also cast a shadow on Chen Kun's film career.

His film career in this life is not as smooth as in his previous life, and his box office appeal is much weaker.

Another comedy film "Priceless Treasure" directed by Wang Jing was released in August, but it only earned 8 million yuan in box office in 1500 days.

Compared with "The Inn of the God of Wealth", "The Priceless Treasure" can be said to be a complete waste.

What’s interesting is that both films were directed by Wang Jing and are comedies. The former starred Xie Tingfeng, and the latter starred Zhang Baizhi.

As the saying goes, whoever is missing will be embarrassed, and the gap in the control variables is even more embarrassing.

Zhang Baizhi's luck seems to have been bad since that incident. Although her pay has increased, all her film and television dramas have failed, and they are all bad movies.

From then on, she was officially squeezed out of the mainstream market of Hong Kong and mainland film and television, and could only rely on some gossip news to maintain her popularity.

On the contrary, Xie Tingfeng's career went particularly smoothly after that incident.

First, he spent 100 million to buy a sea view villa.

He then sold most of the shares in the special effects company and earned a lot of money. He then opened several more companies. His food company was established during this period and later evolved into Feng Wei Pai.

At the same time, he won the Best Actor Award at the Academy Awards for his role as a ghost in "The Informer", and the box office of the movie "Shaolin Temple" starring him exceeded 200 million yuan, setting a personal best.

Finally, this year a low-budget costume comedy "The God of Wealth Inn" won a box office of over 100 million yuan among a number of Hollywood blockbusters, and it seems that he has returned to the peak, and he is still the leader of the middle-aged generation of Hong Kong actors.

Perhaps this is the legendary blessing in the future, and it also proves that women can only affect the speed at which men make money.

However, if we put aside "Aftershock", the total box office of domestic films in the summer season is not as high as "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 3", let alone "Transformers ".

So this year's summer season would have been truly horrible if there hadn't been "Aftershock".

But with "Aftershock", the situation is very different. Although other domestic films are relatively poor, "Aftershock" is strong enough.

The saying goes that one beauty can cover up a hundred flaws. No matter how high the box office of Hollywood movies is, the champion of the summer season will still be Chinese-language movies.

As of the end of August, "Aftershock" had been released for more than a month and a few days, and the total box office reached 11.86 billion.

The film has applied for an extension key, but the film's box office potential has almost been completely exhausted.

There should be no problem in the final box office breaking through 1.2 billion, but breaking through 1.3 billion should be impossible.

The media and some institutions predict that the final box office of "Aftershock" in China should be around 12.3 billion.

This result is also very good. At least it surpassed "Transformers 3" and ranked third in the mainland film history box office rankings, second only to "Interstellar" and "Avatar".

In addition to domestic sales, "Aftershock" also achieved very good results overseas.

In North America, the film has been released for nearly a month and was taken off the screen first, with the final box office revenue set at 36 million US dollars.

This result is very good, and it is the fourth best result for Chinese-language films in North America.

Although the box office is not as good as Chinese-language films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Interstellar", or even as good as "Hero", the film's reputation in North America is very good.

In addition, "Aftershock" has been released in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia for more than half a month, and its box office potential is almost exhausted.

In one release, the movie has grossed nearly 1.6 billion yen, equivalent to about 15 million U.S. dollars, and it may be able to take another 1 million or 2 million U.S. dollars in the future.

In South Korea, the film attracted 1.2 million viewers, translating to a box office of approximately US$8 million.

In Southeast Asia, the box office in various regions totaled 13 million US dollars.

Currently, the overseas box office of "Aftershock" has totaled 72 million US dollars.

These regions should be able to generate box office revenue of another four to five million U.S. dollars in the future. Together with Europe, Australia and South America, the film should have no problem grossing over 100 million overseas.

By September, "Aftershock" will also begin to enter the European, Australian and South American markets.

The release in these regions requires distribution by Lionsgate and also depends on their arrangements.

In China, the mainland received 12.3 billion, Hong Kong received 1.6 million Hong Kong dollars, and Taiwan received 1.6 million Taiwan dollars, which adds up to million US dollars.

In other words, the final global box office of "Aftershock" was conservatively estimated to be 2.6 million US dollars.

If the box office in Europe is stronger, it might even break through $300 million, but this is more difficult as the gap is after all, there is a gap of 40 million dollars.

A global box office of $2.6 million is a good result even in Hollywood.

Maybe it can't be compared with those blockbusters, but if it were put on this year's global box office list, it should be ranked in the top 30.

This is already Liu Zhou's second Chinese-language film that has achieved outstanding results in the global market. However, the happiest people are Tangshan, who previously approached Liu Zhou to collaborate on Aftershock just to promote their city of Tangshan in China.

Let the people of the whole country see that after experiencing the great disaster of earthquake, the people of Tangshan have rebuilt a modern city on the ruins.

However, after Liu Zhou's analysis, they handed over the control of the film to Liu Zhou without knowing it, and then they could no longer control the direction of the film.

But out of trust in Liu Zhou, the richest man and great director, they still let him do his best.

They were very excited about what Liu Zhou and the others said about releasing "Aftershock" on a large scale overseas and promoting the city of Tangshan overseas.

But after calming down, I still felt a little bit unconvinced.

Now that the facts are before them, they have no choice but to believe it.

With the popularity of "Aftershock" overseas, the city of Tangshan has gradually become known to some overseas audiences.

Especially during the release of the movie, many media outlets also specifically introduced the city of Tangshan.

These are not just tabloids, there are also some large media outlets.

When the Tangshan leaders saw this situation, their mouths were so wide with smiles.

I didn't expect that Tangshan would one day become as famous overseas as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which made several second-tier cities in China very envious.

For this purpose, Tangshan's top leader even made a special phone call to Liu Zhou and exchanged pleasantries.

The movie "Aftershock" brought both fame and fortune to Tangshan.

It grossed at least $2.6 million worldwide, and they also had a percent investment share, which meant they got at least $ million.

Their investment was just the construction of a filming base and 50 million in cash, which added up to less than 60 million, but they made more than 100 million.

They may not know the global box office yet, but the domestic box office of 12.3 billion is indeed real.

Even if they don't understand movies, they can understand that this result is very impressive.

This also made them a little surprised. No wonder so many people were begging to cooperate with Liu Zhou. They could really make a lot of money.

With the end of the summer season, the domestic film market has begun to slowly calm down.

The biggest winners of this summer season are of course "Aftershock" and "Transformers 3", two movies that have grossed over billion yuan.

Especially "Aftershock", which caused a large-scale debate or war of words during its release.

Although the popularity of the movie has begun to decline significantly, there is no doubt that the impact it has caused has just begun to ferment, and undercurrents are already surging in the film industry.

After the booming summer season, the film market became very dull as September approached.

However, in this ordinary September, Jia Yueting organized a LeTV festival.

It was a grand event. Not only was the script screening location chosen to be at the Beijing National Convention Center, but the bosses of major domestic film and television companies, as well as most of the big-name directors from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, were also invited.

In order to allow Liu Zhou to attend, Jia Yueting even flew to Los Angeles personally to hand the invitation to him in person.

At that time, Liu Zhou put all his energy into "Joker", and he felt that he was in a particularly good state and he didn't want to interrupt this rare good state.

So he still rejected him tactfully, but since he was so sincere, Liu Zhou had to give him some face.

He couldn't attend in person, but he specifically called Zhang Zhao and asked him to bring several directors and artists from his company to attend.

Although Jia Yueting felt a little regretful about this, he was also quite satisfied.

After all, Liu Zhou's status is much higher than his, so there is nothing he can do even if the other party doesn't give him face.

Now that he has arranged for directors and artists under Golden Harvest to participate, it is already a great honor for him.

After all, the directors under Golden Harvest are all big directors in the industry, and the artists are also the most popular in the circle, with greater influence than the artists of other companies combined.

So Jia Yueting was also satisfied.

Compared to Jia Yueting's happy departure, Liu Zhou fell into deep thought. Gradually, he began to understand why this old man made this LeTV ceremony so grand.

Others may not understand him, but Liu Zhou sees him very clearly.

There is no doubt about Jia Yueting's personal charm or brainwashing ability. Even real estate tycoon Sun Hongbing invested 165 billion yuan in his car project and almost cried after the failure.

It was such a lousy project, but Hengda was fooled into taking over. They threw in $8 million, which was then squandered without any splash at all.

After the money was spent, Jia unilaterally terminated the cooperation with Hengda, resulting in a wage dispute.

Finally he had to run to the United States, and was nicknamed "Jia Leting, who will return next week", which brought a lot of fun to everyone.

Although he is a very despicable person, one thing is that he does not harm ordinary people, but only the capital.

As for those investors who have been cheated, they are leeks and will be cut sooner or later.

This is also the reason why everyone is still having so much fun making memes about him even though he ran off to the United States.

If he had cheated ordinary people, everyone would have wanted to curse him every day.

In this life, many film and television copyrights have been snatched up by Sina, and the current LeTV video is much weaker than the original time and space.

But I think this will definitely not be able to suppress his heart that is suffocating for his dream, and he should soon start his ecological counter-attack.

He made the LeTV ceremony so grand this time just to build his fame. Only with fame can he display his personal charm.

I believe that it won’t be long before LeTV will start to rise.

Jia Yueting's ability to deceive people is his strength, and Liu Zhou doesn't want to have anything to do with him.

But the LeTV Festival he organized was quite interesting.

Later, the three major video websites and Weibo all held certain ceremonies. Although the value of these awards was not high, they were still quite good for promoting the platforms.

So Liu Zhou thought Sina could also create one.

Sina owns two major platforms, Sina Video and Sina Weibo, which are closely related to the entertainment industry. Perhaps they can jointly organize a Sina festival or Sina Night or something like that.

(End of this chapter)