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

Chapter 741 Propaganda
Ex Machina: The Path to the Awakening of Artificial Intelligence...

Thriller!

This genre is inherently niche, like *Blade Runner 2049*, which has a high rating of 8.3 on Douban and 8.0 on iMdb…

However, the global box office was only $2.6 million, which is a loss compared to the production cost of $1.5 million!

Honestly, Hollywood doesn't understand China!
At least none of them understood that Zhang Yimou knew that "Curse of the Golden Flower" was a very dark story. In order to attract the audience, they hired a group of film school students to play palace maids at the beginning, showing off a row of white thighs and genitals right from the start, making the audience feel at home...

The same goes for "Ex Machina," which features numerous scenes of Chen Yao and Meng Ziyi taking baths—with two maids taking turns...

Although the shower scene only showed glimpses of the thighs and back...

That's enough!

It at least added a touch of warmth to this cold film…

Artificial intelligence in "The Wandering Earth"?

Shen Yan was speechless: "Moss is the most powerful algorithmic artificial intelligence! It's an extremely powerful algorithm. The Jupiter crisis, including the two prequels we're going to film, Space Elevator Crisis and Lunar Crisis... were all calculated by it!"

"Our entire plot revolves around Moss's calculations. Moss firmly believes that digital life is a form of evolution... but he doesn't oppose the Fireseed Project either. The Fireseed Project is essentially Zhang Beihai's version of the interstellar civilization project from The Three-Body Problem..."

Lu Yang joined the discussion: "So it's the villain?"

"No...it's just more rational...we've all read the original novel 'The Wandering Earth,' and we all know the story is actually a tragedy..."

The original novel of "The Wandering Earth" is actually quite dark. The protagonist and his wife are ordinary people, representing the ignorant majority. They suspect that the helium flash is a lie fabricated by vested interests and ultimately become traitors to the Wandering Earth project.

This group eventually executed all the executors of the Wandering Earth project on the ice field. They laughed maniacally, spitting on the ice sculptures and the Wandering Earth, and began to sing praises to the sun on the ice field before being struck by a massive helium flash and rendered insane in the next moment.

Then the betraying crowd was forced to pick up the Wandering Earth plan from the corpses of those they had just killed, becoming its new executors…

Moss's quote, "I know it's a luxury to expect someone to always be rational," is a perfect example.

In the movie, it represents the stubbornness of those who question the plan; in the book, it is actually the epitaph of those who carry out the plan.

Shen Yan continued, "You two should each make a prequel... give Lao Guo some time to rest... look at him, he's almost as thin as a tree trunk!"

"It's not that exaggerated..." Guo Fan waved his hand: "I feel fine, I was just too fat before!"

Shen Yan suddenly remembered something: "...Dilraba is coming tomorrow, have her film a death scene..."

"Han Duoduo?"

"Correct!"

Lu Yang: "Even in 'The Wandering Earth,' there isn't a female lead..."

"Zhao Jinmai isn't the female lead? What kind of talk is that!"

"I mean the kind of female lead who's the male lead's love interest!"

"Then it becomes dating..."

"That's true. It's best not to include couples in this kind of hard science fiction, otherwise it can easily confuse the main plot..."

"Alright, you two should both recommend 'Ex Machina' on Weibo... I'm going back to my stream!"

"Ex Machina" and "The Moon," Spark's niche science fiction attempts...

With a total investment of 1.2 million, it can be basically concluded that Ex Machina has recouped its costs!

"The themes of Ex Machina and Moon, which were released later, are actually quite niche. Ex Machina is about the Turing test and the awakening of artificial intelligence. Our total cost was 6500 million, with special effects costing about 3500 million... The actors' salaries were very low."

"Because it inherently has an experimental nature!"

Back in his room, Shen Yan started a live stream: "Movies are different from TV series. The main way TV series make money is by selling to TV stations and video websites. Platforms mainly look at whether there are big names involved when buying dramas. Therefore, popular stars, especially top stars, are very expensive!"

Recently, besides Wu Fan sleeping with fans, there have been several other news articles such as "Lu Han pays 80 million to film 'Fighter of the Destiny'" and "Outdoor air conditioning in 'Fighter of the Destiny'"...

Regarding the exorbitant salaries of actors, Shen Yan put it bluntly: "The production costs of TV dramas are getting higher and higher, so everyone is playing it safe. I remember many years ago, tens of millions was considered a big production. But what about the costs now? The risks brought by high costs make it impossible for investors to afford to lose money or fail. What to do? Play it safe."

What does "safety card" mean? It means hiring whoever has the most data traffic!

"To be honest, quite a few terrible dramas have come to me with high prices... How high?" Shen Yan said directly, "Two hundred million!"

"Of course I refused. Knowing it's not a good project, why would I take it? I don't need that little bit of money..."

“I film more than one TV series every year… After finishing ‘The Wandering Earth,’ I immediately joined the cast of ‘The Rebel,’ directed by Kong Sheng and Li Xue, with a five-person screenwriting team. It took two years to polish it before I was satisfied… It’s definitely an excellent spy drama!”

"We're still casting for the female lead... She needs to be around my age, and her acting skills can't be too lacking. As for the current shortlist... I can't reveal too much. Let's talk about 'Ex Machina' and 'Moon'!"

Mao Xiaotong has been confirmed as the female lead in "The Rebel".

She was cast purely based on her acting skills!

Of course, image is also important; otherwise, why not choose Yang Zi?

"Ava in *Ex Machina* was inspired by Maria from *Metropolis*... *Metropolis*, a 1927 film, creatively imbued a robot with the image of a femme fatale, and that robot was modeled after the protagonist, Maria. The robot Maria effortlessly replaced the original robot and instigated a workers' uprising against upper-class oppression..."

"We filmmakers need to watch more old films to draw inspiration and creativity from them!"

"Emotions are impossible for algorithms to achieve. The essence of AI lies in its lack of emotion—ruthlessness, decisiveness, efficiency, and efficiency. Thinking about it this way, humans are both fragile and precious..."

"As for whether artificial intelligence might awaken, how would I know? That's beyond my comprehension... I'm just making up a story!"

Shen Yan then talked about "The Moon": "The idea for 'The Moon' came from a short science fiction story called 'For Survival,' in which an astronaut is stranded on a strange planet and waits for rescue, similar to being trapped underground in a mine disaster with no food."

He had a machine that could quickly create clones, so he planned to use his clones as food.

One problem is that his clones are born with all of his memories, including the memory of cannibalism, so they are immediately thrown into a bloodbath where the living eat the dead…

Many days passed, and the rescue team arrived. By then, the astronaut no longer knew if he was still the same person he had been at the beginning.

The film *Moon* is also based on this logic; however, we've only captured the most beautiful aspects of human nature…

"The theme of 'Ex Machina' is dark enough. If we make another one with this kind of theme, it will be very difficult for us to recoup our costs..."

"...I underestimated Dilraba's appeal; I didn't expect her to gross 1.4 million on the first day..."

(End of this chapter)