China Entertainment Mythology 2004

Chapter 263 The final box office was 17.43 billion US dollars, and the derivatives sold wildly
At the beginning of "You Now You See Me", there is a water escape performance. The heroine enters the glass water tank, her hands and feet are tied with chains, and there are an astonishing number of piranhas above. There is a time limit. If she cannot escape within a certain period of time, the performer Will be eaten by piranhas.

Before the start of the magic show, the heroine will wear regular clothes. After the magic countdown, the companions on both sides pull hard to reveal the sexy swimsuit inside, and the heroine will wiggle her butt very boldly.

Before the shooting of this group of shots officially started, the crew had sent the swimsuits to be worn during the shooting to Li Mu's room, and prepared three sets for Li Mu and the heroine Liu Yifei to choose from.

Liu Yifei tried on all three swimsuits in front of Li Mu, and then stood in front of the sofa wearing the sexiest and most daring one, posing provocatively towards Li Mu.

"Does it look good?"

Li Mu stroked his chin: "It looks good!"

"How nice is it?"

"I want to cherish you for being so good-looking immediately, immediately, and mercilessly."

Hearing this, Liu Yifei turned around and picked up the most conservative of the three and said, "Or just this one."

Li Mu raised his eyebrows: "This one is the least distinctive among the three."

Liu Yifei went to the room to change the most conservative one, and said to Li Mu after coming out, "Because I know some people are narrow-minded, choose the most revealing one, I'm afraid some people will be jealous."

Li Mu stretched out his hand and pulled the man onto his lap: "So I am such a person in your heart? Yes, there may be some men in this society who are very narrow-minded, but this does not include us. Who are we? It's the director, is it? Actors are the most daring group to show themselves, there are so many nudity and fake scenes, let alone just wearing a relatively revealing swimsuit?"

Liu Yifei looked at Li Mu for a while with a half-smile, then broke away from Li Mu and picked up the most revealing one: "I'll call the props team right now, and I'll choose this one."

"no!"

Li Mu's voice came suddenly.

"But you just said..." Liu Yifei looked at Li Mu and said.

Li Mu pulled the man back and buried his head in his chest: "Okay, I lied just now, other actors are naked and it's none of my business, so you are none of my business, the most conservative one is already my limit."

Liu Yifei put on such an expression as expected, and then put his arms around Li Mu's shoulders.

……

In mid-January of 13, "Frozen" was released for the 1th week. Not only did it win the championship again with a weekend score of 8 million US dollars, but the original soundtrack of the film also began to be officially released globally, and it successfully topped the US Billboard charts. It created the spectacle of winning both the North American box office and music charts at the same time, which is very rare in the entire film history.

In the past ten years, there have been only four films that have won the billboard championship: "Michael Jackson: This Is It" in 2009, "The Hunger Games" in 2011, "Les Miserables" in 2012, and "Frozen" at the end of 2012. ".

Of the four top-ranked films in total, films directed by Li Mu accounted for half, which is an astonishing achievement.

When Zhang Jingying was a guest at Li Mu’s home some time ago, Li Mu once said that the original soundtrack of “Frozen” could win the billboard championship. At that time, Zhang Liangying dared not say that she didn’t believe it at all. I believe that I can really win the championship, but I feel that it is too exaggerated.

"The Hunger Games" has been regarded as a miracle at the top of the double list. What is a miracle?If it can be achieved and reproduced casually, what qualifications are there to be called a miracle?

However, it is very incredible that "Frozen" has succeeded again!
In fact, when it comes to the miracles created by "Frozen", it's not just as simple as the first place in the North American film and music double charts?
Let’s just talk about the film’s box office performance in RB, let alone other film and television companies or ordinary netizens, even Liu Siying, the vice president, and Chen Zhixi, the production director, find it incredible.

Li Mu answered the phone calls of Liu Siying and Chen Zhixi consecutively within a day, and both of them were talking about the RB box office of "Frozen".

"Mr. Li, do you know? The box office of "Frozen" in RB has exceeded 250 billion yen!" This is Liu Siying's call.

"Mr. Li, "Frozen" has reached the third place in the box office of RB film history, and it is only 11 billion yen away from "Titanic" which is second in film history." This is Chen Zhixi's call.

It can be heard that both of them were very excited at the time.

I still remember that when the film was just released, the distributor of RB once boasted that he would take 150 billion yen. At that time, Huashang still felt that the distributor's statement was unrealistic.

But what happened?
Where can 150 billion be stopped?Even 200 billion can't stop it, and now it has directly broken through the 250 billion yen mark, and the most important thing is that the film has not yet been released.

In other words, 250 billion yen is not the end point that "Frozen" can reach. At present, there is only a gap of 11 billion yen with "Titanic", which is about 1000 million U.S. dollars in conversion, depending on the current box office trend. , "Frozen" finally surpassed "Titanic" and ranked second in RB's film history, which should already be a high probability event.

No need to think about the number one, "Spirited Away" ranked first at the final box office of 308 billion yen, and "Frozen" can't surpass it anyway.

But even so, two works directed by Li Mu have been squeezed into the top ten films in RB film history, and the other is the tenth-ranked "Gravity", with a box office of 150 billion yen.

It is worth mentioning that Cameron's "Avatar" ranked ninth, with 156 billion yen.

Back to the filming scene of Now You See Me.

There is a saying on the Internet in the original time and space, saying that during the filming of this film, the actor had an accident when he was filming the scene of escaping from the water. If it wasn't right, the person was released urgently—in fact, this kind of statement is a bit nonsense.

It is not denied that actors do encounter dangerous situations when filming, but they are not so dangerous that their lives are at risk.It's not really dangerous scenes such as blasting scenes, horse riding scenes, etc. It's just escape in the water. There are so many safety measures, how could it be easy for the actors to be in danger?
At the very least, the actors won't be locked up, right?Also, the water tank looks very deep, as if it would cover the actress, but there is no shot of the actress standing upright in the film, right?
In fact, the water in the water tank is slightly shallower by one foot, so that the actress's head will be exposed immediately when she stands upright, which is much safer.

Also, the shot of the actress falling into the water could have actually been taken in two shots.For the first time to shoot down, use a sponge pad instead.

In the second shot of entering the water, the actress stood up straight in the water tank, exposing her head, and then sank her body, showing the state just after entering the water. Then the two clips were combined to form a complete picture of entering the water.

At the shooting scene, after repeatedly explaining the shooting steps, the field management began to clear the scene, and all departments reported that they were ready.

Li Mu held the loudspeaker: "Attention all the staff, we must always put the safety of the actors first. No matter you find any possible bad situations during the filming process, no matter whether I call the card or not, as long as you If you feel that the actors may be in danger, you can stop shooting directly and give priority to protecting the safety of the actors, do you understand?"

"I understand!"

Liu Yifei walked up to Li Mu and said in a low voice, "The water is not deep, so don't be so nervous. What if I perform well but others think I'm in danger and rush into the camera? Let's shoot normally."

Li Mu shook his head: "It's just a popcorn movie, how can your safety be more important to me? Okay, I'm the director, listen to me."

"Okay, all departments pay attention."

"action!"

……

In January, Huashang's new film "Monster Hunt" officially launched a large-scale publicity campaign.

The male protagonist Zhang Ruoyun and the female protagonist Zhou Xun are frequent guests of various TV variety shows. At the same time, movie posters in major shopping malls, subways, bus stations and other places have also begun to be fully rolled out.Online portals, forums and other trolls began to discuss frequently—in a word, let all audiences know that there is such a Huashang film to be released during the Spring Festival this year.

The film's official release date is February 2013, 2, which is the first day of the Lunar New Year.

This year's Spring Festival, in addition to "Monster Hunt" produced by Huashang and directed by Xu Chengyi, "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" directed by Zhou Xingchi will also be featured.

It stands to reason that, under normal circumstances, two major films would not be released on the same day, and a lose-lose approach would not be worth the loss for either party.

But the Spring Festival is an exception, because the schedule is only a few days, even if you want to avoid it, you can't avoid it.

It’s okay when the annual box office share of the Spring Festival stalls is not high, but in recent years, with the continuous cultivation of Huashang’s key films hitting the Spring Festival stalls every year, the current Spring Festival stalls’ annual box office share has changed from the previous insufficient 1% skyrocketed to 9%.

The 7-day box office during the Spring Festival accounts for nearly one-tenth of the total 365-day box office in the whole year. With such a high proportion, how can it be given up when there are other key films released?

Therefore, although Li Mu and Zhou Xingchi have a good relationship, although Zhou Xingchi played a cameo role in Hua Shang's film "Source Code", and Li Mu also played the role of the empty son in "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons", this year Hua Shang's "Monster Hunt" and Zhou Xingchi's "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons" had to fight to become popular.

The time came to the end of January, when "Frozen" was close to being released worldwide.

As for the final box office of the film.

The final box office in North America was 4.3 million U.S. dollars, and the total overseas box office was 13.95 billion U.S. dollars. Adding the 3.45 million U.S. dollars in the inland area, the final global total box office was 17.43 billion U.S. dollars.

Therefore, "Frozen" officially surpassed "Gravity"'s US$16.9 billion, becoming the highest-grossing film under Li Mu's name, and at the same time replaced the former, becoming the third highest-grossing film in global film history.

In this way, the top two films in global film history continue to be directed by James Cameron, while the third and fourth places are all directed by Li Mu. Cameron and Li Mu both took the top four in global film history.

The performance of "Frozen" in RB is miraculous. As of the film's release, it has won a total of 268 billion yen in the RB market, which is about 2.55 million dollars converted into US dollars, ranking second in RB film history.

For a while, whether it was on the Huaxia Internet or the RB Internet, there were discussions about "why "Frozen" is so popular in RB", and the answers given by netizens were also varied.

In short, no matter what, "Frozen" has achieved such a high score, which has greatly exceeded almost everyone's previous expectations.

Previously, Li Mu insisted on spending 1.5 million U.S. dollars to make a cartoon, so many people were waiting to see his jokes. For this reason, Huayi Brothers would rather leave a bad impression on Li Mu than I only invested a little bit symbolically, so as not to lose money and affect the company's market value, but I didn't expect such a result in the end.

But is 17.43 billion U.S. dollars the profit limit that "Frozen" can achieve?

It seems so, after all, the film has already been released around the world.

However, the revenue that a film can bring to the company is not just as simple as hundreds of millions of box office.

In China, the box office revenue of a movie accounts for the vast majority of all revenue.In North America, in the mature market of Hollywood, the box office revenue of a film generally only accounts for about 30% of the film's total revenue.

Another 70% of revenue comes from the proceeds of related derivatives.

"Frozen" is undoubtedly a Chinese animation film, but in the development of the film's peripheral derivatives, the film is somewhat similar to the Hollywood model. At least Li Mu chose to cooperate with Disney, who is very experienced in this area .

Huashang Company is responsible for the design and development of most of the derivatives. As the world factory, Huaxia is responsible for the manufacture of related derivatives, while Walt Disney is responsible for selling them worldwide except Huaxia, and finally the two companies will divide them.

The range of derivative products is very wide, including various toys, water glasses, school bags, game authorizations, etc., among which the best-selling dresses of the sisters Elsa and Anna in the film are the same style.

So far, less than three months after the film was released on a large scale around the world, nearly 200 million dresses of the same style in the film have been sold crazily, and each "Elsa Group" is priced at US$149.98. In other words, the same dress alone sold nearly 3 million U.S. dollars in three months.

And it's just a skirt.

In fact, in less than three months, the peripheral derivatives of "Frozen" sold nearly 15 billion US dollars, and the speed of attracting money was extremely alarming.

It's amazing in Hollywood, and it's unprecedented in China!

For a while, Elsa and Anna even defeated Barbie dolls and became the most popular doll images in the world in the past two months.

The domestic sales of "Aisha dresses" at US$149.98 are very mediocre and too expensive, but the sales of pirated skirts worth tens of dollars or even more than a dozen dollars are not bad. The effect is not obvious.

Compared with the expensive "Aisha dress", the "Frozen Little Flying Fairy" toy with a few yuan is very popular in the domestic market. , In fact, this toy is an idea proposed by Li Mu himself.

The toy is very simple. It is a doll in the image of Elsa or Anna. The skirt of the doll is the propeller of the toy. It looks a bit like a bamboo dragonfly, but it needs electricity to drive.

Peter Pan quickly became popular because he was beautiful, fun, and most importantly, cheap.

The great success of "Frozen" in peripheral derivatives has made other big directors in China a little dumbfounded. People used to only know that making movies can also sell product placements to make money in addition to box office.

Take director Feng Xiaogang as an example. Before the official release of several of his films, all the shooting costs were recovered just by placing advertisements.

At that time, Director Feng felt that he was too good, making money by making movies is as simple as that!
But now you are looking at Li Mu?
Watching his "Frozen"?
The global box office is 17.43 billion U.S. dollars, but the derivatives alone sold 15 billion U.S. dollars in three months?

What if I give you another year?

Why don't you go for 30 billion US dollars?

Crazy, a big director like Director Feng can't understand this era.

In the face of numerous media reports and inexplicable surprises inside the company, Li Mu himself remained calm.

He remembered a report in Yuanshikong, saying that within a year after the release of "Frozen", its peripheral derivatives alone sold 50 billion US dollars.

One year, 50 billion, I don't know whether it is true or not.

But there is no doubt that Princess Elsa in the original time and space "Frozen" is the most profitable princess in Disney.

(End of this chapter)