Who are you calling "little fresh meat"? I'm the king.

Chapter 603 Departure (13)

Besides "The Martian" and "The Wandering Earth".

Shen Yan has prepared "Moon", "Ex Machina", "Passengers" and "Alien Awakening"...

The next two are both planned to be horror movies!

Passengers is perfect for a successful horror film—a lawless space station, the protagonist awakens prematurely, which means he can choose any woman to wake him up at will…

However, Passengers has a good premise: how a couple who are awakened prematurely in a hibernation spaceship face the inevitable death and aging of life.

The original production company was Sony. They saw the success of this movie: a good idea, science fiction, Jennifer Lawrence + Star-Lord, and it was likely to be a success!

Then they took the picture!
Life – A spaceship and an alien creature board it and begin killing everyone.

A typical B-movie!

Rather than comparing it to Alien, it's more like The Thing and The Fly—in The Thing's ending, the survivors of the alien massacre sit down and are about to freeze to death, while everyone is still wondering if the others are aliens in disguise;

In the ending of "The Fly," the monster's tragic fate ends when he is killed by his lover, an act he sees as an act of mercy towards himself.

All of this came to an abrupt end at a moment of downward unease.

The film refuses to reveal what will happen next, leaving everything to the audience's imagination.

Okay, actually, the budgets for these four films weren't high. The main reason was to use the soundstage—it was all set up, and we'd reached an agreement with the head of the Xiangshan Film Studio to shoot at least two sci-fi films every year…

These days, only Spark Studio is investing heavily in making sci-fi films, and the sets are already built. It would be a waste not to make them!

Films like *Moon* and *Ex Machina* have simple settings and require few characters and actors, so they can basically be made with a box office of under 4000 million…

Ji Xiang approached China Film Group, Tencent, and Sina to jointly invest...

If you use Andy Lau and sell the overseas rights, you can basically break even.

Hong Kong films can't come up with anything new anyway—just make a movie like "Burning City" or "Shock Wave 2"...

Such a big incident happened, yet they didn't contact the central government?

Moreover… what is the so-called ultimate solution to the nuclear leak in "Burning City"?
8 sets of protective suits!

This concerns the life and death of more than two million people and an entire city, and you, a whole part of Hong Kong, only have eight sets of hazmat suits?

The key to solving the problem was ultimately 100 tons of concrete.

Yes, 100 tons of concrete…

No 10,000!
Not 100 tons of concrete…

Damn it, can't you even find 100 tons of concrete at any construction site?

With a standard load capacity of 7 cubic meters and a national standard density of 2.4 tons per cubic meter, 6 truckloads will suffice…

In an emergency, even if we overload a little, five trucks can handle it.

Including "Shock Wave 2", which features a nuclear bomb!
Surprisingly, the Hong Kong police resolved the issue...

Brother, the Hong Kong Garrison is not just for show!
Sometimes I really wonder if these Hong Kong screenwriters are brainless...

This is absolutely ridiculous. Michael Bay's "Transformers 4" requires the Central Military Commission's approval to send in the air force to fight aliens in Hong Kong...

—Before the decisive battle, there was a scene where a spokesperson from the central government announced that Hong Kong should not be afraid, as fighter jets had already taken off!

You could say that Hollywood panders to the Chinese market, while Hong Kong films don't need to?
This can't be explained by the phrase "small-mindedness"; it's simply a lack of common sense!
……

"Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" grossed 5228 million yuan on its opening day, 6716 million yuan on its second day, 8760 million yuan on its third day, and 9200 million yuan on its fourth day...

The film grossed 2.39 million yuan in its first four days.

And it's getting higher every day. The box office performance of movies that generate phenomenal word-of-mouth and drive a viewing frenzy…

A bunch of people are discussing the film's explicit content...

Indeed, "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" is quite graphic, and it was the first time that real-life school bullying was shown on the big screen in China.
Moreover, the school bullying is just the appetizer; the real big-scale, truly explosive scenes are in the revenge scenes that follow.

Andy Lau is also very willing to go all out...

He held his daughter, who lay in a pool of blood, tightly in his arms, roaring with all his might, a sound of pain and despair.

Tears streamed down his weathered face, a picture of broken pain. His body trembled violently from the intense sobbing and fear of loss. His expression shifted from surprise to grief, as he sank into helpless groans of despair.

When he discovered the bullying videos on his phone, he broke down in tears again, his whole body trembling uncontrollably, going into a frenzy, half-mad, half-demon-like rage, yelling, and pounding, continuing his self-destructive madness.

Once the bullies were identified, the moment the pent-up pain was released, their true colors were completely revealed. Their expressionless act of "fighting violence with violence" ultimately brought the wicked to justice…

He rarely plays this kind of role before!

After all, he's a celebrity.

Celebrities and actors are different...

Andy Lau himself once said, "When I was filming in my early years, I designed some actions and expressions to portray the characters, but the director told me not to do that, just stand there looking handsome!"

That's right. From the very beginning, the Hong Kong film industry positioned Andy Lau as an idol who could act cool, rather than requiring him to perform. This was to maximize Andy Lau's commercial value, and fans were happy with this approach.

It's hard to imagine that he could play such a violent character.

Moreover, "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" grossed a whopping 6300 million yuan on its first working day...

Many box office prediction agencies have raised their final box office prediction for "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" to 11 billion yuan!
There were relatively few movies released in August, only one: How to Train Your Dragon 2.

"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" won't be released until August 29th, while Nolan's "Interstellar" won't be released until November...

Of course, "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" has a Douban rating of 7.2...

Compared to the first film's 8.7 rating, it's dropped several levels!

It's understandable, after all, the plot of "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" is relatively less engaging and lacks the smooth flow of the first "Sheep Without a Shepherd," and many of the explicit scenes are really just for visual spectacle...

Many film critics were unhappy with it…

Understandable!

After all, Spark Studio has been incredibly strong this summer, starting with "The Big Winner" during the May Day holiday, followed by "The Magic Hour," "Lost and Love," "Brotherhood of Blades," and now "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2"...

Every single one is a masterpiece!
Every single one of them did well at the box office…

Moreover, Shen Yan offended the core team in the industry—the group that controls the awards…

Can they say hello to you?

Shen Yan didn't really care; after all, he was making commercial films, and commercial films are open to all opinions...

That small group of people can do whatever they want...

It won't affect sales!
On August 17th, Shen Yan posted a short reflection on the creation of "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" on Weibo: "Regarding 'Sheep Without a Shepherd 2,' I read the comments. Many comments said that we didn't portray the bullies enough. I'm very curious. They are the murderers, so why must we portray the perpetrators? They are murderers, they are criminals!"

"What reason is there for evil? There's no point in investigating this. If your child is bullied, would you also investigate the perpetrator's underlying reasons?"

"The fact that the body is placed in front of us proves that life has been taken away, an irreversible fact. We don't need to know the prisoner's feelings, nor is it necessary to understand them. We are not interested in their unfortunate background, nor do we care about their motives."

"By the way, I've arrived in Venice... I wish 'Burning' all the best. Anyway, I've given up on the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Awards. I feel like the chances of winning the Golden Lion Award are even higher than winning the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Awards!"

(End of this chapter)