Chapter 513: A dramatic plot

As the Spring Festival is getting closer, except for the necessary staff, all the people in the three companies, Xingchen Film and Television Company, Animation Film Company, and Shiba Culture Company, have taken the Spring Festival holiday in advance.

In order to let everyone have a good New Year, and considering that the company was profitable this year, Gu Wei waved his hand and distributed year-end bonuses of hundreds of millions.

There are nearly a thousand employees in various departments of Xingchen Film and Television Company, plus the animation and artist management departments. It is definitely impossible to distribute everyone's year-end bonuses evenly.

Therefore, length of employment and performance became the standards. Old employees could earn as much as 200,000 or 300,000 yuan, and even those who had just joined the company could earn 20,000 or 30,000 yuan.

Compared with previous years, this year's generous investment can be regarded as a benefit from Gu Wei. Looking at the employees smiling happily after receiving the money, Song Ge and others were also very moved.

"A year-end bonus of hundreds of millions, except for us, no other company in the industry has such benefits."

“Yes, some even continue to issue additional stocks and use them as year-end bonuses. That’s really awesome.” Lu Yang said happily.

Speaking of Lu Yang, the post-production editing of "The Blade Strikes" has finally been completed. When Gu Wei learned the news, he couldn't help but sigh, saying it was not easy.

On the contrary, Lu Yang, as if nothing had happened, even suggested that several company executives get together before the New Year.

"Hey, Director Gu and Yifei are going to get engaged after the Spring Festival. To use the words from the TV series, let's have a bachelorette party to make it lively."

Having said that, it was a good thing that Liu Yifei was not around, otherwise Gu Wei would definitely have suffered that night.

A bachelor party was of course nonsense, but it was still okay to get together, so Gu Wei handed the matter over to Lu Yang to arrange it and asked him to notify everyone.

After talking about the year-end bonus, Song Ge mentioned the investment in ByteDance. He was a little puzzled as to why Gu Wei ignored so many large Internet companies and instead had a special liking for this newly established company. He even held a special meeting for this purpose.

In response, Gu Wei made a few perfunctory remarks without going into details.

After all, in Gu Wei's opinion, investing in ByteDance, including acquiring a stake in Weibo a few years ago, was just to gain control of the news voice.

As I said, Gu Wei is not afraid of being attacked by others, but is afraid of being attacked for no reason. With Weibo and subsequent tools such as Tik Tok in hand, Gu Wei can rest easy.

As a time traveler with foresight, Gu Wei only invested a symbolic amount even in European and American companies. After those companies went public, he immediately cashed out and made a small profit.

To put it bluntly, his attention and focus are still on the film and television industry. If we really look at the historical line, wouldn't the original shares of some super large companies be attractive?

You know, whether it's Apple, Penguin, or Alibaba.
As long as Gu Wei's family invests a little in these stocks, his future net worth will be much more than just that of Gu Busi?
But even so, Gu Wei only participated in the IPO of Google a few years ago, made some money and then immediately cashed out and left. This wave of funds did become the biggest help for Gu Wei to start his business. It was also with these funds that Gu Wei shot his first special effects blockbuster.

In other words, if he is really greedy and puts all his assets into it, he might end up being harvested by the other party and being slaughtered like a pig.

.........

In the villa.

More than two months after the filming of "Special Identity" was completed, just before New Year's Eve, Wu Jing finally visited Gu Wei.

"I thought you forgot about the script after you started dating someone."

In the study, Gu Wei poured the other person a cup of tea and teased.

"How can that be possible? I have a date and a movie to shoot." After hearing what Gu Wei said, Wu Jing touched his head embarrassedly.

"Haha, when did you and Nan Nan start dating? If she hadn't seen Weibo, she probably wouldn't have told me yet!" Liu Yifei asked with a smile, her face full of gossip.

"We just met at a movie premiere before, and he left his number to me. Then we became familiar with each other..." Listening to Wu Jing talking, the expression on Liu Yifei's face became very interesting.

"You guys chat first, I'll call you when the meal is ready." With that, Liu Yifei walked out.

Seeing the young lady's expression, Gu Wei guessed that the other party was most likely going to ask Xie Nan for specific details.

Shaking his head, Gu Wei stood up and took out a script from the bookshelf. It was the "Wolf Warrior" that Wu Jing had given him before. It was just a framework at first. Gu Wei spent some effort in the past two days to write out the specific content.

"Then director, let me take a look first?" After receiving the script, Wu Jingru felt like he had found a treasure. After all, everyone in the circle knew Gu Wei's great name in script writing!

"Yeah." After taking a sip of tea, Gu Wei nodded lightly.

In the revised script, scenes about the Wolf Warrior Squadron's training were added, while the exercise scenes were deleted.

To be honest, when polishing this script, Gu Wei's creative ideas were a bit bold and open.

After all, in the original time and space, the movie "Wolf Warrior" cannot be said to be bad. It's just that maybe because Wu Jing shot too many action scenes, the content of the movie always unconsciously turned to the routine of kung fu movies.

For example, in the exercise scene, in order to highlight the strength of the protagonist Leng Feng, most of the members of the Wolf Warrior Squadron, led by the deputy captain, plunged headfirst into the opponent's trap.

Then Leng Feng, who had foresight, shot and killed the "brigade commander".

There is no need to mention our army's tactics in the jungle battle. A mine in the water or a mine in the soil could knock down more than a dozen soldiers, but Leng Feng was able to defuse the mines he stepped on. This protagonist's halo is too awesome.

At the end of the film, the protagonist caught up with the mercenary leader Lao Mao alone near the border, and actually turned defeat into victory by relying on the "villain dies because of talking too much".

This kind of plot really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If the old cat didn't talk so much nonsense and stabbed the protagonist to death with a dagger first, then our side would have completely failed. This is clearly using our side to highlight the villain, and it's a bit hard to distinguish between the big and small kings!
After about half an hour, Wu Jingchang closed the script with a breath.

"As expected of a great director, compared to him, many of my ideas are indeed a bit petty." I thought silently in my heart, but asked: "Director, a team of hundreds of mercenaries entered the border, and there were drug lords, and the plot of killing Chinese people, can this pass the review?"

The plot of "Wolf Warrior" created by Gu Wei has indeed been significantly changed compared to the original version.

First, the protagonist Leng Feng kills the drug lord's younger brother. The drug lord, who was seriously ill and would not live long, went completely crazy without an heir and prepared to send a large number of mercenaries across the border to hunt down Leng Feng who was serving in the army.

But the mercenaries attracted by the huge reward were not crazy, and most of them refused the mission.

Only some people who were hoping for a lucky break were willing to do it, and eventually they organized a small team of less than a hundred people and crossed the border armed with live ammunition.

When they encountered the Wolf Warriors Squadron in training in the wild, they were almost wiped out, with only the leader, Old Cat, escaping.

Lao Mao told Min Deng an important piece of news that Leng Feng, who had killed his brother, had been transferred to serve in the special forces.

Min Deng became even more angry when he heard the news. At this time, Lao Mao came up with an idea. The unit where Leng Feng was located was the Chinese special forces closest to Min Deng.

If Min Deng launches a terrorist attack nearby and captures some Chinese hostages, China will most likely send Leng Feng's special forces abroad to carry out the mission.

Mindeng was ecstatic when he heard the idea. He first offered a reward of 200 million US dollars to recruit a team of 500 mercenaries. He also prepared various weapons such as armed helicopters, tanks, rocket launchers, mortars, etc.

They also attacked two Chinese ships on the Mekong River, capturing and killing two crew members on board.

After the news was reported back to the country, a rescue operation naturally had to be launched. The Wolf Warrior Squadron, which was closest to the crime scene, became the only choice to carry out the mission.

Leng Feng and his companions went abroad with guns and ammunition, but they did not know that they were greeted by an international mercenary group of more than 500 people with various weapons and the most experience in killing...

"Well, it shouldn't be a big problem. Since it's a military action movie, what's the point if the scenes are small?" When shooting military action movies, script review is indeed a big problem.

The original version of "Wolf Warrior" had many flaws in its plot, but it was extremely successful at the box office. With a cost of more than 80 million yuan, it grossed 540 million yuan domestically, and made a profit of nearly 100 million yuan.

Putting aside the well-known reason of the main theme, a very important point is porn, and action porn, which is rare in Chinese movies. The literal interpretation is "action pornography".

Of course, this is just a metaphor, which means that the plot of an action movie is mainly to satisfy the presentation of the action scenes themselves, and the story is just a decoration, just like an adult movie.

When super-burning or super-sexy "action scenes" stimulate the audience's adrenaline, all they may think about is "go, go, go", and as long as the plot loopholes are not too obvious, they will basically be ignored while watching the movie.

Although these films are not of high quality, they are still popular among male audiences, such as "The Expendables" or the "Somewhere Hot" series.

Among Chinese-language films, action porn is very rare outside of Hong Kong, and there are even fewer films featuring gun battles.

Putting aside factors such as censorship, mainland films have never been able to resolve the issue of the legitimacy of the source of guns in terms of plot.

Whether it is the protagonist or the villain in the story, it is impossible for them to pull out a gun and start shooting in the street for no reason.

Gu Wei's version of "Wolf Warrior" cleverly found a solution to the problem, which is to graft action porn into the mainstream military action movie.

So even though the original "Wolf Warrior" had many flaws in the plot, the action scenes were enjoyable for the audience.

For example, when Leng Feng killed the mercenary leader, some viewers even applauded in the theater. Some viewers said as they walked out of the theater that they almost cried when they heard the military leader say, "Whoever offends China will be punished no matter how far away they are."

This is the reason for the success of "Wolf Warrior". At least it seemed so exciting, cool and explosive back then!

"What about the review?" Wu Jing continued to ask. He also understood that it would be extremely difficult to get the script of this "large-scale" military action film, which also involved sensitive issues such as drug lords and borders, approved.

"The company will get it done. We will submit it for review after the new year, and we will start preparations immediately after it passes the review." Gu Wei gave the other party a reassurance.

……

There has been a lot of buzz online about the fact that "Farewell My Concubine" was not directed by Chen Kai.

Brother Chen Kai was really angry this time. According to rumors in the circle, he was very furious.

Even though "The Promise" failed at the box office and was made into a spoof video and posted online, it did not make Director Chen lose his composure like this.

Sure enough, Director Chen’s company angrily sent a lawyer’s letter to the other party.

"Some people are full of nonsense and their brains are really broken. I once again solemnly warn you to delete the post immediately and apologize, otherwise I will see you in court."

Regardless of whether it is true or false, this Weibo post has spread completely inside and outside the circle.

In addition, over the past decade or so, Director Chen's films have indeed been on a downward trend, with constant negative reviews and bad films, and few good works.

You can already imagine what people are talking about online.

A large number of netizens think that what this post says should be true!

Unlike the mess on the Internet, the actors, celebrities, industry insiders, and the actors of "Farewell My Concubine" seemed to have rehearsed it well.

Many people came out to support and solidarity Brother Chen Kai and refute the "rumors" on the Internet.

.........

On Gu Wei's side, there was hot pot, various foods and drinks in the living room of the villa.

It was originally agreed that everyone would get together outside, but in the end the location was changed to his place. Gu Wei was really impressed by Ning Hao, Lu Yang and their gang.

Song Ge, Wu Ershan, Chen Guofu, Wu Jing, Xu Zheng, Wang Chen, Jiang Xuerou, Wang Jinghua…

All the company executives and directors came.

Just at this moment, snowflakes started falling from the sky and it was freezing cold outside. When everyone in the house saw the steaming hot pot, they naturally started eating it quickly.

...

After eating and drinking, the ladies chatted and gossiped together.

Gu Wei and several directors, including Song Ge, Chen Guofu and others, discussed the filming location of Wu Jing's film.

According to Ning Hao, filming at the inland border is safe and convenient.

Lu Yang also agreed with Ning Hao's opinion, and persuaded Wu Jing that there was no need to go far away. After all, if people went abroad, it would be a big trouble if something happened.

But Wu Jing thought again and felt that he couldn't be careless. After all, this was his first film as a director after joining the company, and the investment was not small. If it failed, he would probably not be able to continue in the circle.

"Director, I asked Brother Zheng, and he still thinks it's more appropriate to shoot in Thailand. The theme of the movie is the showdown between drug lord mercenaries and mainland special forces. It always feels like something is missing if it is set in China." In the office, after listening to the suggestions of Ning Hao, Lu Yang and others, Wu Jing still insisted on his own idea and said.

Xu Zheng next to him also nodded, indicating that this was indeed the case.

To be honest, there is nothing wrong with Wu Jing's consideration. In the original version of "Wolf Warrior", Wu Jing did not go abroad for filming due to limited investment. And the shots of vegetation in the film also show that the scenery is somewhat biased towards the north.

And now that Gu Wei has taken action, he naturally has to strive for perfection.

Furthermore, the reason for going to Thailand was to make the drug lord's "nest" worthy of Min Thein's identity.

The second is that it is very convenient to shoot in Thailand.

First of all, the natural scenery, exotic architecture and cultural atmosphere have always attracted film and television companies from all over the world to shoot in Thailand.

Secondly, the practitioners are more professional. Officially, governments at all levels support the filming of foreign films, provide "one-stop" services, and various approvals are relatively fast.

In the Southeast Asian film industry, only Thailand is decent. We can't go to Vietnam to shoot.

Because Hollywood and other foreign crews come to Thailand to film all year round, many professional local reception teams have emerged here.

The professionalism of the local team greatly affects the filming quality and cost control.

In comparison, there are far fewer foreign films being shot in China.

When "Transformers 4" was filming in Hong Kong Island, the great director Michael Bay was slapped in the face by the locals. I guess they wanted to see if the director would be deformed!
.........

(End of this chapter)