Text/Sun Pengyue
Edit/Gale
Huayi's decline validates one thing: audiences only care about good movies, not who the producers are.
"Railway Hero" as the main theme of the film, Huayi hopes that it can reproduce the glory of "Eight Hundred" and save its own 6.2 billion debts. The box office barely exceeded 100 million in the 18 days of release, and the proportion of scheduled films was only 4%. Huayi's total investment in "Railway Hero" exceeds 300 million, and the box office must get at least about 800 million yuan to return the cost.
In addition to "Railway Hero", many movies produced by Huayi this year have not done well at the box office. The national day animated movie "Rescue Donut Time and Space Rescue", the box office in the 23 days of release was only 35.4 million, and the production cost could not be recovered. Although Huayi's co-produced "My Father and Me" has a good box office, Huayi's share ratio is extremely low, and it can only be divided from 1.5 million yuan to 1.9 million yuan from the billion box office.
On October 12 this year, Huayi issued an announcement that Wang Zhonglei, the actual controller of the company, plans to reduce his holding of 55.58 million shares within 6 months, which is about 2% of huayi's total share capital. Prior to this, Wang Zhonglei pledged 80% of his Huayi shares due to the company's lack of cash flow, and 95% of huayi shares held by his brother Wang Zhongjun were also pledged.
Huayi has been unfavorable for consecutive years, with a huge loss of 6.2 billion yuan for three consecutive years, and the company's stock price has fallen by nearly 90%. In addition to the pledged shares, the Wang brothers sold a villa in Hong Kong in order to repay the debt, as well as Picasso and Van Gogh's paintings, but the debt was still as high as 1.65 billion.
To some extent, Huayi's failure meant the end of an era.
All along, in the Chinese entertainment industry, there is a so-called "Beijing circle", which has begun to take shape in the 80s, running through the golden period of rapid development of Chinese films. It is an "economic community" composed of a small circle of directors, actors, screenwriters and producers. Involving the production, investment and distribution of films and television dramas, the relationship interests are complex, and even Han Sanping, the chairman of China Film Group, which has the right to import films in China, is one of the initiators of the Beijing circle.
In the Beijing circle, there are Chen Kaige, Feng Xiaogang, Jiang Wen, Ge You and other well-known representative figures. The big guys in the circle like to use "their own people" and "familiar faces", which is the so-called royal actor. More resources and more opportunities have become synonymous with the Beijing circle. There are countless small actors in the entertainment industry who want to join the Beijing circle, and even the popular film emperor film queen, many of them have a Background in the Beijing Circle.
Huayi is the vanguard of this "Beijing circle", and most of the works in the Beijing circle are produced by Huayi investment. These famous directors and performances also made Huayi enough at the box office, making Huayi the first company in the entertainment industry.
In order to tie up the relationship with the Beijing circle, Huayi even acquired a large number of listed companies at a high premium: in 2013, Huayi acquired Zhejiang Dongsheng under Zhang Guoguo's name for 250 million, with a premium rate of up to 36 times; in 2015, Huayi acquired Dongyang Haohan, which was only one day old, with a premium of more than 100 times; in the same year, it spent 1 billion yuan to acquire 70% of the equity of Dongyang Meera under Feng Xiaogang's name; in addition, it also acquired several listed companies such as Angelababy, Feng Shaofeng and Li Chen. These named companies have spent nearly 4 billion yuan in total!
The high premium acquisition has formed a huge amount of goodwill, which is greater than the asset impairment loss. And the Beijing circle that once made domestic stars squeeze their heads is also no longer beautiful. There are fewer and fewer blockbuster movies, and clichéd stories become rotten memes that can no longer capture the hearts of young audiences.
Wang Zhonglei once said: "Half of Huayi's world was laid down by Feng Xiaogang. Feng Xiaogang, who was once a representative of the Beijing circle and a brother of Huayi, is also different from the past, experiencing a series of negative events, and can no longer support the name of "Feng's New Year Film". Two consecutive film and television works,"Only Yun Knows" and "North and South", had low box office and poor ratings, and finally ended dismal. Even because some of the plots are too exaggerated and rich, it has attracted bad reviews.
It is extremely ironic that this pair of comrades who were once close to each other, because of Feng Xiaogang's box office failure, Huayi demanded up to 168 million yuan on the grounds of the VAM agreement.
In contrast, Huayi's competitors: Bona Pictures has a rapid momentum, Beijing culture is suddenly emerging, and Guangguang Media is not willing to show weakness, these three companies have successively bet on "Wolf Warrior 2", "Wandering Earth", "Nezha Devil Boy Descending", "Hello Li Huanying" and many other films with a box office of more than 4 billion yuan, and the net profit has repeatedly reached a new high. And these movies, there is no Figure in the Beijing Circle behind it.
Compared with the brilliant record of the opponent, Huayi is much inferior, and even in the top ten films of the domestic box office, none of them are produced by Huayi.
Huayi relied on the Beijing circle to complete the original accumulation, and monopolized half of the entertainment circle at the beginning of the domestic film and television industry; and fell into shock under the dud of a group of old guns and the lack of explosive content. It can really be said that it is a Beijing circle and a defeated Beijing circle.
Against the backdrop of changing audience tastes, the former film style is not attractive enough for young people. If Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei do not make changes and innovate, then Warner may not be surnamed Wang.