text | Linghu Boguang
At the recent Beijing Film Festival, Wang Yibing of Bad Monkey Pictures said something that aroused heated discussion among domestic netizens. This is what he said. He bluntly said that the biggest feeling at the moment is the lack of money. In the past, funds were abundant but high-quality projects were scarce. Now, it is obvious that the industry is changing, and the shortage of funds has become a prominent problem.
He also said that the three movies invested by Bad Monkey Pictures, " All or Nothing ", " Second-hand Masterpiece " and "Miracle Dumb Kid", showed a situation of "making one profit, losing one and tying the other". Because this matter became a hot search topic, netizens began to quarrel, because netizens had their own complaints about the three movies.
"Desperate" belongs to Zhang Yimou, and its box office is 3.848 billion. " Miracle " belongs to Yi Yang Qianxi, and its box office is 1.3 billion. "Second-hand Masterpiece" is directed by Guo Qilin, with a cumulative box office of 115 million yuan.
Unless it is money laundering, no matter how you calculate it, it is obvious that "All or Nothing" makes money (how much it costs), then "Miracle" is flat, and "Second Hand Masterpiece" is losing money.
Those noisy netizens only see them as pigeons. I actually have two questions after seeing this news.
First, why didn't he mention " Mr. Red Carpet ", which was scheduled to be released during the Spring Festival but has escaped release? This movie suffered a huge loss (to give Andy Lau face?) The Internet said that the investment was as high as 260 million, and Andy Lau's salary was 60 million, but the box office Less than 100 million, so it ended up losing 200 million).
Secondly, if the above speculation is followed, "Desperate" makes money, "Miracle" is flat, and "Second Hand Masterpiece" loses money. It is still a very scary thing to think about. The 3.88 billion is definitely a huge profit. The problem is that one of the two subsequent movies made a draw and the other lost money. It is also scary.
"Miracle" has a box office of 1.3 billion, if this is just flat. According to the usual calculation that the box office is three times the investment, its cost is as high as about 400 million. , and the leading actors of "Second Hand Masterpiece" Guo Qilin and Yu Hewei are not the top actors in the country, and they lost money at the box office of 100 million.
I found on the Internet that its investment cost was also 100 million yuan, which means it would take 300 million yuan to get back the money. Why is this movie so expensive?
There is a lack of themes and an abundance of traffic stars? In addition to censorship, why are Chinese movies so "difficult"
This answer originally came from a certain platform's question "When will domestic movies fill the gap in monster movies?" Although the starting point is different, it actually talks about the same thing.
Many of the answers below still blame censorship, which means that the scale is large, bloody, scary, and cannot be filmed.
As far as I know, this is complete nonsense. Monster movies are different from ghost movies, religious movies, pornographic movies, horror movies, etc., which are obviously limited. Have you not seen the China Internet Network? Big snakes, crocodiles, and experiments that resulted in all kinds of monsters were all badly filmed. .
After being strictly reviewed by the Internet, even though it is somewhat different from theater movies (it needs to be looser), the difference is not too big. Most online movies are bad, so there's no reason why theater movies can't be made at all. Moreover, the last two films of Tsui Hark's "Detective Detective" also had giant monsters on the sidelines (although they are not core monster films)
The fundamental reason is that monster films are basically heavy industry films, at least with a medium investment level, and the Chinese film market is because After years of operation, the entire industry is now quite abnormal in terms of investment-output ratio.
Ning Hao, a manager of Bad Monkey Pictures, said in an interview that "All or Nothing", "Miracle" and "Second Hand Masterpiece" made money, broke even and lost money, just like "Mr. Red Carpet". The Internet said that the investment was as high as 260 million, Andy Lau 60 million, it's not that big Is the scene investment still so high?
In other words, where did the remaining 200 million go? How much does it cost to make? Are there 200 million? Is this just for publicity? If not, will there be additional money for promotions exceeding 100 million during the Spring Festival? Is the total cost 300 million or higher?
Jia Ling's " Hot and Spicy " said the investment cost was 350 million, " Azolla " invested 500 million, and the money-losing Han Han's " Sihai " invested 260 million?
I guess there must be some water, but the remuneration of celebrities is too high, plus the filming fees for the Spring Festival release and the publicity that can easily reach hundreds of millions, it is possible that the cost mentioned on the Internet is cost + publicity. But these movies have no industrial aspect, so why are the investments so high?
These people's combined salary may exceed 200 million
You don't have to think about it, but what if it's a monster movie? If you do a little better, would tens of millions be enough? Is around 100 million enough? Not only is it not obvious enough, it cannot be done in China? If the management is afraid that it won't sell, why not hire a popular star? If so, will the cost go up to at least 200 to 300 million?
Here comes the question. Like the previous science fiction films, monster movies have no domestic precedent and there are no successful examples in the market. Which investor dares to invest around 300 million to take a gamble?
Typical examples of Chinese science fiction films at that time were " The Wandering Earth " and " Shanghai Fortress ". The investment in the two movies was similar, and the latter was even higher, but the operation was the above situation. It is said that the production cost is hundreds of millions, the stars Lu Han and Shu Qi are hundreds of millions, and the publicity is probably around 300 million. You can see what the final film will look like.
"The Wandering Earth" was released entirely because of the love of Guo Fan's team. The most important thing is that the investment in this film was not enough. Not only did Chinese movie superstar Wu Jing join the cast without asking for a salary, but he also invested 60 million. At that time, the leading actor Qu Chuxiao was just randomly found. , plus Zhao Jinmai's salary is tens of thousands of yuan, and the most expensive one is Wu Mengda's salary of 200,000 yuan.
" The Wandering Earth 2" Wu Jing did the same thing, Andy Lau also invested, and the remaining ones like Li Xuejian, Ning Li and others didn't get very high salaries. And many people may not know that Li Xuejian and Zhu Yan Manzi are artists managed by Guo Fan's own agency Shuidi, and they will definitely not be too expensive.
Coupled with the support of the state and enterprises, Guo Fan went to prostitution for free to benefit from a bunch of industrial manufacturing, which would normally be beyond the ordinary domestically.
The investment in "Zhou Chu" was only 10 million, why did "Hot and Spicy" cost 350 million?
There are several Guo Fan teams in China, and "Zhou Chu Eliminates Three Evils" which was very popular at the beginning of the year. Is it the same? It is an action movie. In fact, the cult content in the second half obviously does not cost much money. The first half contains a lot of action scenes, but it is more expensive. The movie is also more expensive than Ethan Ruan, which is said to be 800,000.
It’s hard to calculate how much the other actors paid for the film, but at most it’s 2 million for the software, and the production fee is 8 million. As a result, the production cost was 8 million. Compared with "Second Hand Masterpiece", it only had domestic transitions and indoor scenes. "Amores" moved around in a room, and "Miracle" was also a city scene without any big scene scenes. , are movies too expensive here?
Some people will ask why it is not called "All or Nothing". I can tell you clearly that 8 million still cannot be filmed.
Because "All or Nothing" contains a large number of location transitions in Shenzhen, Southeast Asia, and other regions. At the same time, there are a large number of group scenes with dozens or hundreds of people, such as the final violent impact action scene. There are no transition scenes in the early stage of "Zhou Chu", and there are more gangs and cults in the beginning, but it will not be too difficult to shoot. Spend money.
"All or Nothing" I checked online and said it was 80 million, so its investment is very normal in China. Really, it is a very benign Chinese movie. Even if there are traffic stars, none exceed hundreds of millions.
Let’s go back to monster movies and this incident. There is another thing that people outside the industry may not know. Before 2019, Chinese movies belonged to the Great Leap Forward era. Even though there was a lot of chaos, the market box office was rising steadily. Financial Enter the cultural industry and engage in various financial products.
To put it bluntly, people are trying to make money from top to bottom and from the inside out, but investors are still willing to try to invest and develop themes.
Wu Ershan's "Trilogy of the Gods" came out of this situation. Behind the scenes, Beijing Culture continued to make money by investing 3 billion in a gamble. Although the follow-up funds were not in place when the epidemic hit, at least 1 billion was spent to complete the filming, which shows how different the environment was at that time.
The epidemic has had a great impact in the past three years. Now as long as you see any domestic film activities, those capitals and big bosses are there every day. The epidemic has hit too hard, and the capital has been cautious. The industry has no money, and big projects cannot be launched. Come on, we are so pitiful.
You can take their words as fart, but the impact is indeed obvious. The simplest reason is that China has successfully remade foreign IP movies.
This kind of remake IP + star cast + realism gimmick + medium investment (hard publicity) = blockbuster movie
Are there more and more of them? Capital is like this, it just would rather spend hundreds of millions of money on publicity. No matter what gimmicks are made, it is impossible to spend money on risky and pioneering themes. In their eyes, movies are a fart, culture is a fart, and making stable money, preferably big money, is the way to go.
This can be used in many domestic cultural industries. Why is the 3A "Black Myth" an independent company instead of a big capital?
Chinese movies are really too deformed
Finally, Chinese movies are really deformed now. In addition to censorship that prevents many things from being released, another point is that this market and investment ratio are very unhealthy, and the cultural industry is quite special. Yes, because the price of movie tickets does not fluctuate too much, but the investment behind it varies greatly.
You said that the cost is high because you spend more to comply with the market and earn more. It seems logical, but in fact it is why the money behind the same electronics is completely different. We are not talking about heavy industry blockbusters such as "The Wandering Earth" and "Fengshen". The examples listed at the beginning are: "Miracle", "Hot and Spicy", "Man Jiang Hong" and "Four Seas", why is the investment so high? Others' "Zhou Chu except San" Why is the investment so low?
The Taiwanese market is different, so why is the investment in "All or Nothing" so low in the same mainland market?
Many netizens don't understand why capital likes to use Chen Sicheng. Chen Sicheng's movies are very popular because his investment in "The Disappearance of Her" did not exceed 150 million. It is quite a lot even if you don't watch it, but it is already very benign in Chinese movies. Why are other investments of the same scale so different? Where did the price difference go?
The cost of foreign films is high, but their production is stable. At least everyone can accept where the costs are spent. Can the audience understand the cost of domestic films? Is there something wrong with it?
