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

Chapter 723 Marketing (25)

Hollywood is rife with unspoken rules...

Where there is money and power, there is never a shortage of unspoken rules, let alone Hollywood, a place of fame and fortune.

To some extent, unspoken rules are part of the Hollywood film and entertainment system; a history of Hollywood is a history of sexual promiscuity.

In Hollywood, unspoken rules are an open secret.

At the Highland Center, the venue for the Academy Awards, there is a concrete "bed." Inscribed at the foot of the bed are the words: "The road to Hollywood—how some of us got here."

A hundred years ago, Hollywood directors and producers chose leading ladies like this: whoever had the biggest breasts, or the one they most wanted to sleep with—often right there on the audition sofa.

A red sofa!

Moreover, sex is only one part of the unspoken rules of the game, or rather, a very small part. In a broader sense, these unspoken rules govern every aspect of an actor's life.

During the era of major studios, there were even 'moral clauses': female stars could not get married!
Back then, MGM placed great importance on female stars maintaining their virginity. Judy Garland (The Wizard of Oz) had to abort her unborn child because "the audience loved her because she looked like a child, not a mother."

However, while MGM has an unrealistic demand for its stars to be "upright," it also exploits them in various ways, including but not limited to sexual matters!
Back when Transformers 3 came to China for promotion, a flight attendant posted on Weibo that she saw Rosie Whiddington and Michael Bay cuddling in first class.

One comment that stuck with me was from a well-known film critic: In Hollywood, this isn't called an unspoken rule, it's simply called the "rules of the game."

In Hollywood, if you can get a role in a movie, you don't even need to be asked whether you want to lie down or not; countless people will voluntarily take off their clothes and swarm around you.

The A24 has now become the new benchmark…

Two years ago it was *Dallas Buyers Club*, last year it was *Whiplash*, and this year there are three films nominated for Best Picture: *Carol*, *The Danish Girl*, and *La La Land*…

The audition for A24's new film...

There are really a lot of young actors who want to improve...

In comparison, the Chinese entertainment industry... has improved now—at this stage, money is the real unspoken rule in the entertainment industry!
They all joined the cast with their own investment; those who slept with others only got marginalized minor roles.

Shen Yan could certainly try it out if he wanted, but he really didn't have any interest in it...

……

With the Spring Festival film season approaching, the promotional campaign for "Detective Chinatown" is becoming increasingly widespread...

First, there was Shen Yan's rendition of "Sawadika," followed by Bao Qiang and Xiao Shenyang's "Memories Can Only Be Remembered"...

Both promotional songs are incredibly popular!
Especially "Sawadika," the song is upbeat, and the lyrics... well, they're pretty wild, with lines like, "Let me show you a brand new Superstar in the detective series!" and "Di Renjie is out!"

The second step is trailer marketing.

All three trailers have garnered over 10 million views!
The third step is to extract the humorous moments and use them for short video marketing…

Especially Xiao Yang's segment...

"Huang Landeng, what do you mean? Everyone in that town knows Tang Yin is my henchman!" "Tang Yin, are you in Malaysia or Korea? I'm right here at your doorstep. Do you think this is a movie shoot? Is your Sister Wang back?"

"I am sworn in with sin!"

In addition, Shen Yan's "La La Land" continues to achieve great success—it won 7 out of 7 Golden Globe nominations, received 14 Oscar nominations (tying the record set by "Titanic"), and then won all five of its nominations at the 70th British Academy Film Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score…

Of the four key indicators, two are resounding successes!

Now it's time to see the Critics' Choice Awards and the various guild awards!
By the way, *La La Land* was released in mainland China on January 16th, grossing 2.04 million yuan in its opening weekend. As of January 29th, after 14 days of release, its cumulative box office reached 4.86 million yuan…

The total box office is estimated to be around 6 million.
It's not very high, but it has already set a new record for musicals!

Incidentally, this also helped La La Land surpass $3.5 million in global box office revenue…

Of the ten Oscar-nominated films, La La Land's box office performance was comparable to The Revenant's!
By the way, although "The Mermaid" is using a scarcity marketing strategy—aside from two trailers and a few posters, there are no clues whatsoever—a recent interview with a well-known film magazine only yielded one sentence from Stephen Chow: "Love can break through all boundaries."

However, at the Only You themed press conference held on January 29, Stephen Chow personally unveiled the film's "Turbulent Seas" poster and "Stirring Up Trouble" trailer, and also had Deng Chao, Lin Yun, Show Lo, and Wu Fan sing the theme song "Invincible"...

It seems that the marketing of "Detective Chinatown" has put pressure on Stephen Chow!
Otherwise, they wouldn't have made such a fuss.

Chen Sicheng publicly stated, "The pressure is immense. Yan Ge (Chen Sicheng's character in the film) has an unbeatable record during his release window; his films, whether starring or directed, have never lost. If we lose this time, I'll be the one to blame!"

As for the marketing claim that they "owe Stephen Chow a movie ticket," Chen Sicheng decisively denied it: "If that's the case, we also owe Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat, and Li Lianjie movie tickets... and if we have to say we owe movie tickets, then we owe the production company movie tickets..."

Most of Stephen Chow's films were produced by Win's Entertainment...

"I think emotional marketing is acceptable, but we don't have to force it on others!"

The "owe movie tickets" marketing tactic is really disgusting!
Following this logic, we also owe teachers a lot of money for DVDs; we owe HBO, Netflix, and BBC a lot of subscription fees; we owe Paramount, Universal, and Sony a lot of movie tickets... It's as if we were born to pay off debts!

But right now... Star fans are going crazy.

The phrase "I owe Stephen Chow a movie ticket" is trending everywhere!
The pre-sales for "The Mermaid" are comparable to those for "Detective Chinatown"...

Shen Yan had no choice—he had already spent 100 million yuan on ticket subsidies, so he couldn't force the audience to buy tickets!

By the way, Kung Fu Panda 3 was released on January 29th…

In fact, China Film Group's box office expectation for "Kung Fu Panda 3" is 2 billion yuan - a very reasonable expectation. "Kung Fu Panda 20" was the runner-up in the annual box office chart that year, so this year's runner-up should be at least 25 billion yuan!
Unfortunately, the film was released a week before the Spring Festival. Everyone was busy with the Spring Festival travel rush and buying New Year's goods. In addition, they were unlucky and encountered the biggest cold wave since 08, which seriously hindered everyone's willingness to go out.

In the week leading up to the Spring Festival, "Kung Fu Panda 3" achieved over 60% of the total box office with approximately 40% of the screenings each day, a truly outstanding performance.

However, it was all for naught. The total daily box office was only a little over 70 million, and Panda only earned a little over 40 million per day...

As for the North American box office, "Kung Fu Panda 3" didn't perform very well either, grossing $7426 million in its first two weeks, and then facing competition from "Deadpool" in its third week...

(End of this chapter)