Who are you calling "little fresh meat"? I'm the king.

Chapter 596 I'm not a tycoon, I can't afford to be tormented (14)

This summer's movie season is truly a feast for the eyes!

Youth films, realistic movies, comedies, and even Hollywood blockbusters with special effects are all box office hits!

So far, is the only genre this category—historical martial arts—or more accurately, martial arts...?

"The Four Great Constables: The Finale" will be released on July 12th...

There were hardly any people discussing it…

There are very few people who criticize it!

The number of ratings on Douban also reflects this: the first season of "The Four" had 17 ratings, the second season dropped to 8, and by the final season of "The Four," only 6 people had rated it…

Not many people are paying attention to this movie…

Box office of 1.89 million...

The box office reached 1.05 million yuan in its opening week!
The typical box office performance of a bad movie…

In fact, martial arts films have long been outdated – in 1993, Hong Kong martial arts films suffered a complete defeat!
That year, Hong Kong cinema produced many large-scale martial arts films, such as "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber," "The Killer Tang Zhan," and "Heroic Beggar So," but all of these films flopped at the box office.

Especially the martial arts epic "The Blade of Fury" directed by Sammo Hung.

This film cost 1800 million to produce, but it only grossed less than 200 million at the box office, resulting in a huge loss.

Films like Michael Mak's "The New Meteor Butterfly Sword," Poon Man-kit's "The Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain," and Wu Ma's "Once Upon a Time in China: Ghost Foot Seven" had investments of nearly 20 million, but their box office returns were only around 9 million.

Chung Siu-hung directed a film called "The Killer Tang Zhan," which starred Zhang Fengyi and Rosamund Kwan, but it only grossed a little over 330 million at the box office.

"Huang Feihong: A Man Should Serve His Country" is a film directed by Zhang Xinyan, who also directed "Shaolin Temple." This film only grossed 48 yuan.

That year, Hong Kong produced nearly 400 films, with martial arts films accounting for one-tenth of them.

Several martial arts films released by Tsui Hark's film studio were not very successful at the box office!
Originally, they hoped to make a fortune by riding the wave of popularity of "Swordsman II". However, the crazy "modification" of "Swordsman II" made many viewers not want to watch it, and the box office was only over 11 million.

"The New Legend of the Condor Heroes" was also full of flaws. The premise that "eating the secret manual will greatly increase your power" was too absurd, and in the end, it only earned 810 million yuan at the box office.

However, the expansion of Hong Kong films into the mainland market, coupled with the global success of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," gave martial arts films a new lease on life...

Unfortunately, this attempt to extend their lives wasn't very successful...

It has contributed a large number of bad movies!

Then the audience lost interest in this type of subject matter!
Even though there were some well-received films like "Reign of Assassins" and "The Legend of Lu Xiaofeng" in between, their box office performance... let's not even mention it!
Of the martial arts films that have been heavily promoted and released in the past two years, only "Flying Swords of Dragon Gate" and the "Four Great Constables" series have been profitable; the others have basically all lost money.

The cast of "Brotherhood of Blades" includes: Deng Chao, Wang Qianyuan, Hu Ge, Wan Qian, Wu Jing, Jin Shijie, Zhou Yiwei…

The production cost was 4500 million, which is not a small amount.

The publicity and marketing investment was close to 3000 million yuan – of which 1000 million yuan was used for ticket subsidies and 2000 million yuan was used for platform subsidies!
As an aside, all the major platforms are going crazy with ticket subsidies, including Nuomi, Dianping, Maoyan, WeChat Movie Tickets, and Gewara!
However, Shen Yan invested in Maoyan—acquiring a 35% stake for 300 million yuan. Therefore, most of the films produced by Xinghuo Studio have exclusive strategic partnerships with Maoyan…

This means that discounted tickets can only be purchased through Maoyan.

But... other platforms don't follow any ethical guidelines. They bypassed the film producers and signed cooperation agreements with cinemas, joining in and selling tickets for 9.9 yuan...

They're just throwing money at it...

—The goal is very "simple": to seize the top spot in online market share.

Shen Yan can't possibly stop cinemas from signing contracts with platforms, can he?

Logically speaking, Lu Yang should have been very confident about "Brotherhood of Blades"...

But... the promotion for "The Bride with White Hair: Moonlight Kingdom," which was released on the same day, was too aggressive, aiming to rival Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin!
And it's being released on Qixi Festival!

It mainly features themes of national and familial hatred, the spirit of the martial arts world, and romantic love!
Of course, everyone knows this is a bad movie—its release has been delayed four or five times.

But their pre-sales for Qixi Festival reached a staggering 7000 million!
Moreover, Huang Xiaoming and Fan Bingbing are the main actors, and the director is Zhang Zhiliang.

A top-tier lineup!
With such a cast and promotional campaign, a box office of less than 500 million is a failure!
Lu Yang was naturally a little unsure...

"Brother, I'm going to the US tomorrow for business..."

Shen Yan shook his head, declining the invitation, and added, "You expect me to take sides just because I'm making a bad movie review? Do you really think I have nothing to do? I'm very busy!" "...Then why don't you post on Weibo to help promote it?"

"Row!"

Shen Yan nodded, then said, "I've already acquired the adaptation rights to Thunder Sweep Drugs and am preparing to turn it into 'The Big Shot 3'... Get a few screenwriters together to work on it!"

"Huh? The Big Shot 3?"

"What's wrong? Don't you want to continue?"

"No, the second part hasn't even been released yet!"

"It's okay, it'll be released during the National Day holiday this year..."

The Thunder Anti-Drug Operation is the prototype of Operation Icebreaker – the Thunder Anti-Drug Operation in Boshe Village, Lufeng.

Shen Yan continued, "With the participation of three units—the Publicity Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, the Anti-Drug Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, and the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department—the scale of the film can be quite large!"

Lu Yang immediately became interested: "How big can it be?"

"You can film things like corrupt officials!"

"...Okay, I understand..."

Just as Shen Yan was about to hang up, Lu Yang asked again, "What are you going to America for?"

"Let's make some investments..."

Investing in movies?

"These are all low-cost investments..."

……

Shen Yan received two scripts recommended by David Fenkel: *Manchester by the Sea* and *Brooklyn*…

David Fenkel has left A24 to focus on managing the Wildfire Studio.

Liaoyuan Studio is actually the American version of Shen Yan Film Studio.

But the success of "Dallas Buyers Club" has led many independent filmmakers to vie for collaborations...

The main reason is that those big companies simply don't collaborate with independent filmmakers.

There's one more thing... they think Shen Yan is being taken advantage of!

Rich people from China…

Isn't this treating Shen Yan like a Japanese person?

—Back when Sony acquired Columbia, Hollywood treated it like a money bag and ripped it off for several years. It was a huge injustice for them for years!

Now everyone knows that Chinese people are rich…

This is called paying tuition!
However, Liaoyuan Studio only takes on low-budget films with profound storylines.

Moreover, there are many restrictions—the biggest one being Shen Yan…

There was no green light committee; it was just Shen Yan's absolute decision-making. If he thought it was worth investing in, then it was worth investing in…

As an aside—the streaming rights to "Dallas Buyers Club" were sold exclusively to Netflix for $3500 million!

Therefore, Shen Yan has the money to continue operating the Liaoyuan Studio...

Moreover, both "Manchester by the Sea" and "Brooklyn" are low-budget films!

Everyone knows "Manchester by the Sea," but "Brooklyn" is a film dedicated to Ireland—it tells the story of an Irish girl named Alice who comes to New York hoping to make a name for herself, and ultimately has to make a difficult choice between her homeland and a foreign land in the face of reality.

Shen Yan knew about this movie and was initially very interested, but after hearing that it cost $3500 million, he lost interest!

Tell David Fenkel directly: "I'm not some rich guy, I can't afford to mess around like this!"

(End of this chapter)