Chapter 6 Release
Although "Tuya's Wedding" won the Golden Bear Award in its previous life, its box office in China was only "544 million", which is a typical example of a movie with a very high reputation but a terrible box office failure. The movie has a clear storyline, is not pretentious at all, is very real, and very touching, but not many audiences went to the cinema to watch it.

Gu Wei had no idea about the box office performance after the movie was released, but Guangguang was confident. They thought that although "Tuya's Wedding" was an art film, with the blessing of the Golden Bear Award, the box office of the movie should not be too bad, and Gu Wei did not point it out.

The international copyright of the film has made a lot of money and won awards. For Gu Wei, he has already gained both fame and fortune. Now he just needs to wait for the copyright fee to arrive. Life without money is hard. He dare not go out to socialize for a month. Even the senior girl in school asked him out. Can he still let her pay for him? Gu Wei is still a bit chauvinistic. Not spending women's money is his bottom line.

On the 20th, Gu Wei went to a cinema near the school and bought a ticket for the movie "Tuya's Wedding". Looking at the few occupants in the screening room, he felt a little disappointed.

Just think of it as spending money on publicity. Anyway, I don't plan to make any more art films in the next few years. After this year, the domestic film market will improve and the era of commercial films will come. With so many future blockbuster movies in my mind, why should I be afraid of the lack of box office when the time comes? Gu Wei comforted himself.

Sure enough, after the movie was released the next day, the first-day box office statistics from Guangguang were 87. According to the law of continuous decline in box office revenue and current consumption in the film market, the box office revenue after the release will not be much higher. From the perspective of investment cost, the domestic box office must have lost money. However, this cannot cover up the fact that the film’s foreign copyright has made huge profits.

"The Golden Bear Award-winning film only grossed 87 yuan on its first day. Where is the direction of the domestic film market?"

“Tuya’s Wedding was a box office failure.”

"The reputation of "Tuya's Wedding" has exploded and has been widely praised."

There have been various reports in the online media and discussions among netizens on major portals, saying that the movie is a typical example of a box-office hit but poor performance.

The movie box office continued to decline in the following days. During this period, Gu Wei received many calls. Feng Xiaogang, Jiang Wen, Yu Nan and others also called to chat with him.

.........

At the end of the month, Gu Wei received a call from Guangguang and was cheered up when he heard that the copyright fee had arrived. He then rushed to Guangguang to handle related matters.

According to the agreed profit-sharing ratio, plus the tax deducted, the total amount was about 10 million, which was a huge sum of money even in the capital at that time.

At this stage, the government generally has a tax exemption policy for students who start their own business or open a studio. However, "Tuya's Wedding" was submitted to the film festival and the copyright was sold in the name of Guangguang Company. The copyright fees were paid directly to Guangguang Company, but the taxes could not be avoided.

That night, Gu Wei had another dinner with Mr. Wang from Guangguang. Wang Changtian was very concerned about Gu Wei's next movie and promised that as long as Guangguang was needed, both money and people could be discussed. However, Gu Wei did not make any promise to him and only said that he would talk about it after the movie was released.

Before shooting his next movie, Gu Wei plans to visit other directors' crews and learn from them. He knows his own level well. At the beginning of the filming, it was almost entirely the staff of Qingying Studio who were in charge. Apart from providing the script, all he did was shout "cut" in front of the camera. Most of the shots were decided upon after discussion with several old masters in the crew, including the post-production editing of the film, which was also the responsibility of Qingying Studio. The film's subject matter and luck accounted for most of the reasons for its award.

After all, nowadays is not like in later generations, where anyone can be a director. As long as you are rich and famous, you can get a crew and find a few executive assistant directors, and then you can satisfy your desire to be a director. Now, if you don't have some skills, other directors in the industry will not look up to you.

The next day, as soon as the money arrived, Gu Wei notified the employees who had been interviewed a few days ago to start work. With the help of school teachers, he recruited all other personnel needed by the company, including personnel in human resources, finance, operations, etc. However, he did not hire an assistant. Now that there is no movie being filmed, there is no need to coordinate various things. It is more comfortable to be alone, and he will wait until the second half of the year or the end of the year if there is a need.

Afterwards, Gu Wei went to the mall and bought a lot of tea, cigarettes and alcohol to give to the teachers and the director of the directing department. The teachers saw that they were not particularly expensive and happily accepted them. When they found out that they were Gu Wei's copyright dividends and roughly calculated how much they could get, some teachers' eyes were red.

The next day, he went to Beijing Film Academy's Qingying Studio again and treated the original filming crew to a meal. He gave red envelopes to everyone at the table to thank everyone for their help in the filming of the movie. Including the meal and the red envelopes, Gu Wei spent nearly 300,000 yuan on this trip, averaging nearly 5,000 yuan per person, which was equivalent to several months' salary in those days.

Within two days, the news that Gu Wei treated guests and gave out red envelopes spread from Qingying Studio, and earned him a lot of good reputation. Upon hearing the news, Gu Wei also sighed that the money was not wasted.

.........

In early April, Gu Wei finally had some free time. From the end of last year until now, he had been busy with movie matters, like a spinning top, spinning non-stop.

When Gu Wei had some free time, he first went home to visit his parents and had a meal with them.

During this period, Feng Xiaogang called him again to ask him to get together. Gu Wei couldn't refuse it, so he decided to go and see first.

In April, Feng Xiaogang had already started preparing to shoot the movie "Big Shot".

On Friday, Gu Wei went to the antique calligraphy and painting market alone, looked around and bought a set of four treasures of the study, planning to take them to Director Feng's home when he visited him. He thought that it was his first time there and he didn't know what the host liked, so instead of buying cigarettes and alcohol, it would be better to buy these things, as he was in the circle of directors and must have done a lot of pretentious things.

Early on Saturday morning, Gu Wei called a taxi, told the driver the specific address, and headed to the west of the city.

Generally speaking, the capital's military compounds are mainly in the west, mainly in Haidian and Fengtai, and there are also some in Shijingshan. In the past few years, Feng Xiaogang had been hanging out with Wang Shuo and others, so he bought a house in Haidian for convenience.

After getting off the car, Gu Wei took the gifts he bought yesterday and walked around for more than ten minutes without finding the place. He had no choice but to take out his cell phone and call Director Feng.

"Hello, Director Feng, I'm Gu Wei."

“I’m here, but I can’t find the exact place.”

"Okay, I'll wait for you at the west intersection." Twenty minutes later, Gu Wei looked at the gate of the courtyard in front of him and said, "Director Feng, your place is really hard to find. It's quite convoluted."

"Haha, this is the old city area with many alleys and hutongs. It's hard to find if you haven't been here before. Let's go in and talk," Feng Xiaogang said with a smile.

As soon as he entered the door, Gu Wei saw someone saying, "Director Gu, come in quickly and have a seat inside."

"Let me introduce you. This is my wife, Xu Fan."

Feng Xiaogang seemed quite familiar with people, which also showed that he was quite tactful in dealing with people, unlike Gu Wei, who had a very straightforward temper.

Of course Gu Wei knew the person in front of him. Feng Xiaogang divorced his ex-wife because of her. Gu Wei had also seen the movies she acted in in his previous life, but the person in front of him now was younger and more beautiful.

"Sister Fan, hello, I'm Gu Wei. This is my first visit to your house. I'd like to offer you a small token of my appreciation, not just respect," Gu Wei said to the person in front of him.

"Look at you, it's enough for you to just come, why do you need to bring anything? Xiaogang has been talking about you in front of me these days, saying that you are young and promising, and you won the Golden Bear Award at such a young age, which is really amazing," Xu Fan said with a smile.

"Sister Fan, please stop praising me. If you keep on praising me, I'll get carried away," Gu Wei said jokingly.

Several people went into the room, sat down and started chatting. Xu Fan was very talkative. After Gu Wei sat down, he kept asking questions about this and that. He also asked about his family situation. When he learned that Gu Wei's parents both worked in the unit and that he was currently a student in the directing department of Beijing Film Academy, his attitude became much more enthusiastic.

Firstly, although Gu Wei is young, the honor she has received is real. Her husband has been a director for so many years but has never won the Golden Bear Award. With this award, Gu Wei's status in the circle has skyrocketed. During this period, the sisters and friends around her have asked her about Gu Wei many times.

Secondly, Feng Xiaogang had mentioned Gu Weilai to her quite a bit in the past few days, saying that a new big director had emerged in their circle, and that he was a native of the capital. For those of them in the Beijing circle, this was a good thing, as there was one more director with achievements and awards in the circle, which represented resources.

"Okay, okay, you stay here to check the household registration," Feng Xiaogang said, waving his hand as he saw Xu Fan asking questions all the time.

"Come on, Gu Wei, I'll take you to see my collection," Feng Xiaogang said to Gu Wei.

Afterwards, he asked Xu Fan to go to the Laosi Restaurant at the intersection to order a few dishes, and shouted that he wanted to have a good drink with Gu Wei at noon.

"Okay, I'll go over and ask the fourth brother to prepare, and you two can have a good chat," and then he walked out the door.

"Your sister Fan is a nice person, but she's too talkative. I'm usually afraid of her at home. She'll always talk to me about something."

"My sister-in-law is very generous and beautiful. Director Feng is so lucky," Gu Wei praised.

"I heard that Director Gu gave hundreds of thousands of red envelopes to the crew. There aren't many people as generous as you."

"Director Feng, I also feel that it's not easy for them. They've been busy following me around, and we can't treat them unfairly," Gu Wei said, waving his hand.

Feng Xiaogang gave a thumbs up and said to Gu Wei: "Just for this, you are a real man."

Then he went on to say that in today's movie making, people in the crew get paid to do their jobs, and there aren't many people like him who give red envelopes later on. The main reason is that the investment in making movies nowadays is generally not large. After a movie is finished, it is considered a good deal if it can be completed normally without additional investment. There is no spare money to give extra rewards to the crew members. Unlike later when the investment in movies increased, the crew members basically received extra red envelopes before or after the shooting.

"Director Gu, my new movie Big Shot will start shooting at the end of the month. I'm currently doing the pre-production. Come to the crew and have a drink with me. I'll introduce a few people to you."

Gu Wei agreed on the spot. When talking about the movie "Big Shot", Gu Wei thought of the classic lines in the movie, Ge You, Li Chengru, and of course Hong Kong's Rosamund Kwan, whose Thirteenth Aunt is also a classic of the generation.

When it comes to movies, Feng Xiaogang can't stop talking. He talked a lot about the filming of the movie, the preparation of the crew and the selection of actors.

"Director Feng, you have a lot of calligraphy and painting collections in this room?" Gu Wei didn't continue to argue with him about the issue of making a movie. He glanced at the collections in the room and casually talked about it.

"My cultural level is average. I usually come into contact with a lot of screenwriters and writers. Without cultural cultivation, it is not easy to deal with them," Feng Xiaogang said bluntly to Gu Wei.

The two of them looked around in the room for a while, and Feng Xiaogang took out all his collections, most of which were calligraphy and paintings. Gu Wei didn't know much about this, so he just listened to him.

At noon, the three of them had a meal at Feng Xiaogang's house. When they learned that Gu Wei was single, Xu Fan even said at the dinner table that he wanted to introduce a girlfriend to Gu Wei, but Gu Wei didn't take it seriously.

The meal lasted until after two in the afternoon. Feng Xiaogang might have drunk a little too much, and he talked a lot to Gu Wei. Gu Wei also drank a lot, and was in a daze and didn't hear clearly what he said. He just heard a few names and some words like let's get together some other day.

(End of this chapter)