China Entertainment: Been working as a director since 03

Chapter 602: Humility Can Keep You Popular for a Long Time
The box office of "Wolf Warrior 2" continued to soar after reaching 35 billion.

It’s already impressive for a movie to get an overtime card, but this movie is even more outrageous, as it has already gotten a second overtime card.

This means that the film could be released for as long as two or three months.

In China, it is rare for a movie to continue to be shown for such a long time after the film market matures.

Old movies like "Shaolin Temple" starring the King of Kung Fu do not count.

At that time, there were very few domestic films, and there were also very few films imported from abroad, or even no films at all.

If it were the same as it is now, where a movie would be taken off the screen within a month of its release, cinemas wouldn’t have enough new movies to replace it.

That’s why “Shaolin Temple” was able to create a box office miracle, with ticket prices ranging from 1 to 30 cents, and sales of over 100 million.

Finally, the box office of "Wolf Warrior 2" exceeded 50 billion.

The second place is still 20 to 30 billion, which directly doubled the number of the first place in the domestic box office. It is really exaggerated.

"It's outrageous, really outrageous. The box office of one of his movies is higher than the box office of hundreds of my movies combined." Wang Jing experienced firsthand what it meant to be the chosen one.

"That's an exaggeration. In fact, your total historical box office is still higher than Brother Jing's." Li Yu said jokingly.

Later people calculated that Wang Jing's total box office in history was 53 billion, which included the total box office of "Chasing the Dragon".

"Chasing the Dragon" has not been released yet, but because of Li Yu, the "Detective Chinatown" series has become a work directed by Wang Jing.

Even if we remove "Chasing the Dragon", Wang Jing's total historical box office is now over 50 billion, and even close to 60 billion.

"Director Li, I know you are trying to comfort me, but I feel even more upset. I have been making movies for twenty or thirty years, and others have caught up in just two or three years." Wang Jing smiled bitterly.

If there was a place to report, Wang Jing would have wanted to report Wu Jing for cheating.

Li Yu really wanted Wang Jing to calm down.

In the future, there will be a female director whose first directorial debut in her career will be 20 or 30 years after Wang Jing.

Considering that saying this might be too hurtful to Wang Jing, Li Yu chose not to say anything.

"As the saying goes, there will be more and more young directors emerging in the future. You can think about it from another angle. The fact that they can get such high box office revenue shows that the market is many times bigger than before.

If you can make a good movie, you can also get a high box office. I have a feeling that in the future there will be billionaire directors, billionaire movie kings, and billionaire movie queens.”

Li Yu predicted.

In fact, some stars who market themselves as having a total box office of over 10 billion yuan are actually overstating the matter.

They clearly just played a supporting role in a movie, and sometimes they were criticized for their supporting roles, but they had the nerve to take credit for the movie's box office, calling themselves billion-dollar stars, as if they were the ones carrying the box office revenue.

Some originally quite stylish words were ruined in this way.

The word "teacher" has also been abused in the circle.

In the past, people called respected old artists "teachers", which was a sign of respect for them.

Now, anyone can call me teacher.

"It would be great if my Chasing the Dragon could be half as good as Wolf Warriors 2. This is the work I put the most effort into in recent years, besides the Detective Chinatown series." Wang Jing turned the topic to his Chasing the Dragon.

Wang Jing is a super quick shooter. Before Li Yu went to Hollywood to shoot "Aquaman", he had already started shooting "Chasing the Dragon".

The filming was completed a few months ago and is now ready to be released.

"This goal is too high. Hong Kong-style gangster films have been out of fashion for a long time. It's good enough to have 1 billion. I think what you should worry about more is whether Andy Lau will be upset after your Chasing the Dragon is released. He was paid for a cameo, but you edited him into the leading actor." This was the first time Li Yu saw a cameo from the beginning to the end. In terms of taking advantage, Li Yu had to admit that Wang Jing was much more professional than him.

"It's okay. I have a very good relationship with Andy. I have known him for more than 30 years. I am the director he has worked with the most times in his acting career. He complains about me a few times at most."

Wang Jing was confident, as if everything was under his control.

If the two people are not close enough, they would never dare to play like this, because it would really offend others.

Wang Jing dared to do this because he has a very close relationship with Andy Lau.

Andy Lau had a career low before.

Andy Lau's positioning was awkward for a long time after his debut.

In the eyes of many people, his acting skills are average and he only knows how to act cool in the early stages. There is no essential difference between him and those young actors who rely on their looks to make a living.

It was not until he won the Best Actor Award at the Academy Awards in 2000 for "Infernal Affairs" and the Best Actor Award at the Golden Horse Awards in 2004 for "Infernal Affairs 3" that his acting skills were officially recognized by the public, and he evolved from a young actor with mediocre acting skills to a powerful actor.

In the 90s, Andy Lau opened a film company, and he thought the movies made by the company would be popular.

I didn’t expect that all the movies I made were flops and I ended up owing a lot of debts.

He was popular and received help from many people to pay off his debts.

After paying off his debts, Liu Dehua encountered another serious problem.

The movies produced by his company all flopped, which indirectly dragged him down and caused many directors to distrust him and be unwilling to use him.

In this context, Wang Jing often gave him film contracts, which helped him get out of the trough of his life. Therefore, he appeared in many of Wang Jing's bad films.

How could someone who has been making movies for decades and has worked with Wang Jing for decades not understand Wang Jing's tricks?

Many times, I would take the movie even though I knew it was a bad one, just to repay Wang Jing for his great help.

It may also be related to a word from the Dragon King.

When his career was at a low point, Andy Lau sought help from the Dragon King.

The Dragon King told him not to be impatient, as his peak had not yet arrived and he would remain in the entertainment industry for the rest of his life.

He was also specifically reminded to be humble, and as long as he could maintain a humble attitude, he would remain popular for a long time.

Many celebrities and wealthy people in Hong Kong believe this.

Liu Dehua listened to the Dragon King, was humble, and went wherever help was needed.

For example, in "Infernal Affairs", Liu Weiqiang took the script and looked for investors everywhere, but no one was optimistic about it. So Andy Lau received salary as an investor and starred in the film.

Ning Hao's famous work "Crazy Stone" was also invested by Andy Lau.

He is a humble person and helps people everywhere. His career is really getting more and more prosperous and he is making more money, so he has always remained humble.

"Director Li, when will your movie 'Aquaman' be released? It's been almost three months since it was filmed." Wang Jing asked curiously.

He was very curious about what Li Yu's first blockbuster in Hollywood would look like.

In the 1990s, many people from Hong Kong went to Hollywood to develop their careers, including directors and actors, but most of them couldn't make it there in the end.

(End of this chapter)