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

Chapter 994 Routine Operation! (13)

Shen Yan doesn't really need to criticize "iPartment"...

Public opinion has been strong enough!
Actually, the TV series "iPartment"...

To be honest, screenwriter Wang Yuan is quite talented. Although he borrowed ideas from other works, he localized many of them and strung them together.

Each episode features two or three parallel storylines, some of which are quite compelling.

I was particularly impressed by the episode with Guan Gu and the Mario he imagined. The part where the music played and the door opened at the end was a really gradual progression.

Moreover, the fact that he was able to copy so many shows that he has a fairly high level of film viewing experience.

As for plagiarism, "iPartment" was originally an advertisement...

Who knew it would become so popular?
The company that produced Love Apartment, Gaoge, clearly started out relying on Wang Yuan's family connections. Even before making movies and TV series, they made money by shooting commercials through these connections.

Wang Yuan's father was Wang Tianyun, the vice president of Shanghai Film Group at the time, which is why Love Apartment was able to bring in Lisa Rong, who worked at SMG, and later a group of hosts from the very beginning.

Of course, it's also related to Wei Zheng—after graduating, Wei Zheng interned at Shanghai TV and became familiar with people like Yu Li and Lisa…

The "Love Apartment" IP was originally an advertisement for the Taiwanese dating website i-Part, which began operating in mainland China in 05. The website's CEO met Wang Jiawei while promoting his film "My Blueberry Nights" and revealed his idea of ​​expanding and strengthening his business in mainland China through advertising. Wang Jiawei then passed the business on to Wang Tianyun.

In order to promote his son to the top position, Wang Tianyun handed over the business to Wang Yuan...

Then, Wang Yuan had a sudden inspiration: Since this social networking site is called Love Apartment, let's assume that there really is such a Love Apartment, and concretize the stories that happen between the men and women living there.

Then he created "iPartment"...

Wang Tianyun went so far as to use his pen name, Gong Yu, to personally serve as the producer for Aiju.

This is also why Hu Ge made a cameo appearance in "iPartment"...

Wang Yuan himself said, "After we were confirmed to produce 'iPartment,' the first thing I did was go to the DVD store near my house and rent thousands of episodes of comedies like 'How I Met Your Mother,' 'Friends,' 'The Big Bang Theory,' 'The IT Crowd,' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond' to learn how American TV shows tell stories!"

Therefore, "iPartment" is full of 'plagiarism'...

In addition, the male lead in the first season was Lu Zhanbo, whose character was copied from Sheldon Cooper.

However, Jin Shijia's acting was so poor that he turned a genius boy into the big idiot next door.

Then, in the second season, Wan Yu was gone, Lu Zhanbo's storyline was cut in half, and the male and female leads were completely changed, with the Xianfei couple taking over...

As for Wang Chuanjun…

To put it bluntly, if it weren't for Wei Zheng and Wang Yuan bringing him into the TV series "iPartment," and his good friend Chen He's support, how could he have starred in a series of TV series such as "Love Begins with a Confession" and "Medical Examiner Dr. Qin"?

How could she possibly get on board with the Shanghai Film Studio, star in "The Wasted Times," and later gain Xu Zheng's attention?
Oh, in this timeline, he didn't get involved with Xu Zheng...

She did, however, hang out with Lou Ye and Chen Kexin, starring in "The Shadow Play" and "Last Letter"...

……

In fact, 2008, when "Project Gutenberg" was initially taking shape, was a very difficult year for the Hong Kong film industry. Under the influence of the financial crisis, even co-productions between the mainland and Hong Kong struggled to find investors. After Felix Chong and Alan Mak jointly established their own company, they were almost in a situation where they had no films to make.

Because of their unfamiliarity with the mainland market, even the later critically acclaimed "Overheard" could not be filmed for a time, so they had to make "The Great Detective's Daughter," which ended up being "even more disastrous" in terms of box office and critical reception.

Fortunately, with the addition of director Derek Yee, and the work of directors Mak and Chong, "Overheard" was able to be revised and made filmable. Chong finally had a new "Overheard" trilogy as a director. Shen Yan's investment in and starring role in "Project Gutenberg" was considered a risky move in the industry!

The last film that director Felix Chong directed independently was "The Wind Rises" in 2010, a comedy action film that only received a 6.3 rating on Douban Movies, better than 30% of comedy films.

Industry predictions for the box office of "Project Gutenberg" are generally between 12 billion and 15 billion yuan.

After all, Shen Yan is there!

No one expected that "Project Gutenberg" would gross over 1 billion yuan in its opening weekend and still reach 1.87 million yuan on its first working day!
Maoyan predicts the box office will reach 32 to 34 billion yuan.

Without a doubt, Warriors has achieved tremendous success!

……

For Shen Yan, a film grossing over 30 billion yuan is normal...

—If that movie doesn't reach 3 billion at the box office, we might have to have a serious discussion about it!
But for director Felix Chong, this was an unprecedented first.

Previously, his highest box office was "Overheard 3": a global box office of US$5379 million, which is approximately RMB 3.35 million, including RMB 3.08 million in mainland China and HK$2390 million in Hong Kong;
"Project Gutenberg" grossed more in mainland China than all his previous films combined!

The box office performance in Hong Kong was also quite good: in just five days, it grossed over HK$1200 million in Hong Kong.

Definitely a top-five contender for the year!
"The script for 'Project Gutenberg' was completed very early. The first draft was completed in 2008. At that time, Director Mai and I had just started our company and business was very bad, so we hid in the company to write the script."

I wrote the story about counterfeit money because while I was looking for another story material, I unexpectedly found a lot of information about counterfeit money online.

I found three fascinating stories, all from three different groups involved in printing US dollars. One criminal in particular captivated me; he was a young man, around 30 years old when he was arrested. He had been printing for years, and when he was apprehended, he was on a farm in the American Midwest, with only him, his printing press, and the printed dollars there. Even on the run, he was still printing. When he was finally caught, he had two trillion dollars in printed dollars behind him…”

"I thought this didn't make sense. He must have been terribly panicked at that time, but how did he escape, how did he suppress his fear? He just kept printing. This situation really attracted me, and I felt that I had to make films like this, and then develop other things from there..."

During the promotion of "Project Gutenberg," many media outlets interviewed Felix Chong, who asked, "Why did it take 10 years for this story to finally be released to the audience after it was written?"

"Investors are not very accepting of this kind of high-IQ crime; they feel that audiences are only willing to accept more straightforward things!"

“I just felt indignant. I don’t think the audience is that stupid. If you write a high-IQ play and the audience can’t understand it, that’s your problem. You’re the one who’s making the audience confused.”

"Did Brother Yan invest?"

The latter praised Shen Yan in various ways: "Brother Yan said that this story is still good even with spoilers, and only he dares to invest in it because in his opinion, no one has ever done the story of 'Peerless' before, and only if no one has done it before is it worth investing in!"

"We both come from screenwriting backgrounds, so we're very sensitive to stories..."

Then… the reporter asked the most crucial question: 'The dual male leads in *Project Gutenberg* break the mold of past Hong Kong films' "two heroes" setup, and even create a slightly ambiguous feel. Did you anticipate this?'

Zhuang Wenqiang laughed: "What does it feel like to be gay?"

Actually, during filming, the actors would ask questions, and we were constantly trying to keep track of them to avoid any misunderstandings...

Uh… many comments say that Shen Yan plays the submissive character, and the relationship between Li Wen and Wu Fusheng is suggestive of being gay…

This viewpoint actually got a lot of likes!

In a sense, that makes a lot of sense—they are the same person. Li Wen is a narcissistic person, and what is called gay is actually just narcissism!

(End of this chapter)