Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 253 Outshines others
It is August, and the 2016 summer season has entered its second half. Several blockbusters have been released one after another, attracting the attention of many moviegoers and film and television media.

Everyone's attention is mainly focused on two matches.

One is "Skiptrace" starring Jackie Chan VS "The Legend of the Gods" starring Li Lianjie.

These two Chinese action superstars appeared on the same stage once before in "The Forbidden Kingdom" a few years ago, but that was just a collaborative relationship.

This time, it’s a head-on competition.

Come to think of it, their development trends over the years are actually somewhat similar.

Since "Chinese Zodiac" in 2012, the reputation of Cheng Long's films in recent years has not been very high.

From "Police Story 2013" to "Dragon Blade", the signature kung fu comedy has decreased and the literary scenes have increased.

In fact, it is understandable. After all, he is over 60 years old. It is normal for him to change his acting style when he can no longer fight.

Li Lianjie is similar to him. After "Flying Daggers of Dragon Gate", he has been wandering around in bad movies like "The Mystery Detective".

Moreover, in the past two years, his reputation has taken a sharp turn for the worse due to his charitable foundation and religious issues.

So this time the competition between the two seems to be quite fair.

They are all big productions with investments of hundreds of millions, and the leading actresses are all "well-known blockbuster vase" Fan Qiaoqiao, and they have all signed a guarantee of 10 billion box office with the distributor.

"Skiptrace" has Jackie Chan's basic base, and "Fengshen Legend" has a larger star lineup, so each has its own advantages.

Another showdown is between "Detective Chinatown" and "Grave Robbers' Chronicles".

Actually, it's quite forced to put these two movies together.

Apart from the fact that they were released on similar dates, there is no connection at all.

But it should be said that netizens have endless ability to have fun on their own, and they can create connections even if there are no connections.

Arclight Pictures previously announced that "Detective Chinatown" belongs to the "Green Ivy Detective Universe".

The last drama in the "Green Ivy Series" was "Forensic Qin Ming", and it was competing against "Grave Robbers' Chronicles".

Now we are in touch.

Many netizens directly joked online, saying that "Meng Bai Da Da" has done nothing else in the past two years except fighting against "Dao Bi".

However, many viewers feel that compared to the last time, Arc Light is under greater competitive pressure this time because the opponent is "two against one".

Just half a month before the release of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", Qiyi TV's web drama "The Mystic Nine" also started airing.

Although they are not produced by the same company, the web drama and the movie belong to the same big IP "Narcotics", so they complement each other and take advantage of each other's popularity.

In comparison, "Detective Chinatown 3" seems lonely and isolated being sandwiched in the middle.

"It's incomprehensible. Movies are better compared to movies, not even close to web dramas."

In the office, Meng Bai held the phone and said, "My idea is that we can use the topic of 'competition' for publicity, but we should just focus on the movie. There's no need to bring in anything else."

"It's my opinion. It's okay for the audience and netizens to have fun on their own, but we shouldn't put the cart before the horse when it comes to publicity." Chen Zhixi's voice came from the phone.

"By the way, their first weekend box office should be out. What's the total number?"

"The Lost Tomb" will be released on August 8, which is the same Friday as "Detective Chinatown", so we can also look at the box office in the first weekend.

"According to current statistics, the total box office for the first three days of the weekend totaled 4.2 million yuan."

"4.2 million..." Meng Bai sighed, "That's more than us."

"Indeed, the lead actor Lu Han is currently one of the top-tier stars. Previously, their distributor said that the fans alone could support a basic audience of 10 to million, so they directly released the film with a guaranteed box office of billion."

"That's ridiculous. If traffic fans want to boost ratings or playback volume, that's fine. But for a movie, where real money is used to buy tickets, it's already good to expect fans to support a box office of 200 or 300 million. How can it be that high?"

Meng Bai doesn't quite agree with what Chen Zhixi said about the "basic fan base".

"Well, actually, there is controversy in the industry about how much value 'fan traffic' can play in the film market."

Since the entry of Internet capital, many of the traditional film and television market gameplays have been changed, the most typical of which is the "traffic economy".

In the past, all celebrities, whether good or bad, had to have two representative works.

Only with representative works can you gain popularity, only with popularity can you gain ratings, only with ratings will TV stations buy into it, and then you can monetize it through advertising.

But things are different now. Internet capital directly uses the left hand of film and television companies to produce and the right hand of video platforms to broadcast. If you don’t want to watch it, big data will directly push it to you.

Celebrities have also fully absorbed the style of their neighboring Korean idols, taking the idol route and making money mainly by gaining fans.

The most typical example is Alibaba.

At the beginning of the year, the newly established Alibaba Pictures announced the launch of the ancient IP movie "Eternal Love", and declared that it would not adopt the traditional film and television production model, and everything would be decided by big data.

The screenwriter of the film was cancelled, and big data was used to screen out the audience's favorite scenes and add them into the film.

The casting did not need to be decided by the director team, and the big data directly selected Liu Yifei and Yang Yang, who were most recommended by netizens. Alibaba Pictures calls this "film and television digitization". If it succeeds, the film and television industry will get rid of the past "semi-metaphysical" model, and all success points can be inferred from data.

I can only say that this attitude of "listening to my way" in every field is very consistent with Alibaba's "stereotype".

The film is also produced by Ruyi Pictures and is currently scheduled to be released next year. Many people in the industry are curious about the outcome.

Back to the present, although the box office performance of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" in its first weekend far exceeded that of "Detective Chinatown", the ratings are very different.

Three days after its release, its Douban score was only 4.8, which is worse than last year’s web drama version.

Many viewers complained in the comment section: "After watching this movie, I even forgave the previous "Nine-story Demon Tower"."

Netizens also kept their word. The rating of "Nine-story Demon Tower" was only 4.3 during its previous broadcast. With the release of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles", it rose to 4.8 in a few days.

I can only say that although they are both the same, the one you look at for a longer time will always look better.

With such a bad reputation, casual viewers can basically forget about it. How successful the movie can be now really depends on how much support the fans give to their "brother".

As the weekend ends and the workday returns, the single-day box office of movies will inevitably decline.

The box office of "Detective Chinatown" on the first working day before that dropped to more than 8000 million. The drop is within 30%, which is normal.

The decline of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" was quite large. Its single-day box office on Monday dropped to 5000 million, almost half of that on the weekend.

This is not the end. In the following days, the daily box office continued to plummet.

4000 million, 3000 million, 2000 million, until there were only a few million a day.

On Maoyan Movie, the estimated box office of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" also dropped from 12 billion at the beginning to 7 million.

When the movie was first released, Lu Han’s fans happily shouted the slogan “Summer box office champion”, and thought that all the movies released at the same time were just a bunch of rubbish.

"Please fans of 'Detective Chinatown' don't try to take advantage of the popularity. We are simply not on the same level." This was a very popular phrase in the fan circle at the time.

Unfortunately, with the box office growth of "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" declining, these calls can no longer be heard.

Those fans who had previously made sarcastic remarks also deleted their posts and ran away, pretending that nothing had happened.

In comparison, the performance of "Detective Chinatown 3" is as stable as an old dog.

After half a month of release, the cumulative total box office has reached 7.6 million. The decline is within the normal range, and there is still an increase of to million every day.

According to this trend, it is almost certain that the total box office will exceed 10 billion, and Maoyan's estimated total box office is also 11 billion.

The competition between "Detective Chinatown" and "The Lost Tomb" is basically over, while the "Dragon and Li dispute" on the other side ended even earlier.

Big Brother Cheng is indeed Big Brother Cheng. As a "scenic film called an action film", "Skiptrace" relied on Jackie Chan's appeal and achieved a box office revenue of nearly 5 million yuan.

The performance of "Legend of the Gods" was much worse. After earning 1 million yuan on the first day of its release, it plummeted to less than 2000 million on the second day.

The Douban score is only 2.7, which is the worst of the year.

Although the cast is strong, the casting is very sloppy.

Li Lianjie plays Jiang Ziya, Huang Xiaoming plays Yang Jian, Louis Koo plays Shen Gongbao, Xu Qing plays Taiyi Zhenren...

It can be said that, apart from Fan Qiaoqiao's Daji who is relatively reliable, the rest of the characters are more abstract than the other.

The audience who were tricked into the cinema complained that this movie was clearly a movie that Xiang Huaqiang put together just to promote his son Xiang Zuo.

Some viewers also suspected that the distributor was trying to launder money as they dared to guarantee a box office of 10 billion yuan for such a bad movie.

Although it has not yet been finalized, the total box office of this movie is estimated to be difficult to exceed 2 million.

Needless to say, the distributors will suffer huge losses. The producers, Bona Film Group and China Star, will not make any profit either. After all, the production cost is over 4 million yuan, so even with a guaranteed minimum, it will still be a loss.

At this point, the film market in the second half of the summer season has changed from a "four-strong competition" to a "one-man show".

The audience's discussion gradually shifted from which movie was better to "Detective Chinatown".

The current situation is very good. The next step is to wait for the final results to come out. Several producers have even begun preparing for celebration banquets.

Meng Bai also slowly shifted his focus from movies to the casting preparation for the upcoming "Day and Night Chase" and the launch of "The Lost Tomb" next month.

Just at this time, he suddenly received a call from Chen Sicheng.

"Hey, Meng Bai, are you in Beijing North now?"

"Yes." Meng Bai looked at the casting list in his hand and joked, "Can't wait to celebrate in advance?"

However, Chen Sicheng did not respond to his joke and said in a dull tone: "Something happened here. If you are not busy now, can you come to my place?"

Hearing the other party's serious tone, Meng Bai couldn't help but ask: "Why, Senior Brother, you didn't go out to whore and got caught, did you?"

"Bullshit, when was I arrested? No, when did I have sex with a prostitute?" Chen Sicheng said speechlessly: "It's not me who's in trouble, it's Baoqiang... Tsk, anyway, come over here first and we'll talk."

(End of this chapter)