Chapter 1078 The Beginning of the Hong Kong Film Myth

Following last year's practice, a blockbuster movie will be released in Hong Kong on January 1st.

It is the second part of the "Best Partner" series, the signature of New Art City Company.

This guy is also overbearing enough and knows that Kirin Films will not compete with them for the January 1st schedule, so after last year, they launched "The Best Partner" at this time, which has the intention of fixing this schedule.

In the past year, Seven Monsters of New Art City has made a total of 15 movies. Although there are good and bad movies, overall they still made a lot of money.

Now that New Art City has made money, Boss Lei's Golden Princess Cinema Line has naturally made a lot of money as well.

After calculating this for a year, they actually had a pre-tax profit of about 100 million Hong Kong dollars!

Although it is not as changeable as Qilin Film Company, nor can it compare to Golden Harvest Company with Cheng Long and Hong Jinbao, it has surpassed Shaw Brothers Film Company and officially became the third largest film company in Hong Kong.

Even though their foundation is not very stable, New Arts City not only has "The Best Partner" but also "The Young Boys". Even if they only produce one movie a year, they have already achieved dazzling results. , unlike Shaw Brothers, which can only rely on old movies and old-fashioned thinking.

In order to achieve greater success this year, Lei Juekun specially allocated 30 million yuan in the second half of last year to produce "The Best Partner 2".

As soon as the number of 30 million came out, everyone in Xiangjiang looked at them with admiration.

You know, even three years ago, the box office champion did not earn 30 million!

Not to mention the investment in a movie.

If you can invest 5 million, it is considered a blockbuster, but if you can invest 10 million, there is no such thing.

It is the trend of blockbuster production driven by Yin Jun that drives the cost of film production in Hong Kong to become higher and higher.

On the one hand, stars' salaries are getting higher and higher.

Three years ago, 300,000 yuan was enough to hire a good star, and first-class stars were around 500,000-700,000 yuan. If it was 1 million yuan, I am afraid that only top stars like the Hui brothers and Cheng Long could get it. Even Hong Jinbao, Zheng Shaoqiu couldn't get it.

Now, it is said that Cheng Long received 8 million yuan in salary and dividends for filming "Red Zone"; the main actors in "Police Academy 2" also received 1 million to 2 million yuan in salary and dividends, with the highest Rowan Atkinson even received a salary of 2 million US dollars; in addition, Eddie Murphy, who starred in "Beverly Hills Cop" in Hollywood, finally received a salary of 5 million US dollars plus dividends.

Of course, Eddie Murphy and Rowan Atkinson cannot be counted in the local salary in Hong Kong, so the most is Fei Xiang from "Speed".

With this movie, he earned a salary of 3 million U.S. dollars plus a large amount of dividends, which works out to about 20 million Hong Kong dollars, which is really scary.

Not to mention these commercial blockbusters, Zhou Yunfa won the Cannes Palme d'Or for his wonderful performance in "Prison", so Qilin Films gave Zhou Yunfa 6 million Hong Kong dollars in salary plus dividends.

From this point of view, Xiangjiang Film is now very different from before. All kinds of expenses are increasing, and many small film companies are unable to adapt to this environment.

Although they are still making movies, due to various restrictions, their profits are only hundreds of thousands, one or two million, but their losses can put them out of business in just one sum.

Because Yin Jun, Cheng Long, Xu Guanjie and their films are at the forefront, how can those films that are obviously crudely compiled and poorly made satisfy the audiences in Hong Kong?

If you can't satisfy the audience in Xiangjiang, how can you sell it at a good price in other places?

On the other hand, some companies that make romantic movies still rely on precise market positioning, low costs, quick film arrangement, and medium returns, and their profits are relatively good.

The main reason why New Arts City spent 30 million Hong Kong dollars to film "The Best Partner 2" is, of course, that "The Best Partner" sold well at the overseas box office, with a total of 35 million Hong Kong dollars. This alone allowed them to even lose money. The profits were made back, and the local box office made a net profit again.

This time, before the filming of "Best Partner 2" started, Yin Jun discussed with Lei Juekun that for the first part of "Best Partner", a publisher from other places bought the copyright and made it into a video tape for broadcast in Europe and the United States. The effect was unexpected Not bad, so this time United Artists Films and Disney are planning to join forces to help New Art City release "Best Partner 2", and the money received will be divided between the two parties in proportion.

Lei Juekun naturally agreed happily to this. With the Big Seven of Hollywood operating behind him, and facing dozens of European and American developed countries, the price would definitely not be low, at least a few cents higher than what the small distributors had offered before. Buyout prices of hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands are much better.

In order to make his second film released in Europe and the United States successful, Lei Juekun increased the investment again and raised the production cost to 30 million.

Then there is another important reason, which is that movie ticket prices in Xiangjiang have increased again.

Prices of everything in Hong Kong have been rising rapidly in recent years, including salaries. They were around 1,200 at the beginning, but in 1981, they were almost 2,000 Hong Kong dollars.

In just 4 years, wages have almost doubled, so it is normal for the price of movie tickets to rise.

Yin Jun remembers that when he and Guan Zhilin went to see the first movie together, the price of movie tickets was 5.6 yuan. As a result, last year in 1981, the average price reached about 10.2 yuan.

The major theater chains and theaters in Xiangjiang have already agreed that starting from January 1, 1982, movie ticket prices will rise again, ranging from 10 to 12 yuan.

The best blockbusters cost 12 yuan, and the most common movie tickets will not be less than 10 yuan.

Don't underestimate the price increase of one or two yuan. Compared with the unit price of movie tickets, this is a 10%-20% increase, which means a 10%-20% increase in the movie box office, which means an increase in box office revenue. 10%-20% increase!

A 10%-20% increase of 1 million is not much, but what about a box office of 10 million? What about the 20 million box office? What about the 30 million one?

It was also because of seeing such a big piece of fat coming that Xinyi City decided to release "The Best Partner" on the first day of the New Year to get off to a good start!

The result was just as they imagined, a box office hit.

The box office on the first day of Friday reached 2.1 million, which was almost higher than the highest single-day box office of the first episode of "The Best".

The box office on Saturday reached 3.2 million in one fell swoop, making it one of the few super movies in Hong Kong that can exceed 3 million in a single day!

Then Sunday's box office dropped back to 2.5 million, but the three-day box office in the first weekend was as high as 7.8 million Hong Kong dollars, far exceeding the first episode.

According to this trend, after the six-week screening period, it should not be a problem to reach a total box office of 30 million.

Of course, not all of the 30 million invested by New Art City was used for filming. Only about 20 million was used directly for filming. The remaining 7 million was used to make some special effects, and another 3 million was used for Above the promotional advertisement.

With the development of the film industry, the tradition that good wine is not afraid of dark alleys has also undergone many changes.

The most representative one is Yin Jun's "Speed". The overwhelming advertising fee of 50 million US dollars really brought a lot of viewers to it.

In addition, the "Great Split" advertisement produced by Yin Jun was the first to make the movie's leading actor Fei Xiang famous, which can be regarded as a classic marketing.

If it weren't for the addition of these two factors, no matter how good "Speed" was, it would still be no match for "Superman 2" in North America.

If it hadn't been for the shocking battle with "Superman 2", "Speed" would not have won such a great reputation, let alone be a hit in Europe and South America.

Therefore, the quality of the film is of course important, but publicity is even more indispensable, and the greater the investment, the more important it is.

The publicity investment of 3 million Hong Kong dollars is considered to be a lot in Hong Kong in this era. "Best Partner 2" can be seen in newspapers such as "Kilin Daily" and "Pear News" every day. Xu Guanjie, Micah, Zhao Yazhi and the others also appeared on several TV programs to promote the show, and they did a good job of pre-heating.

Therefore, such a good first weekend result is expected.

Seeing the excellent results of "Best Partner 2", theater distributors from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and other places came over one after another and strongly requested to buy it out for distribution.

But today's Princess Jin is no longer the small film company that was just established two years ago.

Continuous success gave Lei Juekun greater confidence.

Except for small places like Singapore and Vietnam, where he can accept buyouts, in other foreign markets such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, he requires everyone to do it according to the share.

Princess Jin doesn’t want more, 30% of the box office revenue, and the rest is divided between their theater distributors and movie theaters.

Publishers from other places were shocked when they heard this request.

Because before this, Yin Jun's movies had this confidence, and "Speed ​​of Life and Death" was based on profit sharing.

But that's "Speed ​​of Life and Death"!

Although "The Best of Us 2" is good, it is definitely not as good as "Speed". Are you so brave?

However, no matter what they said, Lei Juokun made up his mind this time and must give this sharing agreement a try.

With no other choice, the first to be unsettled were Baodao's film producers. Several of their families were competing. The ones who reacted faster signed a share-sharing agreement, took the copies and started planning for the release.

Next is Japan and South Korea. Movie fans in these two countries have now become Yin Jun’s die-hard fans, especially Japanese fans who know that Yin Jun is Mr. Jun. For Yin Jun’s own production and Yin Jun’s script Movies are absolutely addictive to watch, and none of them will be left behind.

In the past, both "The Boys" and "Mr. Zombie" triggered a movie-watching frenzy in Japan and earned a lot of box office.

Therefore, after Japan fell again, South Korea could not hold on.

Several big players have already surrendered, and the remaining countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines naturally had no choice but to compromise and signed a share-sharing agreement with Princess Jin. Everyone was ready to release it one after another.

In this day and age, when Hollywood blockbusters have not yet started to show off their power and everyone is focusing on feature films, a film model with an oriental cultural atmosphere like Xiangjiang is more popular among Asian people.

So basically as long as there are familiar people, familiar directors, and familiar screenwriters in Xiangjiang movies, the fans will know whether they are good or not, and there is no need for any publicity from these theater companies.

This is actually how the myth of Hong Kong films was established.

Of course, in the end, the myth of Hong Kong films was destroyed by the Hong Kong filmmakers themselves.

Not only the small and medium-sized film companies that follow the trend of filming, but also film companies such as Jiahe, Yongsheng, and New Arts City are also crazy about fishing, but in the end everyone has fun together!

However, even in 2020, an era when Hong Kong films are dead, Asian movie fans will still buy into the familiar names such as Andy Lau, Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung and Stephen Chow. This is probably the last trace of gold for Hong Kong films. This is the evidence of the times!