Chapter 258 "Don't Knock" Is Released

In a middle-class residential area in Beijing.

Wearing glasses, Li Xuejian was sitting on the sofa, reading the newspaper in his hand and listening to the news broadcast on TV.

Since he was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer while filming in 2000, and then returned to film "Departures" in 2002, Li Xuejian has not been acting very frequently, although he has become famous in the art circle because of this movie.

Cancer is not an easy disease to deal with. Even if the operation is successful, Li Xuejian has still been mainly resting in the past few years, and he has filmed a movie every three or four years.

Li Xuejian, who has been acting all his life, is not used to taking a break suddenly.

Although he didn't act in many movies before, averaging one movie every one or two years, he was still a drama actor of the Central Drama Theater and had a large number of drama performances.

Now that the drama performances have stopped, he stays at home every day drinking tea and reading newspapers, enjoying his retirement life in advance.

After a few years of such a leisurely life, Li Xuejian is bored.

I want to act!

Looking at the publicity about the release of the movie "The Sun Also Rises" in the newspaper, Li Xuejian sighed slightly.

Just then, his cell phone suddenly rang.

He picked up the phone carelessly, and after just listening to a few words, the expression on Li Xuejian's face changed again and again.

"Director Wu's new movie?"

"Actor?"

"Yes, I will definitely play it!"

Yes, with a limited selection range, Wu Yuan first thought of Li Xuejian, who he had worked with before.

Compared with You Benchang, Li Xuejian is more suitable to play this kind of lonely and eccentric old man.

You Benchang looks too kind, especially when he is older, he looks like a kind old grandfather, without the feeling of loneliness at all.

Li Xuejian is different. As a man who played the King of Qin, he was chosen to play Ying Zheng because he looked extraordinary cold when he was serious.

And if he smiles, he can melt the frost like a spring breeze, and suddenly become a cheerful old man again.

This is undoubtedly very suitable for the role of "Li Wen".

When they worked together on "Departures", Wu Yuan jokingly asked him to work together again next time, and now it just happened to fulfill this agreement.

Wu Yuan's invitation would naturally not be rejected by Li Xuejian. Li Xuejian, who had been recuperating at home for a long time, had long wanted to come out again.

The two of them decided to work together in no time. Around December at the end of the year, when it was snowing heavily in Beijing, they started filming "A Man Called Li Wen Decided to Die"!

After finalizing this most important male lead, the preparations for "A Man Called Li Wen Decided to Die" were almost complete.

For an art film like this, the early preparations are still very easy.

A few leading actors are determined, and then a few powerful actors who are familiar to the audience are found to match the roles, and a suitable shooting location is selected, and then the filming can start.

Wu Yuan only put a small part of his energy into the preparations of this film, and easily solved the early preparations.

The assistant director and producer of the crew will naturally handle and perfect the other details.

His attention turned to the new movie that the company is about to release.

On September 12, the debut work "Don't Knock on the Door", the first work of the young director Liu Meichuan supported by the company, will be fully released in the mainland.

The production of this movie is not easy.

As we all know, the General Administration has very strict review of movies involving the theme of "ghosts".

In the impression of many fans, it seems that they have seen many Chinese horror movies, and all of them have plots of ghosts harming people.

But in fact, all these horror movies in the impression are made in Hong Kong Island.

It's just that the pirated discs that flow into the mainland are all Mandarin dubbing versions, or more accurately, Taiwanese dubbing versions.

So some fans who don't know the situation still think that these movies are made in the mainland.

In fact, the Mainland General Administration is very strict, and the more years you count, the stricter it is, and no horror movies involving ghosts are allowed to pass the review.

And Liu Meichuan's "Don't Knock on the Door" is a very typical Asian horror film, which combines the characteristics of horror films in Japan and Hong Kong Island.

The whole process is from a thrilling perspective, without any bloody and violent scenes, but it is always startling. The climax is mostly in its hallucinations and sudden shots of force majeure. This sense of horror is very challenging to the nerves of movie fans.

For example, at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, there was a knock on the door in the quiet corridor, which made the audience and the protagonist nervous and the tense atmosphere began to be created.

Then the protagonist carefully approached the door step by step, leaned on the cat's eye and looked out but saw nothing, no one.

Just when the protagonist in the picture and the audience watching the first-person perspective were relieved, the protagonist turned around, and a woman with disheveled hair and no face was standing behind him face to face, only one centimeter away from him.

Then the protagonist and the audience were scared at the same time, and goose bumps all over their bodies could be scared.

This is the characteristic of Asian horror movies, which always use the environment, background music, step-by-step movements, and sudden thriller shots to create a horror atmosphere.

"Don't Knock" is such a movie. In the movie, the protagonists are a group of college graduates who rent a shabby apartment together for the sake of cheapness.

When they moved into the apartment, all kinds of strange things began to happen.

The knock on the door at 12 o'clock every night, the reflection in the mirror, the creaking sound under the bed, the sound of marbles jumping upstairs, and the sudden appearance of a white figure in the corridor.

All kinds of weird things that challenge their spirits torture their brains.

They want to escape from this apartment, but they find that no matter how they escape, they will always return here at 12 o'clock at midnight.

It turns out that this is a cursed apartment.

Of course, if the movie is really shot like this, the General Administration will definitely not pass the review.

No matter how big Wu Yuan's face is, it is useless.

So, at the end of the movie, everything is over, the protagonists are all crazy and live in a mental hospital.

Then after examination and investigation by the police, the truth finally came to light. It turned out that it was not a ghost who was asking for life, but the protagonists had bullied a female classmate in school and forced the female classmate to jump off the building.

His boyfriend has been waiting for an opportunity to retaliate, and finally found a drug that can cause hallucinations and cause nerve problems if taken for a long time, and has been drugging the protagonists.

All the strange things they encountered in the apartment were actually caused by hallucinations caused by ghosts in their hearts. Because they were afraid of being killed every day, they actually imagined that they were being killed by the wronged ghosts, which eventually led to a nervous breakdown and all of them went crazy.

Yes, everything has a scientific explanation. It was a deliberate revenge, not a real ghost.

After adding such an ending, the General Administration reluctantly approved it.

As for why Wu Yuan insisted on supporting Liu Meichuan when the domestic environment did not advocate the shooting of such horror movies, of course, it was because he considered a higher angle.

Liu Meichuan does have some talent for directing horror movies. During the interview, the horror short film he shot with a handheld DV really scared Wu Yuan.

It's a bit like James Wan when he was shooting "Dead Silence".

It would be a pity not to cultivate such a talented director.

Wu Yuan has always positioned Light and Shadow Times as not a mainland film production company. He is targeting the entire Asian market.

In the Asian market, except for the mainland of China, the other major ticket warehouses have a large horror film market.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand in the future all have a large number of fans who love to watch horror movies.

Even in Japan and Thailand, horror movies are one of the pillars of their film industry.

Especially in Thailand, some excellent horror movies in Thailand are popular throughout Asia.

Wu Yuan certainly wants to cultivate an excellent mainland horror film director to compete with these excellent Asian horror film directors and grab food.

This "Don't Knock on the Door" is an attempt.

Not only in mainland China, Guangying Times is also actively working on the release of this film in Hong Kong Island, and plans to release DVD videotapes in Japan and South Korea.

The real field of horror movies is not the cinema, but the DVD market.

Compared with watching horror movies with others in the cinema, it is more exciting to watch them alone on the sofa at home, at least most horror movie fans think so.

From North America to Japan and South Korea, horror movies have always been the best-selling genre in the DVD rental market.

Moreover, most movie fans are not very picky and watch horror movies from all over the world. They are all favorites of horror movie lovers, including Korean horror movies, Japanese horror movies, Thai horror movies, and Hong Kong horror movies.

If mainland horror movies can be done well, there is a lot of room for development in this market!

Liu Meichuan, who was highly expected by Wu Yuan, felt an unprecedented sense of pressure immediately after hearing that the company was in power to operate the Asian DVD release of this movie.

Liu Meichuan is very young, only 26 years old this year, and is a true emerging young director.

Before he was selected into the Young Director Support Program, his biggest dream in life was just to make a horror movie of his own.

After watching an American horror movie "The Shining" in a video store at the age of 12, he fell in love with this type of movie that stimulates people's nerves, and since then he has been obsessed with horror movies, American, Japanese, and Hong Kong Island. He has watched a lot of horror movies, and an idea came to his mind.

He also wants to make such a horror movie!

Then, he worked hard to study, and after two failures, he finally got into Beijing Film Academy and became Wu Yuan's junior.

Later, as soon as he graduated, he encountered the Youth Film Support Program of Light and Shadow Times.

With a try-it mentality, he submitted his resume and rough DV self-photographed works, as well as the script of "Don't Knock on the Door" to Light and Shadow Times.

Unexpectedly, among nearly a hundred competitors, he stood out and was selected.

Now, "Don't Knock on the Door" has been filmed and will soon be released nationwide, and even overseas DVD distribution will be operated.

All this is like a dream for Liu Meichuan!

On September 12, sitting in the No. 2 screening room of the Light and Shadow Times Cinema in Beijing, Liu Meichuan still couldn't believe it.

He held the hand of the male protagonist Lei Jiayin sitting next to him and murmured: "Big Head, I'm not dreaming, am I?"

Lei Jiayin shook Liu Meichuan's hand helplessly: "Director, you are not dreaming."

"But can you stop calling me Big Head?"

"My head is really small!"