Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 577: National Day holiday
The quiet September passed quickly, and as time came to the end of September, the domestic film market became bustling again.

The three films released during the National Day holiday also began large-scale promotion.

There is a lot of competition in this year's National Day holiday, with three blockbusters competing on the same stage.

The most popular and anticipated one is "Legend of White Snake" starring Jet Li, Huang Shengyi and Yang Zi.

This blockbuster is said to have an investment of 300 million yuan, and has international superstar Jet Li joining the cast. It also tells a story that is well-known to the Chinese people, making it the most anticipated by the audience.

There may not be an investment of 300 million, but there should be an investment of more than 200 million.

After all, Jet Li's salary should be more than 100 million.

How could Jet Li possibly work with that couple if the remuneration was not sufficient?

In addition to "Legend of White Snake", "Painted Wall", which was specially produced by Guangxian, is also not to be underestimated.

This movie, starring the husband and wife duo Deng Chao and Sun Li, is equally full of gimmicks and is known as the sister film of "Painted Skin".

However, this is not the most eye-catching thing; the host of Guangguang Media, Liu Yan, is the most eye-catching one.

In the past half month, Guangguang has fully utilized its publicity advantages and held more than 20 large and small meet-and-greet events across the country.

No one knows how many sexy outfits Liu Yan has changed into, and her photos are circulating everywhere on the Internet.

Moreover, Guangguang shamelessly promoted Liu Yan's nude performance in the film, which attracted more attention.

This is undoubtedly very interesting, especially since various photos of Liu Yan showing off her figure were widely circulated, making some old perverts even more excited.

So in the future, Liu Yan should not blame the audience for often talking about her figure, as she has used her figure to attract attention before.

The last blockbuster is the Hong Kong police and gangster film "Cold War" produced by Golden Harvest and starring Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok.

Although Hong Kong films have declined, no one dares to underestimate Hong Kong films produced by Golden Harvest.

It has been proven many times before that Hong Kong films produced by Golden Harvest, which are heavily promoted, will definitely have good box office results.

Especially the original "Ip Man", which earned more than 200 million yuan at the box office, leaving poet Chen's "Mei Lanfang" far behind.

This time, two movie kings, Liang Jiahui and Guo Tianwang, gathered together, and Andy Lau made a cameo appearance. Golden Harvest also launched a large-scale publicity and promotion campaign. No one dared not to take "Cold War" seriously.

Both Guangguang and Juli regard "Cold War" as an important competitor.

On September 50, "Legend of White Snake" was released first, and with over 1500% of the screenings, it took in million at the box office on the first day.

This result is undoubtedly a failure.

You should know that not long ago, "Aftershock" had a screening schedule of more than 60% and earned over 100 million yuan at the box office in a single day.

Then on September 800th, "Painted Skin" was released, but the box office on the first day was even lower, earning only million, which was also a somewhat bleak result.

"Cold War" was released on the 30th. Although it only had 34% of the screenings, it grossed 23 million at the box office, becoming the box office champion of the day!
The outside world was surprised by the success of the three films.

They originally thought that "Legend of White Snake" should be far ahead, followed by "Painted Skin" closely behind. After all, "Cold War" is still a Hong Kong film, so it should be at the end.

But unexpectedly, the least favored film "Cold War" had the best performance on the first day.

Although this result was unexpected, everyone's attention was attracted by another thing.

Only two days after its release, a lot of negative news about "Legend of White Snake" has appeared.

"Legend of the White Snake is a fighter among bad movies!"

"There is no worst, only worse! I never thought Jet Li would act in such a terrible movie."

"I regretted watching it! Damn, I wanted to leave before I even watched 20 minutes. Huang Shengyi's role was not the White Snake. She felt like she came from Yihongyuan. I can't complain anymore."

"I'm so speechless. Zhao Yazhi and Wang Zuxian's Bai Suzhen look like she came down from heaven to earth, while Huang Shengyi's Bai Suzhen looks like she came from heaven!"

"A mistress movie like "Warring States", it's really awesome!"

"The emotions have no foundation, the characters have no personality, the special effects have no details, the jokes have no IQ, the fighting has no moves, the sensationalism has no logic, there is no respect for the audience, it is a complete failure!"

The audience may just watch for fun, but people in the industry know that it was Guangguang who did it.

The energy that Guangxian unleashed with all his strength not only crushed "Legend of the White Snake", but also frightened everyone else.

I knew that Guangguang’s publicity was powerful, but I didn’t expect it to be so strong.

Not only was "Legend of the White Snake" completely powerless to fight back, it also allowed "Painted Skin", a low-budget, bad movie, to rise in box office sales against the trend.

This is what shocked everyone.

"Painted Skin" made 8 million on the first day, over 10 million on the second day, and 12 million on the third day. At this rate, the film has the potential to break 100 million at the box office.

In contrast, Juli Films was completely unable to fight back, and the promotion and public relations of "Legend of the White Snake" was a complete failure.

The film's plot, characters, dialogues and special effects were all criticized, and even Jet Li was affected.

However, the one who was criticized the most was Huang Shengyi.

One viewer's comment went viral online:
The Bai Suzhen played by Zhao Yazhi and Wang Zuxian seemed to have descended from heaven to earth, while the Bai Suzhen played by Huang Shengyi seemed to have come from heaven to earth!
Looking back, Huang Shengyi became famous for her image of a pure and innocent girl in Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu". It is such a irony that she is being criticized like this now.

To be honest, although "Legend of White Snake" can be considered a bad movie, it is not as bad as it is said on the Internet.

At the very least, "Painted Skin" is much worse than "Legend of White Snake".

"Painted Skin" did not need any special efforts from its opponents to criticize it; the audience spontaneously gave various criticisms.

However, Guangguang Media has been able to control public opinion very well. In fact, it went against the trend and even hired its own internet trolls to discredit the film, thus shifting everyone's attention to the nudity in the film.

This is really not a gimmick. When the fox demon appears in the movie, it is all white.

In addition, Liu Yan's boat scenes and her display of body, although not completely naked as advertised, are still quite revealing.

This time she can be said to have become famous.

Many male audiences were attracted to the cinema by her.

This also reflects the power of light publicity.

What were originally negative reviews from the audience can be cleverly turned into a point to attract the audience to the cinema.

Even Golden Harvest’s publicity department said they had learned something from it.

In fact, facing the aggressive attitude of Guangguang, all departments of Golden Harvest are taking it seriously.

"Cold War" is also a competitor of "Painted Wall" and also needs to be on guard against sudden dimming of light at any time.

Although Guangguang has been chasing "Legend of White Snake", Golden Harvest still dare not let its guard down.

After this year's National Day, I believe that no company will not attach great importance to Light Media, especially when there are movies clashing with theirs.

But at the same time, Guangguang has also indirectly demonstrated its strong publicity and promotion capabilities, and attracted more film companies to want to cooperate with them.

After the first week, "Legend of White Snake" only earned 60 million in box office in five days.

Compared with the nearly 300 million yuan investment in the film, this result is definitely unsatisfactory, and there is no way the domestic film will be able to recover the cost.

"Painted Skin" earned 4 million in 4500 days, and the difference between the two movies was only 1500 million on the first day of "Legend of White Snake".

Finally, "Cold War" grossed 72 million in three days, winning the first-week box office championship during the National Day holiday with an absolute advantage. …

At Juli Film and Television, Yangzi and Huang Shengyi looked extremely unhappy when they saw the result.

Not only were the two of them criticized, but also because of the failure of the movie.

They had high hopes for this movie, and in order to allow the company to gain a foothold in the film industry, they spared no expense in inviting Jet Li.

Now the movie has grossed 60 million in five days, which is considered a complete flop.

Not to mention gaining a foothold in the film industry, it is even unknown whether costs can be recovered.

There is no need to think about the domestic box office, so they can only pin their hopes on the overseas market. They can only secretly pray that Jet Li’s appeal overseas is really that strong.

"Damn Wang Changtian, the chairman of a big company, has no bottom line in doing things." Yangzi cursed angrily.

"He was originally an entertainment reporter, and he does things by any means necessary." Huang Shengyi also sighed, and then said, "Fortunately, Jiahe did not take action against us, otherwise the situation would be much worse."

“Jiahe has always been very clear about what he does, and his reputation has always been good. As long as you don’t provoke him, he won’t target you.

Or maybe Jiahe thought we were too weak, and a single ray of light was suffocating, so he didn't bother to attack us." Yangzi smiled bitterly.

"Don't be discouraged, there are still five days left for the National Day holiday, and we still have a chance."

"Hopefully."

……

Wang Changtian of Enlight Media is very satisfied with the current results.

The box office gap between "Painted Skin" and "Legend of White Snake" is only 15 million, so it should be no problem for it to surpass it in the end.

Wang Changtian felt funny when he thought of Yangzi.

He had such a good hand, but he played it badly.

Maybe he doesn't even know how to run a movie, but he still wants to enter the film industry ambitiously. It's really nonsense.

If he doesn't learn his lesson this time, no matter how big his family fortune is, it will be squandered by him.

Now "Legend of White Snake" is no longer a concern. Thinking of this, Wang Changtian couldn't help but turn his gaze to another competitor.

Cold War is not easy to deal with.

Not to mention the Golden Harvest Group behind it, the reputation of the movie itself is also very good and has spread on a large scale.

The most important thing is that even he didn't dare to offend Jiahe.

Being the industry leader is not just a slogan. Not to mention that their publicity capabilities may not be much inferior to ours, in the future, the overseas distribution of some of our films will also have to rely on them.

But just because you can’t criticize “Cold War” doesn’t mean you can’t do other things.

……

"Mr. Zhang, the lighting is just too disgusting. They are always trying to take advantage of our popularity. Whenever they promote Painted Skin, they always bring up our Cold War."

We send out a press release, and the other party immediately follows up with one."

The publicity director of Jiahe Group complained to Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao smiled and said:

"Don't worry about them. Guangguang's actions are actually a disguised form of publicity for Cold War."

“But it’s really disgusting that they do this.”

"We just need to make sure that Cold War is not deliberately discredited. The film has a very good reputation and may be made into a series like Overheard.

And it should only be in these few days that "Painted Skin" has received terrible word of mouth. Even if Guangguang promotes it with all its might, the box office will be at most over 1.5 million yuan, or at most million yuan.

Guangxian has strong publicity capabilities, but no matter how strong they are, he dare not spend too much money, otherwise they will lose money.

So they will probably stop such large-scale publicity in the next few days.

What you need to do is to study the publicity methods used by Guangguang this time. They are worth learning from.”

"Okay Mr. Zhang."

……

As the film entered its second week of screening, on October 3rd, "Cold War" saw its screening schedule increase to 42% thanks to its great box office and good reputation, earning another 25 million in a single day.

On the following 1.1th, th, th and th, the single-day box office exceeded million, and in five days it grossed million.

Adding the 1.82 million earned in the first three days of its release, "Cold War" earned a total of million in seven days.

Although the National Day holiday has passed, it is certain that the box office will exceed 200 million yuan.

"Painted Skin" relied on the powerful publicity and promotion capabilities of Light Media and the subsequent popularity of "Cold War". Although the movie had a terrible reputation, it still grossed over 1.1 million yuan in nine days after its release, reaching million yuan.

The one that suffered the most was "Legend of White Snake", which started high and ended low. The beginning did not seem to be very good. After ten days of release, the box office barely broke 100 million yuan.

The box office was still surpassed by "Painted Skin" by as much as 10 million.

It seems that the negative marketing had too much of an impact on the movie.

In the following working days, the box office of the three movies inevitably dropped sharply.

However, thanks to its good reputation and a screening rate of less than 50%, "Cold War" still has a box office of nearly 10 million every day.

However, for "Painted Skin", negative reviews completely broke out after Guangguang stopped its promotional investment.

But they no longer care, the film's box office potential has been fully exploited.

For a movie with a cost of less than 20 million yuan, a box office of over 100 million yuan is considered a huge profit, not to mention the stimulus to the share price of Guangxian.

In the end, "Legend of White Snake" seemed to be a blessing in disguise. Without the directed light, the audience found that the quality of the movie was not as bad as people said on the Internet.

Although the reputation has improved, the best time has been missed and the box office has not increased much.

By October 2.3th, the box office of "Cold War" reached 2.5 million yuan, and the final box office should be around million yuan.

This was a shot in the arm for the Hong Kong film industry, and it also made the major film and television companies in Hong Kong seem to have regained their confidence. At this time, six or seven police and gangster films had already been approved.

Golden Harvest also consolidated its reputation for the high quality of its Hong Kong films.

While the National Day movie season was in full swing in China, Liu Zhou, who was far away in Hollywood, finally completed the post-production of "Joker" after nearly two months of meticulous polishing.

It also received rave reviews when it was screened internally at Warner.

They really didn't expect Liu Zhou to be able to make such a great movie.

Despite being an R-rated movie, they felt the film would do well at the box office.

Because Liu Zhou wants to compete for an Oscar next year, the movie needs to be shown in theaters this year, and the publicity and promotion plan is imminent.

(End of this chapter)