In December 2019, Feng Xiaogang's new film "Only Yun Knows" came out in a menacing manner, and the pre-screening propagandists carried out carpet propaganda bombardment on various platforms, almost everyone knew.
For the new film, Lao Feng and Xu Fan even pulled down their faces to shoot the photo album, which was enough work for the film.
But after the release, it was a different scenery:
The box office continued to decline, forecasts were repeatedly lowered, and there was an uproar in the industry.
Even "Manslaughter", which was released for half a month, could easily cut it off, looking at the opposing movies and breaking through four or five, he could only sob.
Later, this movie directed by Feng Xiaogang and starring Huang Xuan finally broke through 100 million yuan after 5 days.
Feng Xiaogang was not surprised or displeased, but instead talked about the past of "No Thief in the World" in the social media, recalling the past and the glory days, only sighing and changing the human world.
A little complaining, a little sighing, incorruptible old scenery is no longer.
In the text, he talked about how he also had a scenery, but now the new directors are mushrooming, the box office record is a new high, there is a great sense of handing over the country to Xian, "Only Yun Knows" Although the box office is dismal, but also thanks to his fan preference with the lead actor Huang Xuan.
Unexpectedly, after "Only Yun Knows", Feng Xiaogang turned his head and plunged into the TV series, while Huang Xuan picked up the script and relived Feng Xiaogang's lonely situation with a new director
This time, the box office was even worse
——"Wuhai"——
The movie "Wuhai" is a feature film starring Huang Xuan and Yang Zishan.
The director of this film is named Zhou Ziyang, is a complete newcomer director, but the name is not small, the first debut of his life "Old Beast" won four nominations for the Golden Horse Award, and single-handedly sent the old drama bones from Inner Mongolia to the throne of the film emperor.
I don't know if it was after Feng Xiaogang complained that his scenery was no longer there, Huang Xuan turned his head and chose such a newcomer director.
In order to avoid another tragic encounter at the box office, before the release of the film, the filmmakers also played the tactics of the sea of people and launched a network of connections, so that many star actors in the circle sent articles to help create momentum.
Huang Xiaoming, Wang Baoqiang, Ni Ni, Ou Hao, Zhang Jingchu and other big names have forwarded and written copywriting publicity as soon as they were released, and some people even threw thousands of dollars to support it, and in the previous film premiere, Directors such as Cao Baoping, Wan Ma Tse-dan, Li Xiaofeng, and Song Taijia also came to the scene for the first time.
Although these people did not participate in the production, this kind of posture is enough to envy others.
Coupled with the film's participation in the San Sebastian International Film Festival, it easily won the Fabisi Film Critics Award, and the awards were supported by celebrities, and on October 29, "Wuhai" was released with the attitude of stars and moons.
But then, it was a slap in the face.
After entering the market, the audience's response to "Wuhai" was obviously not directly proportional to Wu Yangyang's star team, and it only received 2.3 million box office on the first day of release, ranking sixth in the large market list, and even the re-screening of the Japanese movie "Entering the Mortuary" was almost twice as much as him.
The box office in the future is also sluggish, always hovering around 2 million, and the ranking is constantly withdrawing under the injection of fresh blood, and after a full 7 days of accumulation, it has just exceeded 10 million.
Today, "Wuhai" has accumulated 11 million box office, and the ranking that has long been squeezed out of the ranking has announced the outcome of this battle -
The defeat is decided.
However, it is regrettable that the box office downturn of "Wuhai" has nothing directly to do with word-of-mouth.
The movie "Wuhai" tells the story of Yang Hua (Huang Xuan) and Miao Wei (Yang Zishan), a couple in Wuhai, Inner Mongolia.
Yang Hua's family is generally poor, often by the number of the old man, in order to fight for a breath, he and his friends invested in a government project of a dinosaur paradise, but more than half of the project broke the funds, the project was in ruins, and he also owed a bunch of debts because of the failure of entrepreneurship, the poor couple Pepsi mourned, and the relationship with his wife also cracked and intensified.
Under the dual encirclement and suppression of reality and dreams, Yang Hua gradually lost himself and walked step by step into the abyss.
According to the director's creative ideas, "Wuhai" expresses a couple who hurt each other under the condition of having an emotional basis, going farther and farther, writing out the real tragedy buried in thousands of cases, and the deeper level is to express the fable of an independent life body under the influence of money and materialism, which is gradually alienated by society.
Although in this subjective environment of being good at labeling, just seeing the short trailer of "Wuhai" parents is enough to be labeled as a dull literary film.
But in fact, the director took "making the film not dull" as the first purpose in the early stage of creation.
In the process of watching, you can clearly feel that the film is full of a large number of symbolic languages, the character conflicts are clear, the character change line is also very clear, although there is a slight blur in the focus of the story, the director's formalistic approach and the realism of the film lead to the problem of poor digestion of the perception, but it is also within the scope of tolerance, and the sinking ending of the film is even more hair-raising and upside-down, and it is still unfinished.
Anyway, my look and feel is acceptable.
The film scored 6.1 points on Douban, although it has just passed the passing line, but for a literary and artistic film and a script original by a newcomer director, the play is absolutely above the average line.
This kind of box office performance obviously did not meet the psychological expectations of the filmmakers, and the director who single-handedly bred the work was even more heartbroken.
On November 2nd, looking at the stalled box office trend, Zhou Ziyang had a complicated mood and issued a long article, talking about the behind-the-scenes of the film.
There was the meaning of Feng Xiaogang spitting bitter water in the social media two years ago.
He said that after winning the award for "Old Beast" that year, there were many capitalists who took the ready-made script and piled the cash in front of him to let him shoot commercial works, but Zhou Ziyang was not moved, and still immersed himself in grinding his original script.
Three years later, the script was successfully polished, and Zhou Ziyang immediately found Huang Xuan.
Huang Xuan had just finished in the "Only Yun Knows" crew, saw that what was handed to him was a dull feature film, originally wanted to shirk it, made an appointment with Zhou Ziyang for dinner, and wanted to politely reject him at the dinner table.
Unexpectedly, after drinking three rounds of dishes and five tastes, the two actually talked about life happily, and Huang Xuan took over this play as soon as his brain was hot.
During the filming process, in order to pursue the state of the character, Huang Xuan deliberately found a dark and dilapidated corner room in the hotel, without makeup, no combing of hair and no washing of face.
The grease in his hair was mixed with the flying sand in the wind, and he was wearing the protagonist's clothes during the breaks, which led to a meal at a local restaurant that no one recognized.
The dedication is there for all to see.
Another protagonist, Yang Zishan, also practiced difficult anti-gravity yoga for a plot in the film.
There was a scene hanging on the mountain with a 9-level wind, and I had to hang it on a three-meter tree to show yoga, and the crew did not have palpitations after watching it.
Of course, the real bitterness is still about director Zhou Ziyang.
Before the start of filming, he had no income for several years, refused to make a lot of money after the business cooperation, in order to shoot "Wuhai" he exhausted all his strength, according to his own statement, online loans alone borrowed more than 20 platforms, every day to wake up to open the mobile phone to calculate the repayment of loans.
The "naked loan" problem experienced by the protagonist in the film is basically a reflection of his own experience.
It is estimated that this time, the director will have to bear a lot of debts.
In general, the box office fiasco of "Wuhai" can be regarded as a lesson for the director, after all, there are too many tragedies in this kind of literary feature film.
In order to push "Send Me to Qingyun", Yao Chen was more Knowledgeable 7 times a day, participated in the publicity of major platforms, and finally it was difficult to stop the fate of folding.
The director of "Birds and Phoenixes" did not hesitate to kneel down and beg for the film, which saved the film from the fire pit.
There are also Zhang Dalei of the previous "August", Xin Yukun of "Bursting into Silence", Wan Ma Tse-dan of "Balloon", etc., the road to domestic literary and art films is obstructed and long, which is a fact that is obvious to all in the industry, just like some said:
The days were already very hard, why should I go to the cinema and cry.
Of course, I did not ask the market "what is the crime" on their behalf, but I just think that at some key points, we still have to give in to reality.
If Zhou Ziyang had chosen to cooperate with capital that year, while making money, he did not forget to express himself, in this slightly relaxed environment, perhaps the quality of "Wuhai" would not be so formalized.
In the movie, you can even clearly feel Zhou Ziyang's submission to the big screen, presumably in the middle of the night, he also regretted it.
Similarly, I'll look for another negative case: Bauber.
In the past few years, I have gradually entered the network movies from the big screen, mingled with the sketch actors, remade one foreign movie after another, and picked up people's teeth and wisdom to borrow flowers to offer Buddha.
No, just finished flipping Huang Zhengmin's "When Men Are in Love", he set his sights on "The Secret Zoo", which is his sixth foreign film remade.
Although none of them scored 5 points, and every time they went online, they were pointed out by thousands of people, but each one made a lot of money.
Sometimes it is right to think about it, why should the development of national cinema be entrusted to the shoulders of one person, and why should the creators be responsible for every audience?
You see, how happy he was at the press conference.
Earn money, don't chill!
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