Chapter 276: Box office hit, "Wolf Warrior" project approved
Chapter 276: Box office hit, "Wolf Warrior" project approved
The popularity of "Taken" overseas has boosted the popularity of the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".
The popularity of [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] also led to the release of "Taken" overseas.
The two complement each other and make progress together. The number of theaters showing "Taken" in North America reached 3642, which is unprecedented for Chinese directors, and the box office of the movie naturally continued to rise.
Ten million... twenty million... fifty million... one hundred million...
And that’s not all. With the popularity of “Taken”, the tablet computer that Brian gave to his daughter in the movie and also appeared in subsequent plots has also attracted the interest of many electronic product enthusiasts.
When the global box office officially exceeded 2 million US dollars more than days after the movie was released, China's OPPO Mobile Communications Technology Co., Ltd. also held a global new product launch conference in conjunction with the popular director Wang Hao.
At the press conference, OPPO's CEO Chen Mingyong first reviewed the company's past development, and also took out the second large-screen full-touch screen smartphone OPPO find1 launched in China at that time.
Although this Android smartphone was released three months later than China's first smartphone, the Meizu M8, its design, which was the same as the one Wang Hao used in the movie "Buried Alive", still caused cheers at the scene.
Especially when Wang Hao walked onto the stage and took over the OPPO find600 from Chen Mingyong, which had taken more than three years of research and development and the dedication of more than 1 people, the display screen behind him began to play clips of OPPO phones appearing in related movies in the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".
There is Huang Lei yelling at the phone in "Buried", Wang Zhi taking selfies with his phone in "The Shallows", Xu Zheng escaping with his phone in "What to Expect When You're Not There", Guo Fucheng calling Ruan Wen with his phone in "The Warriors", Yu Bo removing the phone from the bomb in "Source Code", and in the just released "Taken", Liam Neeson rescued his daughter because of a phone.
At this moment, the movie completely illuminates reality, and the science fiction creations that originally only existed in the movie actually appear in front of everyone.
There was applause from the audience. Wang Hao also picked up the OPPO phone and began to demonstrate various operations under Chen Mingyong's explanation.
After the mobile phone display was over, another staff member handed Chen Mingyong a file bag, and Chen Mingyong handed it to Wang Hao.
"What is this?" Wang Hao showed a puzzled expression on his face at the right time.
Chen Mingyong motioned for him to open the file bag and take a look.
Wang Hao untied the file bag, turned it over and poured it into his hand. A tablet computer that was slightly larger than an A4 paper, as thick as three or four coins, and silver-white in color, with a very sci-fi feel, appeared in his hand.
The style is exactly the same as the one Brian gave to his daughter in the movie Taken.
Wang Hao skillfully opened the tablet computer and simultaneously projected the screen onto the display behind him, which naturally drew applause from the audience again.
Afterwards, as Wang Hao operated, the audience gave endless applause to the world's first tablet computer on the market.
With the launch of OPPO's new products, the box office of "Taken" naturally also became a huge hit.
When it came to the 3th day after the release of "Taken", the film's global simultaneous box office results finally successfully exceeded 60 million US dollars, and its approval rating was firmly above %.
This result is higher than the original "Taken"'s global box office of 2.27 million US dollars.
The reason for this is that in addition to the blessing brought by the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] to the film, the box office of mainland movies also gave a boost.
You should know that when the original version of "Taken" was released in mainland China, it only earned more than 1600 million yuan at the box office, but now "Taken" directed by Wang Hao has reached a box office of 2.6 million yuan in mainland China.
Although this figure is lower than his previous film "Source Code", which grossed over 3 million yuan in the mainland, if the overseas box office is counted, "Taken"'s global total box office of 3.1 million US dollars has already exceeded "Source Code" by a large margin.
In addition, the disc rights of "Taken" have been sold to Sony Pictures for US$3 million over three years.
If all past and current movies are added together, the total global box office performance of Wang Hao's movies has exceeded 50 billion RMB, which is more than 7.3 million US dollars based on the current exchange rate.
In Hollywood, this achievement would already make him a qualified commercial film director, and he is fully capable of taking on big productions.
If it were placed in China, he would be the undisputed number one. Even Master Zhang is not as good as him in the commercial film box office, let alone Lu Chuan.
His film "Nanjing! Nanjing!", which was crushed by Wang Hao's "Taken", just broke the 100 million yuan box office.
This box office result is one-third less than the 1.6 million box office in the original time and space. Compared with the cost of the movie of 8 million, it is a huge loss.
I’m afraid that Lu Chuan will wet her pillow with tears in her dreams at midnight. If she had known, it would not have been released at the same time as “Taken”.
Of course, Wang Hao didn't bother to know how miserable Lu Chuan was.
At the same time, he also knew that this achievement was not enough for him and his company to rest on their laurels.
Because it is now 2009, China's economy is about to take off, and correspondingly, China's film and television industry will also usher in a period of rapid development.
Not to mention that future movie box office will easily exceed 5 million or 10 billion, let’s just talk about the movies that will be released in the next few months.
"Transformers 2" grossed 4.3 million yuan in mainland China and 8.36 million U.S. dollars worldwide.
The second part of the tribute trilogy, "Founding of a Republic", grossed 4.2 million yuan in mainland China.
In addition, the disaster blockbuster "2012" had a box office of 4.5 million yuan in mainland China and 7.91 million US dollars worldwide.
Of course, these are not the main points. "Avatar", which will be released in North America this year and in mainland China next year, is the real depth bomb.
The mainland box office was 12.8 billion yuan, and the global box office was 28.47 billion US dollars!
This epoch-making 3D movie brought by James Cameron will surpass his previous "Titanic" with a magnificent visual feast, breaking the global box office record in film history, and at the same time deeply shocking the global film and television industry practitioners and fans.
By then, Chinese film and television industry practitioners, as well as Chinese movie fans and audiences, will fully understand how big the gap is between their own film industry and the Hollywood film industry.
Wang Hao, who has the memories of his past life, knows this very well and therefore has never dared to relax.
Fortunately, his efforts after his rebirth were not in vain. At least now the Galaxy Pictures Group is thriving. The [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] he created is expanding step by step. The industrialization level of Chinese films based on this universe is also steadily improving. The [Galaxy Cinema Metropolis] used to carry all of this has already broken ground.
And the release of "Avatar" is not a bad thing.
Only by comparison can we know the gap, and only by knowing the gap can we make up our minds to catch up.
Even if some film and television industry practitioners may indulge in the past and cling to the old ways, with the impact brought by "Avatar", there will surely be many young film and television practitioners who will open their eyes and actively embrace the world.
The key is that in today's Chinese film and television industry, only Wang Hao and his company and team are at the forefront of the film industry, and Wang Hao's "Galaxy Cinematic Universe" is a science fiction film.
The huge sales of "Avatar" will definitely increase the weight of Wang Hao and others in the hearts of the leaders above. [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] and [Galaxy Movie Metropolis] will also inevitably usher in a wave of good news at the capital level.
What's more, Wang Hao is still very young. Born in 82, he is only 27 years old now.
It is hard to say what the future will be like.
So although Wang Hao feels a sense of urgency, he is still full of confidence in the future.
In particular, the hit movie "Taken" not only enhanced his reputation in the country, but also helped him gain a foothold in Hollywood.
This is like "Face/Off" to Rainie Yang and "Sense and Sensibility" to Li An.
If the big sales of "Wushuang" in North America could only be attributed to luck, then "Taken" is enough to prove that Wang Hao, a foreign director, can adapt to and integrate into the Hollywood film system, and his films can be recognized by North American audiences.
This has greatly enhanced his value as a director, and at the same time, the value of his "Galaxy Cinematic Universe" has also greatly increased in the eyes of other Hollywood companies.
At least after the global box office of "Taken" exceeded 300 million US dollars, he received a call from Universal Studios, saying that their management wanted to talk to him again about Universal Studios and the "Galaxy Cinematic Universe".
Wang Hao just smiled and politely declined.
After that, several other Hollywood film and television companies extended olive branches to him. Although Wang Hao did not reject it outright, he did not agree to it either. He just used the tactic of "delaying" and said that he would talk about it next time he went to North America.
As for when he will go to the United States? We will have to wait.
Because when "Taken" grossed 3 million U.S. dollars at the box office, his next movie "Wolf Warrior" became a hot topic in the eyes of everyone.
Regarding this movie, Wang Hao revealed that the budget was 2 million RMB.
Well... this number is double his initial estimate of 1 million RMB, which is more than 3000 million US dollars, which is considered a big production in Hollywood.
But every one of his movies is a big hit, so it's normal for the investment amount for new movies to have a little premium.
His directing and screenwriting fees for this movie alone would account for 3000 million, so it wouldn't be too much for him to take 3% of the film's global box office.
In addition, Starlight Special Effects, a subsidiary of Galaxy Group, also offered a high price for the special effects work in the movie "Wolf Warrior".
Equipment like mechanical exoskeletons, various new weapons, and lifelike special effects all cost a lot of money.
What's more, even so, companies like Huaying, Huayi, Motion Picture, Columbia, Sony Pictures, Starlight, and Wanda Film, which was just established this year, are all scrambling to invest in this movie.
In the end, before "Taken" was officially withdrawn from theaters, 60% of the investment shares of "Wolf Warrior" were sold to nearly a dozen companies.
With more than 100 million yuan of initial funds in place, the preliminary preparations for "Wolf Warrior" began to proceed in an orderly manner.
The behind-the-scenes team of the crew was formed very smoothly, because as early as last year, Wang Hao had asked Xingdou Culture to prepare for the film in advance.
And the key is that Wang Hao launched the "back-end income" policy in this movie. As long as the behind-the-scenes workers whose professional skill rating can reach A level or above join the "Wolf Warrior" crew, in addition to wages, they can also obtain various profit dividends after the movie is released.
For example, they can get a share of the profits from selling movie discs to video websites, various joint authorizations, peripheral sales, etc.
Of course, it is limited to mainland income.
But even the profits from the mainland are enough for the retirement of those working behind the scenes.
As long as the Galaxy Cinematic Universe develops well in the future, their profits will be considerable.
And it's not just the behind-the-scenes workers. As for the actors, the "Wolf Warrior" crew will not give them too high a salary, but will also share the quota of back-end income.
And depending on their status and importance in the subsequent movie universe, the back-end income of major actors like Wu Jing can cover the entire world.
That is to say, a little bit of the revenue from the sales of "Wolf Warrior" discs in the United States will be shared with them.
Investors are actually quite dissatisfied with this, because this is simply taking a piece of meat out of their pot.
But these guys were persuaded one by one by Wang Hao.
In Wang Hao's view, leaving aside the previous films, he wants to make the current "Wolf Warrior" a benchmark for the film industrialization of the Chinese mainland film industry, and set an example for subsequent film and television companies and director crews that are interested in this.
To make China’s industrialized special effects blockbusters, you have to do it this way!
Therefore, the entire "Wolf Warrior" production has been very methodical since the project was launched, and the progress has been very slow.
Just for the feasibility study of the film project, Galaxy Pictures spent more than a month conducting a survey and statistics on similar works in the current domestic and foreign film markets, and conducted research and analysis on the selling points of the movie "Wolf Warrior".
In this era, domestic science fiction films can be said to be extremely rare.
Apart from Wang Hao's previous works, it can even be said that there is almost nothing.
Therefore, senior executives from various departments of Galaxy Pictures and internal reviewers of the company all had certain doubts about the tone of the movie "Wolf Warrior".
Should it be more science fiction or military action?
Wang Hao did not make a decision directly on this issue, but let everyone speak freely in order to cultivate their thinking ability in this regard.
After all, although Galaxy Pictures belongs to him, it is also the cradle of Chinese science fiction films. If everything is based on his will, then it may not be a good thing for the cultivation of science fiction film talents.
(End of this chapter)