Reborn in the Chinese Entertainment Industry: You're a Director, But You're a Casanova?

These three names are simply the standard and pragmatic casting logic of film and television producers.

For acting skills, there's Yuan Quan; for popularity, there's Chen Hao; and for buzz, there's Chen Hong.

After hearing this, Jiang gave a disdainful sneer and offered the most scathing professional critique.

"Yuan Quan is no good."

"She is indeed a good actress, but her temperament is too clean and too cold."

"She stood on the stage like a martyred chaste woman. Look into her eyes, do you believe she would commit incest with her own stepson? She couldn't portray the hunger and lust that Fanyi was inherently like."

Liu Yuehua smiled.

"Wasn't it you who played the young master Zhou Ping? The contrast in appearance is what creates dramatic tension."

Jiang Wen was speechless. He immediately realized that he had overstepped his bounds and the director was suppressing his right to speak.

He laughed, pretending to be nonchalant, and then began to comment on Chen Hao.

"She's okay at acting in TV dramas, but she has no stage experience."

"When the long shot was close to her face, her exaggerated facial expressions, which were typical of acting on a small screen, couldn't convey any real quality and couldn't hold up the eerie old house at all."

"If an actress's acting is bad, it's because the director didn't direct her well. Why do you think I can't train her?"

Jiang Wen chuckled.

"Sigh, let's talk about Chen Hong. Actually, I don't have any conflicts with Brother Kai."

"I understand why he wouldn't let me play Cheng Dieyi back then, and I don't blame him."

"But I do hope you can poach him from the other side."

"Chen Hong is stunningly beautiful. If she were to actually act in this drama, she would definitely make those old men in the Beijing entertainment circle furious."

"But I think she's just a pretty face, she doesn't have any acting skills, she just relies on her looks."

"Her delivery of lines was terrible. Even in a static stage movement scene that was filmed in one take, she couldn't even shout out three complete lines of explosive dialogue."

"If you use her, you're sacrificing the film's quality for publicity and distribution, which is putting the cart before the horse."

Complete rejection is a challenge from an experienced director to a new director's right to speak.

Jiang Wen raised an eyebrow, wanting to see how Liu Yuehua would respond to his moves.

Liu Yuehua nodded, indicating his agreement with Jiang Wen's assessment.

"Brother Jiang is right. I don't really know much about these actors either, and I've never had any contact with them."

"As a director, Director Jiang's analysis is quite insightful."

Then Liu Yuehua changed the subject.

"As I just mentioned, the selection of actors is only one aspect, and the contrast between their image and their promotional image is another."

"If I were only judging by acting skills and appearance, why would I cast comedic characters like Feng Gong and Song Dandan?"

"When they come on stage, the audience is immediately pulled out of the story."

Jiang Wen raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, Song Dandan's on too?"

"It's okay, we can arrange an audition first, let all three actors have a go, and then decide on someone else in the end."

"By the way, have you read 'Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils'?"

"Oh, what's so great about martial arts movies? TV dramas are just so-so."

"Actually, the casting for this film was also a bit of a scramble. Zhang Da Hu Zi's casting caused quite a stir in the entire entertainment industry, you should know that, right?"

"Yes, that's true. It happened when we were filming 'Swordsman'. The casting and recasting generated a lot of buzz."

"The role of Wang Yuyan was originally intended for my senior, Yan Danchen, but in the end, it was Liu Yifei from our family who was cast instead."

"Oh, now that you mention it, I vaguely remember it. It was reported in the news, so what do you mean?"

"What I mean is that we should also hold a casting call and publicly select suitable actors."

Let's take a look and see which role is more suitable.

Jiang Wen thought about it and felt something was off.

"No, no, no, I did a thorough research on your background before you came."

"You've been filming everything from BL films to movies this past year, and it seems like you've never done any open casting before."

"They just randomly pick new students or their parents to fill in, only using the cheapest ones. Why are they making such a big deal out of casting this time?"

"Is it really just for publicity? Is it really for casting, not for choosing actresses?"

Liu Yuehua smiled.

"Brother Jiang, what kind of person do you take me for?"

"The girls around me are all incredibly beautiful. I never touch actresses; I have no interest in them."

"My happiest time was when I first started making gay porn."

Jiang Wen quietly took a half step back and looked at Liu Yuehua warily.

"Brother, you can't just say things like that. You should at least be interested."

In terms of script polishing and the shrewdness of casting, Jiang Wen's intuition is that it is at the top level in China.

"So, in your opinion, whose business is capable of handling this?" Liu Yuehua asked.

"Xu Qing," Jiang Wen said crisply.

"She has that pampered yet charming young woman quality in her bones."

"At the age of 30, you are at the peak of your maturity."

"Her arrogance and repression, hidden in her dimpled smile, made the audience believe she was capable of seducing her stepson and destroying her entire family as soon as she stepped on stage, without her having to act."

Moreover, Jiang Wen added a fatal point from the perspective of taking sides.

"Xu Qing comes from a privileged background and is a veritable little princess of Beijing's elite circles."

"Old Lu and his gang consider themselves the orthodox Beijing circle. If you can get Xu Qing into this film crew that's specifically designed to slap them in the face, that would be truly devastating."

This suggestion caught Liu Yuehua's eye, and he quickly went through it in his mind.

After playing Ren Yingying in "The Smiling, Proud Wanderer", she reached the peak of both her popularity and mature charm.

In terms of professional skills, he is absolutely capable of holding his own, and the clash of hormones between him and Jiang Wen is definitely the biggest visual tension in the whole film.

In terms of publicity and distribution, the participation of the "princess of the compound" in the film, which aligns with her own interests, brings top-tier topic traffic.

Moreover, stripping away these external labels, in Liu Yuehua's personal calculations, 34-year-old Xu Qing also possesses high added value potential for development.

Although Liu Yuehua is a profit-driven businessman, he is also a normal man.

In this world of fame and fortune, power and women are always intertwined resources.

Xu Qing's inherent mature and married woman aura, along with her stunning figure, makes her a highly desirable business partner for any director who wields absolute power within the production crew.

There's a saying that goes, "ql breeds FB, absolutely ql breeds absolutely FB."

Bringing her into the film crew was not only about finding a highly talked-about second female lead for the movie, but also about setting up a high-level target for themselves.

In the subsequent closed rehearsals and high-pressure film crew environment, it was only natural for the director to want to conduct in-depth script discussions and psychological counseling with an actress who was deeply mired in emotions, thereby completing a dual binding of interests and physical intimacy.

"Teacher Jiang has a good eye; she has figured out both the business and inflation value perfectly."

Liu Yuehua nodded in satisfaction.

"We've decided on Xu Qing for the role of Fan Yi, but we'll see how things go later."

"In a couple of days, we'll hold a public casting call to generate buzz."