丨This article was first published in the Pippi movie
Pi Ge's recent introduction of "Yi Tian Slaughter Dragon Record", "Hero HaoJie Su Qi'er", "Murderer Tang Chop", "A Knife to the City" and other movies are all martial arts films released in 1993.
A common feature of these films is that they have paid a lot of money, but they have suffered box office failures.
Among them, works such as "A Knife in the City" have even led to the closure of the film company due to the lack of return.
In fact, more than 380 films were released in Hong Kong that year, of which as many as 33 were martial arts works, a proportion of nearly 10%.
Only a few of these films, which cost less and grossed more than 10 million, made money, and most of the others did not fare well.
The reason for this comprehensive rout is the blind follow-up brought about by the boom in martial arts movies, which saturates the market and fatigues the audience's aesthetics.
Looking back at 1993, the hong Kong film market's big scene of competing deer is actually much more exciting than the martial arts movie itself.
First, the historical inflection point of Xu Ke's film studio
1993 was a very unpleasant year for Xu Ke.
Released in mid-February, "Wong Fei Hung's Three Lions Battle" earned him 27.46 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office (the box office results mentioned in the article are all in Hong Kong dollars, and will not be repeated below).
After Jet Li left Jiahe to stand on his own, Xu Ke went through many setbacks to find Zhao Wenzhuo to take over.
At this time, his film studio's 3 IPs, the "Ghost of a Woman" series ended; the "Laughing Pride" series is about to end; the "Huang Feihong" series can continue, but it is not sure whether the new lead actor can hold up.
The problem facing Xu Ke is that new IP needs to be developed.
Xu Ke's idea was to give "The Undefeated Rise of the East" to Li Huimin and Cheng Xiaodong; "The Wind of the Four Kings of Huang Feihong" to Yuan Bin; to develop another "Young Huang Feihong's Iron Horse" to Yuan Heping; to develop another "New Crane Needle" to Chen Musheng; and to focus on filming "Green Snake".
The most ideal result is that "The Wind and Clouds Rise" ended perfectly; "The Wind of the King" continued the classic; "Iron Horse" opened a new IP of "Young Huang Feihong"; "New Crane God Needle" sold well; "Green Snake" could also be a big seller.
Taking a step back, as long as 3 films are exploded, Jiahe is enough to achieve a bumper harvest in the cinema market in 1993.
However, the reality soon hit the face, "The Storm Rises Again" shouted out the thunderous slogan of "you have science, I have divine skills", and finally lost 11.25 million yuan;
"The Wind of Kings" ended with 11.19 million by the prestige of Jet Li in the previous "Lion King Battle";
The production conscience of "Iron Horse" is not good at the time, only 6.81 million; the sentence "I will use internal force to force it out" in "New Crane Needle" can also make people thunder and burn out, 8.17 million;
Xu Ke's own "Green Snake" only received 9.5 million.
Xu Ke tossed and turned for a whole year, and when he looked back, he found that only the "Lion King Battle" that Kai Nian cooperated with Jet Li made money, and the back was all white play.
Yuan Heping was not discouraged, gathered Wang Jue and Zhen Zidan to shoot "Hero Haojie Su Qi'er", and gained 7.01 million, which was even better than "Iron Horse".
2. Jet Li, Yuan Kui, Wang Jing, Breakout
Although 1993 was extremely dismal for Xu Ke, it was a satisfactory year for Jet Li.
At that time, after Jet Li left Jiahe, he was like "a Lin sister falling from the sky" and became a fragrant bun in the Hong Kong film market.
Except for Jiahe, everyone wanted to get him, but in the end Jet Li chose to partner with Yuankui to form his own Zhengdong company and be his own boss.
In 1993, they successively launched "Fang Shiyu" and "Fang Shiyu Sequel", both directed by Yuan Kui and starring Jet Li, which received 30.67 million and 23.01 million box office respectively, ranking 6th and 11th in the annual list.
The success of the "Fang Shiyu" series is due to jet Li's strong appeal, and second, it is inseparable from the funny route strategy taken by the film.
Although many people at that time were not optimistic about Jet Li's self-organized company, the 30.67 million result was the best martial arts movie of the year, which really hit the face of many people.
But Jet Li's "Taiji Zhang Sanfeng", which was released at the end of the year, received a general response, and was released for more than a month, only receiving 12.54 million at the box office.
In addition, he also filmed for Xiang Huaqiang's Yongsheng Film, and made two films in 1993 alone, both in cooperation with Wang Jing.
In these two movies, "Huang Feihong Iron Chicken Fighting Centipede" received 18.18 million, which is better than "The Wind of the King";
"The Demon Sect Leader of the Dragon Slayer" invested 80 million yuan, but it only had 11.86 million box office, and everyone knows what happened later.
This year, Wang Jing also made several funny films with the wind, "Seven Princesses of Wuxia" received 9.82 million; "Nerve Knife and Flying Cat" directed by Zhu Yanping received 9.7 million; "Laughing Man Chu Liuxiang" received 3.16 million; Zhu Yanping's own "Sword Slave" received 2.68 million, which also became cannon fodder.
Third, Yu Rentai, Hu Dawei, Liu Zhenwei, etc. who took the sword to the side
While Jiahe and Zhengdong both stepped up their filming to make money, Oriental Films was not far behind, and they found Zhang Guorong and Lin Qingxia to form CP to shoot the two parts of "The Legend of the White-Haired Witch" in 1993.
Because there are two major stars sucking fans, and with a weird style as a selling point, the investment is low, and the market response is actually very good.
In the end, Yu Rentai's "The Legend of the White-Haired Witch" received 19.87 million, and Hu Dawei's sequel "White-Haired Witch 2" also received 11.84 million.
The star group plus comedy style is more likeable, such as Liu Zhenwei's new film this year, "The Legend of the Eagle Hero", which took only 27 days to shoot, but received 22.38 million box office, which was the biggest surprise of the year.
Li Li rubbed the "Huang Feihong" IP, but made a spoof film "Huang Feihong to Huang Feihong", and there were also 10.56 million laughs and jokes.
But his "Guangdong Five Tigers Invincible Sun Yat-sen" released in the middle of the year went too far, and although it gathered the Five Tigers of Wenna, it only had a box office of 5.29 million.
Ke Shouliang also rubbed the IP of "Deer Dingji", looking for Liang Chaowei to shoot "The True Wei Xiaobao's Fengzhigou Girl", which also had a box office of 10.35 million.
Fourth, McDonald,Pan Wenjie, Noon Ma, Zhong Shaoxiong, and others became cannon fodder, and they couldn't bear to see it
Counting the "money-losing goods" of that year, the box office can be more than 6 million, in fact, it is not very miserable.
Madon-Gey's "New Meteor Butterfly Sword" (9.17 million); Pan Wenjie's "Flying Fox Story" (6.87 million); Noon Ma's "Huang Feihong's Ghost Feet Seven" (7.6 million); Chen Huiyi's "The Heroic Nature of Water Margin" (6.01 million) are all among them.
The rest are really "miserable".
Zhong Shaoxiong used mainland actor Zhang Fengyi to shoot "Tang Chop the Murderer", which only grossed 3.39 million;
Zhang Xinyan filmed "Huang Feihong's Boy Serves the Country", only 480,000;
Longxiang Pictures' "Late Qing Dynasty" series is even more miserable, with only 640,000 "White Lotus Evil God" and only 430,000 in "Wuzhuangyuan Iron Bridge III";
Hong Jinbao filmed "A Knife to the City" for Luo Wei, which only received 1.98 million, resulting in the collapse of Wanli Film, and Luo Wei died even more darkly after 3 years, and the life of a generation of great directors came to an end.
Also changing his fate because of the failure of the movie was Du Qifeng.
In 1993, he filmed "Three Heroes of the Orient" (1.94 million) and "The Legend of Modern Heroes" (5.23 million) for Huanya Variety, which did not sell out; "Barefoot Kid" for Shaw was forcibly released 12 days after its release due to a dispute with the theater, with only 3.97 million box office (the online box office data of 1010 yuan was wrong).
After that, Du Qifeng began to doubt life, thinking about the wall for a year, and after his comeback, he formed a galaxy image and started a new life.
The chaos of Hong Kong martial arts films in 1993 is a microcosm of the decline of Hong Kong films
In fact, the top 5 annual box office films in Hong Kong that year were not martial arts films.
"Jurassic Park" whale swallowed 61.9 million at the box office, in fact, has shown that the influence of Hollywood movies can not be ignored.
And the selling lists of "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang", "Flower Field Affair", "New Love" and "City Hunter" also show that the direction of the market has changed.
And those filmmakers who rush to follow the trend to make martial arts films cannot see these changes at all, resulting in a serious imbalance between social supply and demand.
The large number of shoddy works flooded by the market has exacerbated this rout, resulting in the burial of good works such as "The Book of the Dragon Slayer in the Sky", "Iron Horse", "A Knife In the City", and "Barefoot Boy".
In fact, behind the prosperity of the Hong Kong film market in the 1990s, this kind of follow-up chaos has always existed.
The blindness of investment eventually led to the eventual demise of major film companies like gamblers.
Jiahe and Shao's two predators have been fighting for more than 30 years, and finally both of them are coming to an end. Jiahe transformed the studio business; Shaw also announced that he would no longer make films.
After 2000, with the influx of filmmakers into the mainland, the jianghu of Hong Kong films gradually withered, and now there is only a pool of stagnant water left.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Bloody Dan Heart
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