Chapter 312 The Contradiction Between the Two Zhangs

The lively celebration banquet for "Let the Bullets Fly" was naturally reported extensively by media reporters, but compared with the celebration banquet, the gossip about Jiang Wen sending a red envelope to Yang Shoucheng attracted more attention from netizens.

After the box office of If You Are the One 2 reached 4.5 million yuan, the daily growth rate dropped to a few hundred thousand.

At the same time, the screening rate of major cinema chains has been reduced to below 5%. Although the films have not been withdrawn, they are almost the same.

"Although the box office is a bit disappointing, for a commercial film, this box office has satisfied me. As for the domestic film box office record, I will continue to sprint."

Feng Xiaogang was still full of vigor and vitality when facing the interview with reporters. He was right. After all, in terms of profit, the revenue of "If You Are the One 2" was not necessarily worse than that of "Aftershock".

After all, although the latter has a high box office, it also requires a large investment. The former earned more than 50 million from patch ads alone, plus the box office share, which is enough to make other companies in the circle envious.

"If you want to make money, you still have to rely on big directors." Many film and television company bosses in the industry sighed, thinking back to the development of Huayi Company, it was really almost entirely due to Feng Xiaogang.

In 98, the Wang brothers hired Feng Xiaogang, the king of Chinese New Year films, from Forbidden City Films, for a whopping 400 million yuan a year. Endless continued the success of Party A and Party B, and its box office revenue was equal to that of other small films combined.

From then on, Huayi's development became unstoppable, and Feng's New Year films also created the December New Year box office in the mainland.

In 04, Feng Xiaogang's contract with Huayi expired, and he joined hands with Zhang Guoli to establish a company called Taihe Minzhong, investing 500 million yuan and each holding 50%. Zhang Guoli served as general manager and Feng Xiaogang as director.

The two had an ambitious plan at the time: Feng Xiaogang would make two movies every year and Zhang Guoli would make three TV series every year, but the result was that Director Feng was poached by Huayi again.

Looking at Huayi's development over the years, it is basically centered around Director Feng. Even when he wanted to shoot "1942" which seemed destined to lose money, Mr. Wang and his wife supported it with great pain.

Because commercial disaster movies are different from literary disaster movies.

For example, in the Hollywood disaster movie "San Andreas", no matter how big the earthquake is or how many people die, at the end of the film, the father finds his daughter and the protagonist's family is reunited. The audience will smile knowingly, feeling that life is impermanent, and that being a family together in peace is more important than anything else.

However, at the end of "1942", the protagonist returns to his hometown alone and picks up a motherless girl as a relative. Anyone who sees this will sigh and feel depressed and crazy.

Wang Xiaogang and Wang Dawang have been producing films for many years, so they could see the risks involved. However, in order to win the heart of the general, they really dared to take the gamble. Regardless of whether the movie made money or not, at least they managed to keep Feng Xiaogang.

As for Zhang Weiping of New Picture, I don’t know if he has lost his mind. Recently, the highly anticipated "The Flowers of War" held a start-up ceremony in Jinling.

Media from all walks of life flocked to Jinling.

But soon after, a piece of gossip was leaked by someone in the circle.

At the beginning, when Zhang Yimou wanted to shoot this drama, he found the author of the novel, Yan Geling, and bought the film rights and TV rights. This was mainly to prevent others from buying the TV rights and to avoid someone shooting a TV version of "The Flowers of War" before the movie was being filmed.

As everyone knows, Zhang Yimou only makes movies and rarely shoots TV series. He also promised the author that he would return the copyright of the TV series to the author after the movie was finished. The main reason he bought the copyright now is that he is worried that someone will do something bad.

Later, the "The Flowers of War" project was successfully launched, and Yan Geling approached Zhang Yimou twice to discuss buying back the TV series copyright.

"Once the film starts shooting, and preferably once post-production has begun, we can return the copyright of the TV series to you." Zhang Yimou promised Yan Geling.

However, Yan Geling later learned that the TV drama copyright of "The Flowers of War" had been sold by Zhang Weiping at a sky-high price, which meant that Zhang Weiping had earned a very generous copyright fee. As a result, Yan Geling got nothing and lost the trust of the film and television company that wanted to cooperate with her.

In other words, Zhang Yimou was the last person to know about Zhang Weiping's operation. As a result, the launch conference ended in a bad mood.

"I heard that when Director Zhang learned about the situation, his face turned grim. The two of them started arguing after the press conference, and it was quite noisy. Otherwise, there would be no way the news would have gotten out."

In the Xingchen Film and Television Company, Song Ge spoke vividly, and Gu Wei beside him nodded from time to time.

At this moment, Song Ge didn't know how to complain about Zhang Weiping.

"Zhang Weiping doesn't think that he can achieve what he has today entirely by himself."

Gu Wei was also speechless. In the original time and space, New Picture lost Zhang Yimou and had to close down in the end. In comparison, Huayi Company, even though it went astray in the later period, but relied on Feng Xiaogang and finally survived.

"There should be quite a few companies in the circle that have contacted Director Zhang." After thinking for a moment, Gu Wei couldn't help but ask.

"That's for sure. Almost all the famous film and television companies have probably contacted Director Zhang privately. After all, who wouldn't want to have such a great director under their wing?"

According to the information Song Ge learned, Huayi, Bona, Guangguang, Emperor Entertainment, Orange Sky, Stylish Media, Xiaoma and other companies in the circle are all waiting for the "breakup of the two Zhangs" so that they can become the buyers.

After he finished speaking, Song Ge reacted instantly, "I understand. Although the two of them have conflicts, they are probably inseparable in the short term. The investment in "The Flowers of War" is so huge, there is still pressure."

"You can try it first, offer a higher price, relax the conditions, and slowly work hard. Sooner or later, you will have a chance."

At this moment, Gu Wei looked like a weird uncle who was tempting a little girl with a lollipop, with a meaningful smile on his face.

……

"Let the Bullets Fly", which had outstanding box office performance, naturally could not escape the fate of being called to a meeting.

At this time, the official media spoke out again to congratulate the Chinese-language film for setting a single-film box office record of over 700 million.

At the same time, the State Propaganda and Art Bureau and the Film Bureau of the State Administration of Optoelectronics jointly organized a seminar on "Let the Bullets Fly", inviting more than 50 experts and scholars from government departments, producers and distributors, academia, critics, and the media to discuss the film and expound on the concept of "the rise of Chinese-language films."

Gu Wei was naturally among the invited guests, but he did not attend, using the excuse that he was busy dealing with the film's nomination for the Berlin Film Festival.

At the seminar, the experts did not focus on non-artistic issues such as funding and technology, but instead focused on discussing the film's theme and educational significance.

Who says watching movies can’t educate you? Although some experts are unreliable, some people have talked about making Let the Bullets Fly a key project for China’s cultural export abroad.

All major countries in the world attach great importance to cultural exports. Just like Hollywood movies dominate the world, after watching them, people in some remote and backward countries and regions will naturally think that New York is so developed and prosperous, and if they have the opportunity to go there, will it change their destiny?

This will encourage some relatively "elite" and "excellent" people from all over the world to work hard to go to the United States and contribute to their economic development.

For example, if anime is produced well in an island country, some anime fans may want to travel to Tokyo, go shopping, and buy anime-related products after learning about the culture of the island country.

Although Gu Wei did not go, Ning Hao, Wu Ershan and Lu Yang did go to join in the fun.

After a one-day seminar, although there was not much actual content, the quality of "Let the Bullets Fly" was definitely improved.

In the following days, several major central media newspapers spoke out and praised the film, analyzing from various angles why "Let the Bullets Fly" was so successful, its box office success, and what significance it has for Chinese-language films.

"It's all just nonsense. It makes me want to fall asleep."

"Haha, don't worry. If Painted Skin 2 surpasses Let the Bullets Fly, I guess the higher-ups will have to hold a seminar."

Hearing this, Wuershan was stunned. It was true. Even if it was not worse than "Let the Bullets Fly", he would probably still be called to a meeting. After all, if you don't hold a meeting, the experts will have no room to perform.

In such a lively atmosphere, Xu Zheng's "Lost on Journey" was released in major theaters across the country.

Liu Yifei might have been shocked after watching "New Shaolin Temple". So she dragged Gu Wei to the cinema to watch this comedy film which has the potential to make over 100 million yuan.

Su Chang, who did not join the group, also clamored to go along. She was not planning to go back to her hometown for the New Year this year. She has been staying at Liu Yifei's house recently, and the two of them have been living the life of stay-at-home girls again.

In late January in the capital, with snowflakes floating in the sky, three people, fully armed with masks and hats, appeared at the Wanda International Cinema in the capital.

“The screening rate of Lost on Journey is not high either.”

The young lady who bought the ticket couldn't help but say as she walked into the theater.

"You don't even look at the cost of this movie and the proportion of publicity and promotion. How high a screening rate can they give you? Not to mention that there are so many domestic and imported films at the same time. This amount of screening is already good enough."

Upon hearing this, Gu Wei casually explained that this is still Wanda's side. If it were other cinema chains, the screening rate would probably be even lower, after all, their size is there.

"Pfft!"

"Ha ha!"

The plot of the movie "Lost on Journey" is very simple, and the shooting technique is not complicated either, and it is full of laughter throughout.

Especially the scene where Niu Dan was drinking milk, which caused a burst of exclamations in the theater.

"This can't be real drinking."

Su Chang on the side couldn't help but ask, although it was a movie, but Wang Baoqiang's acting skills were really good, making people wonder if he really drank a whole bucket of milk.

"I really drank it. I only took one take when I was shooting this scene. You can see there was a flash in the middle. That was because I couldn't drink any more, so the camera cut away."

"Ah." Liu Yifei and Su Chang were both shocked.

Seeing this, Gu Wei also felt a little emotional. Everyone's success is not easy. Wang Baoqiang, an actor from a grassroots background, is indeed an underestimated actor with great talent.

The movie wasn’t long and before we knew it, it ended with laughter.

"Haha, oh my god, I am dying of laughter."

"I think it's much better than The New Shaolin Temple. What do you think, Sissi?"

"Yeah, sure."

Halfway through, the young lady laughed so hard that tears came out.

On the other hand, unlike Gu Wei and the others, Xu Zheng was also filled with anxiety at the moment. After all, it was his first time as a director, and the success or failure of this movie was of vital importance to him.

“Hey, I told you to stop walking around, the box office data won’t be available until tomorrow.

Besides, didn’t Director Gu say that the box office has the potential to exceed 100 million yuan? Don’t you still believe in Director Gu’s vision?" Tao Hong couldn't help but say when she saw Xu Zheng swaying back and forth.

After being scolded by Tao Hong, Xu Zheng stopped wandering around and sat down. He picked up his phone and browsed the online reviews. However, it was still morning and large-scale reviews would probably not come out until the afternoon.

There are only a few good reviews on the Internet now, but Xu Zheng still read them one by one.

Seeing her husband like this, Tao Hong was also a little emotional. After so many years of development, Xu Zheng's position in the circle is now rather awkward. In terms of popularity, he is certainly not as popular as other popular young actors. In terms of works, what people can remember is the role of Zhu Bajie.

The situation of people reaching middle age and becoming outdated is vividly reflected at this stage.

After thinking for a moment, Tao Hong got up and went to the kitchen, planning to cook some delicious dishes at noon to comfort her husband.

...

(End of this chapter)