Zhang Songwen soared in value after starring in "Crazy", and recently received the first commercial endorsement - Lei Jun's Xiaomi mobile phone, and it is expected that the endorsement fee will not be less than 5 million yuan a year.
Coincidentally, in addition to Zhang Songwen, who is famous all over the world with a work, there is also Wang Baoqiang, who is a legendary figure who has to be mentioned in the Chinese film and television industry.
Recently, his new film "In the Octagon Cage" is set, and Brother Brown wants to discuss with everyone the past and present life of this movie, as well as the legendary figure Wang Baoqiang.
"In the Octagonal Cage" will land in theaters on July 6 Chinese mainland, and like Dapeng's "Keep You Safe", it is based on real events and has a strong degree of topicality and discussion.
The four key words elaborate that "In the Octagon Cage" has a strong potential for explosion.
The first key word: fighting orphans.
In 2017, a video of the training and life of "fighting orphans" went viral and caused heated discussions. In the video, two Liangshan children who lost both parents are adopted by the Chengdu Enbo Club.
The adopted children are 14 years old, and the club is responsible for their food and clothing, usually do not have to undergo nine years of compulsory education, and spend most of the day participating in high-intensity combat training, and occasionally going to the surrounding cities for commercial performances.
After the video was exposed, public opinion continued to ferment, and because there were some social and moral problems in the incident, it was urgently stopped by educational institutions and made the highest instruction: "Find and deal with together!" ”
In the end, the results of the survey showed that there were 45 minors, 1 orphan, and 37 school-age children who needed to continue their education, basically left-behind children from Liangshan and Aba areas of Sichuan.
These specially trained children have only one purpose: to win championships in boxing and rewrite the trajectory of their lives.
The video of one of the children, Jiyi Ajie, who cried and refused to go home, was forcibly taken away by his grandfather, who sent him to the club to learn boxing.
For this group of children who have no money, no status, and are not good at studying, boxing may be their only way out, and in the club, founder Embo is their food and clothing parents.
The character played by Wang Baoqiang in "In the Octagon Cage" is Xiang Tenghui, and the prototype character is Enbo.
In the pilot trailer, there is a passage that says: "I tricked them out of that ravine, I tricked them into martial arts, I tricked them into winning championships, how could it be a lie?" ”
The short 15-second trailer shows a strong conflict of reality, and the last time I was moved by such a trailer was Xu Zheng's "I Am Not the God of Medicine", which is extremely similar in style to "God of Medicine".
In "I Am Not the God of Medicine", the character played by Xu Zheng did something last resort in order to help a group of special people.
In "In the Octagon Cage", Wang Baoqiang trained children to boxing and won the championship, which ended with "rescue", such a philosophical, meaningful topic, as long as the adaptation is in place, there is no reason not to explode.
The second key word: octagon.
Explanation of terms, what is an octagonal cage?
The MMA mixed martial arts arena, like a cage, consists of eight posts, eight mesh frames, eight cushions, a floor mat cover sheet, and a door.
Rules: Octagon fighting matches are divided into two phases: attack and safety.
In the attack phase, also known as cage technique, four people form a group, each group is three minutes long, and the opponent uses boxing and kicking tactics in the cage to knock out the other side to win.
In the safety phase, also known as cage technique, fighters need to control their emotions and try to win more points with their overall strength.
They need to wear boxing match attire and combat off-road boots, among other things.
Chinese mixed martial arts and tactics are Zhang Tiequan, Yan Xiaonan, Song Yadong, Zhang Weili and Li Jingliang, who originally withdrew from the UFC due to a neck injury to Li Jingliang against American Michael Chiesa on April 8.
This kind of professional boxer competition is fist-to-flesh, more realistic than the highly performative Chinese kung fu, if Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Jackie Chan, Wu Jing and other kung fu superstars fight Li Jingliang, they will basically lose.
When Li Jingliang played in the international competition, Donnie Yen set up a banquet to congratulate him, and Wu Jing went to the scene many times to observe and take photos with Li Jingliang.
After Jiyi Ajie in the orphan fighting incident was taken back to Yuexi County in Liangshan by his grandfather, he also wanted to continue to learn boxing, and then arranged to enter the boxing team of Lugu Middle School for training, practicing boxing while learning.
In 2019, he won the men's 50kg championship of the Sichuan Youth Boxing Championship; In 2022, A-jie, a junior in high school, was selected for the Sichuan Provincial Boxing Team and won the men's 52kg championship again in the same year.
Themes such as "In the Octagon Cage" can be divided into sports competition types, which are the same as Chen Kexin's "Winning the Championship" and Deng Chao's "Chinese Table Tennis".
And India's "Wrestle! Dad", including the upcoming Japanese imported film "Slam Dunk" has similar attributes, and the viewing and watchability are relatively high.
Action scenes, like boxing films like "Quidi", are easy to mobilize the audience's adrenaline, as long as the characters are portrayed well, the scene is shot more explosively, plus metaphors and reflections on real society, I believe that the box office explosion is just around the corner.
The third key word: Mo Boy.
The movie directed by Feng Xiaogang, who plays the heroine in the film, is generally called "Feng Girl", and the movies of Wang Jing and Zhang Yimou are also called "Jing Girl" and "Mou Girl" by fans.
In particular, Zhang Yimou has the ability to discern pearls in the actress, and has successively won actresses such as Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Zhou Dongyu and Liu Haocun, among which, Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi have also left their names in Hollywood.
But in the choice of male stars, basically look for some more famous stars, such as Jet Li in "Heroes"; Deng Chao in "Shadow"; Zhang Yi in "One Second"; Shen Teng in "Manjiang Hong" and so on.
He rarely praises an unknown actor in big-budget movies, but in the 2022 New Year file "Sniper", Zhang Yimou unexpectedly used newcomer Chen Yongsheng.
Zhang Yimou is still as vicious and sophisticated as ever, Bo Le's vision is not diminished that year, "Sniper" finally won 600 million box office and Douban 7.7 points high reputation, the best performance is the male number one Chen Yongsheng.
The audience affectionately called him "Mou Boy".
The actor, who was identified by Zhang Yimou, once again attracted Wang Baoqiang, and the tenacity in "Sniper" perfectly matched the teenager role in "In the Octagon Cage".
This is also Chen Yongsheng's guest appearance in "Manjiang Hong", once again taking on the heavy responsibility of the male protagonist, and Wang Baoqiang will take him further.
The fourth key word: summer file.
Every summer, there are more or less blockbuster movies, that is, during the pandemic stage last year, Shen Teng and Ma Li's "Walking on the Moon Alone" still won 3.1 billion box office under such difficult circumstances.
Going back further, among the top five box office lists in Chinese film history, two movies are from the summer file, one is Wu Jing's "Wolf Warrior 2" in 2017, and the other is "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends" by Dumplings in 2019.
Look at the schedule of "In the Octagon Cage" on July 6, and this weekly schedule has also produced several high-grossing movies, such as "I Am Not the God of Medicine" released on July 5 in 2018, with a box office of 3.1 billion; In 2019, "Drug Sweep 2" starring Andy Lau and Koo Tianle got 1.312 billion.
Finally, to compare the situation of this summer, the front is in the second week after the student holiday, no blockbuster films have been released, and the next two summer head films are released on July 21.
are "Super Family" produced by Happy Twist, starring Shen Teng and Allen; "The First Part of Fengshen Starring Huang Bo" (currently not yet confirmed), "In the Octagon Cage" was released for two weeks on July 6, and these two blockbusters only met the audience.
By that time, Wang Baoqiang had already made most of the box office, and as for Wu Jing and Jason Statham's "Megalodon 2" in August, the impact on "In the Octagon" was even weaker.
Therefore, with the above four key words, it will definitely detonate mainland theaters, Brother Brown expects the box office of "In the Octagon Cage" to reach 2 billion, if "Super Family" or "The First Part of Fengshen " has a bad reputation, this movie still has the potential to impact 3 billion.
Then this will be Wang Baoqiang's movie to wash away his shame.
Where does the "shame" come from?
Then let's continue to talk about Wang Baoqiang, the legendary filmmaker.
He went from an obscure actor to a radiant box office celebrity;
From a pure grassroots who did not graduate from primary school, he became a celebrity who is famous all over the world and owns billions of properties;
From taking the initiative to post a document to be green, accusing his wife of maintaining an improper relationship with his agent, to his current girlfriend Feng Qing, who is now low-key dating.
In these 20 years, we have witnessed the birth of a generation of legends.
As early as 2004, Wang Baoqiang's external image was discovered by Feng Xiaogang, and in "No Thief in the World", he performed on the same stage with Andy Lau, Liu Ruoying and other superstars and became famous.
In fact, in 2003, the 21-year-old Wang Baoqiang, who did not have any popularity, had an excellent performance in "M Well", and his acting skills beat many first-line celebrities, and the film was not released in the mainland due to the theme.
But it did not prevent the film from shining at the Berlin Film Festival, being nominated for the Golden Bear Award and winning the Silver Bear Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, and Wang Baoqiang won the Golden Horse Award for Best New Actor for his outstanding performance.
Think about it, how difficult it is for a semi-literate grassroots who has not carried out any professional acting training to win the recognition of the jury and the audience for the first role in the first work.
Feng Xiaogang's "No Thief in the World" came another blow, in 2006, the role of "Soldier Assault" Xu Sanduo once again touched the national audience, in this drama, Chen Sicheng, Duan Yihong and Zhang Yika are behind him.
Since 2008, he has appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala three times, and then cooperated with Xu Zheng in the "Wandering Road" series, cooperated with Chen Sicheng in the "Detective Chinatown" series, and also starred independently in "Hello! Mr. Tree".
Due to his grassroots background, no star shelf, excellent reputation and audience popularity, since his debut, none of the films that have been released have hit the street at the box office, that is to say, the movies he starred in have sold well at the box office.
Especially in the "Tang Detective" series, he is the veritable first male protagonist, who has repeatedly rushed into the top ten of the box office list in Chinese film history, and his box office appeal has repeatedly reached new highs
, As of now, the total box office of the movies he starred in is 17.1 billion, ranking ninth.
Wang Baoqiang's personal value has also risen, and in "Detective Chinatown 3", it is widely believed that his personal salary is as high as 80 million yuan, which is three times Andy Lau's salary.
The achievements made at the box office are obvious to all, he began to follow Deng Chao and Stephen Chow, the starring was not happy, he had to invest himself, be his own producer, direct and star in the movie.
So, in 2017, "Big Trouble" came into being, and this movie is Wang Baoqiang's "shame".
Although "Big Trouble" won 756 million box office, its reputation really collapsed, with a Douban score of 3.7, directly nailed to the pillar of shame of bad films.
The film won him the Golden Broom's most disappointing director and most disappointing film "award", this disgraceful award, ordinary filmmakers will not accept the award.
But Wang Baoqiang attended and delivered an acceptance speech: "My first time as a director, lack of experience, the golden broom can spur me, can give me this opportunity to say sorry to the audience, I respect the film, respect the audience, respect the seniors here." ”
"This time "Big Trouble" really can't help fans, count me once I owe everyone, please believe me, I will continue to learn in the future, and I will definitely be able to become a more qualified director in everyone's minds and become a qualified filmmaker."
This may be the biggest shame in Wang Baoqiang's life, but it is indeed not easy for him to face up to his "shame" and say a paragraph of encouragement from filmmakers.
We have seen Wang Baoqiang's progress over the years, CCTV media talked about Wang Yibo's "desperate illiteracy", compared Wang Baoqiang, a filmmaker with no culture, through continuous learning and hard work, and finally recognized by the audience.
I believe that this time, "In the Octagon Cage" will be able to wash away the shame!