Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
On December 27, 2021, the official Weibo of Huayi Brothers Movie announced the launch of the development of the movie version of "Love Is Delicious".
As a dark horse in the domestic drama in 2021, "Love is Delicious" received nearly 130,000 ratings from Douban and ended with a high score of 8.2.
It is reported that director Chen Zhengdao and starring Li Chun, Zhang Hanyun, Wang Ju and other original people and horses will return to the film version of "Love Is Delicious".
However, on the same day, according to the Tianyancha App, Huayi Brothers' affiliate, Tianjin Binhai New Area Huayi Qiming Oriental Warm Culture Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huayi Qiming Oriental"), added a new piece of executor information, and the subject of the execution was 28.5 million yuan.
According to the data, Huayi Brothers Company was founded by Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei brothers in 1994, and invested in the film "Endless" by the famous director Feng Xiaogang in 1998 and the film "The Devil Is Coming" directed by Jiang Wen to officially enter the film industry.
Interestingly, the media learned through the Tianyancha App that from February 2021, Wang Zhongjun will no longer serve as the legal representative of Huayi Qiming Oriental. On December 20, Wang Zhongjun withdrew from the directorship of Shenzhen Kaihua Lianyi Cultural Investment Co., Ltd., and it is worth noting that Zhang Guoguo, Feng Xiaogang, Wang Zhonglei and others also withdrew from the ranks of shareholders.
In addition, Wang Zhonglei also withdrew from the ranks of shareholders of Xingjia Special Purchase Network Technology (Beijing) Group Co., Ltd.
Intensive stock withdrawal has become another "scenery" of Huayi.
Previously, there were reports that since 2019, Wang Zhongjun has solved the company's liquidity problem by selling a batch of artworks. He said the night show at guardian auctions in 2018 was "half my paintings, but I was happy to sell them." "For the safety of the company, I can sell anything, which is not shameful."
In 2020, according to media reports, Wang Zhongjun also sold his holdings of two high-rise A and B connected units of Hong Kong's Zhongbanshan Fuhui Haoting for HK$220 million, totaling 3,738 square feet (about 348 square meters).
In the midst of the crisis, Wang Zhongjun also sought help from Liu Chuanzhi and others.
What happened to the former film and television brother?
In this regard, Xu Meijuan, a reporter from The Times Weekly, had an exchange with Shule, and poor Dao thought:
Huayi has become a "hollow big guy" in the film and television industry, and the intensive withdrawal of shares may be similar to the previous situation of Erwang pledging shares and selling art, that is, raising funds to let Huayi "pass the pass".
In fact, the biggest difficulty of Huayi Brothers at present is that there is no explosive collection.
Huayi Brothers has participated in the investment of many popular films in recent years, but the harvest is not much, and most of the top domestic films at the box office have nothing to do with Huayi, and its presence in the film and television circle has been insufficient.
According to the data, in the second half of 2018 and 2019, the films directed by Huayi Brothers were missing, and the films released did not meet expectations as a whole. Only "Eight Hundred", released in 2020, won the overall box office of 3.1 billion.
In 2021, "Hello, Li Huanying" was released and achieved an overall box office of more than 5.4 billion, but Huayi Brothers, as a participant, had a limited impact on its overall performance.
Several other films that have been released, such as "Beyond", "Midsummer Future", and "Railway Hero", have not achieved too high box office results.
It has to be said that in the past, the way of over-relying on directors such as Feng Xiaogang to carry out the literary and artistic production of genre films has lagged behind in the current increasingly diversified film and television wave.
Wang Zhongjun once said, "I bought 16 to 17 of his (Feng Xiaogang's) films, only "1942" lost money from the book, and the rest were all profitable. ”
But now, there's no way to continue.
If you want to turn around, Huayi Brothers, who still have appeal in the film and television circle, especially in the network, need to have new explosive models and new genre films to complete the directional explosion and re-brush the sense of existence.
If it can be achieved in 2022, it can be turned over.
As for the much-concerned Huayi Star Theater project, it is foolish to think that similar to the earlier Huayi Town, the Star Theater also aims to make the film and television IP land and become a sustainable income-generating entity (real scene) project.
According to the report, the Huayi Brothers Shule Chuanxing Theater is composed of four major parks, of which the new city living room uses a variety of high-tech means to meet the cultural and spiritual needs of local residents in an all-round way in the form of the most beautiful museum, the most beautiful science and technology museum, the most beautiful library, the most beautiful film museum, and the most beautiful cultural hall.
However, this kind of operation currently has no really successful example in China, obviously can not refer to the "old" success of Zhenbei Fort, and live performances are also affected by the normalization of the epidemic, coupled with the IP strength is difficult to compete with such as Disney, Universal and other IP dense arrays and mature operations, the prospect is not bright.