director of the millennium

"Director, is it so troublesome to release a Hollywood movie? Do we have to hold so many premiere events?"

In a luxurious hotel in the city center of London, Wang Xueqi, who was nearly 70 years old, collapsed on the sofa in the living room of Wu Yuan's room, his face full of fatigue.

It is already late at night on October 10th, and the crew of "Doctor Strange" has just finished the premiere in London.

The past week has been a great test for Wang Xueqi.

After the premiere of "Doctor Strange" in Los Angeles, he followed the group to Los Angeles to attend the Los Angeles premiere of "Doctor Strange", and then went to London with everyone to attend the London premiere.

Traveling between two cities in five days is not a big deal, but it is not an easy task with the Atlantic Ocean between the two cities.

If China is added in, this is equivalent to Wang Xueqi crossing more than a dozen time zones and spanning two-thirds of the earth in a short period of time!
This is not an easy thing for an old man who is almost seventy years old. The inappropriate daily and night schedule alone is enough to torture him.

Not to mention that he also had to participate in the promotion of the premiere event, so he could face these blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners in a good spirit.

Having been in the industry for so many years, Wang Xueqi has never complained about the hard work, but this week has really made him physically and mentally exhausted and he can hardly take it anymore.

"Teacher Wang, you've worked hard." Wu Yuan had no choice but to comfort him, "Today is the last premiere event."

"That's how Hollywood movies work. Generally, big movies that are released around the world will have a premiere in North America and the UK, taking into account both the North American and European film markets."

"In recent years, the Chinese film market has also grown. More and more Hollywood blockbusters are paying attention to the Chinese mainland market and holding grand premieres in the mainland."

"This kind of thing is really common in Hollywood."

Wu Yuan was also somewhat helpless. Hollywood movies do like to hold several premieres. This is the "happy trouble" that movies facing the global market must endure.

When Wu Yuan’s films were exported, they would also hold premiere events in Japan. It’s the same principle, they value the local market.

It is easy for domestic films, as they only need to hold a film event, but this also means that they only have the Chinese market and have little influence overseas.

Wu Yuan smacked his lips and said, "When will our Chinese-language films be able to hold premieres all over the world? That will prove that Chinese-language films are truly going global."

"You are the only one who has this ability now." Wang Xueqi was not optimistic about the future and kept shaking his head.

As a Chinese actor who has seen the "big world" overseas, Wang Xueqi is well aware of the gap between Chinese and Hollywood films.

The gap here is not the soft power gap in directors, actors, and screenwriters, but the hard power gap in the film supporting industry chain, and this hard power gap cannot be made up in three to five years.

Not to mention anything else, during the filming of "Doctor Strange", Wang Xueqi could clearly feel the gap in professionalism among the crew.

Before coming to Hollywood to shoot, the most professional and talented crew he had ever seen was Wu Yuan's crew. But after he joined the crew of "Inception", he deeply felt the professionalism of Hollywood.

He felt it even more deeply when he was on the set of "Doctor Strange", especially when he knew that the backbone members of Wu Yuan's crew were all people he had sent to Hollywood to study.

The gap in professional standards between behind-the-scenes film work, supporting industrial chains, and acting jobs is really not so easy to bridge.

"Take your time." Wu Yuan pursed his lips. He was also very clear about this, but he was more confident than Wang Xueqi: "It only took us more than ten years to go from the tenth largest film market in the world to the second and first. In another ten years, these behind-the-scenes film systems will be able to catch up with Hollywood."

"I have always believed it!" "I hope so." Wang Xueqi nodded hopefully.

After a few seconds of silence, Wu Yuan changed the subject: "Teacher Wang, after these three premieres, your performance as Gu Yi was outstanding!"

"I saw that among the invited guests, more people were discussing Ancient One than the protagonist Doctor Strange."

"I'm afraid you're really going to get into trouble this time overseas."

"I'm at this age now, I don't care about whether I'm popular or not." Wang Xueqi smiled and shook his head.

Although he said that, Wu Yuan clearly saw a bit of complacency in his expression.

After these three premiere events, Wang Xueqi was indeed very surprised and delighted.

Judging from the number of shots of the character of Ancient One in the movie, he is definitely not the second male lead. From the plot point of view, the significance of this character's existence is like that of a novice guide in an online game. His role is to lead out the protagonist, teach the protagonist, and then hand over his responsibilities to the protagonist, and then he can die.

Generally speaking, this kind of "guide" role has a relatively low sense of presence.

But Ancient One is different.

This character is so cool.

The words mysterious and knowledgeable are the embodiment of the Ancient One.

Coupled with its identity as the "Grandpa of China", it naturally gives Europeans a feeling of "hazy beauty".

After all, in the eyes of most Europeans and Americans, the word "China" represents mystery, antiquity, and culture.

The appearance of the character Ancient One embodies the country of "China" into a flesh-and-blood person, which is very eye-catching for European and American audiences and fans.

To a certain extent, this character's charm is even greater than that of the male protagonist Stephen Strange!

After all, Stephen Strange was an arrogant and unlikable person before the accident, and it was with the help of Gu that he was reborn after the accident.

Besides, although Benedict Cumberbatch is handsome, there are a lot of handsome men in Europe and America, so it is not a strange thing.

But it is quite novel to see a mysterious, powerful, ancient and knowledgeable Asian "Merlin" appear in European and American movies.

Although this movie is called "Doctor Strange", many film critics and media people who attended the premieres in Los Angeles and London wrote a lot of articles to interpret the character of "The Ancient One" after the premiere, and talked a lot about this character!

Even on Google search software, the search ranking of "Ancient One" is higher than that of "Doctor Strange", and the number of clicks on the Google entry for "Ancient One" has skyrocketed in the past week!
These things were collected and conveyed to everyone in the "Doctor Strange" crew as soon as possible. Wu Yuan didn't know what others thought after they learned about it, but he was very happy anyway.

This change of role is the right one!

Sure enough, changing the movie version of the Ancient One from a Celtic woman to an elderly Asian man in the original comic was an extremely correct choice!

Whether it is the fans of the original comics, or the film critics and media people, they all recognize this character very much! (End of this chapter)