China Entertainment please answer! 1997

Chapter 95 Cooperation with China Film Group

Soon, Cao Qing only stayed in the China Film Group for less than two hours, and he had already contacted the production directors and discussed in advance about the production of Cao Qing's "The Grandmaster" in a few months. Distribution issues.

After completing this important matter, Cao Qing finally had to do the most important thing since coming to China Film Group, which was to meet Han Sanpin.

But even though it was a face-to-face meeting, Cao Qing was not as uneasy about Han Sanpin as other directors in the film and television industry.

As for Han Sanpin, Cao Qing, who almost didn't need his help except for a little need for some connections, was able to maintain a normal heart even though he didn't say that he had no desires or desires.

I said before that I want to obtain investment from China Film Group. There are three specific cooperation methods. The first one is to directly invest all the money from China Film Group. Sufficient investment funds also need to continue to prove themselves at the box office.

This kind of cooperation means nothing at all to Cao Qing, who is already a peg.

However, China Film has three specific investment methods. Although Cao Qing is not interested in the first investment method at all, he is still quite interested in the second financing method.

China Film Group's second investment method is a co-investment model that is relatively more commercial than the previous institutional investment.

In this cooperation model, China Film and the cooperative film company will each contribute a portion of the investment in the cooperative film and share risks and benefits together.

This model is relatively common both at home and abroad. After all, the film industry is too risky. It is possible that a film with tens of millions of investment can earn tens of millions or even over [-] million at the box office, and it is also possible that the investment amount The final box office of movies with tens of millions and over [-] million is even less than tens of millions.

In this kind of film investment behavior with extremely high risk fluctuations, although there are film companies that can suppress dark horse films from time to time and make the company's annual turnover explode, but at the same time, there are often giant film companies that lose money because of several consecutive losses. Movies, directly dragging down the cash flow of the entire company, bringing the entire company, which was still extremely prosperous, directly to the brink of bankruptcy.

In order to reduce this risk as much as possible, even those seemingly brilliant movie giants generally only make full investments in some low-cost movies.

For those films with overly large investment, unless they are particularly confident and extremely confident, even the film giants will still choose multiple companies to cooperate. In this way, although the benefits will be smaller, the risks will also become more controllable. .

And what Cao Qing wants to discuss with Han Sanpin this time is this kind of cooperation model. After all, there are too many movies and TV series that Tengda Film and Television Entertainment will produce in the future, and the current funds of Tengda Film and Television Entertainment are not counted. many.

Under such circumstances, although Cao Qing is willing to slow down his pace, it is not impossible for Cao Qing to complete such a good thing all by himself, but this kind of behavior is a bit troublesome and ugly after all, and this kind of behavior in the entertainment circle Companies that look too ugly are often prone to joint boycott and friction by all parties in the later stage.

Although Cao Qing is not afraid of such things as making public outrage out of his confidence in his works, he is not only focused on the film and television industry. When there are other paths to choose from, he is very wise. I don't intend to eat it all by myself.

In the next cooperation model with China Film Group that he plans to discuss with Han Sanpin, Cao Qing plans to accept a small part of China Film Group's investment in some movies and TV series that are not particularly important, in order to obtain China Film Group's help in various aspects. All save Tengda Film and Television Entertainment a lot of energy.

In Huaguo's current film and television industry, there are many film companies that have chosen this cooperation model like Cao Qing. Many of these companies will even become famous in the future, such as: Huayi, New Screen, Xingmei, Poly and so on.

Although these film companies are independent on the surface, in fact, they all have cooperative investment relationships with China Film Group behind the scenes. What Cao Qing plans to discuss with Han Sanpin now is to make his company a Huayi's new screen is generally a China Film Cooperative Enterprise.

After bidding farewell to several directors of China Film Production, Cao Qing declined the idea of ​​accompanying them all, and walked up the China Film Building alone.

Of course, it refers to the China Film Studio Building. In fact, due to the recent reorganization, this building is still the same building as the Beijing Film Studio.

Walking up the stairs slowly, Cao Qing casually browsed the surrounding environment while thinking about the problem in his heart.

"Well, it's still the same dilapidated place, no different from what it was a few months ago."

"Sure enough, China Film Group is still poor these days, and Han Sanpin is still far away from becoming the later Han Sanye."

After watching for a while, Cao Qing silently came to such a conclusion.

Cao Qing's way of summarizing a matter is always so quick and arbitrary. However, although arbitrary, Cao Qing's conclusion that China Film Group is poor is indeed correct.

Compared with the China Film Group that will flourish in the future, the China Film Group this year is completely like a dying old man. Even though it has just been reorganized, it still has a long time to recover and become young.

After all, during the nearly ten years from 1993 to 2002, Huaguo film has been in a long period of downturn. At this time, a huge problem facing the heads of major film studios across the country is , How can the film studio under him survive normally.

Different from the period when he first traveled to this world, Cao Qing has personally experienced the Chinese film situation in the 90s in the past two years or so, so he has no doubts about the huge problems faced by the Chinese film and television industry at this time. He also understood something in his heart.

I remember that when "Crazy Stone" was released in 98, Cao Qing once thought that movie theaters in this era must be very profitable, because for those young people in the 90s who were still relatively lacking in spiritual material, through movies It should be a good entertainment consumption to learn about the world and enrich one's spiritual life. In addition, there are not many movies shot these days, so it stands to reason that the number of attendees in each cinema hall should be high.

At that time, the extremely good attendance rate of the movie "Crazy Stone" also confirmed Cao Qing's idea.

However, Cao Qing's idea was overthrown by him only a few months later.

At that time around March 99, Cao Qing decided to go to the movies because he was bored for a while, so he specially invited Huang Bo and Liu Yijun.

Unexpectedly, when he arrived at the movie theater, the whole movie theater was empty, and even during the one and a half hour playing time of that movie, except for Cao Qing, Huang Bo, and Liu Yijun, there were no one else in the whole screening hall. No one else came in.

And when Cao Qing and the others came out, they realized that not only their auditorium was like this, but the situation in the other auditoriums was also similar.

In the entire cinema, Cao Qing counted, and besides himself and Huang Bo, there were no more than ten people in the audience. What a bleak scene it was.

Cao Qing has never seen this kind of scene in more than ten years, even Cao Qing had seen the most dilapidated movie theater in his fourth-tier city before his rebirth (a movie theater that was already very old and was about to be demolished and rebuilt), It is far from being so rare that the number of moviegoers is so rare that there are more staff members than audiences.

Cao Qing, who was puzzled by such a scene, finally understood how difficult the operation of the cinema these days was after careful consultation with the staff in the cinema.

According to the cinema staff, Cao Qing learned that during the whole year, the cinema where he came to watch movies, except for those Hollywood blockbusters, or the movies of Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Yimou, could be considered to have a large number of people. In addition, other domestic directors at this time have no appeal at all to the audience.

Even many domestic audiences, after hearing the names of directors who have released movies, are often reluctant to pay for such expensive movie tickets and are not willing to pay for these rubbish directors. Instead, they directly choose to spend a fraction of the genuine movie tickets. After a few days, I would go to a street stall to buy pirated discs and watch them at home.

For this reason, in this time period in the late 90s, many theaters could only sell woolen sweaters during the day and show movies at night, so as to make a living without letting themselves go bankrupt.

It is also because of this situation that throughout the 90s, not only did the total annual box office of Chinese movies total less than one billion, but the number of movie screens across the country has also been slow to grow, remaining at around 3000 yuan all year round. scale.

Under such a situation, Cao Qing's debut film "Crazy Stone" was really well promoted by him. It happened to attract a large number of the most fashionable young people from the Internet. Otherwise, with the current domestic situation, Considering the sluggish movie viewing situation, Cao Qing's "Crazy Stone" will most likely not exceed the box office of 300 million.

Since this is the case even with Cao Qing's excellent "Crazy Stone", how can those films whose production level is far inferior to "Crazy Stone" survive in such a depressed state of movie viewing? ?

It is precisely because of this that the Beijing Film Studio (China Film Group), which produces dozens of hundreds of films a year, is still very bright on the surface, but in fact it is already in turmoil, and it is losing money every year. , just trying to keep it from going bankrupt.

The general situation of China Film Group will continue until 2002.

That year, with the third reform and change of China's film industry, it continued into the third year. Although the entire film industry was not yet completely prosperous, open and prosperous, it already had fertile soil that provided power for this situation.

In addition, Zhang Yimou's "Hero" was so brilliant and domineering that it changed the habit of countless Chinese people never going to the cinema, and China Film gradually ushered in a golden period of development.

As for the three changes in the film industry in Huaguo, although the third was in early 2000, it actually started in 1993.

At that time, the superiors issued a letter entitled "Several Opinions on the Reform of the Current Mechanism of the Film Industry" (Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, Document No. 1993, 3), which directly broke the original system in which film distribution rights were monopolized by China Film Distribution and Exhibition Corporation. State-owned studios across the country For the first time, it has the autonomy to distribute its own films abroad.

At the same time, in this document, it is also mentioned for the first time that movie ticket prices should be liberalized in principle, and the specific ticket prices should be controlled by local authorities themselves, and they should be raised or reduced reasonably according to the development progress of their own cities. Base fare.

The internal reform of the film industry this time can be regarded as initially loosening the soil for the rise of the film industry in the future. The film industry is no longer filled with strict rules and countless shackles based on news organizations, and the industry has been slightly loosened.

However, such a degree of reform is still not enough to make the domestic film market truly prosperous.

So not long after, the domestic film industry carried out a second update and reform. This time, with the approval of the upper management, the major movie theaters in Huaguo were officially able to import a certain number of imported films from abroad.

Soon, as these extremely wonderful Hollywood blockbusters entered the market, countless audiences who had never been to the cinema before were formed into the habit of going to the cinema to watch movies. Among them, the Unparalleled Giant Wheel set off countless turbulent waves in the Chinese film industry, and completely stimulated the domestic audience's interest in Hollywood blockbusters.

However, the interest of domestic audiences in watching movies is only for those Hollywood blockbusters and top domestic directors such as Zhang Yimou and Feng Xiaogang. For other domestic directors who are not well-known, they still have no interest at all. extremely stingy.

But in any case, since 1994, this system of introducing a batch of Hollywood blockbusters every year can be considered a good thing for the entire domestic film market.

Even though the entry of these Hollywood blockbusters crushed the confidence of countless Chinese directors, it also provided new inspiration for the reform of film studios.

The situation in the film industry caused by this second reform is exactly what Cao Qing could see the year he traveled through time.

However, these two reforms can only be regarded as initially increasing the possibility of prosperity for the film industry. It was the third reform that really made the Chinese film industry prosperous.

This time, the film industry began to officially announce reforms to the whole society. From this year onwards, finally, not only those state-owned studios can start filming, but even those commercial capitals that are completely outside the system can officially enter film industry.

That is to say, this third reform and welcome directly brought new vitality to the Huaguo film industry. Huaguo film was finally no longer all cultural units, no longer all public institutions, but truly defined as an industry.

That's why until now, Cao Qing finally came to meet Han Sanpin, vice chairman of China Film Group.

Because in the past few years, no matter how much Cao Qing wanted to cooperate with China Film Group, there was a huge irreconcilability between a private film company like him and a domestic giant like China Film Group.

It was not until the beginning of this year that this huge irreconcilability was finally issued with a document from the upper echelon, and there was a possibility of initial harmony, which also gave Cao Qing and Han Sanpin a real basis for cooperation.

(End of this chapter)