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

Chapter 600 Premiere of "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" (13)

Shen Yan was taken to the platform the day after returning to China.

Sheep Without a Shepherd 2 will be released on August 7th…

This is considered the last film released by Spark Studio during the summer season.

The first half of the year saw the release of films such as *Duckweed*, *More Than Blue*, *The Winners*, *Magic Hour*, *Brotherhood of Blades*, and *Sheep Without a Shepherd 2*.

Currently, the highest-grossing film is "Duckweed" with 18.27 billion yuan, followed by "The Magic Hour" with 8.26 million yuan, and "More Than Blue" ranks third with 7.04 million yuan.

The box office for "The Big Winner" was 6.54 million.

Currently, "Brotherhood of Blades" has grossed 4.65 million yuan, and it is highly likely to break 6 million yuan!
As for "Lost and Love," it was a co-production of Spark Studio...

"Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" is actually "Silent Killing". It was produced by Guo Fan and directed by Yang Qing, the director of "Night Shop" and later "Hot Pot Hero".

He was recommended by photographer Liao Ni.

Liao Ni is considered Rao Xiaozhi's go-to photographer, and he has a good relationship with Rao Xiaozhi, Guo Fan, and Lu Yang...

He spoke up, and Guo Fan went to audition, and then Yang Qing became the director!
Shen Yan has now stepped down as producer…

Main actors: Andy Lau and Ma Yili!
A bunch of celebrities, directors, and media attended the premiere.

After all, Ma Yili is a legitimate member of the Beijing entertainment circle, and the uproar over her alleged "Monday reveal" incident from a while back is still fresh in everyone's minds...

Andy Lau... has always been a big star!

The budget for "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" was 7500 million RMB, with Andy Lau receiving a salary of 10 million RMB plus 1000% of the box office revenue...

Actually, Andy Lau's salary should be around 2500 million yuan - his salary is related to the work he does.

"Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains", "Blind Detective", and "Storm" were not big box office hits...

Later, the huge success of "Chasing the Dragon" and "Shock Wave" raised his salary to HK$40 million. When he served as the producer and lead actor of the film "The White Storm 2" directed by Herman Yau, Andy Lau's total remuneration was HK$30 million. He successfully reduced the production cost of the film by replacing the fixed salary with a box office share model, and eventually earned nearly HK$100 million!

After "The White Storm 2" and "Shock Wave 2" grossed over 13 billion yuan at the box office, Andy Lau's salary soared, reaching as high as 6000 million Hong Kong dollars at one point—the same price he received for "Mr. Red Carpet" and "Burning City"!

However, he was also a producer on "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2"...

The "Sheep Without a Shepherd" series is basically carried by Andy Lau at the box office...

Therefore, the model is a base salary plus box office revenue sharing.

……

"From the very beginning, we aimed to make 'Sheep Without a Shepherd' a series... The first film, despite not being highly anticipated, grossed 5.8 million yuan. Over the past few years, we've been thinking about how to make the sequel..."

"I've considered several suspenseful crime genres, but none can compare to the wow factor of the first one..."

“Last year, a former classmate sent me several videos of school bullying, so I went to the Film Bureau and the Ministry of Education to see if this kind of film was allowed… They gave me a lot of advice, so I set the story in Southeast Asia, brought in Yang Qing, we did a lot of research, and then we wrote the script for ‘Sheep Without a Shepherd 2’…”

“When we were in school, there were a lot of bullies... I asked many of my former classmates, and they said that once they got to college, bullying almost disappeared. If something happened, it was called a campus criminal case!”

"Everyone can check out the short videos on Kuaishou; there are tons of real-life examples of school bullying..."

"I showed a few to Brother Wah, and he was very angry. So we tried to make the script as bloody as possible... and filmed some acts of school bullying very explicitly..."

Before the official release of "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2," Shen Yan went on stage to share the origins of the "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2" project...

Guo Fan, Yang Qing, Liu Dehua, and Ma Yili also shared some thoughts…

Everything you said was quite good. The movie opening... it didn't quite feel right based on my film-watching experience.

Opening scene: A group of bullies are shown harassing Xiaomai (played by Zhao Jinmai), applying glue to her face, kicking her, doing whatever is disgusting...

Extremely blatant violence!
Even when Andy Lau took revenge on the bad kids, he killed them one hammer blow at a time!
Extremely bloody...

It doesn't feel like the first "Sheep Without a Shepherd" at all.

The first "Sheep Without a Shepherd" movie was captivating thanks to its plot!

Why did the second part completely abandon the strengths of the first part?

Then, at the end of the movie, after Zhao Jinmai, who played the mute boy, climbed out of the box, she didn't release the pigeons, but instead twisted their heads off...

And then he gave the camera a Kubrick-esque gaze…

That's right, the whole play was planned by the little mute!
How could a nine-year-old girl who dared to stab her stepfather to death be a weak victim of bullying?
She did this simply to escape this place, to escape her mother!

The whole plan—killing the four wicked women, staging a fake kidnapping, sending Andy Lau to his death, and the little mute girl escaping—was devised by the little mute girl; she was the mastermind!

Therefore, school bullying was just the trigger—tragically, the daughter played by Liu Dehua in Jiang Yiyi was actually chosen by the little mute.

She was bullied for a long time by four notorious girls in high school, and the solution she found was Jiang Yiyi and her father...

She was bullied. She played with Jiang Yiyi, and Jiang Yiyi was bound to be bullied, which would then lead to a loss of control and a major incident.

Of course, it's also possible that Jiang Yiyi was bullied, and then the little mute boy deliberately approached her...

Unlike "Silent Killing"—there are only two scenes depicting school bullying, not as many...

After all, school bullying is just a trigger!

Moreover, using too many of these shots gives the impression of being a gimmick or a selling point…

This work is stuck on the censorship line—many plots are bloody, and the combination of visuals, camera work and sound effects creates a terrifying atmosphere. There are many sudden camera attacks, which are indeed very stimulating to the senses!

It also incorporates many highly controversial elements, such as school bullying, domestic violence, and child rape.

……

"In fact, the best suspense films use professional psychological knowledge to bring us into the inner world of the criminal, allowing us to follow the camera to unravel the mystery and ultimately feel the terror and shock on a psychological level; for example, in Hitchcock's Psycho, Hitchcock first takes the audience into the protagonist Norman's room and shows us a lot of animal specimens, nude women and paintings of violated women."

"The second-rate approach involves a contrasting script structure that draws the audience into the world of a victim, only to abruptly overturn that victim's image, leaving us jolted."

"Sheep Without a Shepherd 2 falls into the second category, but we couldn't film it directly, so we left some room for creative interpretation..."

After the movie screening, the main cast and crew took to the stage, and Yang Qing spoke about the final presentation of "Sheep Without a Shepherd 2"...

"Did you summarize these yourself?"

"No, it was Yan-ge who said it during our script meeting!"

Shen Yan silently raised the microphone: "I just wanted to show off a little, to flaunt my film viewing experience..."

Andy Lau said, "I really like the 'Sheep Without a Shepherd' series. Their choice of material and the final effect of the film surprised me. I didn't realize that there are so many young creators in mainland China, and they are really outstanding!"

"...We already have some ideas for 'Sheep Without a Shepherd 3,' and we estimate it will be released in 2016!"

(End of this chapter)