Chapter 590 Those who imitate me will die

Chapter 590 Those who imitate me will die

Chapter 590 Those who imitate me will die
Wow!
The applause in the screening room only lasted for a very short time before stopping, because the big screen quickly lit up again after it went out, and the end-credits easter egg began to play.

Since it is a movie universe, Easter eggs are definitely indispensable.

There are two post-credits Easter eggs in "Swords of Shu Mountain", and the first one is set in Chengdu Prefecture.

When the sword light that crossed the sky appeared, a sloppy old beggar in a restaurant in the city looked outside, chuckled, and acted like an otherworldly master who was playing with the world.

The second easter egg happened in Mount Emei, thousands of miles away. In order to save the seriously injured Zhou Chun, Yu Yingnan was collecting herbs in the forest, and as a result, a faint pink poisonous mist filled the air.

Yu Yingnan was unaware of anything at first. By the time she felt dizzy and staggered, it was already too late. Before she fell, she saw a flash of colorful scales in the forest out of the corner of her eye.

"Not bad!"

After the movie premiere ended and the leaders left, Wang Hao found Tsui Hark and the main creators of "Swords of Shu Mountain" and gave them encouragement and praise.

That evening, film reviews about "Swords of Shu Mountain" appeared on major media platforms, with the largest number on the TikTok platform.

After all, it is an APP of its own group, and there will naturally be cooperation between the various branches. It is not excessive to let Douyin help with promotion.

Therefore, there are not only reviews and viewing impressions of "Swords of Shu Mountain" on Douyin, but also during the screening of the movie, many young and beautiful anchors started shooting ancient and fairy-style costume change videos about the movie on Douyin.

In addition, some ancient martial arts bloggers, especially female anchors who have mastered certain sword skills, even performed sword dances on Douyin using the soundtrack from "Swords of Shushan".

In the old days, there was a beautiful woman, Gongsun, who used a sword to move around.

The female anchors on Douyin may not have such strong capabilities, but with the help of modern technology, especially the "Sword Energy Shooting All Around" and "Flying Swords" filter effects added by Douyin, they can also show remarkable results, which greatly enhanced the popularity of "Swords of Shu Mountain" and made a significant contribution to the popularity of the movie.

In the eyes of industry peers and film and television companies, the acclaim and popularity of "Swords of Shu Mountain" undoubtedly means that Galaxy Group has successfully added a new film universe.

In this way, they have left other film and television colleagues far behind.

People can only envy this. After all, when it comes to movies, the audience likes it if they like it and dislikes it if they don’t.

Other film and television companies have tried to create their own film series IP or even "movie universe" before, but most of them have been a lot of noise but little results.

Some, such as LeTV, died before they even started due to various reasons.

When their family entered the film and television industry, Accountant Jia once shouted slogans like "creating a Chinese fantasy universe" and invested heavily in Guo Xiaosi's "Jade Dynasty".

For this movie, they even found Starlight Fantasy, hoping that they could provide technical support.

Of course Starlight Fantasy readily agreed to this. After all, they had never made a full CG movie before, so it was indeed a big challenge.

However, LeEco's slogan had only been shouted for less than a year. At the end of last year, in November 2016, the LeEco mobile phone supply chain, which was still advancing by leaps and bounds, encountered financial problems, affecting about dozens of suppliers and agents, and involving tens of billions of yuan in payments.

This incident sounded the clarion call for LeEco's collapse. At the same time, the low-key LeEco Finance surfaced. The huge financing projects behind it were inextricably linked to many suppliers of the "LeEco ecosystem", which made people worry about its financial situation.

At the same time, as the halo faded, the share price of LeTV, which once followed closely behind Galaxy Pictures, also began to fall. The large amount of pledge made by Accountant Jia in the past for financing became the sword of Damocles hanging over LeTV's head.

Because of this, Accountant Jia had approached Wang Hao years ago.
After sounding out his opinion, I asked Galaxy Group whether it was interested in LeTV.

It can be seen that LeTV, which has financial problems, has to choose to introduce strategic investors (takeoverists).

In response, Wang Hao directly expressed that he had no interest.

After all, Galaxy Group's Star Video is currently developing quite well. With a large number of excellent exclusive self-produced dramas and overseas Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian dramas, it is enough to compete with iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent.

Even without the help of Wang Hao and Galaxy Group, at the end of February this year, LeTV still announced that Sunac, headed by Sun Hongbin, a Shanxi fellow villager of Accountant Jia, had invested 2 billion yuan in LeTV and LeTV-related entities.

In addition, China Life Insurance and LeRan Investment also came to support. The total investment of the three parties exceeded 168 billion yuan, which can be regarded as a breath of fresh blood for LeTV.

But this seemingly huge amount of 168 billion yuan is far from enough to solve LeEco's capital chain problem. After acquiring a stake in LeEco, Sun Hongbin, who turned the company upside down, couldn't help but say to the media:
"I really admire Lao Jia for wanting to do something so big with just this little money."

I don't know whether this was a genuine compliment or a hint of something else, but he told the public that he trusted Accountant Jia and the LeTV team.

Unfortunately, Boss Sun, the "white knight" who had believed in Accountant Jia, had to admit defeat in the end.

The investment from R&F and several investment banks did not bring about a turnaround for LeTV. The company's private bond issuance failed, the Shimao Industrial Project No. 3 was not sold as scheduled, and Accountant Jia's assets were frozen.

Finally, just one week before the release of Wang Hao’s “The Three-Body Problem 1”, on the evening of July 2017, 7, Accountant Jia boarded a plane to the United States, and from then on he left the legend of “returning home next week” in China’s capital world.

Anyway, I don’t know how many weeks have passed now, and Wang Hao still hasn’t seen Accountant Jia show any signs of returning to China.

As for the "Lord Dynasty" universe he had once boasted about creating, it naturally became a thing of the past.

However, "Lord Dynasty 2" is still in production.

Thanks to the participation of well-known domestic special effects companies such as Starlight Fantasy, the finished product of "Jade Dynasty 1" far exceeds the original with the same investment amount. Whether it is the modeling texture of the characters or the flexibility of the movements after motion capture, they are all above average.

In addition, given that Guo Xiaosi has many fans, the box office performance of this live-action CG animated film is not a huge hit, but it can be said to have broken even.

This gave Xiao Si some confidence, so even when LeTV collapsed, he still found new investors and contacted Xingguang Huancai again to start filming "Jade Dynasty 2".

In contrast, LeTV had too much ambition but failed to sustain itself, resulting in the death of its "China Fantasy Universe".

Although some companies have also called for the creation of a "movie universe" and have even taken action, and their current results are decent, their future is still uncertain.

For example, as early as 2010, Star Overseas Films announced that it would invest 35 billion to build a "Journey to the West" movie universe.

The first film in the series, Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven (starring Donnie Yen, Chow Yun-fat, Aaron Kwok, etc.), was released during the 2014 Spring Festival. Unfortunately, it ran into the same theme animation film Monkey King: Hero is Back by Galaxy Group. Although it was not a complete failure, it also had a poor box office, earning only 8.73 million yuan. As for the second work in the series, Journey to the West: The Monkey King Defeats the White Bone Demon (starring Aaron Kwok, Gong Li, Feng Shaofeng, etc.), it was released during the Spring Festival.

This one is even worse. The release date was chosen to be the 2016 Spring Festival, and it had to compete with Wang Hao's movie "Ball Lightning". The result is naturally self-evident.

However, although they were overshadowed by Wang Hao's "Ball Lightning", these two "Journey to the West"-themed movies still made money, which also greatly increased the confidence of the producer, Star Overseas Films.

So they announced in 2016 that there will be eight films in the "Journey to the West" series, and that their company will subsequently invest in the filming of three films in the "Eight Immortals Conquers the Dragon King" series and three films in the "Bao Zheng" series, thus creating a [Chinese Mythology Universe].

Wang Hao can only express his blessing for Xinghao Pictures' ambitions.

After all, the other party's film is a special effects blockbuster, and the third part of the "Journey to the West" series, "Journey to the West: The Women Kingdom", has already started shooting. Its shooting and production location is in [Oriental Galaxy Cinema]. At the same time, the special effects producer in the movie has been changed from the foreign companies in the first two parts to Wang Hao's Starlight Fantasy.

From this point of view alone, it is impossible for Wang Hao to speak ill of his own company behind its back.

However, even if he did not make too many comments, the Internet was not very optimistic about this movie.

After all, there are so many film and television works on the theme of "Journey to the West". The audience can still watch the first few films in the series for fun and see what a "Journey to the West" blockbuster looks like with the addition of special effects and big names.

If you keep repeating this routine, people will become aesthetically fatigued.

However, Star Overseas Films' "Journey to the West" series and "Chinese Mythology Cinematic Universe" are still a dream. However, another film company has begun to slow down its efforts to create a movie universe.

This is talking about Huayi Brothers.

When Wang Hao first worked with the Wang brothers, the cooperation was actually quite good and there were no unpleasant consequences.

However, later on, Huayi Brothers could no longer keep up with the pace of Galaxy Group.

Moreover, Huayi went public before Galaxy Pictures. At that time, the Wang brothers were in high spirits and had a large amount of funds in their hands. Naturally, they were unwilling to just follow behind Wang Hao and get some benefits. However, they were not sure about their own strength, so they also made bold statements to the outside world.

Compared with Xinghao Film Group, Huayi still has some strength, so their film series are much more complete than Xinghao.

For example, the "Detective Dee" series, the first film in this series, "Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame", was directed by Tsui Hark and starred Andy Lau, Li Bingbing, Carina Lau, Deng Chao and others. It was released in 2010 and featured elements of costumes, fantasy, action, suspense and so on.

With a strong cast and Tsui Hark's wild imagination, the film achieved good results after its release.

More importantly, "Detective Dee", a character very familiar to the audience, was brought to the big screen, and with the success of the TV series and the unique style of the film, many people at the time believed that the "Detective Dee" series would become the hottest costume suspense film that would dominate the Chinese film market in the next few years.

However, Huayi was ultimately inexperienced and had not learned much from following Galaxy Group. Its plan for "Detective Dee" was good, saying that it would shoot ten films in the series, but it ended up making mistakes in the selection of actors.

Anyone who studies and analyzes Wang Hao's [Galaxy Cinematic Universe] will know that when filming and producing a movie universe, how can you find big stars to play the main characters right from the start?
In fact, Star Overseas Films also made the same mistake.

They are all naively still believing that big stars + big scenes equal big productions, but they haven’t thought about what to do with the subsequent actor pay expenses if the first movie becomes a hit?
Even the plan of signing several film contracts at one time is useless, which clearly shows that he has no confidence in his own film universe.

So after "Journey to the West: Havoc in Heaven", the lead actor of the second part was changed, and Aaron Kwok, who played the villain Bull Demon King in the previous part, was transformed into Sun Wukong.

After the first "Detective Dee" "Mystery of the Phantom Flame" had Andy Lau star in it and it performed well, in order to control costs, Huayi had to make a major cast change in the second film, replacing them all with cheaper young actors, and moved the story timeline forward, making a "Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame" .

The performance of this movie has certainly improved compared to its predecessor.

But considering that "Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame" was released in 2013, and the box office ceiling during the Chinese New Year was pushed up a lot by the works of Galaxy Pictures, the performance of this work does not seem to be very impressive.

Not only is the performance inferior, the reputation of "Detective Dee: The Mystery of the Phantom Flame" is also far behind its predecessor.

In addition, Tsui Hark, who was the main controller of the project, joined the Galaxy Group and started the "Swords of Shu Mountain" and the "Shu Mountain Cinematic Universe" which have just ended their hit theaters. The "Detective Dee" project was shelved for a few years. Then Huayi changed the director and started the shooting and production of the third part "Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings".

At present, this movie should be released next year. The reason why Wang Hao knows this very well is naturally because the filming and production of "Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings" was also carried out in [Oriental Galaxy Cinema], and the special effects content was still handled by his Starlight Fantasy Company.

Of course, the "Detective Dee" series can at least have a sequel, but Huayi Brothers' other "Republic of China Fantasy Kung Fu" series failed before it even got off the ground.

This is referring to the "Tai Chi" series of movies launched by them in 2012.

The film series is produced by Huayi Brothers, directed by Hong Kong director Stephen Fung, and starred by stars such as Yuan Xiaochao, Angelababy, Tony Leung, and Eddie Peng. It tells the growth story of Yang Luchan, a Tai Chi master in the Republic of China.

However, this is not a traditional costume kung fu film, but a fantasy kung fu film that combines elements of costumes, martial arts, action, comedy, steampunk and so on.

To be honest, Wang Hao still admires Huayi very much. They can come up with such a trendy movie series. Just looking at the mixed elements, it can be regarded as an innovation.

Moreover, Huayi also learned from the lessons of its previous film "Detective Dee" and replaced the leading actor with a national-level martial arts athlete who is relatively new in the circle.

And considering the possible price increase upon contract renewal, Huayi made a big move and shot three films at once.

It’s a pity that although Huayi was full of confidence in this series of films, the market response was not satisfactory.

There are three parts in the Tai Chi series.

The first film, "Tai Chi 1: From Zero", was released on September 2012, 9, and its performance and reputation were mediocre.

Then, seeing that the situation was not good, Huayi quickly released "Tai Chi 2012: Rise of the Heroes" on October 10, 25.

But the result is still the same as the previous one, which makes Huayi's investment go down the drain. As a result, "Tai Chi 2017: The Peak", which was originally supposed to be released this year, that is, in 3, is still silent and has not been scheduled.

It can only be said that the failure of these two consecutive film series completely dealt a heavy blow to Huayi Brothers' ambition to create a movie universe, and it also became the fuse for Huayi's decline.

(End of this chapter)