, To Qifeng made some remarks, which caused an uproar in the public opinion.
At the beginning, he just shared his views on global movies, and his speech was normal. When answering reporters’ questions in the second act, his words were surprising. Maybe he felt that his speech was inappropriate, so he quickly took remedial measures.
The reporter asked the question like this: "Can tell us why movies are so important to us, the audience sits in a dark room, watching movies through a big screen, or in your opinion, what makes movies so unique ? Make the movie last forever? ”
Maybe it was influenced by the Iranian filmmaker’s speech in the jury, or maybe it was influenced by the Phoenix legend “Flying Freely”, Johnnie To began to startle everyone. What
roughly means is that if you want to govern a certain place, the first thing you need to do is movies, stop its inherent movie culture, because movies are very close to the public, and you can start directly from movie theaters.
While talking, why did the topic change suddenly, and went directly to his hometown, one of which was: " I think Hong Kong... no, sorry. "
As soon as Du Qifeng made this remark, the mainland entertainment circle quickly The pot exploded, and before it fermented much, his personal social platform account "Du Qifeng bot" disappeared immediately.
search shows: user does not exist. In this case,
didn't log out by himself, that is, many netizens reported it together and blocked it directly.
Whether these remarks will affect the release of Johnnie To's follow-up film is still unknown.
Brother Fei analyzed that Johnnie To’s remarks at the film festival caused controversy and had three meanings:
First, we cannot talk too much about the understanding of “freedom” here; But depressed and unsuccessful;
Third, the Hong Kong film industry has been affected.
On this, we in the mainland have not done any interference or influence anyway.
But from Johnnie To's context, I feel that "Hong Kong movies are lonely" has a great relationship with us.
Let's not talk about anything else, let's compare the current box office of Hong Kong movies to see how much influence mainland movies can have in Hong Kong?
On February 18th, Hong Kong's real-time box office rankings, there were two mainland films in the top ten, namely "The Wandering Earth 2" and "The Red River".
Comparing the box office, "The Wandering Earth 2" was beaten by the Marvel movie "Ant-Man 3", Hong Kong local movies "Mad Tongue Lawyer" and "When the Wind Rises Again", as well as the Taiwanese movie "Want to See You".
This is not just the same day, since "The Wandering Earth 2" was released on a large scale in Hong Kong on February 9, the situation has always existed. Even though Andy Lau tried his best to announce the release, the film's schedule and box office have never been able to rise.
"The Wandering Earth 2", which sold a box office of 3.8 billion in the mainland, began to be unacceptable when it arrived in Hong Kong. Compared with Cameron's "Avatar 2" with 143 million Hong Kong dollars, "The Wandering Earth 2" seems to be a drop in the bucket. Can it hit 1000? Ten thousand Hong Kong dollars is still a mystery at present.
From this point of view, the Hong Kong film market is very free, and the mainland film market in Hong Kong is very small, and there is no such thing as making any waves, let alone affecting the Hong Kong film industry.
The desolation of Hong Kong films is due to the deviation between the development of its own film industry and the overall market structure.
A large number of filmmakers went north to the mainland, and a large number of Hong Kong stars such as Andy Lau, Stephen Chow, Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung, Chow Yun-fat, etc. entered the mainland. Hong Kong's young generation of actors is lacking, and screenwriters are not good enough, so it is impossible to draw audiences into the theaters. The
dvd era was replaced by Internet Blu-ray, just like the bb machine era was quickly replaced by mobile phones. The cost of film production has risen, while the peripheral revenue has decreased greatly, and film production cannot make ends meet. If things go on like this, Hong Kong films will be washed by the market, which is what we see now .
Finally, when Johnnie To talked about the creation and artistic value of films, thecapital ratio to illustrate. The original words of
are as follows: " I think movies are not measured by money. I have made a few movies myself, and the cost is not more than two million Hong Kong dollars. I am very happy and comfortable. I think movies are the best. The important thing is to talk about passion and vision. Without these two, all artists cannot do what they should do. Even if you are given 10 billion, if you don’t have it, you don’t have it. If you have it, you have it. There is no problem. Many films that are favored by the academic awards season are mostly low-investment. For example, most of the Oscar-winning films are almost the same.
But this passage illustrates a problem from the side: Johnnie To is not favored by the mainland film capital, so he cannot open the mainland film circle. In addition, Hong Kong films are lonely, and he, who was once a prolific producer, has no films to shoot.
Let’s look at Wang Jing again. He has in-depth cooperation with the three major streaming media platforms in the mainland. His editing and directing skills in the 1990s are still very popular in the mainland. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t go to theaters. Splitting the box office can also make a lot of money.
No, Donnie Yen was brought out by him. "The Legend of Qiao Feng" was broadcast directly on the Internet, attracting a large amount of traffic.
Along with "The Mermaid", "Journey to the West: Conquering the Devil", "Operation Mekong", "Taking Tiger Mountain Outwitted", "Di Renjie", "Operation Red Sea", "Changjin Lake" and "Chinese Doctor", the box office exploded.
Hong Kong directors such as Stephen Chow, Lam Chiu-yin, Tsui Hark and Lau Wai Keung have been recognized by mainland capital.
Bona Films, Huayi Brothers and other film production companies give them a heavy budget for their films, and their commercial box office often refreshes the box office rankings in Chinese film history.
As long as the films produced have a market in the Mainland and the audience is willing to say "I owe him a movie ticket", the latest works will naturally come out, but what about Johnnie To?
In 1996, he co-founded Galaxy Image with Wei Jiahui and other filmmakers, and cooperated with Hong Kong stars such as Andy Lau, Lau Ching Wan, Dayo Wong, Sammi Cheng, and Ren Dahua. Around the turn of the millennium, he produced many popular films.
Excellent works such as "Slimming Men and Women", "Gunfire", "Dark War" and "Dark Flower" can produce at least three films every year, but after "Drug War" in 2012, the works began to decline year by year, and in recent years it has reached It will take a few years for one to come out.
Among them, 3 films were difficult to produce:
One is "The King of Kings", which was approved in 2016, and is a costume fantasy movie about "The Yellow Emperor vs. Chi You". For 7 years, the Douban information only shows the director Johnnie To, Screenwriter Wei Jiahui, none of the starring information can be found;
The other one is "Black 3". It is one of the main reasons why Johnnie To complains;
There is also a film "Catch the Demon Master" , the film was approved in 2015, Xiang Huaqiang's Chinese star brought money to enter the show, starring Andy Lau, Gong Li and Xiang Zuo, and there is another The name is "Big Man with Great Wisdom 2". Is
familiar? That’s right, it’s Andy Lau’s big fat movie. The first heroine is Cecilia Cheung, but the second one took 8 years to shoot, and it couldn’t be released. What happened in the middle? What about things?
From Du Qifeng, whose high production level was comparable to that of Wang Jing before, to the difficult production of the 3 movies compared with Zhou Xingchi, it can be seen that Du Qifeng has been gradually abandoned by the market.
Because he didn't learn the essence of Wang Jing, and he didn't show his heart to embrace the mainland, so he couldn't get the same massive movie resources from the mainland as Zhou Xingchi, Lin Chaoxian, Tsui Hark, and Liu Zhenwei.
If this continues, you can only make small-scale films with an investment of 2 million Hong Kong dollars.
traces back to Johnnie To's last movie, which was "My Boxing Boyfriend" in 2019.
The film directed by Johnnie To, starring Xiang Zuo and Wang Keru, "My Boxing Boyfriend" was abandoned by the market, with a total box office of 24.5 million.The budget cost of the film is about 30 million, and the producer lost everything.
The owner behind "My Boxing Boyfriend" is Xiang Huaqiang's China Star Films. Obviously, the movie is not rushing to the box office. "Legend of the Gods" is the same.
An actor who has not received professional acting training, coupled with the fact that the subject matter cannot attract the audience, the consequences of forcing Xiang Zuo made Johnnie To's works lose their box office appeal.
Before Johnnie To’s "Threesome" had a box office of only 100 million, and "Gorgeous Office Worker" co-operated with Chow Yun-Fat only had a box office of 47.42 million. In addition, he strongly praised Xiang Zuo's "My Boxing Boyfriend",
Johnnie To successfully achieved the box office " "Three in a row", the word-of-mouth has repeatedly broken new lows. The only one of the later works with a good reputation, "The Big Tree Catches the Wind", was affected by the subject matter and content factors and could not be released in the mainland.
Du Qifeng also has a nickname called "Du Dapao". Back then, his level of bombardment was comparable to that of Feng Xiaogang, plus he was proud of his talents and had an outspoken character.
's remarks at the Berlin Film Festival caused controversy this time, and I'm afraid they will really be abandoned by the market.
Do you have anything to say about Johnnie To's remarks?
