director of the millennium

"The Lunar New Year movie season is coming soon." Wu Yuan murmured to Liu Yifei, "The competition between the Lunar New Year movie season and the Spring Festival movie season is still very fierce this year."

“I don’t know who will win the Lunar New Year box office this year.”

With the changes of the times, the Lunar New Year period, which once dominated the Chinese film industry, has gradually lost its popularity. This first Chinese film schedule, which was pioneered by Feng Xiaogang, has now become a vassal of the Spring Festival period.

Whether in media reports or in the mouths of people in the film industry, the Lunar New Year period has been tacitly incorporated into the Spring Festival period, and can even only serve as a warm-up period before the Spring Festival period.

But this does not mean that the Lunar New Year period is no longer popular. December, which is the month when the Lunar New Year period falls, is still a period that some veteran directors value.

The 2017 Lunar New Year box office can even be regarded as the most important one in recent years.

Directed by Feng Xiaogang, written by Yan Geling, starring Huang Xuan, and co-starring Miao Miao and Zhong Chuxi, the movie "Youth", adapted from Yan Geling's novel of the same name, is scheduled to be released on December 12, and will be released simultaneously in China and the United States.

Well, there are only a dozen theaters in North America that will schedule this movie, but it sounds awesome. Feng Kuzi is really good at marketing.

However, this "Youth" is not a commercial film, but an art film, and Feng Kuzi's obsession with film awards is getting deeper and deeper.

When he first started making movies, he wanted to integrate into the mainstream film industry and to gain recognition from awards, but the older generation of filmmakers who controlled the discourse power looked down on him and even did not consider his films as films, but just feature-length sketches.

Later, Feng Pants had a falling out with this group of old men, and all kinds of verbal battles broke out one after another. He also earned the nickname "Feng Cannon". When the fight was at its worst, Feng Pants was almost like the Monkey King who attacked the Lingxiao Palace. He was really going to turn the world upside down.

In the end, Feng Kuzi finally won the victory. After being scolded for several years, he finally won the Golden Rooster Award, reconciled with the Golden Rooster judges, and even praised the Golden Rooster specifically, saying that the misunderstanding was over.

Since then, Feng Kuzi has been quiet for a while, and it seems that he is not too obsessed with awards and doesn't criticize much anymore.

But a few years later, perhaps after seeing Zhang Yimou's success, he became restless again and started thinking about making art films.

Well, the previous film that won the Golden Rooster Award for Feng Kuazi was "Assembly", which was also a commercial film. The art films he made seriously were indeed not that outstanding.

After achieving success in the commercial field, Feng Kuzi's obsession with art films came back, which led to the movie "Youth". He even followed Zhang Yimou's example and also found Yan Geling, obviously aiming for the level of "To Live" and "Coming Home" to make this movie.

Feng Kuazi is really willing to spend money and has invested a lot in the promotion of this movie. He not only wants to win awards, but also wants to get box office revenue.

However, he is not the only ambitious director in this year's Lunar New Year box office. There is also Chen Kaige following closely with "Legend of the Cat Demon". In order to make this movie, Director Kaige even spent hundreds of millions to build a Tang City.

It's no wonder that the Tang City he built for filming is much more meaningful to the development of China's film and television industry than "Cat Demon Legend" itself. At least "Cat Demon Legend" can only leave a shot of the imperial concubine looking back, but Tang City has become the leading film and television base with the historical background of the Tang Dynasty in the next ten years. In the future, almost all film and television dramas involving the Tang Dynasty will be shot here, which is an extraordinary contribution! However, "Cat Demon Legend" should not be underestimated. After all, it is a rare movie in the post-Chen Kaige era. Although Chen Kaige's storytelling ability is still hard to describe, the pictures of this movie are really beautiful. Some of the trailers released so far have indeed made many audiences and fans look forward to it.

It has to be said that Chen Kaige's films still have an advantage in trailers that do not involve the story plot.

In addition, this year's Lunar New Year movie season also includes "The Thousand Faces of Dunjia", "Psychological Crime: City of Light", "Blood Steel", "The Little Shop of Sorrow" and other movies.

"The Thousand Faces of Dunjia" was written and produced by Xu Ke, "Psychological Crime: City of Light" has Deng Chao joining, and "Blood Steel" is even more outrageous. I don't know how much favor Jackie Chan owes him, or how deep the insider trading is behind it, but he actually took on such a movie that promotes newcomers, and it is a joint venture between Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. There are too many tricks behind it.

Even the film with the shallowest background, "The Little Shop of Sorrow", is a collaboration between Emperor Entertainment Group and Wanda, and is adapted from Keigo Higashino's novel of the same name.

During the promotional period before these movies were released, no matter which movie it was, it seemed that they had the potential to be blockbuster hits, which undoubtedly made this year's Lunar New Year box office the most competitive in the past five years.

Especially on December 12th, Guangying Times will also join the melee. The company's production of "Ex-Files 29: Goodbye Ex" will be released on the 3th, targeting the market in the month before the Spring Festival!

Even so, it was the appearance and influence of Wu Yuan that led to some changes. Otherwise, the original time and space should have had two movies, "The Second Generation of the Goblin: The Fortune of This Life" and "The Bell of the Demon", joining the melee of this year's Lunar New Year box office.

The main reason why "The Second Generation of the Demon" was not included was because the producers wanted to stick with Liu Yifei, but Wu Yuan firmly believed that there was no point in making this movie. After a long delay, the producers gave up and chose Nazha, who also had a "fox demon" feeling. As a result, the production of the movie was postponed and it could not be released in time for this year's Lunar New Year holiday.

"The Ring" was a Hong Kong comedy film that was supposed to be produced by Chen Kexin, co-produced with Happy Twist, and directed by Chen Kexin's wife. However, due to Wu Yuan's intervention in this life, Chen Kexin's journey to the mainland was not very smooth, and Happy Twist would not cooperate with him, so this film did not appear.

Even so, this year's Lunar New Year holiday has 7 major films plus five or six tie-in films released within this month, so the competition is still fierce.

"We must support our own "Ex-Files 3"!" Liu Yifei raised her eyebrows, put her arm around Wu Yuan's neck, and said with a smile: "Why don't we go to the cinema to watch this movie together? I've seen the first two parts. They're quite interesting romantic comedies."

"Uh" Wu Yuan scratched his head, and the words of rejection remained in his mouth.

Although the "Ex-Files" series is one of the current cash cows of the Light and Shadow Era, and he also knows that the box office of "Ex-Files 3" will be very good and create the highest score in this series, but Wu Yuan really doesn't like this movie. In his dream life, he went to the cinema to watch this movie more than ten times in order to figure out why it was so popular. He almost vomited. Even after more than ten years, he was not interested in watching it again.

This isn't some classic art film that makes people want to revisit it every few years.
But seeing Liu Yifei's expectant eyes, Wu Yuan still didn't say no, but just smiled and nodded: "If you want to go and see it, then I will definitely go with you. Anyway, the crew of "The Monkey King" will not start filming until after the Chinese New Year, so I will still be very free during this period before the New Year."

"Then it's settled!" Liu Yifei immediately responded. She didn't really like or look forward to this movie, but she hadn't been to the cinema with Wu Yuan for a long time, and she missed the feeling when they first fell in love~ (End of this chapter)