Huayu: Director started with art films

More than an hour later.

Li Yishu held her waist and walked out of Huating Hotel.

Perhaps it is because of her age, Gong Li, who is 30 years old this year, has truly demonstrated the fighting power that a mature woman should have.

Even though Li Yishu drinks wolfberry water and takes Liuwei Dihuang Pills for maintenance all year round, she still finds it a bit overwhelming.

What's the saying? There are only oxen that die from plowing, but no land that is damaged by plowing.

Gong Li is a woman with a perfect figure and temperament. Now she has reached the most desired age, so her fighting power is naturally doubled.

Fortunately, Li Yishu finally held on.

At the same time, this also strengthened Li Yishu's idea of ​​continuing to exercise. She rearranged the Five Animal Exercises and continued to take wolfberry water and Rehmannia pills.

Shanghai Film City.

When Li Yishu came back, the opening ceremony here had already ended.

The filmmakers, film producers, and others who came to attend the Shanghai Film Festival have all left the venue and started to visit and tour Shanghai, the modern oriental capital.

Because the film exhibition will not officially start until tomorrow.

However, many people still stayed at the scene and visited the exhibition hall specially set up by Shanghai Film Studio to commemorate the 100-year history of Chinese films.

(Actually it started from Dingjun Mountain in 1905, exactly 90 years ago)
This century-long history started from the Republic of China and lasted until last year. A total of one hundred film posters were displayed, including the black-and-white film "Dingjun Mountain", the ink-style "The Tadpole Looking for Mom", the classic cartoon "Journey to the West", and Zhang Yimou's "Red Sorghum"... and other films.

Among them, two of Li Yishu's films were shortlisted for the 100 films, "That Mountain, Those People, Those Dogs" and "Farewell My Concubine".

In fact, according to the selection criteria, there should be more than two works by Li Yishu that could be selected.

Not to mention that "Black Coal, Thin Ice" won the rather watered-down Locarno Film Festival, at least "Central Station", which won the Berlin Golden Bear Award, was qualified enough to be selected.

But with a hundred movies in a hundred years, it is impossible for Lee Yi-su to monopolize three movies.

The reason why he can have two films is that he is the chairman of this year's jury, and "The Mountain, the Man, the Dog" and "Farewell My Concubine" are both Lee Yi-su's real famous works.

The former made Li Yishu win the Golden Lion Award and become famous, while the latter became the unprecedented Palme d'Or for a Chinese film director.

"plum!"

Abraham, who was visiting the exhibition hall, saw Li Yishu coming and immediately walked up to him and said with a smile: "Congratulations, Li, for becoming the jury chairman of the Shanghai Film Festival. I wonder when you will be free to come to our Venice Film Festival to serve as the chairman for one term?"

"Mr. Abraham, I'm afraid there won't be time for that in the short term."

Li Yishu smiled and said, "You may not know that I am currently filming an epic Chinese history masterpiece. I believe that after this movie comes out, all war-themed movies around the world will be eclipsed."

"Oh?" Abraham became interested. He didn't think Li Yishu was a boaster, so he asked, "What kind of historical film are you going to shoot?"

Li Yishu said, "Do you know the history of the three countries?"

Li Yishu never expected Westerners to know much about Chinese history, but the Four Great Classics are different. These books were translated into English a long time ago and sold in Europe and the United States.

"The history of three countries?"

Abraham frowned, thought for a while, and then remembered something: "Is it the novel from China?"

Li Yishu looked at the other person in surprise: "Yes, Mr. Abraham has also read this novel?"

"I've heard of it, but I haven't seen it. But when I get back to Italy, I'll find a way to buy a copy and read it." Abraham smiled and asked, "Is your film still being filmed?"

"Yes, it's still being filmed. But if you're interested, Mr. Abraham, I'll take you to the crew after the film festival is over. I mobilized 800,000 people to shoot this film."

"Oh my goodness!!"

Abraham looked at Li Yishu in shock and exclaimed in surprise.

This also attracted the attention of many people around.

"Eight hundred thousand people?" Abraham seemed to realize that his voice was too loud, and quickly lowered his voice and asked, "Li, did you really mobilize eight hundred thousand people to shoot this movie?"

"It's not 800,000, it's 800,000."

Li Yishu shook her head and said, "But if we only count the extras, there are actually nearly 100,000 people."

Taking into account the length of the movie, as well as the differentiation and climax of the plot, the most exciting part of the two films, apart from the galloping horses of Cao Cao's expedition against the Wuhuan at the beginning, is perhaps the tens of thousands of troops besieging Liu Bei and Zhao Yun's seven ins and outs.

The filming time for Zhao Yun's seven ins and seven outs will probably be after the beginning of next spring. The subsequent winter scenes will mainly focus on literary scenes involving a small number of military forces, such as Zhuge Kongming's debate with scholars, borrowing arrows from straw boats, and Huarong Road.

But next there will be a big drama, which is the burning of Chibi in the Hengdian artificial lake. At that time, more than a dozen water forts and hundreds of wooden boats will be set on fire along the entire shore of the artificial lake, creating a realistic feeling that Cao's army was encountering the burning of Chibi.

When Abraham heard that there were only 100,000 people instead of 800,000, he was a little disappointed. But after thinking about it, 100,000 people was not a small number.

As far as he could remember, the film with the largest number of people mobilized was "War and Peace" shot during the Soviet era, which was said to have mobilized more than 100,000 people.

But that was a historical war blockbuster created by the entire country, and it is definitely different from the movies shot by Lee Yi-su personally.

So 100,000 people is really not a small number!!

And the most important thing is that this is an ancient war. Just thinking about the scene of thousands of horses galloping and tens of thousands of armored soldiers all over the mountains and plains.

Abraham suddenly said excitedly: "Li, after the film festival is over, I will definitely visit your crew!"

"no problem!"

Li Yishu readily agreed, "I will also invite some reporters and national film distributors to visit. You can go to the scene to watch our crew filming."

If he wants to increase the box office of "Red Cliff of the Three Kingdoms", he will carry out subsequent promotion in Asia and is not in a hurry. However, it is different in European and American countries as they are not interested in Eastern history.

Only by promoting it in advance, declaring it a groundbreaking historical masterpiece, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people to film it, and letting reporters write some soft articles, can we create some waves in Europe and the United States.

After the movie is finished, we will edit in some sufficiently exciting war scenes, preferably like the various war scenes from the "Lord of the Rings" series that were edited on the Internet decades later, so as to arouse the interest of these foreign audiences.

The two sides chatted for seven or eight minutes, until Amy came over and Li Yishu said goodbye to Abraham.

After leaving the exhibition hall, Li Yishu asked, "Have you arranged a hotel?"

"Everything has been arranged, boss. Yongmei, Tanaka and the others have already gone there."

"Okay, let's go now."

Li Yishu nodded, followed Amy, and went to a nearby large foreign-related hotel.

noon.

After a quick meal, a group of senior executives and managers from the art media group held some business meetings on the group's financing next year in the conference room provided by the hotel.

After nearly a year of resource integration, Art Media Group has now divided into eight subsidiaries, namely film, TV series, music, publishing, distribution, TV broadcasting, newspapers and animation. (Not including Golden Lion Film and Jingyi Film and Television Company)
The eight subsidiaries are independent of each other, but they also cooperate with each other because of the existence of the parent company. Amy said, "Boss, we have already contacted Ernst & Young, an accounting firm in the United States. They will evaluate our Art Media Group. It will take about three months, and they will be able to give a valuation in January or February next year."

"Can they tell me approximately how much it's worth?" Li Yishu asked curiously.

Not only him, but also Monica, Yongmei, Tanaka and others were very curious.

In the past, Art Media Group's business was too fragmented, so it is integrating its resources again this year. According to Amy, referring to the group's profitability, return rate, market share and other issues in the past few years, its market value is approximately US$10 billion.

This is still an exaggeration. After all, Li Yishu spent nearly US$400 million just to acquire Ming Pao and Asia Television.

But market value is not something that can be determined by what you say. It depends on the professional accounting firm and the opinions of investors.

Others think he is not worth $15 billion, but investors are optimistic about the future and think he may be worth $ billion.

Amy hesitated and said, "It's about the same as what we estimated before, about 10 billion US dollars, but this is just an estimate."

Seeing that Amy seemed to have something to say, Li Yishu did not ask any more questions and said with a smile, "Not bad, I thought it was only 700 million or 800 million US dollars. I am satisfied with the estimate of 1 billion US dollars."

When the others heard this number, they also smiled excitedly.

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The group is preparing for an IPO, and they are all veterans who have worked with the group together, so they must be entitled to the options they deserve.

If this wave goes well, there will be countless more millionaires and even tens of millions of dollars worth of wealth.

Apart from anything else, Amy will definitely become a multi-millionaire.

"Okay, let's not talk about valuation anymore. Tanaka, tell me about the business situation in Japan..."

Li Yishu changed the topic and stopped talking about market value and instead talked about the business conditions in various regions.

"Okay, boss." Ichiro Tanaka paused and said, "We are currently cooperating with Toho Co., Ltd. and have invested in 6 movies. We are also cooperating with Asahi TV..."

The meeting lasted for more than an hour, until about three in the afternoon.

Li Yishu dismissed the meeting and asked everyone to go back and rest. He left Amy alone and asked, "Is the valuation given by Ernst & Young not high enough?"

Amy said, "Sure enough, I couldn't hide it from my boss. The valuation they gave was only about $5-6 million."

"So little?" Li Yishu frowned.

"It's already a lot. I took it for granted before."

Amy began to explain.

There must be a reason why the valuation given by Ernst & Young is only $500 to $600 million.

Ming Pao and Asia Television were both acquired by Li Yishu at a fixed price, and both have been operating in Hong Kong for many years and have certain market reference value.

The estimated price and the purchase price may be roughly the same.

But some of Li Yishu’s other companies do not have such high valuations.

The reason is very simple, that is, these companies do not make a lot of money and their business volume is not large.

The reason why these industries can be valued at US$200 million is purely due to the wide range of businesses involved in the Art Media Group and its bright future.

Li Yishu asked, "What if we include Golden Lion Pictures?"

He did not ask about Jingyi Film and Television Company because the company was worthless in the eyes of investors. In October this year, several advertising companies in Yanjing had obtained licenses for film and television shooting.

In other words, Li Yishu's company is no longer the only private film and television company with a license.

Its value is naturally greatly reduced.

What’s more, how small is the mainland film and television market nowadays?

Last year, the total box office in mainland China was about 25.8 billion yuan, which is only 3.2 million US dollars when converted into US dollars.

This year is even worse. Li Yishu learned from Han Sanping that as of October 10, the cumulative box office in the mainland was only a damn 1 million yuan.

Including October to December, the maximum amount would be less than 10 billion RMB.

A market worth just over 100 million US dollars.

Precisely because the drop was so high, so high that it was frightening, the leaders above were full of expectations for Lee Yi-su's movie, hoping that it could create history and drive a wave of movie-watching.

“If you include Lion Films, it would definitely start at $10 billion.”

Amy smiled and said, "Ernst & Young Accounting Firm especially hopes that we can include Golden Lion Pictures in the calculation."

Li Yishu did not classify the most profitable Golden Lion Films into the Art Media Group.

If Lion Films is included, the valuation would be a solid $10 billion.

"Final Destination", "Saw", "Wrong Turn", "Scream"... These low-cost horror movies have all achieved impressive box office results.

There is also "Final Destination 2", which was released yesterday, October 10th, North American time.

Although the box office results have not yet come out, for a series of movies like this, with the 31st being Halloween, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the box office results are bound to be good.

A professional evaluation company even gave an extremely high estimate of $1.2 million in North American box office.

It is conceivable that if Lion Films were to make a valuation, it would definitely not be less than US$3 million.

These films are simply too valuable and have the potential to be developed into a series of films. It is conservatively estimated that they can generate at least $20 billion in box office and peripheral revenue worldwide.

“Golden Lion Pictures will be merged into the group sooner or later, but definitely not now.”

Li Yishu shook his head. No one knew the market value of these low-cost horror films better than him.

Let’s not talk about other movies, such as Scream and Final Destination, which will be series of at least 5 films in the future.

If they don’t make money, how could these film and television companies make so many films in succession?
Moreover, once Lion Films was merged into the group, when the Asian financial crisis of 97 and the Hong Kong financial crisis of 98 occurred and the stock market plummeted, how could Li Yishu buy at the bottom?

Can't those foreign investors see the true value of the Art Media Group that owns the Golden Lion Film Library?
By then, they will definitely bite off a piece of fat without hesitation.

This is also the reason why Li Yishu would rather have a lower valuation than a merger.

What a loss.

After the 98 financial crisis, Li Yishu bought back the shares and then merged with Golden Lion Pictures to stimulate the stock price. By that time, the valuation of Golden Lion Pictures might be more valuable than that of Art Media Group.

Because three years is enough time to shoot multiple horror movie sequels, and even some other low-cost, high-profit scripts written by Li Yi. (End of this chapter)