Chinese Entertainment: Academic Director

Chapter 390 Not Simple

Cao Yang had long seen through these people in Hollywood.

As long as we share common interests, we are good friends and brothers, and everyone benefits.

But for their own benefit, they are willing to betray their good friends and brothers at any time.

In this respect, these Americans are no match for Marco Müller, the president of the Venice Film Festival.

Perhaps because he studied in China in his early years, he experienced the simplicity and honesty of the Chinese people during that special period, so he is still very particular and cares a lot about Chinese-language films and filmmakers.

Although Cao Yang's "Love in the Seaside City" has been completed, he did not immediately go to the United States to promote "New Pirates of the Caribbean," which is scheduled to be released in about twenty days.

I stayed not for the purpose of submitting "Love in the Seaside City" for review.

To be honest, given his current status, even if the film does have some violations, it certainly won't be like other films that get rejected without explanation of what needs to be changed or how it should be changed.

The most likely explanation is that Director Tong from the Film Bureau personally called Cao Yang to discuss whether retaining these scenes would have a negative impact on society...

By the way, Director Tong is also a vice-ministerial level official.

Before becoming the director of the Film Bureau, he served as a party official, chairman, and general manager of China Film Group Corporation.

During his tenure as Chairman and General Manager of China Film Group Corporation, Mr. Han served as Vice Chairman and Deputy General Manager.

Cao Yang was not in a hurry to go to the United States for two reasons. First, he was afraid of being taken advantage of by the film and television producers' alliance. He decided to observe for a few days before going.

Secondly, the film he produced and co-wrote is titled "Assembly," which will be released nationwide on December 1st. Since he is in China, he will definitely attend the premiere of "Assembly."

Several film and television companies invested in "Assembly", but due to Cao Yang's involvement, there were four main investment companies: China Film Group, Qingdao Film Studio, Huayi Brothers, and Media Asia from Hong Kong.

Nowadays, Han, the general manager of China Film Group, and Cao Yang are considered staunch allies. Most of the films that Cao Yang is involved in will also involve Qingying Film Studio and China Film Group.

Old Han was grateful for this, much like Hou Keming from Beijing Film Academy felt about Cao Yang; the two of them were completely bound to Cao Yang.

Of course, their benefits are definitely enormous.

The reason why Lao Hou was able to take up and hold a leadership position at Beijing Film Academy was because of his relationship with Cao Yang—almost all of his remarkable achievements were due to Cao Yang.

Han was able to take the position of chairman and general manager ahead of time because of his relationship with Cao Yang—the three major European awards, the Oscars, and the money earned from investing in Hollywood movies were all equally useful to Han.

Huayi Brothers and Media Asia originally planned to release "Assembly" on December 20, because "The Warlords," starring international action star Li Lianjie, was to be released on December 13.

This film boasts a star-studded cast including Li Lianjie, Liu Dehua, and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Huayi Brothers and Media Asia in Hong Kong felt it would be better to release "Assembly" a week after "The Warlords" was released, once the hype had died down.

To be honest, the reason is that this is the first time Little Steel Cannon has made a war-themed film, and there are no big names from Hong Kong or Taiwan joining the project, so they lack confidence in Little Steel Cannon.

After all, "The Warlords" was said to have an investment of $4000 million. When the film was first announced last year, the exchange rate between the US dollar and the RMB was 8.0226, which translates to an investment of 3.2 million RMB.

Why was the production cost of this movie so high?

Even if Li Lianjie received 1 million yuan in salary, Liu Dehua received 1600 million yuan, Takeshi Kaneshiro received 1200 million yuan, and Xu Jinglei received 200 million yuan... the total salary of all the actors would only be a little over 1.3 million yuan, accounting for about 40% of the total cost.

But excluding the actors' salaries, does this movie really need to cost nearly 2 million yuan for filming and post-production?
Ha ha.

To be honest, "The Warlords" is indeed a rare good movie, and it is the best film that Chen Kexin has made in her transition from art films to commercial films.

Perhaps because he comes from an art-house film background, he is good at exploring human nature, which is why the development of the characters' humanity in "The Warlords" is so brilliant.

This film is basically considered the pinnacle of Li Lianjie, Liu Dehua, and Takeshi Kaneshiro's acting careers.

The investment in "Assembly" was only over 8000 million RMB. Compared to "The Warlords", no one thought that "Assembly" could compete with "The Warlords" at the box office, even though it was produced by Cao Yang.

However, when Huayi Brothers and Media Asia learned that Cao Yang's "New Pirates of the Caribbean" would be released simultaneously in China on December 21, they considered postponing the release of "Assembly" to next year.

In the end, Xiao Gangpao insisted, so the release date of "Assembly" was moved up to December 1st.

As everyone knows, the premieres of movies related to Cao Yang are generally not messy and are usually held the day before the movie's release, following tradition.

As for the premiere of "Assembly", after consulting with Cao Yang, Xiao Gangpao decided against any gimmicks and set it for November 30th.

To paraphrase Xiao Gangpao, Cao Yang's movie doesn't need any gimmicks at the premiere. My collaboration with Cao Yang on the movie is already a case of 1+1 being greater than 3, so there's no need for any gimmicks or tricks.

Don't be fooled by Xiao Gangpao's shameless attempts to curry favor and flatter; Cao Yang understands him. He's just good at hiding his true feelings; he's actually a very sensitive person.

Being shameless and knowing how to be patient are essential qualities for many successful people.

This is one of the reasons why Xiao Gangpao was able to go from a "small person" to a successful and famous director.

Cao Yang knew very well that if he participated in the premiere as the producer and screenwriter of "Assembly", Xiao Gangpao would have nothing to do and would definitely steal all the limelight from him.

Does Cao Yang need this kind of limelight? Of course not.

So Cao Yang told Xiao Gangpao that he would attend the premiere as a "guest".

Xiao Gangpao remained silent for a long time before finally saying in a low voice, "Director Cao, if there's anything you need in the future, just let me know."

The premiere of "Assembly" was held at the Workers' Stadium, and many celebrities attended, including Ge You, Zhang Guoli, Liu Ye, Huang Xiaoming, Sun Honglei, Li Xiaoran, Fan Bingbing, Zhang Liangying, Shang Wenjie, Annie Yi, and many more.

Zhao Benshan, Fan Wei, and others also came specifically for this purpose.

The directors include Xu Ke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yang.

President Han also came, but he came with Cao Yang. Almost all the guests had arrived, and President Han and Cao Yang were the last to appear.

Although "Assembly" didn't play any tricks at its premiere, it did have a unique approach on the screen.

The thousands of audience members witnessed the largest giant screen in the history of Chinese cinema. This specially made screen, which is four stories high and the size of a standard basketball court, was absolutely breathtaking.

In particular, the 11.1 channel sound effects, recreated on-site using special technology, brought the war scenes of bullets flying and cannon fire raging, striking the hearts of the audience along with the trembling floor beneath their feet.

"How about that? Awesome, right?"

The little cannon grinned, showing off the big screen to Cao Yang.

"That's why I insisted on holding the premiere at the Workers' Stadium. We don't do the fancy premieres like those of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, nor do we have those premieres with singing and dancing but no movie showing, all that secrecy."

We'll stick to tradition and not do anything special, but setting up a super-sized screen and bringing the battlefield to the Workers' Stadium to create a bit of a spectacle is still necessary.

It was indeed impressive, but for viewers who were close by, the screen was a bit too big, making it less enjoyable.

When are you going to the US?

Little Cannon asked again.

Then he leaned towards Cao Yang and whispered, "Should I personally step in and hype things up to suppress the Hong Kong guy's momentum, so that his movie doesn't get popular and affect the box office of your 'New Pirates of the Caribbean'?"

As an industry insider, Xiao Gangpao knows this perfectly well. The domestic film market is getting better and better, but at most, it can only accommodate two blockbuster films in the same release window.

If "The Warlords" becomes a hit, it will indeed have some impact on "Pirates of the Caribbean," which was released a week later than "The Warlords."

Similarly, if "Assembly" becomes a huge hit, it will also affect the box office of "The Warlords" which will be showing for about ten days at a time.

Although Cao Yang was somewhat curious about how Little Cannon would personally participate, he still declined Little Cannon's offer.

“I’m not in a hurry for now, and you don’t need to get involved yourself. Just leave it to the market. If ‘Assembly’ becomes a huge hit, ‘The Warlords’ will definitely not take off, and it won’t affect ‘New Pirates of the Caribbean’.”

Cao Yang said with a smile.

Cao Yang knew some inside information about the box office performance of the movie "The Warlords" in his previous life.

The box office performance of this film has been somewhat controversial. Some people said that "Assembly" "stole" the box office of "The Warlords," which led to the "disastrous" box office performance of "The Warlords."

They also claimed that President Han was behind it all.

Well, in terms of guiding public opinion, the mainland was no match for Hong Kong at this point.

First of all, at this time, China Film Group would invest in almost any commercial blockbuster, not to make money, but to revitalize the film market.

In other words, China Film Group invested in both "Assembly" and "The Warlords".

Furthermore, "The Warlords" had a larger investment and a higher proportion of investment, which can be seen from the fact that Han was the producer of "The Warlords" rather than "Assembly".

As a film producer, would Han really let the box office of "The Warlords" give way to "Assembly"?
"The Warlords" was released a week earlier than "Assembly". "The Warlords" grossed 1000 million yuan on its opening day, while "Assembly" grossed 1500 million yuan on its opening day.

Let's first look at the box office trend of "Assembly". It grossed 15 million on the first day and successfully grossed over 100 million in seven days. The average daily box office was about 15 million, which is a very normal box office trend.

If a movie performs normally, its opening week box office is usually a little over one-third of its total box office. When "Assembly" finished its run, its total box office was 2.6 million yuan, which is in line with this pattern.

The box office performance of "The Warlords" has been somewhat chaotic.

They themselves said that it grossed 10 million on the first day, and the total box office in mainland China and Hong Kong exceeded 100 million in four and a half days.

Keep in mind that "The Warlords" only grossed a little over 2700 million HKD in Hong Kong until it left theaters. How much could it have grossed in four and a half days? Let's say 1000 million HKD. Then it would have grossed over 9000 million HKD in mainland China in four and a half days!
1000 million on the first day, and more than 8000 million in the next three and a half days? Is this box office trend normal? Even with amazing word-of-mouth, it shouldn't be this explosive. It should take at least four to five days for the hype to build.

The film was ultimately advertised to have grossed 2 million yuan at the box office, which is considered normal for "The Warlords".

As for why they later used public opinion to bring up those so-called "data" and said that the box office was "stolen," it's actually very simple—the movie was losing a lot of money!

Preliminary estimates suggest that "The Warlords" will incur losses of at least 1.5 million yuan.

Investors lost a fortune, while actors and directors made a killing.

However, this is a director's transitional work, so how can it "lose money"?

If the losses are this large, where will investors dare to invest in a director in the future? The director's career will be over.

It's not easy for Hong Kong to produce a director who can guarantee box office success in mainland China. Now that we finally have a director whose works have good reviews, we certainly can't let him lose money!
Even if we have to praise him, we should still praise him.

And so, the public opinion arose—if it weren't for "Assembly" "stealing" box office revenue, "The Warlords" might have broken the domestic box office record.

Based on box office trends, even after deducting Hong Kong's box office revenue, there's still over 9000 million in four and a half days. What about a week? At least 1.4 million.

Multiply 1.4 million by 3, and that's 4.2 million in box office revenue.

Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower," which almost broke records, only grossed 2.9 million yuan, while "Titanic," which took more than half a year to make, finally achieved a record of 3.6 million yuan.

Cao Yang couldn't help but think that the next step should be to promote transparency in the box office market, so that some private film companies in Hong Kong and the mainland could not be allowed to make irresponsible claims and engage in unrestrained hype.

After the premiere, Cao Yang did not participate in any subsequent interviews, while almost all the celebrities who attended the premiere gave interviews to the media.

In an interview, Zhao Benshan made an interesting remark: "This movie is very impressive. As for whether it's good or not, it's absolutely fantastic, much better than 'Little Cannon'..."

Cao Yang looked at his phone and encountered a problem.

Today, Li Xiaoran and Pang Bing both came to the premiere of "Assembly". Li Xiaoran has acted in Xiao Gangpao's "A World Without Thieves" and "The Banquet", and Pang Bing has acted in Xiao Gangpao's "Cell Phone", so they both gave Xiao Gangpao face.

Both Li Xiaoran and Pang Bing sent text messages to Cao Yang. How should they choose?

Cao Yang hesitated for a moment, then replied to Pang Bing: "I'm busy today, I'll come see you tomorrow."

Li Xiaoran is currently filming Chen Kaige's "Mei Lanfang". She took leave to attend the premiere and will return to continue filming tomorrow.

Fat Bing can stay in Beijing for three days.

Will you still miss me the way I miss you?

In her daze, Li Xiaoran suddenly uttered these words.

Cao Yang was startled; he hadn't heard Li Xiaoran say that in a long time. He said "Yes," and then answered Li Xiaoran's question with his actions.

The next day, Li Xiaoran went to Huairou in high spirits. Cao Yang lay in bed, somewhat dazed. He had been too excited the night before and had exhausted himself.

Cao Yang doesn't know if Li Xiaoran did it on purpose, but he strongly suspects that she did.

Make sure to catch up on sleep during the day, because there's a tough battle to fight at night.

Fat Bing was no pushover either. During a break in her conversation with Cao Yang, she suddenly whispered in his ear, "Were you at Li Xiaoran's place last night?"

Before Cao Yang could answer, she added with a grin, "You should have let me come over last night..."

Where did we go in the past?

What did you do in the past?
Oh shit!

You're the vixen.

For some reason, Cao Yang pictured Li Xiaoran in his mind, with Pang Bing below...

Sigh, some women are born with these skills that make men fantasize and can't resist.

It's obvious that Fat Ice definitely counts as one.

Li Xiaoran... well, she counts too.

So, is it possible...?

Okay, okay, just think about it, just think about it.

(End of this chapter)