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The emergence of VCD has ushered in a round of great changes in the Hong Kong film industry. VCD discs are much less expensive to produce than videotapes, which gives piracy a greater margin of profit. The impact of pirated VCDs on the box office in foreign ports is extremely fatal to Hong Kong's small film companies.

Li Ke brought together a large circle of film company bosses, and naturally he also had his own purpose. On the one hand, he came forward to do some soothing work on behalf of Asia Pictures, but on the other hand, he actually had his own plans.

The impact of pirated VCDs on New Arts City, Golden Harvest and Asia Pictures, the three Hong Kong film industry leaders, is far less serious than that of other small and medium-sized film companies in Hong Kong. The main reason for this is the strong distribution ability of these three major film companies.

On the one hand, these three companies can try their best to achieve simultaneous release in the East Asian and Southeast Asian markets, the main box office of Hong Kong films. In this way, before the piracy reacts, the box office of the new film will be squeezed as much as possible. On the other hand, the distribution channels of these three companies are far from being comparable to other Hong Kong film companies.

For example, Golden Harvest has successfully knocked on the door of the Japanese market by relying on the golden sign of Jackie Chan. Asia Pictures, on the other hand, relied on good cooperation with Universal Pictures and NBC broadcasters to gain a foothold in Hollywood. Most of Hong Kong's small and medium-sized film companies have almost no overseas distribution channels, so they can only sit and wait for the film companies to come to their door.

But building an independent distribution channel needs to be backed by the strength of the company, such as Golden Harvest as early as the 70s, hoping to open up the US market. But since Bruce Lee's death, Golden Harvest's efforts have had little effect. In another time and space, it was not until after "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" exploded at the US box office that Golden Harvest could be considered in the minds of American distributors. With that little status.

Of course, if the strength is strong to the point of Li Xuan, all the unspoken rules of the industry will be meaningless. In order to enter Hollywood, Golden Harvest has paid a lot of tuition fees over the years. As soon as Asia Pictures comes up, it will be able to cooperate well with Universal Pictures, one of the eight major Hollywood companies. The difference is entirely due to the fact that the Eastern Bloc allocates a significant amount of money every year. Various product placements in Hollywood blockbusters. Therefore, Hollywood film companies naturally want to try their best to curry favor with Li Xuan, the big financier.

What's more, in order to win an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, Li Xuan can throw out millions of dollars to tackle key problems without blinking. If necessary, he simply bought a Hollywood movie giant directly, which is not out of the question.

It's just that Li Xuan's focus has never been on the film and entertainment industry, and many investments are just incidental or fun. In contrast, Li Ke attaches much more importance to the family film company in his hands than his younger brother.

Among the assets under Li Ke's name, the largest piece is the real estate company - Kunpeng Real Estate. As early as when Hong Kong's real estate industry collapsed due to Sino-British negotiations, Kunpeng Real Estate borrowed a large amount of funds provided by Li Xuan. A large number of villas and commercial houses have been hoarded at low prices. As Hong Kong's property market has warmed up over the years, Kunpeng Real Estate's investments have doubled.

At the beginning, Li Xuan snatched food from the hands of Jardine Matheson Group and dug up the fat of Hongkong Land, and deliberately put many of Hongkong Land's buildings in Central under the name of Kunpeng Real Estate. It's just that Kunpeng Real Estate, which mainly collects rent, doesn't need Li Ke to put much effort into it.

In addition, the second part of the assets under Li Ke's name comes from the listed company Xingguang Electronics. The total annual R&D investment of the Oriental Research Institute has exceeded 1 billion US dollars, so much real money has been poured into it. Naturally, a lot of results can be produced. But Li Xuan's vision is still very picky, and the Eastern Bloc has not stretched the battle line very long. Instead, focus on doing some high-quality projects. For example, liquid crystals, such as VCDs, and later DVDs, such as digital mobile phones.

And many other projects that the Eastern Bloc itself does not look at but have real value will naturally seek external cooperation. Li Ke, as Li Xuan's brother, must be the first to get the moon near the water. For example, Starlight Electronics started with the pager project, and now Starlight pager has a share of the Asian market. It is already in second place after Motorola

In addition, the base disks required for VCD DVDs such as those issued by Oriental Commercial Company are also purchased from Xingguang Electronics. The optical disc technology of Xingguang Electronics is naturally inseparable from the support of the Oriental Research Institute. It is important to know that the purpose of optical discs is not only limited to recording VCD discs, but also music CDs, computer storage discs, etc.

Starlight Electronics after the earlier listing. The share price has risen all the way, and now the total market value has exceeded 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars. The shares held by Li Ke are worth more than 800 million Hong Kong dollars. But Xingguang Electronics also does not need Li Ke to put much effort into it, and the CEO recommended by his younger brother Li Xuan is fully responsible for the specific business. His most important job is to sign the word "agree" on the document signed by the chairman.

The two companies of Kunpeng Real Estate and Xingguang Electronics have made Li Ke's net worth exceed 3 billion Hong Kong dollars. As Hong Kong's property prices continue to rise, his worth is still soaring, and he has been ranked among the top of the Hong Kong rich list. In comparison, the assets of Hejiahuan Pictures are far inferior, but this is the company that Li Ke spends the most attention to.

Compared with Kunpeng Real Estate, which has no need to meddle, and Starlight Electronics, which can't be involved, Hejiahuan Pictures can be regarded as a company that Li Ke really runs single-handedly. Before he took over the company, Hejiahuan Pictures was just a leather bag company used by Hele Tang to launder money. And after he became the owner, the company really became formal, and now Family Carnival Pictures has new films almost every month. Although not every part earns, but at least it earns more and loses less, and the annual profit growth is very gratifying.

The scale of Family Carnival Pictures has been able to rank among the top second-rate in the entire Hong Kong film industry. But after thinking about participating in the competition in overseas markets, its strength is still a little insufficient. Therefore, taking advantage of the industrial crisis caused by VCD piracy, Li Ke has the intention to swallow some small fish to strengthen his own strength.

Compared with his younger brother who has not been exposed in advance in recent years, Li Ke is more and more fond of being chased by the spotlight. From time to time, there is lace news in gossip magazines about him flirting with a model or female celebrity.

Li Xuan naturally doesn't know his eldest brother's thoughts, and in fact, he is not very clear about the recent turmoil in the Hong Kong film industry. For example, in the case of the use of computerized ticketing in movie theaters, his eldest brother Li Ke considered it from the position of a movie boss, and focused on the impact on the box office of the movie.

And for Li Xuan. He prefers to think in the shoes of an IT company owner. It's not just a matter of selling a few more computers, it's a deeper reflection of the advent of the computer age.

In recent years, Uncle Shao has gradually shifted the focus of his business to TVB. Especially under the blow that Shaw Brothers Pictures has not improved much even when the Hong Kong film market is booming year by year, Shao Liushu intends to close Shaw Brothers Pictures and sell Shaw Brothers Cinemas.

Asia Pictures replaced Shaw Brothers and is now one of the three major film companies in Hong Kong, along with Golden Harvest and New Arts City. But at the production level. The performance of Asia Pictures in recent years has completely surpassed Golden Harvest and New Art City, but because it has no theaters under its own. While Golden Harvest and Golden Princess have agreed to provide a large number of desirable placements for Asian Pictures' films, it is inevitable that they will suffer losses in many cases.

Therefore, after Asia Pictures learned that Uncle Shao Liushu intended to quit the film industry, it can be said that it was determined to win the Shaw Brothers Cinemas. Of course, it was not that Asia Pictures was without other competitors, such as the famous brand Pan also interested in acquiring Shaw Brothers Cinemas and then entering the film industry. However, Asia Pictures offered Shao Liushu a very high price, and at the same time, ATV Group agreed that Asia Satellite TV would maintain a tacit understanding in the competition with TVB in the future. is no longer so aggressive, and finally succeeded in making Uncle Shao Liu relax.

After the acquisition of Shaw Brothers Cinemas, Asia Pictures immediately carried out a large-scale upgrade and transformation of the cinema chain, among which computerized ticketing is one of the most important reforms of the renamed Asian cinema chain. Compared with traditional manual ticketing, computerized ticketing is not only more convenient, but most importantly, more transparent.

In addition to computer ticketing, Asian cinemas are also realized through network networking, real-time box office statistics. Make the box office more transparent. You must know that Hong Kong's cinema chain has long been monopolized by Golden Harvest, Golden Princess and Shaw Brothers. In addition to having a small say in the scheduling of films, small and medium-sized film companies are even more aware of the cattiness at the box office.

For example, the most common practice is to steal the box office. The audience obviously bought the ticket for movie A, but the box office was counted on the head of movie B when the actual statistics were counted. In later generations, domestic cinemas did this, and the main motivation was that the sharing ratio and rebates were different when each film negotiated with the theater chain.

Movie theaters naturally hope that those movies with high dividends and generous rebates can sell more box office, so that their own income can also be more, so they have the motivation to cheat. Hong Kong's cinema chain and production company are together, for example, Golden Princess Cinema is actually the majority shareholder of New Arts City. Golden Harvest Cinemas is a subsidiary of Golden Harvest Pictures.

If the box office of other film companies can be replaced by the box office of their own films, then for the whole group, the increase in revenue is not half a star. Therefore, the driving force behind the box office stealing of Hong Kong cinemas in this era is much higher than that of mainland film companies in later generations.

The newly established Asian cinema chain uses automated computers to issue tickets, and the box office is announced online in real time through unified networking. The possibility of cheating is almost minimized. So much so that other Hong Kong film companies would rather have a lower percentage of box office stratification and release them in Asian theaters.

Asian cinemas can be said to have won the attention of the new people as soon as they came up, neither playing tricks nor using vicious competition, but using upright means to put Princess Jin and Golden Harvest under tremendous pressure. Don't look at the small and medium-sized film companies in Hong Kong, a single strength may not be able to compete with the theater chain, but once united, no one can ignore the energy that erupts. In normal times, if there is a conflict of interests between everyone, the theater chain only needs to pull a batch and fight a horse, and Hang Lung can resolve the alliance between them.

But this time it's different, these companies are crying and shouting that they want their new films to go to Asian theaters. Although Golden Harvest has its own film company, and although Princess Jin has supported Xinyicheng, it is impossible to fill the two major theater chains with the films of these two companies. So in the end, Golden Harvest and Golden Princess Cinemas were also forced to upgrade their computer ticketing systems.

The market in Hong Kong is too small for Oriental Group, for example, in order to develop a computer ticketing system, it needs to cooperate and coordinate with a number of subsidiaries, including Aikang and Oriental System Software. If it is only for the Hong Kong market, it is naturally very uneconomical.

But Hong Kong's significance to the Eastern Bloc is that it is an excellent testing ground. Hong Kong is such a small place, with a population of five or six million, and although there is still a gap between the economic level and the developed countries in Europe and the United States, this distance is constantly narrowing, so Hong Kong can become a sample of the European and American markets.

In fact, the Eastern Bloc is doing exactly that, for example, Hong Kong is now the fastest growing region in the world. The reason why Asian cinemas have been able to count online box office statistics in 88 years is that it relies on Hong Kong's perfect network infrastructure.

The Hong Kong sample provides the best example for the Oriental Group to promote in other regions. For example, the Eastern Bloc has been actively promoting its own computerized ticketing system in the United States. Many movie theaters in the United States are already using computers to issue tickets, but their systems are not as functional as the newly developed systems of the Eastern Group, especially since the development of the Eastern Group focuses on the future Internet era.

The executives of the cinema company only need to sit in their own offices, and they can check the ticket sales of all their theaters in a timely manner through the networked computer, so as to adjust the schedule according to the attendance rate at any time, which is of great significance to the cinema company.

AMC Cinemas in the United States, in which Oriental Group has a stake, has taken the lead in adopting Oriental Group's online computer ticketing system. With the rapid development of the Internet in the United States, I believe that more and more cinema companies will realize the advantages of the computer ticketing system of the Oriental Group!

In fact, it is not only the computer ticketing system, but also the digital mobile phone that Li Xuan is very concerned about, and the Oriental Group also chose Hong Kong as the first promotion test base. After nearly five years of continuous development, the digital mobile phone project department of the Oriental Research Institute has finally succeeded in producing satisfactory results.

Unlike the digital mobile phones that are being developed in Europe using the GSM standard, Li Xuan chose the CDMA standard, which is more promising in the future 3G era, from the beginning. The laboratory samples have already been developed, and after continuous improvement, the first CDMA digital mobile phone that can be produced on a commercial scale is finally technically mature!

[It's about to be 515, I hope to continue to hit the 515 red envelope list, and the red envelope rain will be able to give back to readers and promotional works on May 15. A piece is also love, and it must be better!] (To be continued.) )