National Tide 1980.

Like "The Black Leather Notebook", in early December, "Crazy Rich Asians", which had been filmed on and off for more than half a year, finally overcame all the hardships and was successfully completed.

This second big-budget movie from Fog Studios is really a money-burner.

Originally, Ning Weimin thought that he had clothing sponsorship from Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin.

Moreover, the grand wedding banquet scene at the beginning of the movie was filmed in Yunyuan, taking advantage of his and Qingzi's wedding.

These two conveniences can really save a lot of money.

So according to his estimation, it should be enough to make about 1.5 billion yen for this movie.

The remaining 500 million in the budget could at least help Matsumoto Keiko get her expenses reimbursed, reduce her taxes, allow them to get some benefits from the Japanese government, and also leave a lot of luxury goods for filming the movie.

Unexpectedly, the Sugar King family in Singapore caused trouble and obstructed the filming of the movie, which resulted in the scrapping of many films that had already been shot, and the filming had to be relocated.

Both France and Japan are places with high consumption, so if you shoot a movie in these two places, all costs will be high.

In addition, the actors' work cycle was forced to be postponed due to the accident, and many shots needed to be re-shot, which inevitably increased travel, accommodation and additional remuneration.

This resulted in a huge increase in production costs, almost double what was expected.

In fact, after the film was completed, not only did the production cost exceed the original budget of 2 billion yen, it even spent 300 million yen.

This movie has become a big production with a production cost of over 20 million US dollars. It is a nightmare of production costs and an absolute failure.

But it must be said that no money was spent, and the effect of the film after the initial editing was really good.

The plot rhythm is not dragged out at all, and the plot where Cinderella finds out that her boyfriend is actually a tycoon is also very interesting, especially the strong Chinese aesthetic and traditional Chinese values, which are rarely reflected in an undistorted perspective.

Although it is a romantic comedy, it is light-hearted and not vulgar at all, and is clearly different from the ugly and stupid Hong Kong movies that use the same shit and piss routine.

In addition to being romantic, this film is surprisingly artistic. In fact, it is much better than the original version of "Crazy Rich Asians" in Ning Weimin's impression.

This not only surprised Ning Weimin, but also made him look at director Osawa Yutaka with new eyes, and felt that the candidate recommended by Kurosawa Akira was indeed extraordinary.

In addition, Teresa Teng’s songs played a finishing touch role as the background music in the film, and completely achieved a perfect match between the songs and the content of the film.

Especially in this era, the concept of MTV had just been born, and the first generation of MTV works were still very crude.

Even Michael Jackson in the United States had just released "Thriller" and his movie "Moonwalker" had not yet been released.

Therefore, as a gorgeous music film tailor-made for Teresa Teng, the Asian queen of pop, "Crazy Rich Asians" is undoubtedly at the forefront of its time in terms of concept.

So no matter how you look at it, Ning Weimin doesn't think there's a chance that this movie will fail at the box office, and he's not worried at all about not being able to recoup the film's actual costs.

In fact, his attitude was quite positive. Not only did he ask Keiko Matsumoto and Shochiku Film to request as many screens as possible, he also asked Taurus Palace to prepare the soundtrack album with one million as the benchmark number.

They even increased their investment at great expense.

In addition to asking Osawa Yutaka to edit a trailer and prepare to advertise it on TBS, he also asked Watanabe Mitsuru to increase Okamoto Akira's funding by 300 million yen for post-production promotion of the film.

In short, he was absolutely certain that this movie would be a big hit when it was released.

Not only would it allow Mist Studio to make a lot of money again, allowing Teresa Teng to wash away her shame of being a "box office poison" in one fell swoop, but it would also sell at least one million platinum copies in Asia, making Taurus Palace a natural winner.

It’s a pity that this movie will not be released until Valentine’s Day next year. We can’t verify the final performance of the movie right away, which makes people a little anxious.

After all, in order to maximize profits, you have to choose a better time slot and you can only wait patiently.

But it doesn’t matter. At least Ning Weimin now has a yacht given to him by Nomura Securities, and he can also hold a gorgeous celebration party in Tokyo Bay for the entire crew on the yacht.

By the way, we can also celebrate that Teresa Teng won the All Japan Cable Broadcasting Award again in the middle of the month with her song "Please Don't Go", the theme song of the movie "Li Xianglan".

This is an award that cannot be manipulated; it is decided by votes cast by Japanese audiences.

It can be said that Teresa Teng really broke the previous historical record with her own strength.

Therefore, as the main contributor and beneficiary of this event, Ning Weimin was not only very happy, but also felt a great sense of accomplishment for participating in this event.

When he was happy, he really didn't care about money anymore, and he showed off almost exactly as the plot of the movie did, and finally got to experience the feeling of spending money in debauchery without any restraint.

However, no matter how absurd it was, others could not blame him for it.

If for no other reason, it was because at this celebration party he not only had food, drink and fun, but also got some important business done.

It turned out that through Liang Jiahui as a middleman, Ning Weimin also invited Xu Ke, Shi Nansheng and his wife from New Art City, as well as action director Yuan Heping from Hong Kong as special guests to attend the celebration party together.

After two days of banquets and consultations, we reached friendly cooperation agreements with them.

As for Xu Ke and Shi Nansheng, Ning Weimin discussed with them cooperation on film copyrights.

In view of the huge success of "A Chinese Ghost Story" this year, Ning Weimin offered to buy the movie and the sequel they were currently planning from them for HK$30 million.

Ning Weimin took a fancy to the benefits of the public screening and distribution rights and audio-visual copyrights of the "A Chinese Ghost Story" series in Japan, Europe and the mainland of the Republic.

This deal naturally surprised Xu Ke and Shi Nansheng.

After all, they only spent more than 5 million Hong Kong dollars to make "A Chinese Ghost Story", and the Hong Kong box office has already made 18.83 million, which is already a huge profit.

However, I never expected that I could get more money from Ning Weimin.

Xin Yicheng itself does not have many overseas distribution resources. Even if it sells to Japanese film companies, it has always received at most three to four million Hong Kong dollars.

Don't even think about entering Europe. No one in Hong Kong except Golden Harvest can penetrate the Western market.

There is nothing to regret about the mainland market.

Although it is a market of one billion people, movie tickets in the mainland are too cheap after all.

Moreover, in today's mainland China, such ghost films are not allowed to be shown publicly, as they are considered to be promoting superstition.

Xu Ke and Shi Nansheng did not believe that Ning Weimin could publicly release "A Chinese Ghost Story" in the mainland, so Ning Weimin gave him 30 million yuan and booked all the episodes in advance, which made Xu Ke and Shi Nansheng very happy.

Not to mention doubling the profit, this money can also ensure that the sequel will only make money and not lose money.

In addition, there is the possibility of further cooperation in the future, so how could Xu Ke and Shi Nansheng not be happy?
Shi Nansheng, in particular, still thought that Ning Weimin, a mainlander who didn't understand the market, was a sucker who had fallen from the sky.

So the couple sold their films very happily, which was naturally what they wanted.

The two of them happily signed the contract and took the check away.

As for Yuan Heping, he has become famous in Southeast Asia and Japan because he has been the action director for Jackie Chan in two films.

But action director is not a lucrative and comfortable career in Hong Kong's film circle.

Moreover, his current status is not that of the "No. 1 Martial Arts Director", nor is he the "Eighth Master" respected by everyone in the circle. It is even more difficult for him to resist the price offered by Ning Weimin - one million Hong Kong dollars.

This is already worthy of being the leading actor among first-tier actors, okay?
No action director in Hong Kong has ever received this price.

What's more, Yuan Heping's hometown is Beijing, and Ning Weimin was very polite to him and showed full respect for his professionalism.

So when these two fellow villagers met in a different place, they became quite close.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

Yuan Heping felt that he had met his mentor in Ning Wei, and was also happy to make a name for himself in Japan and increase his qualifications, so he readily agreed to return to Japan in March next year to serve as the action director for Miura Tomokazu and Teresa Teng's next year's movie "The Bodyguard".

In this way, Ning Weimin has begun to substantially try to combine the production advantages of Hong Kong films and Japanese films, and has begun to try to make money for himself in the Japanese film market by buying out excellent Hong Kong films, and by the way, accumulate a film library for the future streaming media era.

Although he himself was not sure whether this path would work, based on his understanding of the outside world, the probability of success was not low.

In the long run, it is indeed worth a try and must be tried.

What if the effect is good?

Ning Weimin, who already knew in advance that Hollywood blockbusters would inevitably flood into the Asian market with special effects technology in the near future, naturally hoped that by then, he would be able to give Mist Studios and even Chinese-language films more confidence to protect themselves and more means of checks and balances.

If he could cause some trouble for the American devils, that would also be what he wanted.

In addition to these cultural achievements, the last thing worth mentioning at the end of 1987 was probably the suitcase business represented by Ning Weimin and the parking lot business he and Axia cooperated on.

In fact, since the day the patent for the trolley suitcases started to be sold, the sales of Ning Weimin's three own-brand trolley suitcases will inevitably begin to decline. There is no way around it.

After all, such a large market cannot be enjoyed by one company alone for a long time.

Moreover, in order to obtain several years' profits in advance and develop themselves faster, domestic brands have to pay the price of competition and declining sales.

He had even anticipated that as trolley suitcases became more and more common and customers had more and more brands to choose from, the basis of his own cooperation with Yamato Kanko would gradually collapse.

Therefore, all he could do was to set up his own logistics company or department as soon as possible, and then gradually transfer the sales of trolley suitcases to the postal shopping platform.

As for the cooperative relationship with Yamato Kanko, he will not give up and will try his best to maintain it.

But objectively speaking, without the lucrative benefits as a glue, their relationship in the future will definitely not be better than it is now.

In the future, I am afraid that the only opportunity we can have is to use the French LVMH Group’s wine agency as a medium, or to jointly develop tourist routes with it in the French resort of Saint-Tropez.

However, unlike the suitcase business which was beginning to decline, the parking lot industry was booming to an extremely exaggerated degree, far beyond Ning Weimin and Axia's expectations.

It turned out that in the year when the bubble economy was at its peak, with the rocket-like increase in consumer purchasing power, the development of the automobile manufacturing industry was also booming.

Car advertisements can be seen everywhere in ordinary people's lives.

These cost-effective, new, home-use, and luxury models are emerging in an endless stream, tearing a hole in the American vehicle monopoly.

Especially at the end of the year, whether it is because of the strong stock and property markets or because of the payment of year-end bonuses, car sales in Tokyo increased significantly.

At the same time, people are more keen to travel by their own cars at the end of the year.

As a result, due to the continued surge in the number of vehicles, insufficient parking lots, and the lack of established laws and regulations such as garage laws, cars throughout Tokyo were congested and no planning was effective. Tokyo suddenly became the most congested city in Asia.

According to a news investigation program of NHK, at around 23 o'clock in the morning on a certain day, more than 20 cars were parked on the road in Tokyo, of which 88.6 were illegally parked, with an illegal parking rate as high as %. The number of collisions with parked vehicles on the road continued to increase.

Under such circumstances, the parking lot co-operated by Ning Weimin and A Xia has experienced the happy moment of full parking spaces almost every day.

They adjusted the parking fees upwards for the month, and the revenue increased by almost 60%. If one also added the happiness of Tokyo's land prices skyrocketing again at the end of the year, Axia no longer cared about the little profit she had lost in the stock market not long ago.

What's more, the stock market is now improving and her losses have been largely compensated, so she has nothing to complain about.

Even Axia followed Ning Weimin's advice. Taking advantage of the heavy losses suffered by Hong Kong City due to "Black Monday", she began to try to contact Hong City and spared no expense to rescue Mr. Hong who was in prison.

I didn't expect that Ning Weimin was right about this matter.

Perhaps it was because several years had passed since Mr. Hong’s case, and the British man who held a grudge against him no longer paid attention to him.

Perhaps it was because the people in Hong Kong were cheated so badly this time, and the market was so sluggish that they wanted to sell blood to recover their losses.

There are really barristers who dare to risk offending the British and are willing to help smooth out judicial relations and rescue people. It is no longer like in the first few years when everyone avoided them.

Although the offer was not low, the other party wanted one million US dollars first, and then another two million US dollars after the deal was done. In addition, he needed Axia to pay one million US dollars, and he had to smooth over the relationship with the court.

But the other party was, after all, a well-known lawyer in the legal field, and he even made a bold statement, saying that he could guarantee to reduce Mr. Hong's sentence by at least ten years, which still made Axia interested.

So after discussing with Ning Weimin, Axia took out part of the profits from the parking lot and distributed them in advance, and paid the one million US dollars to the lawyer as agreed.

Just like that, Mr. Hong from 14K soon met the barrister in prison and was pleasantly surprised to learn that he might have the possibility of being released early and reuniting with his daughter.

For him, although he was locked up for the past few years, he perfectly avoided the opportunity to make a fortune during the bubble economy.

But even so, he was very happy and expectant when he suddenly found out that Axia was trying her best to rescue him. This kind of joy could not be compared with making a few "small goals" of money.

In fact, there are many things in this world that are more valuable than money, but unfortunately, only a few people in special situations can understand this truth. (End of this chapter)