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"With such a high guarantee of 600 million yuan, if the box office was ridiculed at that time, the peppers would not want to quarrel."
The announcement shows that the cost of "Playing alone" is about RMB 304 million. The guaranteed distribution cost of 600 million yuan means that the box office may cost at least 65.438+08 billion yuan or even hit 2 billion yuan before China's image can be restored. Under the pressure of box office, fans of Hugh, one of the main characters in the film, expressed their concerns.
Last year, Leap, the director of the sports biographical film "Chen Kexin", passed the test and won 840 million box office in the National Day file. If "Going Out Alone" wants to fight a turnaround battle far beyond this level, the film quality, announcement and schedule are indispensable.
As a guaranteed issuer, China's image is not a star company in the industry. However, after combing, Digital Entertainment DreamWorks noticed that in the past three or four years, the Chinese image first participated in the joint production of various domestic/imported films, and soon rose to the independent management of small and medium-sized films such as The Starting Line, Heidi and Grandpa, and participated in Hollywood blockbusters such as Godzilla 2 and Meg. In the past two years, it has participated in a series of Spring Festival and National Day blockbusters such as Crazy Alien, My People and My Home, Detective Cases in Chinatown 2 and 3, Hi Mom, etc.
Playing alone will be its first big project. A paper announcement made the image of China, who was less than five years old, appear in public view.
On March 19, the comedy fantasy film "The Sun Never Set Hotel" produced and distributed by China Image was finally released after two years and four changes. As of 20: 00 p.m. on 19, the box office of the film just passed 5 million on its first day, which is obviously not enough to give much confidence to the outside world.
(Ribu Hotel Douban Film Review)
What is the background of China's image of "without this person" not long ago? Is it wise to spend 600 million yuan to release "Playing Alone"?
Act quickly: from sharing domestic movies to trading and approving movies.
Open the Chinese image of official website, scroll in the simple function page, and display the posters of several head films in Detective Chinatown 3 and Hi, Mom and My People, My Home in turn.
These are all projects that Chinese Image participated in or co-produced in the past two years, and many of them were short-listed at the TOP 10 box office in China. Whether interviewed by official website or the media, it is obvious that these projects have become successful investment cases that China's image is proud of.
But looking at his previous works, we can find that the history of China's image is only four or five years.
On 20 16, China Video participated in the production of Love Letter of Beijing Meeting Seattle and Jedi Escape. At that time, the company was named Wenhua Fengze (Beijing) Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and the box office of both films was around 800 million yuan that year. The former also won the May 1st box office title in the Mainland.
20 18 is the year when China's image began to take off, and a lot of head works were invested in each major period of the year. First, it participated in the Spring Festival for the first time, and its joint production of Chinatown Detective Case 2 reached 3.397 billion yuan at the box office.
Not only that. In this year, China Film also managed three batches of films, The Starting Line, A Stray Cat named Bob and A Perfect Stranger, and became a joint production of two Hollywood blockbusters, A Quiet Place, Meg, which was upgraded from the original role of domestic films to a participant or even a trader of imported films.
Perhaps it is due to the wrestling of the previous year! The phenomenal popularity of "Dad", the Indian film "The Starting Line" with the same theme of education and parenting, has achieved a high box office of 265.438+billion in the cold season of April.
Jia Hao, president of China Image, mentioned in an interview with Black and White Entertainment not long ago that the starting line, as the first batch of films, has received positive investment feedback, and the subsequent imported films have also achieved good returns, especially the co-production film Meg, which was not optimistic beforehand, which won 65.438+53 billion box office results in China, greatly exceeding expectations.
Starting from 20 19, China films began to March towards big budget movies with the main theme. In 20 19 and 2020, more than 16 films were invested.
The climbers on the National Day of 20 19, the leap of the National Day of 2020, my people, my homeland, the sacrifice after the National Day, the rescue of the Lunar New Year, the explosion of the Spring Festival of 20 19 and the detective Chinatown 3 of this year's Hi Mom were all captured by China images.
In particular, this year's voting for the first and second place in the two Spring Festival files of "Detective Chinatown 3, Hello, Mom" is enough to absorb a wave of envy in the industry.
High-profile advanced:
Large-scale online dramas want to buy Huahua Media.
It is not difficult to find that since 20 19, the image of China has gradually moved closer to the central battlefield of China film and television industry.
According to Tianyancha information, the legal representative of China Image is Li Fei. There are 46 enterprises as legal representatives and 88 enterprises with actual control rights, including film and television content creation, production, integrated marketing, equipment leasing, cinema management, publicity and distribution, etc. It can be said that the entire film and television industry chain business has a layout. Take film and television equipment rental as an example. This B-end and back-end business, Chinese, has been continuously promoted as an important business in recent years.
(From China Image official website)
It is worth mentioning that, according to Tianyancha's equity information, Li Fei himself holds 98.03% of the equity of China Image and has the absolute right to speak.
As for other senior executives of the company: director Liu Yiwei, president yan wang of Tiantianle Road, president Miki of Big Fish Interactive, and president Fan Xingchao of Chinese Traveler, they have media backgrounds such as CCTV and Dragon TV, and also provided individual capital for Chinese image in the domestic film and television industry.
In addition to the main film industry, Huahua Image has also tried online movies and dramas in the past two years, and participated in the production of fantasy types such as "Guarding Demon City" and "Mechanical Painted Skin". However, judging from the published works, the film has a general reputation. In the future, its important projects include Yunian Qing 2, Giving charcoal in the snow and other head IP, so it can be seen that it is also learning from the idea of grasping the head project to the field of drama investment.
At the same time, the Hollywood blockbuster resources of Chinese-language images are also uninterrupted-in addition to Meg mentioned above, Paramount's 20 19 Transformers series, Dahuangfeng, Warner and the legendary Godzilla 2: The King of Monsters are all involved in domestic production, and Paramount's unreleased Top Gun 2 is also one of its Hollywood projects.
This may be related to a merger-the once famous Huahua Media was taken over by the Chinese image.
According to the data of Tianyancha, as early as 2065438+September 2008, Wenhua Image became a shareholder in Huahua Media. Soon after, it and the legal representative of Huahua Media, Wang Kefei, each held half of the shares, and took over Shanghai Yiqing Investment Co., Ltd. to operate other subsidiaries of Huahua Department.
At that time, the flower media was no longer the scenery of the year. After successively winning imported blockbusters such as Transformers 5 and Extreme Agent 3, at the beginning of 20 17, Huahua Guanxuan and Shanghai Film Co., Ltd. jointly invested 10 billion US dollars in Paramount Pictures, which caused a shock in the Chinese and American film and television circles at that time, but the deal soon fell through with the tightening of supervision and the outflow of capital.
According to Tianyancha information, as early as 2011in 2006, the former Oriental Times Network Media Co., Ltd. had already started the plan to acquire Huahua Media. However, two years later, in June, 2065438+2008, Dongfang.com said that he decided to terminate the acquisition because he could not pay the purchase price in time.
Less than three months later, China Image succeeded Dongfang Network and completed the acquisition. Its financial ability and bold decision-making are fascinating.
In a recent interview, Jia Hao also revealed that China Image is supporting content creation for new authors' works with certain quality, regardless of investment losses. Compared with investing in the works of peers, how to explore and cultivate new people and promote the development of their own projects is a greater challenge for China's image.
600 million guaranteed "playing alone"
Take such a big risk for a ticket?
Guaranteed a domestic film with high topic may be the beginning for Chinese people to try to move forward in China film and television circle.
Unlike Happy Media, which locked in 600 million revenue ahead of schedule, for many people, Playing Alone seems to be an untimely bomb in the hands of China images: fireworks or chaos, while the former is extremely unlikely.
There are many reasons for not being optimistic.
First of all, 600 million is not a small investment. Investing 600 million yuan in Chinese means that the film must have at least 65.438+0.8 billion or even 2 billion box office to return to the book, and according to the announcement of Kaixin.com, the part beyond the guaranteed box office will be divided equally between the two sides. Obviously, this achievement requires extremely high scheduling.
The last popular blockbuster "Lost in Russia" was also a happy work, with a guaranteed box office of 2.4 billion, but the film escaped because of the epidemic. Further, the equally joyful Crazy Alien secured a box office of 2.8 billion yuan, and the movie finally made a box office of 2183 million yuan, which was a failure.
It is conceivable that only when "Playing Alone" enters such large-scale schedules as National Day, Spring Festival and summer vacation can it guarantee the top two box office results and guarantee the bottom success.
Secondly, like last year's leap, this kind of "going it alone" is doomed to be controversial.
"Playing Alone" was originally named "Li Na" and was adapted from the true story of Li Na, the winner of the French Open Grand Slam. It has been prepared for many years.
Domestic sports films are still in the initial stage. How to grasp the audience's preferences and public opinion orientation depends entirely on filmmakers "crossing the river by feeling the stones". Leap was forced to change its name and cut a lot. Chen Kexin said that "I have made the most tiring film", which shows the difficulty and risk of filming China's celebrity biography.
Secondly, compared with the popular women's volleyball team, the speech and behavior of the film prototype Li Na once caused controversy, and some netizens said that the voice of resistance still exists. Even if Hugh and Hao Lei, two popular and reliable actors, lead the show, it is difficult to predict their box office appeal.
According to public information, Playing Alone was officially launched in mid-July, 20 15, and the script was polished for three years before it was officially launched. All the scenes were completed in February, 20 19, and have not been finalized so far, and the project cycle far exceeds Leap.
However, because the game involves many forces, it is still unknown whether the Leap post deletion storm will reappear in "Playing alone" and what impact it will have on the final film content.
At present, the domestic audience's cognition of domestic sports movies is temporarily fixed on promoting the spirit of sports and the sense of national honor, which puts forward higher requirements for the film's propaganda strategy: how to tap the film content from a new angle and give the audience freshness?
Judging from the past history of guaranteed release of Chinese films, most of them are ordinary investors, whether imported films or domestic films. The only controllable cinema film "The Sun Never sets Hotel" was cold on the first day of its release-it neither established its own content production line nor demonstrated its ability to temporarily lead large-scale projects. Apart from sufficient funds, it is difficult to see where the irreplaceable competitive advantage of China films in the film and television industry lies.
According to Tianyancha's information, China's image was pledged for the first time in February this year. Although it has not yet touched the company's master control, the pledge occurred on the eve of the above-mentioned large-scale guarantee announcement.
That is, since February this year, China's image has been interviewed by many media, and the industry's awareness of China's image is gradually improving. When this announcement of guaranteed release came out, it was more like a thunder, which made the whole world notice this young but ubiquitous brand.
Of course, the value of this guarantee can also be understood from another angle: even if the guarantee fails in the future, China's image will win the ticket to compete with the head film and television company in one fell swoop. With the gradual recovery of the film and television industry, the status of this industry is of great significance.