director of the millennium

The headquarters building of Light and Shadow Times.

“I didn’t understand it, but I was shocked.”

Wu Yuan sat opposite Li Xiaoping and shook his head, saying with emotion: "A-Zu only played the role of a motion capture actor in the movie. To be honest, if we find a professional motion capture actor to do this kind of work, he would probably do a better job than him."

"I don't understand why he would take this role where he doesn't show his face at all. Is it just because it's a Hollywood movie?"

"Maybe. After all, Hollywood does have a special meaning in the minds of Hong Kong actors. It's like a holy place."

Li Xiaoping curled her lips and said, "For decades, Hollywood actors and directors have been trying to break into Hollywood, and there are indeed a few successful examples. It's not surprising that A-Zu made such a choice."

"Director Wu, this has nothing to do with us. Let's talk about business."

“The first poster of Ready Player One has been released online and has received a good response. Next, we should strike while the iron is hot and release the trailer.”

"You arrange it. I have no objection." Wu Yuan spread his hands and said indifferently.

The movie has been completed. For Wu Yuan, his work is done. He never worries about the subsequent publicity work and when and what kind of publicity to do.

Different from those directors nowadays who even design posters themselves, Wu Yuan is a more old-school director who is only responsible for the preparation, production and shooting of the film.

Once a movie successfully passes the review, he will no longer be involved in any subsequent work and hand it over to a more professional team.

Whether it is the design and distribution of posters, the release arrangement of trailers, or the subsequent publicity and promotion work, the company has the most professional team and can definitely do a better job than a half-baked one like him.

Li Xiaoping was used to Wu Yuan's hands-off behavior, so she nodded calmly and said, "I'm just telling you so that you, the director, won't be unaware that the trailer is coming out."

"Director Wu, you must not be lazy again during the roadshow of Ready Player One. You must lead the team to the full extent of the event."

"The Mermaid during the Spring Festival earlier this year really surprised us. Now the mainland film market can actually create a single film with a box office of 30 billion yuan."

"The entire company has full confidence in you and the movie Ready Player One. If others can do it, then we can do it too."

"Well, that's not something you can say casually." Wu Yuan directly interrupted Li Xiaoping's lofty ambitions.

"The 33 billion box office of The Mermaid is not that easy to replicate. After all, I don't have Stephen Chow's special experience."

"For the movie Ready Player One, I still expect it to gross around 25 billion yuan, which would be enough to beat last year's inflated box office record of Monster Hunt."

Mainland movie fans do not owe Wu Yuan a single movie ticket, although some of his early films were indeed pirated and the pirated discs may have made more money than the legitimate ones, but after all, there were only two or three of them, which cannot be compared with Stephen Chow.

The possibility of giving Wu Yuan a ticket out of guilt is non-existent.

Since no one is "buying up for a ticket", the box office of "Ready Player One" will still depend on the appeal of the movie's content itself. It is impossible to be like "The Mermaid", where at least one-third of the box office comes from fans buying up a ticket, not really coming for the movie.

"25 billion. It's enough if the box office in the mainland reaches 25 billion." Wu Yuan said seriously, "Ready Player One is targeting the entire Asian market. It's enough if the mainland market can just break even."

Thinking of the large number of Japanese anime elements added to the movie, Li Xiaoping smiled and nodded in agreement: "Indeed."

A week later. On a sunny weekend, without any prior warning, the first trailer of Ready Player One was suddenly released at 12 noon.

Although there was no prior notice on the main battlefield Weibo, this version of the trailer still topped the Weibo hot search list in the first place (it was bought), and it also had a red and bold word "explosive" on it.

Thanks to the widespread popularity of smart phones, it is now very convenient to browse Weibo online. You can even spend half an hour on it while going to the toilet.

Countless netizens who were either on vacation or in between work clicked on this trailer as soon as possible.

Xiao Mei, the front desk clerk of Light and Shadow Times, openly slacked off while on payroll and was the first to watch the trailer of her company's masterpiece!

When you click on the trailer, after the familiar company logo flashes at the beginning, a tense and urgent music sounds, and the camera slowly pulls up from the bottom, and a "treadmill" slowly comes into view.

Then a pair of running legs appeared on the screen, and the camera moved up to see Peng Peng, wearing a short-sleeved shirt, making a brilliant appearance.

On Peng Peng's head and hands, he wears a set of sci-fi equipment. The silver body and the virtual helmet that resembles sunglasses give people a feeling of mysterious technology.

Before the audience could react, the camera suddenly zoomed in, passing directly through the black "sunglasses" worn by Peng Peng, and entered a bizarre virtual world.

Under the cyberpunk-style skyscrapers and neon signs, a virtual character with very "two-dimensional" dress and image is riding a futuristic motorcycle and racing on the road in the air.

Obviously, this is Peng Peng's image in the virtual world.

But trailers are always trivial and fast-paced. Before people can see clearly, the scene changes again, and comes to a battlefield, where tens of thousands of virtual characters on both sides are running and fighting.

That scene was comparable to the scene in "Avengers: Endgame" when everyone poured out of the portal after being resurrected and fought Thanos together!
What’s even more exciting is that amidst the special effects bombardment and gorgeous melee, we saw a lot of familiar faces.

A virtual character with golden aura all over his body and hair that turned golden and stood up roared in mid-air and released Kamehameha.

A boy wearing a straw hat used his right hand like an inflated rubber to hit his opponent hard.

A group of middle school boys wearing black and red divine robes are making hand seals and summoning all kinds of wind, fire, thunder and lightning.

If the camera zooms out a little higher, you can see a humanoid Gundam more than ten meters tall running around rampaging.

Even in the air, there was a group of wizards riding on brooms, holding magic wands and casting spells.

This is just a glimpse of a corner of the battlefield.

If the scene is frozen at this moment and a careful count is made, the audience and fans who have watched the trailer will be able to count at least dozens of familiar or recognizable "virtual characters".

Bad news: Stitches.

Good news: it’s all sewn up!

At this point, the audience and fans who didn’t know what “stitched monsters” were just thinking that this “hodgepodge” scene was very interesting! (End of this chapter)