director of the millennium

Although "Ready Player One" has not yet been released, the film has already achieved a record of achievement.

That is the most expensive Chinese-language film in history.

Based on the current budget and actual expenditure, "Ready Player One" is expected to cost nearly 6 million yuan in production costs.

This is indeed a gap from the 15 billion RMB cost of the Spielberg version, but considering the reality of the film market, 6 million is already the maximum cost Wu Yuan can spend.

If it burns more, the film will never make back its investment.

Based on 6 million, "Ready Player One" must have a global box office of at least 18 billion to recoup its costs!
A box office revenue of over 18 billion is pure profit!
Wu Yuan estimates that the box office revenue for this film will be around 18-20 billion yuan in the mainland at most, and around 5-8 million yuan in other Asian countries combined.

Ready Player One is expected to be released in 2016.

The highest-grossing movie in 2016 was "The Mermaid" with 33 billion, but this result has no reference value.

The 33 billion yuan for The Mermaid was achieved by Stephen Chow by overdrawing his past and future, combined with the right time, place and people. He himself cannot replicate this.

Judging from the content of this movie alone, it is actually not worthy of the box office results.

Rather than saying that this box office revenue belongs to "The Mermaid", it is more accurate to say that it is the movie tickets that two or three generations of Stephen Chow's fans in the mainland bought for the pirated discs of Stephen Chow that they had watched in the past. It is just the mainland tickets that were bought for all his Hong Kong movies.

The second highest-grossing movie is "Zootopia", which earned 15 billion yuan, which is worth referring to.

Since "Zootopia" was able to make 15 billion, Wu Yuan set the mainland box office forecast for "Ready Player One" at 18-20 billion.

As a local director, Wu Yuan is still confident that his box office can exceed that of "Zootopia", but he does not have a Stephen Chow complex, so his upper potential is only 20 billion.

As for other Asian countries, at best they can contribute 5-8 million to the box office. This is not Wu Yuan's problem, nor is it a problem with "Ready Player One". The reason is that the film market in East Asia is so big. The same would be true for other Hollywood blockbusters. These are all top-notch results.

Achievements like 200 billion yen box office in Japan and tens of millions of moviegoers in South Korea can only be achieved by their own films, and they only release one every few years. It is impossible for foreign films to achieve this.

Wu Yuan's "Your Name" can create miracles in Japan because "My Name" is originally a Japanese movie.
It’s just exporting and selling domestically.

It would be impossible for Wu Yuan himself to replicate this kind of success.

Having been a director for so many years, he may not be able to predict the box office of bad movies, but he can predict the box office of hit movies more or less.

After all, Wu Yuan has a good idea of ​​the trends of the film market each year and knows where the box office ceiling for mainland films is each year.

This limit has nothing to do with the quality of the movie and is based entirely on the number of people currently entering the cinema.

Just like no matter how good "The Wandering Earth" is, it would not have been possible to get a box office of 2010 billion in 46. It has nothing to do with the content of the movie itself.

According to his estimation, if Ready Player One was released in 2016, the global box office (mainly in East Asia) would have been around 25 billion at most.

Under this upper limit, if the film costs 6 million, the profit is about the same as that of an ordinary feature film with a box office of 10 billion.

But once the cost increased to 7 million, it immediately earned less than an ordinary movie, and 8 million was barely enough to break even.

This is something that cannot be reversed by human power. Unless "Ready Player One" becomes a global hit, it will still be able to make a lot of money even if it costs $2 million.

Unfortunately, this is impossible. Hollywood's cultural hegemony cannot be broken for the time being, and domestic films have no distribution and promotion channels in Europe and the United States.

Unless we go to Hollywood to shoot.
Don't say it yet, don't say it yet.

Just when Wu Yuan was worried about the high cost of post-production of Ready Player One and thought of those blockbuster directors in Hollywood who could easily spend $100 million or $200 million to make a blockbuster and how cool that was, he actually received a long-distance call from Hollywood.

It's Marvel calling.

I don’t know how many brainstorming sessions, meetings, and quarrels Marvel has had. In short, in the past two or three months, Marvel’s main executives have made a big change in their mentality.

The China-exclusive version of "Iron Man 3" has been reviewed many times within Marvel.

They don't take the Chinese film market seriously enough and even fooled Chinese movie fans.

Before, they didn't think there was anything wrong with it. They did Sino-US co-production just to bypass the film import quota and release it directly in China. They wanted this quota, not to pay attention to the Chinese film market.

Now, after seeing that "X-Men: Days of Future Past" has broken the $1 million box office in mainland China, they have to pay attention to the Chinese film market.

This is 1 million US dollars!

In order to make up for the mistake it made on "Iron Man 3", Marvel immediately thought of the "Doctor Strange" collaboration it had already agreed with Wu Yuan.

Originally, Marvel planned to shoot this movie in the third quarter of 2015 and release it in the fourth quarter of 2016.

But now, they feel that the film can be moved forward a little faster, perhaps shooting in early 2015 and releasing in early 2016.

Marvel also hopes that more Chinese actors can appear in "Doctor Strange".

Originally, the screenwriter retained the role of Doctor Strange's assistant "Wang" and gave it more plots.

Now Marvel is considering finding a Chinese actor to play the role of Ancient One, a character who was originally set to live in seclusion in the Himalayas and whose real name is Yao. In the comics, he appears as a typical Asian grandfather with a white beard.

Yes, the screenwriter's original design of the Ancient One as a Celtic female with a androgynous personality was rejected by Marvel executives.

Before this, Marvel executives thought this design was quite interesting, and they would prefer that the powerful and mysterious character, Ancient One, be a European or American.

But now.

Marvel has to respect and understand the Chinese film market.

Changing Ancient One, a powerful "superhero" originally created by the Chinese, into a Celtic does not seem to be a good thing.
Comic readers will find it very strange. In the comics they read, Ancient One is clearly an old Chinese man, so how come he suddenly became a bald woman?

After learning about this, Chinese movie fans will also feel that Marvel is deliberately discriminating against and disrespecting the Chinese people.

How come other superhero adaptations have almost no changes, and even the casting specifically looks for actors with similar images and temperaments. Robert Downey Jr. is like Tony Stark who walked out of the comics.

When you get to Ancient One, you become a man into a woman, and a Chinese into a Celt. What do you mean by this?
So Marvel called Wu Yuan.

"Of course I think it's better for Ancient One to maintain the character design in the comics."

"Why did they change him into a female Celtic? What does this mean for the movie? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the main story."

"If a female character is needed to embellish the movie, wouldn't Doctor Strange's girlfriend be enough? She is set to be a big blonde beauty that conforms to American aesthetics!"

Wu Yuan talked freely on the phone and agreed very much with the idea of ​​Marvel executives sticking to the character of Ancient One.

However, he strongly rejected the idea of ​​filming the movie ahead of schedule: "No, there is no need to move the release date forward!"

"I don't have time, and the screenwriters should redesign the plot according to Ancient One in the comics, so let's stick to the original schedule!"

"please!"

Wu Yuan really doesn't want to work non-stop anymore (End of this chapter)