Chapter 555: The Fiery Huo Yuanjia

Chapter 555: The Fiery Huo Yuanjia

Chapter 555: The Fiery Huo Yuanjia
Time soon came to 1970, and the 70s officially began;

On January 1, the movie "Huo Yuanjia" was officially released. Thanks to the early publicity, Li Xiaolong's own popularity, and the fact that the movie can beat up the Japanese, as a Chinese, who wouldn't like to watch it?
At the entrance of Changxing Commercial Cinema on Queensway in Hong Kong, a large group of people are queuing at the entrance;
"This line is too long. There are more people lining up than before when I bought a house."

"Li Xiaolong's new movie, naturally there will be a lot of people watching it, just wait patiently, it will be available for purchase in half an hour."

"I heard they are fighting the Japanese. We have to take a look at it anyway."

Many people were discussing while queuing, and they seemed to be used to it. Hong Kong's real estate market has been good this year, and many people have become accustomed to queuing up to buy houses. However, they often cannot get a spot, mainly because many scalpers have gotten involved.

"There are no more tickets. No need to queue!"

Suddenly, the staff in the front said loudly, causing controversy among the people in the back: "How could this be? Doesn't this theater have more than 1000 seats? There are only a hundred people in the front, right?"

Many people behind found it very strange, until the people buying tickets in front were stopped, and then they realized that there were people in front who bought dozens of seats at a time, hoarded movie tickets, and then sold them at a high price;
"You scalpers are even hoarding movie tickets? I won't even watch the movie."

"If you don't watch, there are plenty of people who will." A yellow-haired young man said disdainfully.

At the Changxing Building headquarters, Yang Wendong and Li Xiaolong were drinking afternoon tea together. Zou Wenhuai came over and said, "Mr. Yang, Mr. Li, something happened. Scalpers are hoarding tickets for Fist of Fury. As a result, many people can't buy tickets and can only pay a higher price."

"Scalpers are hoarding movie tickets? These movie tickets will expire? Are there people hoarding them?" Yang Wendong asked in surprise.

You can hoard houses, cars, industrial products and even vegetables, because some of them will not go bad and some can be preserved for a long time, but movie tickets will become invalid when the time comes. If you hoard them and cannot sell them when the time comes, you will lose money.

Zou Wenhuai explained: “I was also surprised, but later I checked and found out that they bought a large number of tickets for seats, and then sold the good seats at a high price to make a profit;
I guess if they can’t sell out in the end, they might sell the tickets at a fair price. Once they do, it’s easier to sell them, especially since Huo Yuanjia is so popular right now.”

Yang Wendong shook his head and laughed, "These scalpers are really everywhere. Hasn't this happened in the film industry before?"

Zou Wenhuai replied: "No, the highest movie box office before was only one million Hong Kong dollars, which is far behind many other industries, and there is a lot of uncertainty, because even the director of the movie can't guarantee that his movie will be a hit;

But this time, Li Xiaolong is so famous, and with our publicity, people in the market are also looking forward to the film. These factors combined make the risk of hoarding relatively small;
As long as it is profitable and the risk is low, it may attract the attention of many professional scalpers, who have been everywhere over the years.”

“I know something about these people. When Hong Kong was short of water, they also maliciously hoarded water.” Yang Wendong nodded.

In 1963, Hong Kong was seriously short of water. He spent a lot of resources to find water and distributed water to slums. He did not seek to ensure that everyone had enough water, but at least there was water available so that people would not die of thirst or have their lives seriously affected.
At that time, scalpers were involved in all water stations, including the one managed by the Changxing Charity Foundation. The main reason was that it was profitable, and once they got the water, they basically had no worries about not being able to sell it.

These people are so arrogant because they are backed by a gang that specializes in this kind of business. Some real estate companies even hire them to queue up and pretend that the houses are selling very well, and then cheat the few people who really want to buy houses. Of course, this kind of thing is not only in Hong Kong, but also in other countries and even in the mainland in the past.
Zou Wenhuai asked: "Should we take some measures to deal with this matter? Their hoarding of movie tickets has no direct impact on us, but it makes our tickets sell out earlier;
But it seriously affects the business and reputation of the cinemas, but it is not illegal, so we can’t use force to deal with them.”

Changxing Company is a top company in Hong Kong. Even if it can treat some gangs like dogs, it cannot directly participate in such things. This is a principle.

Especially now that the Hong Kong government has begun to crack down on gangs and corruption, regardless of the purpose of suppressing Chinese gangs and police power, they are still right in terms of justice.

Yang Wendong thought for a moment and said, "Well, go find Wei Zetao. He knows some people in the underworld. Ask them to warn him not to touch my business.

In addition, we have set a limit on ticket sales. Anyone can only buy 3-5 tickets at a time. Generally, a family only has this number. We cannot give scalpers an opportunity. Although their behavior will not affect our box office, we will never allow anyone to suck blood from us."

On the surface, scalpers do not cause any direct harm to sellers, but they will definitely cause disgust among customers. In the long run, they must not be allowed to exist.

However, this behavior is not illegal, and we can only restrain them through appropriate restrictions.

"Okay, I'll go right away." Zou Wenhuai left quickly.

Li Xiaolong laughed and said, “There’s no such thing in American movie theaters.”

"The United States is so big that it's hard to find a star as famous as you are in Hong Kong. They have too many choices." Yang Wendong nodded and said, "But after you have achieved success in Hong Kong and Asia, we will move to the United States. I said that I will definitely make you famous and successful around the world, but the route must start from Hong Kong. Only after we gain a base here, we will be qualified to discuss cooperation with Hollywood, otherwise there will be no hope."

The mentality of those people in Hollywood is as dark as that of Wall Street. When doing business with them, you can only try to do it in the long term. In this way, they will not abandon you because of the benefits of long-term cooperation in the future.

Li Xiaolong is a resource for long-term cooperation. In addition, he has expanded the cinema chains in Asia with the capital model. If there are enough cinema chains, he can also become a partner of Hollywood. After all, Hollywood film producers also hope to open up overseas markets. Although Asia is a bit poor, its economy is developing rapidly and it has a large population. The market potential is much greater than that of Europe.

If he can do these two things well, he will have the confidence to talk to Hollywood. This will be much stronger than Golden Harvest in history.

Li Xiaolong nodded and said, "I understand now. I was too ambitious at the time and thought I could become famous in Hollywood."

"In fact, Hollywood can't make a Chinese person really famous, at least not on their own initiative." Yang Wendong shook his head and said, "Look at the past few years, Hong Kong movies and TV series occasionally need to find some foreigners or even Japanese actors, but will we make them famous?

All we want is a decent supporting actor to help us tell the story. That's the only purpose. How can we spend resources to train foreign actors? It's the same in Hollywood."

Not to mention now, even decades later, Hollywood promoted some black people because of political correctness, but they deliberately made fun of them. For example, in The Mermaid, even if they had to find black people, they could find beautiful ones, but they just didn't find any. The struggle here is actually very interesting.

Li Xiaolong asked: "Then when will we contact Hollywood?"

Yang Wendong said: "Wait until you shoot two more movies. I will make you an Asian superstar first. In addition, my theater chain may make some investments in Japan recently. If it succeeds there, then our cooperation with Hollywood will be more confident.

We can’t rush this first collaboration. No matter the content or the method of cooperation, it will be the most important movie to enter Hollywood in the future. When all conditions are right, we will discuss with the US side. "

In the past few years, Changxing Cinema Company has continued to expand its cinemas in Southeast Asia, and has even started to invest in non-Chinese areas. After all, it is not only Chinese people who like to watch movies, but other people also like to watch movies. At most, they just don’t like to watch Hong Kong movies.
Cinema chains are also businesses in themselves, and they are independent. They can cooperate with Hong Kong films, but they will not exist only for them. Even if Hong Kong films are still not accepted by non-Chinese groups in the future, cinema chains can still do business, and the real estate in these places will also be good in the future, at least until 1997.

Theoretically it is the same in Japan, but it is more difficult to do this business in Japan. After all, it developed early. Not to mention foreign capital, even domestic capital finds it difficult to enter a mature industry, unless someone wants to sell the industry. And now there is an opportunity.

"Okay, I'll follow Mr. Yang's instructions in everything." Li Xiaolong agreed.

He was both grateful and admired Yang Wendong. If it weren't for his strong push, he wouldn't have been so successful. His strong ability to strategize also made Li Xiaolong feel at ease, as if he only needed to do what he asked.

The most important thing is that during this year in Hong Kong, he also realized how terrifying Yang Wendong's influence is in Hong Kong and even in Asia. Not to mention that he is a star, even if it is a large Hollywood company, if they really come to Asia and want to do business, they can probably only cooperate safely.

His experience in the United States taught him that if you have ability but no capital to support you, everything is useless. On the contrary, as long as you are not too incompetent and the capital is willing to support you, you can basically succeed.

Yang Wendong smiled and said, "We will consider the next step after the results of Huo Yuanjia come out."

As the first Chinese financial group in Hong Kong, Yang Wendong's words soon had a response. Some young people who speculated on movie tickets were directly caught and punished by more people, and then other people bought tickets and returned to normal;
But it's just returning to normal. Due to the popularity of the movie, many people still need to queue up, and in the past few days, the number of people queuing was still very large.

Thanks to the increase in the number of cinemas in Hong Kong and the improvement of the overall economy, the box office of the movie "Huo Yuanjia" exceeded one million on the third day. At the same time, there were still many people queuing in front of the major film companies in the Changxing Cinemas.

TVB and various newspaper media also paid attention to this incident, especially the scene in the movie where Li Xiaolong kicked the "Sick Man of East Asia" plaque into pieces, which shocked almost every Chinese person.

In addition, some people who have already seen the movie will spread the story among their friends, making the movie even more popular. People are talking about Li Xiaolong, Huo Yuanjia and so on.

On January 1, the Hong Kong film box office exceeded 15 million Hong Kong dollars, easily breaking the previous historical box office of 500 million.

Afterwards, everyone in the Hong Kong market had seen the film, and film sales dropped rapidly, and the number of screens began to decrease. On the 19th, the film was officially taken off the screen, with a total box office of HK$568.9 million, topping the Chinese film box office.

PS: Please give me a monthly ticket
(End of this chapter)