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

Chapter 730 Belated Promotion (44)

Let's do a rough calculation.

The profits from "La La Land" are estimated to be around $2.6 million...

Shen Yan's directorial fee was $200 million—without any profit sharing.

But he personally invested $600 million.

A24 invested $400 million, and Spark Studio, Electric Light Media, and China Film Group jointly invested the remaining $2000 million!
First, deduct the actors' share of the profits—Emma Stone receives 8% of the global profits.

Ryan Gosling didn't; he took $800 million. Emma only took $50…

An 8% dividend would amount to $2080 million.
After deducting the profits, the remaining profit is 2.392, and Shen Yan's dividend is approximately 4800 million US dollars!
Yes, the profit of one film is close to 3.4 million RMB.

This was probably the most lucrative job I've ever made since I started working in this industry...

The combined dividends from Xiwai, A24, and Xinghuo Studio are estimated to exceed $5000 million!
Wow, he made nearly a hundred million dollars from just one movie!
Furthermore, the salaries for the cast and crew of "Detective Chinatown" were based on a tiered profit-sharing system of 5 million RMB and above… 3% for every 500 million RMB invested, and a little over 100 million RMB more for each additional 100 million RMB invested…

If the final box office exceeds 38 billion, his share of the profits will be 35%!

Of course, it's not that outrageous—the highest profit-sharing ratio is only 30%...

38 billion! The revenue share is over 16 billion. Even after deducting 3 million for production and marketing costs, and then 10% for distribution fees…

Even at 30%, that's over 3.5 million!
In addition, there are revenues from overseas copyrights and new media copyrights…

Shen Yan's earnings from "Detective Chinatown" have easily exceeded 4.5 million...

If it really is 35%, then his salary for "Detective Chinatown" alone would be close to 6 million!

This is no longer a question of whether people are envious or not.

That's really going too far...

Oh right, Shen Yan returned to China and immediately gave an interview to "Face to Face," followed by an interview with Maoyan Entertainment, and only then did he receive interviews on Weibo and Tencent...

The next day, he met up with Chen Sicheng, and the two of them did several interviews together…

This can be considered a final promotional event for "Detective Chinatown".

……

On March 5th, in Shanghai, Shen Yan and Chen Sicheng promoted "Detective Chinatown" together...

When asked why he chose to work in the suspense and detective genre, Shen Yan said, "I really like Hitchcock's movies. The suspense he created in his films keeps me hooked... After that, I read a lot of suspense and detective novels, including Ellery Queen's *The Siamese Twins* (mentioned in *Detective Chinatown*), Arthur Conan Doyle's *Sherlock Holmes* series, Utamaro Akio's *The Seeker's Chamber*, Aosaki Yugo's *The Gymnasium Murder Case*, Jack Futrelle's *The Lost Radium*, and John Dickson Carr's *The Judas Window*, among others... I've read them all!"

"The last book Sino read was the original English version of Grimm's Fairy Tales... I accidentally saw the original Grimm's Fairy Tales in high school... It was very dark!"

For example, the story of Sleeping Beauty was not originally called Sleeping Beauty, but had a very strange name called Sun, Moon and Talia.

The story is actually about rape...

Of course, the ending was good, but the process was anything but pleasant!
Chen Sicheng said, "When Teacher Shen talked to me about the story of 'Detective Chinatown,' I actually had some concerns... because the story is a bit complicated, and it would take at least two hours to tell the whole story. Add some jokes, and the whole movie would be over 130 minutes long... I'm worried that this length will affect the screening schedule!"

Shen Yan interjected, "Especially after learning that 'The Mermaid' is only 93 minutes long... I'm quite worried too!" "Worried about the theater scheduling!"

"Even with the same number of screenings, 'The Mermaid' will have two more screenings than us!"

"Furthermore, 'Detective Chinatown' isn't a pure comedy; the suspense elements are somewhat complex, which isn't ideal for the Spring Festival film season..."

"Later, they made a comeback purely through word of mouth..."

The host asked, "Didn't Shen Yan mention the 'owing a movie ticket' marketing topic during the live stream?"

Shen Yan was a little embarrassed: "I was just talking nonsense at the time. I really didn't think it was that serious... It's just sentimental marketing. Using a topic like 'I owe you a movie ticket' for marketing is going too far!"

Chen Sicheng laughed: "And they actually did it!"

Shen Yan chimed in: "We originally thought that once we exposed this, the publicity team for 'The Mermaid' would back down and try a different marketing approach... We didn't expect them to maliciously stir up trouble, saying that I was jealous of them... I was quite angry at the time because I had mentioned it during my live stream in October... Isn't this just turning the tables on them!"

Chen Sicheng also said: "As filmmakers, we don't believe the audience owes us anything... we only owe the audience something!"

"Director Chen previously said that filming the suspenseful plot in Chinatown was to avoid censorship, is that right?"

Shen Yan nodded: "I've discussed this topic with Director Sicheng. Suspenseful detective stories aren't suitable to happen in China because they would definitely involve the police..."

Chen Sicheng nodded: "Moreover, although Chinatown is an extension of Chinese blood, it is still rooted in other cultural backgrounds, and this point of conflict can be easily ignited..."

"So how did you two meet?"

"When he was working on the TV series version of 'Beijing Love Story,' he contacted me about buying the rights to 'Tick Tock' to use as the theme song. That's when we met. Later, when he was making the movie version, he told me he wanted to create a montage of love stories from youth to old age... and he even used my song 'Time Thief' as the promotional song..."

Chen Sicheng: "That time we talked about topics we were interested in. My favorite film is Director Shen's 'Sheep Without a Shepherd'... We talked about suspenseful detective stories. A year later, he called me and said there was a story called 'Detective Chinatown' and asked if I was interested..."

"And then you answered?"

"Um…"

And then there's the unavoidable divorce case involving Baoqiang…

Chen Sicheng: "This is a private matter for them, and it's still being dealt with, so we can't make any judgments. But... we always believe in Baoqiang. He's definitely handled it well. 'Detective Chinatown 2' is still waiting for him!"

Shen Yan nodded: "I think so too!"

Well, after this promotional event, the host suddenly said, "Would you mind if I asked a few questions about La La Land?"

Shen Yan glanced at Chen Sicheng, who quickly said, "This has nothing to do with me..."

"Ask away, but don't ask too many... To be honest, I received seven or eight calls a day, and they were all basically about 'La La Land.' I feel like they were all asking the same questions..."

"My first question is, will you direct any more Hollywood movies?"

"It depends... I'll be joining the cast of 'The Wandering Earth', then filming the TV series 'The Rebel,' and there are two movies in the pipeline... I'll be quite busy, so I don't have any plans for the time being!"

Shen Yan then went on to criticize North American political correctness: "They're demanding diversity now, meaning a movie must have a Black character. 'La La Land' was even criticized for not being diverse enough... Thank goodness I'm Asian..."

(End of this chapter)