"It's not about currying favor with others to get a good box office, Hong Kong style is its own characteristic..."
In mid-March, the Hong Kong International Film and TV Festival, which had been suspended for three years due to the epidemic, finally resumed.
Emperor Film held a grand film release at the fair, with Jackie Chan, Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Cheung Ka-fai, Wu Zhenyu, Yam Tat Wah, Nicholas Tse, Koo Tianlok and other big names of the golden age of Hong Kong cinema sitting in a row, which made the entertainment studio at the scene surging with blood.
In 2023, when we talk about Hong Kong films again, we will find that the market has quietly undergone some changes - small-cost local Hong Kong films represented by "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" and "Still Think You Are the Best" have also received a good response in the mainland market, supplementing large-scale commercial films represented by "Furious Heavy Case" and "Bomb Disposal Expert 2", and Hong Kong films seem to have gained a new life in the mainland market.
At this year's Hong Kong International Film and TV Festival, directors of local Hong Kong films gathered to talk about the "Little Yang Chun" of Hong Kong films, and the emperor launched a number of blockbuster films in one go, as Andy Lau said, as if everyone wants to get the past three years back.
Standing at this point in time, we would like to discuss a topic: what kind of Hong Kong movies can you expect in 2023?
What Hong Kong films to watch this year?
First of all, let's look at the luxurious film list of this year's Emperor films, several works have been produced during the epidemic and are expected to be released this year——
The first is Tony Leung and Andy Lau co-starring "Goldfinger" after "Infernal Affairs", with a film investment of up to 300 million yuan, which can be said to be an aircraft carrier-level production in Hong Kong films in recent years.
"Goldfinger", Tony Leung, Andy Lau
Shao Jianqiu, general manager of film production and project development of the Emperor, said that Tony Leung played an "old thousand" in the movie this time, starting from a hundred yuan after coming to Hong Kong, cheating all the way, and finally cheating 10 billion, Andy Lau played an investigator of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and the two actors staged a double-hero showdown again.
As can be seen from the trailer of "Goldfinger", the film restores the golden age atmosphere of Hong Kong, Tony Leung's role is very dramatic, Andy Lau said that this allowed him to see another part of Tony Leung, Tony Leung himself said that this role gave him a lot of freshness, "He is the mastermind of the fraud of the century, and I have also done a lot of homework and collected information about fraudsters in different places." ”
It is not easy to let the two actors play on the same stage again, Shao Jianqiu revealed, "I think many companies and directors have tried to find the two of them to make a movie together, and the most important thing this time is the director's script, which can move the two actors to work together." ”
Group photo of the main creator of "Goldfinger"
Another superstar expected to appear on the mainland big screen this year is Jacky Cheung in "Customs Front", who has not made any new films in recent years.
Shao Jianqiu said that many film companies have also had projects that hope to invite Jacky Cheung out of the mountains, but because he has been doing concert tours, it is difficult to have a schedule, and the epidemic has affected the offline performance market, giving Jacky Cheung time to return to the film industry. "And he and director Qiu Litao also knew each other, until the script of "Customs Front" came out, the director felt that there was a role that was very suitable for Jacky Cheung, so the director and the boss were also convincing Brother Xueyou, he felt that he could, so he agreed to star, and he also wanted to cooperate with Ting Feng, the two of them had not officially worked together before."
In addition to "Goldfinger" and "Customs Front", directed by Lin Chaoxian, starring Cheung Ka-fai and Chan Wai Ting, "Breaking Point", directed by Mak Siu-fai, "Insider" starring Kwok Fucheng, Yam Dahua, Wu Zhenyu and Fang Zhongxin has also completed filming, which are the police, crime, and action genres that Hong Kong films are best at.
Looking at the emperor's film list, the most notable filmmaker is Nicholas Tse. In addition to the filming of "Customs Front" with Jacky Cheung, he also has three new projects waiting to start - "Rage Spreads" directed by Guo Zijian and co-starred with Andy Lau; "Infinite Mission" directed by Lin Chaoxian and co-starred with Chen Weiting, and "New Police Story 2" directed by Nicholas Tse himself and produced and starring Jackie Chan.
The project originated from a party between Jackie Chan and Nicholas Tse in Beijing, when the two were chatting about collaborating on a new play, and it happened that there was a poster of "New Police Story" in the office, so the idea of making a sequel was born. The two took a short video and sent it to Dr. Yang Shoucheng, chairman of the Emperor Group, in the film, Jackie Chan and Nicholas Tse held each other's shoulders, standing in front of the poster of "New Police Story", Jackie Chan smiled at the camera: "We are chatting here, talking about starting "New Police Story 2", he is the director, I am the producer, you pay!" ”
Nicholas Tse announced three projects in a row, and Shao Jianqiu revealed that he hopes to complete them in one and a half to two years.
Nicholas Tse participated in three new films of the Emperor
The epidemic has restricted the movement of personnel for three years, and the overall output of the industry has decreased, but for the emperor, the output has increased, "because it is easier to knock on the schedule of the staff and actors, Dr. Yang said that the epidemic will always pass, don't worry, so we haven't stopped, 25 movies have been made in the past three years," Shao Jianqiu said.
At the Hong Kong International Film and TV Festival this year, not only did Emperor Film hold a film list release conference, but other companies were not idle, and there were many co-productions and local productions worth looking forward to——
After "Drug Sweep 2: Showdown between Heaven and Earth" grossed 1.312 billion yuan at the box office in the mainland market in 2019, Universal launched "Drug Sweep 3: People in the End of the World" starring Liu Qingyun, Gu Tianle and Kwok Fucheng this year; Asia made the booth look like the Kowloon Walled City, warming up for the movie "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" starring Koo Tianle, Sammo Hung, Ren Xianqi, Lin Feng, etc.; Gu Tianle's Tianxia Company has launched many co-productions or local productions such as "Beyond Evil Deeds", "A Glimmer of Life", "On the Way to the Hospital", "Under the Day", "Finding Qin", "The Guardian", "Lock War", "Egg Boy", "Forty-Four When the Dead Body Dies" and many other co-productions, among which the new work "Who Changed the Big Buddha" was described by Koo Tianle as the most touching script since the film.
OneAsia Film Booth
Are Hong Kong movies eating old books?
Tony Leung, Andy Lau reunited, Jacky Cheung came out again, Koo Tianle and Nicholas Tse continued to be model workers... After this excitement, some viewers questioned: Why are Hong Kong movies going back and forth or these old faces?
This is actually a cliché. It needs to be admitted that there are indeed serious fault problems in actors, the youngest being Nicholas Tse and Chen Weiting, and it is difficult to have a young second-tier actor who is widely known in the mainland.
At the beginning of the rise of co-productions, now this group of actors is in the golden age of their careers, from the acting, popularity, box office appeal are the best choice, for a long time they have become the box office guarantee of co-productions, from a business point of view, the use of senior actors is a very safe thing. On the other hand, most of the movie stars who are still active today were trained by TVB in the 80s of the last century, and they honed their acting skills through TVB dramas and a large number of works in the golden period of Hong Kong films in the 90s of the last century. After the millennium, with the take-off of the mainland's entertainment industry and the deepening of the influence of the Japanese and Korean entertainment industries on China, the audience's choice is no longer only Hong Kong entertainment products, the opportunities for Hong Kong actors to be seen by everyone have decreased, and TVB's star-making ability has basically stopped at Lin Feng, Huang Zongze, a group of actors born around 1980.
The male protagonists of the emperor's upcoming movie
Practitioners have long recognized this problem and are beginning to solve it.
In fact, Hong Kong has been launching newcomers - TVB continues to promote newcomers, film companies give newcomers the opportunity to make movies, and the draft model is also producing top stars in Hong Kong, such as members of the mirror boy group have also begun to make movies. If you live in Hong Kong for three or four months, you will see a lot of new Hong Kong forces, but the mainland audience will not see them, or they will not have the opportunity to be seen by the mainland audience.
Shao Jianqiu said that in fact, there are many good new faces in Hong Kong local productions in the past two or three years, "such as Yang Siyong in "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer", she also filmed our "Marriage in the Future", but it just so happened that she had the opportunity to show the mainland audience this time after filming "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer". ”
"Poisonous Tongue Lawyer", Yang Siyong
In the emperor's plan, at least two large-scale co-productions will be made every year, and five or six smaller local productions will be launched at other times, hoping to nurture new forces in Hong Kong. "Only when the film company gives the opportunity, the actor has the opportunity to perform and hone his acting skills, he must do more to make progress, not everyone has talent, and acting skills also need to be exercised," Shao Jianqiu said. In the release of this film list, the emperor announced the film list plan of 9 local new forces, and the types of works involve love, urban, family, thriller, police and bandit and other themes, and the content is very rich.
In addition to nurturing new talents, how to promote new talents to the mainland market is also an urgent issue to be solved. Hong Kong films produced at a small cost are difficult to enter mainland theaters, and the emperor's method is to use online distribution to help these new actors gradually open up their popularity in the mainland.
"For smaller productions, in addition to being released in Hong Kong and Southeast Asian theaters, there are some themes and stories that are not suitable for mainland theater distribution, and we will use the Internet to distribute them, hoping to show the audience more local productions of Hong Kong products on the video platform." For example, "Married Soon" is a very Hong Kong romance film with a bit of comedy and warmth, and at that time we thought we could try the online platform and conduct an online screening on iQiyi, and the number of hits was very good. With a good number of clicks, there will be audiences who will slowly get to know these actors. Just like everyone used to watch Hong Kong dramas, TVB has so many new actors every year, and they also rely on one work after another to slowly come out.
The heavy roles of large-scale co-productions will not be directly given to newcomers, because this risk is difficult for our company to bear, and it is not a good thing for newcomers, if the box office results are not good, it may be a lose-lose rather than a win-win for the film and actors, so take it slowly one by one, and wait for more people to know them through different channels. ”
Not only the actors in front of the scenes, but also the directors behind the scenes are active in Lin Chaoxian, Qiu Litao and other backbones, and the discovery of new directors is equally important. Shao Jianqiu said that the emperor's method may be more "urgent", and he will continue to give opportunities when he sees talents.
For example, in the release of this film list, it was announced that three films directed by Wu Jiawei "Zhazhi 2", "Zhazhi 3" and "Charge", "We found that Wu Jiawei has a lot of space in action scenes, so "Zhazhi 2" was directly filmed "Zhazhi 3" before it came out, and then saw that he was mature and improved again, so we continued to increase the budget and did a medium-sized budget local production "Charge", and after watching some clips of "Charge", I found that he went further, and we are ready to open a second part. Police and bandit action is the most popular theme in Hong Kong, so "Charge 2" will be opened again this year. Some companies may wait for a work to be released and see the results before deciding whether to make a second part, we are not, if we have confidence in the creator, we will prepare for a sequel very early. ”
Nurturing the local creative power of the new generation is a problem that the entire Hong Kong film industry has been working together to solve in recent years.
In order to discover more new directors, as early as 2013, the Hong Kong Film Development Council launched the "First Feature Film Project" to provide financial support for the first feature film of new directors. In 2020, the Hong Kong Film Development Fund launched the "Passing on the Torch Project" to carry forward the characteristics of mentor-apprentice inheritance of Hong Kong films, invite qualified directors as producers, train new directors to start making Hong Kong local films, so as to encourage new directors to bring up their juniors and increase the production of high-quality Hong Kong films.
For mainland audiences, what can be seen for the time being may still be familiar old faces. The cultivation of new people is not something that happens overnight, but change is already happening quietly.
Group photo of the new director supported by the Emperor
What kind of Hong Kong movies do audiences want?
In the past two years, from co-productions to local productions, there have been works that have received good response in the local and mainland markets of Hong Kong, jointly creating a trend of Hong Kong film recovery.
Looking at the local market in Hong Kong, "Anita Mui" in 2021 became the third annual box office with a box office of 61.34 million yuan; In 2022, "Tomorrow's War" and "Still Think You Are the Best" ranked third and fourth in the box office list, respectively; By 2023, "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" will become the No.1 Hong Kong film in Hong Kong film history with a box office of more than 100 million, and it is also the first Hong Kong film in Hong Kong film history to exceed 100 million at the box office.
The Hong Kong film market, which has always been dominated by Hollywood blockbusters at the box office, has ushered in the recovery of local films in the past two years, Tony Leung said, "It is a good thing that Hong Kong films have recently received the support of many local audiences, after all, local films need the support of local audiences to cultivate more new practitioners, including directors and actors, which is a good start." ”
Why are Hong Kong people starting to return to Hong Kong films? This is a topic that is discussed in the industry.
Shao Jianqiu concluded after communicating with his peers: "Not only in Hong Kong, but also in Singapore and Malaysia, local films are on the rise, because local films not only strengthen local cultural characteristics, but also tend to diversify the subject matter, which greatly increases the willingness of audiences to enter. ”
After communicating with some Hong Kong filmmakers, Entertainment Studio found that Hong Kong audiences also have feelings and even a sense of responsibility for Hong Kong films themselves. For example, when "Tomorrow's War" was released in Hong Kong, many audiences held the mentality of "not watching it is not a Hong Kong person", hoping to contribute movie tickets to the ancient board and support the future development of Hong Kong films.
Rarely, "Still Think You Are the Best" and "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" also achieved a good box office in the mainland, the former with a box office of 107 million yuan, and the latter is still in theaters, with a current box office of 181 million yuan. Although the absolute results are not as good as billion-level blockbusters, for these two local small-cost productions, today's results are already very eye-catching. In addition to small-cost production, co-productions have also had box office hits in the past three years, such as "Bomb Disposal Expert 2" in 2020 won 1.314 billion yuan at the box office, "Furious Heavy Case" in 2021 won 1.329 billion yuan at the box office, and "Detective Wars" in 2022 won 712 million yuan at the box office.
Screenshot from Lighthouse Pro
In fact, the production of Hong Kong films has declined in the three years of the epidemic, and in the Hong Kong local market, 49 Hong Kong films were released in 2019, while the number of Hong Kong films released in the three years of the epidemic was 34, 46 and 27 respectively.
The decline in production has made Hong Kong films show a trend of quality in the three years of the epidemic.
Chen Yongshen, director of "Still Think You're the Best", said that the industry changes in recent years are "not so many, but you can feel that the current works are all creators have souls and things to say, in the past, some dramas will make you feel why you want to shoot, and now filming is only filmed when investors see it and think it is worth shooting." Wu Weilun, the director of "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer", also agrees with this view, "To put it directly, there is no way to cheat money, and now the income in front of and behind the scenes is much less, not like movies is really able to survive." ”
Under the phenomenon of "Hong Kong film rejuvenation" created by several popular films, we also see that there are still Hong Kong films that seem to sell well and the box office is not satisfactory, such as "When the Wind Rises Again" directed by Weng Ziguang, although there is a selling point for Tony Leung and Kwok Fucheng to cooperate for the first time, but the box office has not exceeded 50 million yuan, and although "Cut Off the Network" that is still in theaters has gathered actors such as Kwok Fucheng and Lin Jiadong, the box office has not exceeded 65 million yuan.
So, what kind of Hong Kong films will the audience pay for today? What kind of Hong Kong films do you want?
First of all, the pure taste of Hong Kong is precious, and the local can also be the most international.
Wu Weilun said that the data on NETFLIX shows that when you film a scene that is unique to your region and local culture, there will be audiences around the world to watch it specifically, "they may not understand, but they will be curious, so shooting local themes is a new way out for every place." Chen Yongshen believes that it is not to please others to get a good box office, Hong Kong style is its own characteristics, "Carefully shoot the story you believe in the most, with Hong Kong characteristics, the feelings in it are the same, culture is just a package, if the emotion itself is heavy enough, people around the world will watch it." ”
On the other hand, freshness in subject matter and content is a top priority.
Nowadays, the mainland market is often a large-scale investment co-production, basically the police and bandit crime action theme, the actors are also arranged and combined in various ways, if there is not enough novelty in the story, and the characters are not established, the audience will even confuse some films.
Compared with most Hong Kong films, Nicholas Tse played by Qiu Gangao in "Furious Heavy Case" and Li Jun played by Liu Qingyun in "Detective Wars" are all characters that the audience will never forget, the plot contradictions and conflicts are not conventional, the characters are rich, and the whole work is also the best in the sequence of actors' many works, and it is well deserved to achieve good results.
The success of "Still Think You're the Best" and "Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" lies in providing the audience with more local and fresh content about Hong Kong in addition to the police and bandit action themes.
"Poisonous Tongue Lawyer" brings the legal theme that Hong Kong dramas are good at to the big screen, and "Still Think You Are the Best" continues the taste and urban fireworks in classic Hong Kong films such as "72 Tenants" and "Family Happy Events", and family films with tears in laughter have always been the dominant theme of local Hong Kong films.
At the same time, the story is good enough. Chan Wing-sun, the director of "Still Think You're the Best" and the screenwriter of classic Hong Kong films such as the "Xinzha Junior Sister" series and "Hedong Lion Roar", said that Hui Guanwen once told him to learn to sell a story in three sentences, because only the contradictions of the drama are clear enough to be told in three sentences. For example, in "Still Think You Are the Best", the second eldest brought his girlfriend home, and everyone found out that it was the eldest brother's ex-girlfriend, and the drama contradiction was clear at once.
In general, the new faces of Hong Kong film actors will not be born in the short term, and when the actors of the golden age continue to support the scene, returning to the original question, what kind of Hong Kong films can we expect? It must be the variety of genres and the continuous innovation of the story to bring freshness to the audience.