Chapter 570: Warm-up for the Summer Movie

Chapter 570: Warm-up for the Summer Movie

Chapter 570: Warm-up for the Summer Movie
The crisis that Wanda will face this year is an excellent opportunity for Galaxy Group. Currently, the Galaxy Cinema Line, which they acquired through mergers and acquisitions and restructuring, does not have a high market share in the domestic market.

Whether it is the number of cinemas and screens or the cinema facilities, they are all at the bottom of the list.

If it can swallow up Wanda Cinema Line, Xinghe Cinema will be able to become one of the largest cinema chains in the country, completely making up for the shortcomings of Galaxy Group and helping the group lay a more solid foundation.

"You don't have to reject him. The company has already made arrangements for Wanda. It's no problem to ask your family elders to help comfort him."

Wang Hao said this to Jing Tian, ​​and after returning to the study, he arranged for his secretary assistant to collect information about Wanda’s current funds and business over the phone, and wait until he went to the company tomorrow to look at it.

The next day, after arriving at the company, Wang Hao first looked at the information about Wanda's operating conditions, and then called the person in charge of the company's [Fund Operation Department] to hold a small meeting to discuss the matter and determine a basic tone and targeted plans for the future.

After a busy morning of company affairs, Wang Hao had lunch in the cafeteria and returned to the office to rest for more than an hour. In the afternoon, he went home to pick up his wife, who was dressed in a gorgeous dress, and even brought his son "Junjun" to the Galaxy Theater not far from the company to attend the premiere of a movie.

Although this movie was also invested by Galaxy Group, it does not belong to the [Galaxy Cinematic Universe], and has nothing to do with Galaxy Group's several major movie universe plans.

The reason why Wang Hao attaches so much importance to this movie is simply because it is a foreign movie, and not a Hollywood, Japanese or Korean movie.

This movie is the Indian sports biopic "Dangal" directed by Nitesh Tiwari and starring Aamir Khan.

As part of Galaxy Group's overseas and Asian cultural circle strategy, "Dangal" is a form of contact between Galaxy Group and its Indian counterparts.

To be honest, this kind of contact is not easy, because Indian counterparts, or Indians, are actually not very easy to cooperate with.

These guys have a very weak sense of contract as a whole and love to take advantage of others. Moreover, although they have a large population, their domestic film and television culture market is not very developed.

In addition, India’s film and television culture is very distinctive, and movies tend to incorporate a lot of singing and dancing elements, which makes their cultural circle unique and difficult to communicate with other cultures.

Not to mention Chinese films, even Hollywood films and TV shows find it difficult to enter the Indian market.

However, not all Indian filmmakers are unsuitable for cooperation. For example, Aamir Khan, the leading actor of "Dangal", is an exception.

As a male star in Bollywood, Aamir Khan is different from ordinary Indians. Not only is he dedicated and focused in his acting career, he also strives for perfection in the creation of his works, but he also has very good character and a high sense of social responsibility.

Before "Dangal", he has starred in the inspirational comedy film "3 Idiots", the crime action film "Dragon Drive ", and the fantasy comedy film "OMG". It can be said that he is a big star in China, has a high popularity, and is loved by the majority of Chinese movie fans.

His film "Dangal", like "3 Idiots" and "PK", also has certain realistic critical significance, focusing on the discrimination against women's career choices in Indian society.

The film was originally invested by Galaxy Group. After its release in India, it was boycotted by local audiences because it exposed social injustice.

However, this movie has received high reviews in China, and with the support of Galaxy Group, its screening rate has reached 23.3%, and it has earned more than 2500 million at the box office on the first day. The attendance rate has also reached 21.4%, making it the top-ranked movie in terms of attendance among new and old movies on the same day.

Afterwards, the box office of "Dangal" exceeded 3 million Chinese yuan in the first three days of its weekend, breaking the previous record of 1 million Chinese yuan in the first week of "PK", also starring Aamir Khan, and created a new record for the single-week box office of Bollywood movies in the mainland.

When the news reached India, the audience and people in the film industry who had originally boycotted the film were disgusted.

Continue the boycott. The box office performance of "Dangal" in China is indeed very impressive. For India, this is a matter of glory for the country and enough for them to brag about.

Don't resist criticism. The content of this movie is undoubtedly spitting in the faces of some of them.

No matter how upset Indians felt, "Dangal" became a small hit in the entire East Asian entertainment circle with the help of Galaxy Group's channels. In the end, the film grossed 18.95 billion yuan in China and 31.51 billion yuan worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing Bollywood film in recent years.

This undoubtedly further proves the strength of Galaxy Group and the correctness and rationality of the East Asian cultural circle established around Galaxy Group and the Chinese film market.

Perhaps Hollywood movies can indeed sweep the world with their gorgeous special effects, big stars and big productions.

But as China's film industrialization system gradually matures and gradually catches up with Hollywood in special effects technology and film production, the dissemination of movies will ultimately return to good stories and deeper cultural heritage.

In this regard, Hollywood movies naturally have certain disadvantages, and cultural and ideological barriers are not so easy to break.

If Hollywood wants to spread their movies, the cultural ideas contained in them must be simple and straightforward. Otherwise, if they are a little deeper, the people in the East Asian cultural circle may not necessarily accept them.

For example, when it comes to views on family, parents, children, education, etc., it is difficult for Hollywood to understand the inward-looking culture that is prevalent in the East Asian Confucian cultural circle, and it is also difficult for people in East Asian countries to accept the policy of keeping the people ignorant reflected behind America's happy education.

The efforts made by Galaxy Group over the years have not been in vain. In the future, with the development of the Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian film and television cultural forces gathered around them, a circle of mutual exchange and friendly communication will be formed, and perhaps it will play an unimaginable role in the future.

At present, through the movie "Dangal", Chinese audiences have a better understanding of Indian culture and social reality, and from the perspective of cultural exchange, it has promoted mutual understanding and respect between different cultures.

The response to "Dangal" in the Chinese market was also very enthusiastic, with audience ratings extremely high, with a Douban rating of 9.2 and a Tao Piao audience rating of 9.8.

Everyone was moved by the story of the protagonist Mahavira, who overcame numerous difficulties for the future of his daughters and worked hard to train them to become wrestling champions. They felt the deep fatherly love and the warmth between father and daughter.

At the same time, the audience was also inspired by the tenacity and efforts shown by the daughters in the film in the process of pursuing their dreams. Many viewers said that they "crying while laughing", "almost stood up in the middle of the movie" and "clapped involuntarily after the movie ended". For the first time, Huaying Group and its superiors agreed to Galaxy Group's proposal to further strengthen cultural exchanges between China and India.

At least for the next period of time, restrictions on the introduction of Bollywood films will be relaxed. At the same time, the Galaxy Group will deepen its cooperation with pro-China filmmakers such as Aamir Khan and can accept some young Indian filmmakers who have been inspected and recommended by him to study in China.

Aamir Khan was also very happy when he learned about this.

When he came to China to promote "Dangal", he visited the Oriental Galaxy Cinema Metropolis and the Galaxy Group.

Aamir Khan also expressed strong surprise and envy for China's top film and television production base and Galaxy Group's mature film industrialization system.

He said that although Bollywood's film and television production level is also well-known around the world, its development in film technology has stagnated in recent years.

However, the speed of development of China's film and television production technology is astonishing. It has now achieved remarkable results, almost comparable to Hollywood, which is worthy of learning and reference by their Bollywood counterparts.

Regarding this point, Wang Hao was not overly modest.

Because not only him, but most of the employees of Galaxy Group today no longer have the same attitude of looking up to and fearing Hollywood as before.

Over the years, countless Hollywood movies have been shot and produced in their Galaxy Studios.

After a long period of contact, they found that there was nothing special about these Hollywood counterparts. Their levels were not much different. In some technical matters, the Chinese staff were even better.

Moreover, in the Chinese market, Galaxy Group's films are not afraid of Hollywood films at all. Countless Hollywood blockbusters have failed in the competition with them.

It doesn't even have to be the works of Galaxy Group. Nowadays, some other works can beat Hollywood movies in the Chinese market.

For example, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" was released right after "Dangal".

As the fifth film in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, this is a standard Hollywood blockbuster. The film also continues the style and plot of the previous work and has wonderful computer special effects, but its box office performance in China is only 11.79 billion, even worse than "Dangal".

However, the release of these two films in May did attract quite a few audiences to the cinema, which can be regarded as the beginning of the summer season.

It is now June, the first month of China's summer season. It is just the beginning and the competition is already fierce.

On June 6, Wonder Woman, a unique female superhero in the DC movie universe, was released, becoming the first release of this period. With its beautiful heroine, it attracted many audiences to the cinema, and also surpassed Goblins, which was released at the same time.

On June 6, the campus romance film "Li Lei and Han Meimei", which uses the characters from the People's Education Press English textbook as its IP selling point and plays on the nostalgia of the post-9s and post-80s generations, was released.

However, due to its old-fashioned plot and stiff acting, it has a poor reputation (Douban score of 4.4), and has failed to replicate the success of similar domestic youth films such as "So Young" and "My Deskmate". It was defeated in the competition with another Hollywood fantasy adventure blockbuster "The Mummy" released at the same time, and only earned 1.5 million yuan in box office within the month.

Of course, this doesn't mean that The Mummy is that good.

Although it was the opening work, carrying Universal's expectations of creating the "Dark Cinematic Universe" and invited Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise to star in it, the film did not do a good job in integrating horror and action elements, resulting in a confusing style and poor reputation. Its box office performance in June was only 6 million, ranking second that month.

On June 6, the third week of June, as many as nine movies were released on that day, the most eye-catching of which was the Hollywood space thriller "Alien: Covenant".

It earned about 7200 million yuan on the first day and received a lot of praise from the audience. However, because it continued the dark and cold aesthetic style of the "Alien" series, the horror, blood and other elements also brought a strong audio-visual impact to the audience through the IMAX big screen, which led to a narrowing of its domestic audience range. The cumulative box office in June just exceeded 6 million yuan.

In comparison, the best performing film in the entire month of June was the Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster "Transformers 6: The Last Knight", which was released on June 6.

As one of the representatives of the industrial strength of Hollywood films and the sequel to a super IP, its first-day box office reached 3.5 million thanks to the fan base and visual effects accumulated by the previous work.

It’s just that IP is both the reason for the film’s success and its failure. Due to the “routine” narrative of the sequel, many viewers have become aesthetically fatigued with it, resulting in the film’s lack of box office momentum and polarized reputation.

Overall, as a warm-up period for the summer season, June 2017's box office performance was barely on par with last year.

Among the movies released, the top 7 box office hits were all imported films, and the highest-grossing domestic film was "Li Lei and Han Meimei". In the confrontation trend, China fell into a disadvantage.

But apart from "Transformers 5", the reputation and box office of other films also failed to meet expectations. Although imported films were released intensively, their genres were highly homogenized and failed to inspire sustained enthusiasm from the audience.

People are beginning to feel aesthetic fatigue with the "special effects addiction" of Hollywood blockbusters, giving people the feeling that competition is mild this month, the overall market is in a "accumulating energy" state, and there is a lack of phenomenal blockbuster products.

However, the "accumulation of energy" in June may also be for a better outbreak next month.

Regarding this point, anyone who has seen the summer movie schedule in July, whether they are movie fans or theater distributors, has almost no doubts about it.

Because on July 7st of this summer, the sci-fi blockbuster "The Three-Body Problem 21" directed by Wang Hao will be officially released, bringing the second phase of the world-renowned IP "Galaxy Cinematic Universe" [War Era] to a perfect end.

(End of this chapter)