At 13:08 on February 3, Zhang Zhao, the former CEO of LeTV Pictures, died of illness at the age of 58. In the early hours of yesterday morning, its Weibo account published an obituary confirming the news. In the Weibo introduction, Zhang Zhao once wrote: "Think independently and practice it." Creation is a moving way of life. The obituary also published the list of funeral committees, with Zhang Yimou as the leader of the group, and Han Sanping, Liu Heping, Ren Zhonglun, and Wang Changtian as the deputy leaders.
Filmmaker Zhang Zhao is considered by the industry to be one of the most influential figures in the Chinese film industry. He has successively founded Light Pictures and LeTV Pictures, and joined Fosun Group after leading LeTV Pictures out of the darkest hour. His works as a producer include Zhang Yimou's "Return", "The Great Wall", "Shadow", and Guo Jingming's "Little Times" series.
In May last year, Zhang Zhao left Fosun Group to establish Orange Pictures, a film industry-wide platform. According to the data, Orange Pictures was established in June 2020, the legal representative is Huang Zhen, and its business scope includes film production services, literary and artistic creation, cultural and entertainment agent services, etc.
In June 2018, during the Shanghai International Film Festival, Zhang Zhao came to Shanghai to hold a press conference called "Illumination". At that time, leTV pictures changed its name to "Lechuang Entertainment", and Zhang Zhao still served as the chairman of Lechuang Entertainment. The day before the press conference, a reporter from Jiefang Daily and Shangguan News had a conversation with Zhang Zhao that lasted for several hours. Zhang Zhao talked about his impression and love of movies when he was young in the 1970s, and he was also full of ambition, talking about the quantitative goals of Lechuang Entertainment in the next three years. He once hoped to use the model of "brand + industrialized film + heavy audio-visual and cinema film" to create film brand value. Orange Pictures, founded by him last year, is carrying his imagination of the future of film.
Now that the Slovaks have passed away, they are only commemorated by the old texts.
Interview with Zhang Zhao, CEO of Lechuang Entertainment: Out of the "Darkest Hour" and Back to the "Origin" of the Movie
(Published in Shangguan News on June 24, 2018)
It was a press conference called "Illumination", and the invitations received by each guest were printed with a butterfly that wanted to fly. Before the start of the event, Zhang Zhao, the former chairman and CEO of LeTV Pictures and the current Lechuang Entertainment, came to the media seat to shake hands and greet every reporter.
This is the second time that Zhang Zhao has held a press conference during the Shanghai International Film Festival, and last year's theme was "Annual Rings" and this year's theme was "Illumination". Doomed to be unpeaceful, 2017 was described by him as the "darkest hour", but if you put this in the ring dimension of film history, these are nothing.
"The external environment, the media, the partners, the industry, have all turned their heads, and everyone's opinion of you has fallen into the darkest moment." Zhang Zhao said, "Now, such feelings are far away. Out of the "darkest hour", he is like a butterfly on the invitation, and can't wait to restart the cultural and entertainment layout of the "Lechuang Era".
"Illuminate"
On the eve of the press conference, Zhang Zhao talked about a scene in the 1970s in the hotel where he was staying: opposite the military compound where he lived, there was a shoe-making tannery, and there was a small TV in the factory, and he was lying on the iron door, sticking to the crack of the door and looking inside, "Playing a Vietnamese movie, black and white." This scene is his earliest impression of the film as an audience.
For the family entertainment of movies, he can hardly find a reason not to like it. In a completely dark space, the film conveys a dramatic story in a strong audiovisual way, "for 90 to 120 minutes, the audience sits in the theater, which is a very unique medium way". From Vietnamese movies seen through the iron gate of the factory in the 1970s to popular movies released in theaters today, Zhang Zhao's hobbies are extensive. The devotion of Kailash, the innocence of Bear Haunting, and the youth of Little Times have their value as long as they can touch people's hearts to some extent.
Before becoming a successful industry person, Zhang Zhao once had a dream of directing. After graduating from Fudan University in the 1990s, he went to the United States to study and re-study filmmaking, and at the age of 28, he thought in his heart, "Thirty and standing, what is established is not a family business, it is an ambition." In 1994, his short film "Wood and Words" won an Academy Award for Student Unit. Two years later, Zhang Zhao returned to China and worked as a director and producer in the Shanghai Film Group, and soon found that "the road ahead is difficult".
"At that time, the biggest problem was distribution, there were few cinemas, after filming, drinking a glass of liquor with people, others spent hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy a copy of you." A total of billions of yuan in the country box office, the cinema door is still selling shoes. Zhang Zhao made an analogy that he was a car builder and learned a skill, "There is no road at all, what is the purpose of building a car?" Since then, he has plunged headlong into the film industry, first building bridges and paving the way for the industry, "Film is poetry, industry is far away, you can illuminate the users of this industry."
The word "illuminate" appears very frequently, which is both the theme of the conference and Zhang Zhao's understanding of the film industry. "In a crisis, we were investing in The Shadow because the film itself kept us going." He said that whether it is the story of the movie, the characters, the fate of the characters, each movie is about the "origin". "After people encounter setbacks, you go to recapture the origin and start again. Movies illuminate us people, and when you can't see them, you go back and look at these movies to compare the characters with our inner origins. ”
"Sense of Crisis"
Zhang Zhao's sensitivity has always been admired by the industry, and this sensitivity is reflected in his accurate judgment of the film industry.
At the beginning of this century, the domestic film industry has just started, in order to solve the problem of film distribution, Zhang Zhao quickly formed and promoted a set of specific and operable local network promotion models. In the past four years, it has produced and distributed more than 20 commercial films, maintaining a continuous growth rate of 100%. In 2010, the Internet rose rapidly, but the combination of film publicity and the Internet was rare, and he saw new industrial opportunities. Through focus marketing and the "five-screen linkage" O2O film market system, it provides audiences with a full range of online and offline movie viewing services, and in 2016, it achieved more than 100 million films in 11 films.
"When you're almost on your way to success for a while, you have to be vigilant, you have to get out of success." In 2016, the total domestic box office reached 45.712 billion yuan, but the problems of low theater attendance, unstable single-film revenue, too little derivative income, and the competition between the Internet and theaters in the content playback market have not been solved. "How do cinema movies work? To whom does Internet audiovisual transmission? What attracts the audience? What value should a movie have besides entertainment? These questions have been haunting Zhang Zhao's mind.
Even in the "darkest hour", he did not give up thinking about the film industry itself. "When no one is watching, you don't have to shave and wear beautiful clothes. Staying in the dark, we will consider the problem of industrial development and look for opportunities again. At the most difficult time, the cigarette smoked one pack after another, the faint fire was clearly extinguished in the darkness, and he did not want to leave, "Small crisis, we are all survivors of the film industry, against the current, the sense of crisis will always exist, we must bend forward."
Zhang Zhao always puts the "sense of crisis" on his lips, has a sense of crisis when capital is far away and stock prices fall, and still has a sense of crisis when the industry is second and the growth rate is first. In his view, personal growth and industrial growth go hand in hand. To solve the problems faced by the industry, it must be done, and it needs to be done early, "once and again in the way of entrepreneurship, this is the basic logic." Every startup leaves something behind, not from scratch, but higher and higher. ”
"Origin"
From "film industry" to "entertainment", behind the name change is the further adjustment of the company's layout. Not long ago, Zhang Zhao put forward a quantitative goal in finance: in the next three years, Lechuang entertainment box office revenue accounted for less than 50%. In the future, it will focus on film IP and devote itself to the creation and dissemination of film cultural values.
"Film is a service operator of cultural value brands, and the essence of the film industry is not entertainment, but spiritual service." Zhang Zhao put forward the "IP vertical ecological theory" and "cultural brand value of movies", believing that the current film industry has reached the step of cultural brand communication, and it is necessary to use new retail concepts and online and offline models to provide audiences with cultural brand consumption services in various scenarios such as mobile, living room, out-of-home consumption, cultural tourism, and cinemas. "It is a necessity, and you can never wait until the industry is fully mature to do it, so as to create its own business pattern."
At the press conference on the 19th, Lechuang Entertainment announced 28 major series of film brands, including Zhang Yimou's "Shadow", Guo Jingming's "Traces of The Lord" (part 2), Chen Zhiliang's "Thorn Bureau", and "Divine Eagle Hero" based on Jin Yong's original work. Zhang Zhao's purpose is very clear, not to talk about blockbusters, to talk about series, "I have never been a person who makes blockbusters, I am just a person who makes series movies." He hopes to use the model of "brand + industrialized film + heavy audio-visual and cinema film" to create the brand value of the film. "The better the derivatives industry does, the faster the box office derivative revenue grows. Associated industries such as tourism and games have increased brand user reach beyond movie audiences. The second and third films in the series will in turn promote the box office of the film. ”
At present, cultural tourism projects such as "Yinuo Town" and "Industrial Youth Coastline" have been signed and landed. For the IP development of "Divine Eagle Hero", Zhang Zhao has many ideas, such as the simultaneous construction of theme parks, variety shows, short videos, and the combination of offline fan cultivation and online movie-watching crowds while filming. "'Eagle Hero' provides everyone with the support of the feelings of home and country in the Chinese world, which is its brand. When the movie comes out, the multi-line communication in the derivative field will help the spread of the brand. He named it "The Flywheel Model of Butterfly Regeneration" with the aim of "achieving recyclable, sustainable and amplified commercial value."
In the face of Lechuang, Zhang Zhao said that he returned to the "origin". The origin may be that during the study period in Fudan, Zhang Yimou brought "Red Sorghum" starring Gong Li and Jiang Wen to the night of the premiere ceremony in Xianghui Hall. On the stage, he sang "After drinking our wine, I saw that the emperor did not kowtow"; offstage, some people secretly made up their minds, including Zhang Zhao.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shi Chenlu Text Editor: Zhang Yi
Source: Author: Zhang Yi