The King of Soft Rice in Chinese Entertainment

Chapter 310 The Significance of Blockbusters

Undoubtedly, this is due to the financial backing of these male and female protagonists.

As for why they're putting in so much effort, it's simple: these male and female leads are products of their assembly line, now that they're in production, they definitely want to maximize profits.

At this point, some people might ask, why don't the investors behind them organize their own events, instead of teaming up with other investors and then tearing each other apart during filming?

It's quite simple, but there are risks involved. If you organize your own group, you'll have to bear all the losses yourself. If you organize a group with others, you can argue and shift the blame, transferring the losses to them.

After all, at this point, they weren't making money from box office revenue and viewership ratings, but from financial operations.

Not to mention the rampant manipulation of data and falsification of accounts, which harms shareholders and investors, in short, for capital, risk and cost are kept as low as possible, while profits are squeezed as high as possible.

Since they don't rely on box office revenue and viewership ratings to make money, these film and television production teams can do whatever they want. After all, their artists aren't really mass-produced products; they still need to provide some emotional value so that they can be better exploited.

This is why no matter how much the audience criticizes, the industry can't produce many good works. Without bargaining power, they can't expect capital to do what they want.

Even if Xu Jiuyang, along with Angela and the others, creates a large-scale film studio system for the Chinese entertainment industry, the effectiveness of this system remains unknown if the development of internet capital does not change.

It's worth noting that in order to control the entire project, Angela directly hired an accountant from PricewaterhouseCoopers to be stationed on set and audit the accounts at any time.

These people are good at making fakes, and naturally they're good at catching fakes too. Basically, they're sending a message: I've paid you enough, but don't try to take advantage of me.

If it were Guo Fan from his previous life who was in charge of "The Wandering Earth," he could have kept the first movie under control, but for the second movie, he could probably only hint to the finance department not to make things too messy.

In a sense, if the mainland film and television industry wants to improve, it might be more suitable to have more directors and producers like Chen Sicheng.

No matter how he tailors things, at least he can manage to strike the right balance between capital and film quality while capitalizing on trending topics, and deliver a passable meal to the audience.

Although there have been times when he messed up, most of the time he is a competent commercial director and producer.

"Tsk tsk... I've only just realized that the mainland film and television industry can't even find a handful of basically qualified commercial directors..." Xu Jiuyang couldn't help but mutter.

Angela turned and glanced at him, and he immediately perked up, clearing his mind of distractions, and began to listen to Teacher Tang and the others' understanding of the characters.

As mentioned before, the actors playing Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang, and Cao Cao were all from the TV series. After all, actors Lu Xun and Tang Jiayin directly gave Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang concrete images.

Especially Mr. Lu, before the Three Kingdoms TV series, Guan Yu was portrayed in all sorts of ways in different places, but after the Three Kingdoms TV series, they became basically consistent, and even Koei Tecmo was affected.

Therefore, the character design in "Red Cliff" was based on the script and also referenced Koei Tecmo's game.

In addition, the character design is different from the TV series. Most of Liu Bei's traits in the script are based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so the image in the movie version must be different. Otherwise, why would the audience buy tickets to go to the cinema when they can just watch it on TV?

To date, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has probably been rebroadcast thousands of times.

Therefore, the portrayal must be based on the image of Emperor Zhaolie in the Records of the Three Kingdoms. As a result, the experience that Teacher Sun accumulated when filming TV series before will be somewhat useless, and he will need to think about it again.

The same applies to Teacher Bao's Cao Cao. Although the image of a cunning and ruthless hero remains unchanged, he also needs some fresh qualities and cannot overlap too much with the TV series version.

On the contrary, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun don't need to be changed, since they're already stereotyped in popular culture. I wonder if Professor Bao will write another paper about it. Actually, all of these are fine; they just take time. Professor Tang's Zhuge Liang, however, will be much more troublesome.

Actually, there's no major problem. The main issue is that their ages are slightly mismatched. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Cao Cao are all the same age. Historically, during the Battle of Red Cliffs, their ages were roughly the same as their teachers'.

However, Wuhou was not yet 30 years old at this time, while Teacher Tang just turned 50 this year, almost twice as old.

This is also what Zuo Shandiao has always been most worried about. Makeup is not a magic bullet, and since Zhuge Liang is one of the main characters, some viewers will definitely scrutinize him with a magnifying glass.

"That's why I suggest casting Chen Daoming as Zhou Yu," Xu Jiuyang said with a smile after the other man brought it up again, having been speaking in a low voice to Zuo Shandiao.

"Is there... any explanation for this?" Zuo Shandiao asked, quite puzzled.

"It's a showdown between Kangxi and Yongzheng," Xu Jiuyang reminded him.

"Kang..." Zuo Shandiao was speechless.

There is actually another showdown, but unfortunately Chen Daoming will not play Chang Guangtou until "Back to 1942", which is still a long way off.

"Mr. Han, I have a question," Xu Jiuyang said, his smile fading and his expression turning serious. "How much of the box office do you think Leonardo DiCaprio carried in 'Titanic'?"

"How much of the box office did Leonardo DiCaprio carry?" Zuo Shandiao repeated, then frowned, clearly guessing what he wanted to say.

However, Xu Jiuyang didn't care and continued to ask, "Could it be one-tenth?"

"So how much of the box office revenue do you think Jackie Chan carried?" Zuo Shandiao retorted.

“Of course it’s 80%,” Xu Jiuyang shrugged nonchalantly. “But how many Jackie Chans are there in this world? And how many Leonardos are there?”

Before Zuo Shandiao could answer, he immediately continued, "If Titanic had been cast with a different handsome young actor, like Keanu Reeves, would it have affected the box office? In fact, if Jackie Chan hadn't gone down the comedy-action route and instead made other profound films, would he still have been just as popular?"

"But..." Zuo Shandiao wanted to say something more, but Xu Jiuyang didn't give him the chance: "President Han, I admit that there are indeed people who can carry the box office, but at most they can only reach tens of millions. Hong Kong and Taiwan stars do have popularity in the mainland, but having popularity and having popularity can be converted into box office revenue are two different things."

Leung Chiu-wai is another story. Even at the height of his popularity in Hong Kong, he wasn't a box office draw—the younger generation, like Ekin Cheng, were better at it.

Andy Lau can handle it, but as Xu Jiuyang said, at most it's only tens of millions.

Thinking about it carefully, Yang Mi was probably the one who could carry the box office the most in her past life. Even a terrible movie like "Mysterious Island" could get more than 9000 million yuan at the box office. If she didn't carry about 80% like Jackie Chan, she must have carried at least 60%.

Don't underestimate this ratio; even at his peak, Andy Lau's ratio was only slightly higher.

Always remember that filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and the vast majority of audiences go to the cinema to see a good story. The so-called box office success is, in a sense, more like a form of trust; people see a certain actor in the lead role and assume there must be a good story.

For example, a certain Wang Duoyu.

"Everyone knows the story of the Three Kingdoms, so what do people go to the cinema to see? Besides whether the characters portrayed match their imagination, it's all about the amazing, surprising, and breathtaking scenes, and that's the significance of blockbusters. In such blockbusters, the actors' importance isn't actually as great as you might imagine," Xu Jiuyang concluded to Zuo Shandiao.

(End of this chapter)