In the coffee shop, Li Lianjie said goodbye and left early, leaving only Lin Youlun and Huang Ziqiang to sit and chat.

"How much investment does Director Huang think this film will need?"

"This ......"

Huang Ziqiang was a little embarrassed, his initial idea for the film "Serious Crime Unit" was to do it according to the investment standards of Cheng Long's "Police Story", at that time, this was already his highest expectation for this movie, and now the situation has far exceeded his expectations.

Funded by Lin Youlun and joined by Li Lianjie and Hong Jinbao, this film is fully qualified to impact Hong Kong's top productions, while movies of the same genre, some of which cost less than a few million, and some of which are as high as tens of millions.

Lin Youlun asked this, in fact, he was also testing Huang Ziqiang's confidence in this movie.

Huang Ziqiang is very entangled, he knows that even if he offers a sky-high price of 50 million, Lin Youlun will agree to him without blinking an eye, but when a 50 million movie is made, what level of box office must it reach to satisfy Lin Youlun?

At least it also gets the level of Da Chenglong's "Red Fan District" and "Die Hard", but is it possible for "Serious Crime Team"?

Huang Ziqiang shook his head in his heart, not that he had no confidence in himself, but because of the limited subject matter, it was difficult for this film to make a difference in the European and American film markets.

All Huang Ziqiang can do is make this movie popular in Asia, so he will never mention the sky-high production fee of 50 million in front of Lin Youlun.

"30 million." After thinking about it for a long time, Huang Ziqiang carefully said a figure that was somewhere between a top-tier production and a mid-budget film.

Before creating "Serious Crime Unit", Huang Ziqiang decided to make a realistic action movie. It is not only necessary to photograph the social reality of the luxurious life of wealthy businessmen and the struggle of low-level citizens. At the same time, the action scenes in the film also need to be real and credible. In this way, the filming of the film will inevitably increase a lot of difficulties, and the production cost of 30 million is higher than Cheng Long's "Police Story", but excluding the salaries of Li Lianjie and Hong Jinbao, in fact, the difference in production cost between the two films is not large.

Of course, the investment of 30 million is not small, and there are more than a dozen movies in Hong Kong that can exceed 3,000 at the box office a year, which means that the movie "Serious Crime Unit" should have a good box office result in Hong Kong, and then sell smoothly in overseas areas. It is possible to recover the cost and make a profit.

So when he said this production cost budget, Huang Ziqiang was still a little nervous, for fear that Lin Youlun would not agree.

In other words, it is to find others to cooperate, and it is a big deal to break up if you can't talk about it, but it is different to cooperate with Lin Youlun.

Not to mention that Li Lianjie and Hong Jinbao agreed to appear in this movie because of Lin Youlun's face, that is, Huang Ziqiang really has the courage to bypass Lin Youlun and find someone else to invest, and someone has to dare to take over.

In order to offend Lin Youlun for making a movie, a fool would do such a thing.

But in Hong Kong, there are really two guys who are not afraid of heaven and earth who have done such a thing, one is Wang Jiawei. One is Xu Ke.

Wang Jiawei secretly helped Deng Guangrong start filming "Carmen Mong Kok" without telling Lin Youlun, and then this movie was suppressed for a whole year. In the end, Liu Zhenwei "sold himself" to Lin Youlun and promised to help him make a movie, which can be regarded as being revealed.

Xu Ke failed to reach an agreement with Lin Youlun on the investment issue of the movie version of "Zhu Xian", and then found Lin Jianyue of Media Asia, and Xu Ke dared to do this because he had Lin Youlun's permission in advance.

Huang Ziqiang thinks that he doesn't have the confidence of Xu Ke, nor does he have a good friend like Liu Zhenwei, so when Lin Youlun agreed to invest in the movie "Serious Crime Team", he actually had no room to bargain with Lin Youlun.

Lin Youlun was thinking about it while drinking coffee, and the risk of investing 30 million in filming "Serious Crime Unit" is a bit high, because the box office of this movie released in Hong Kong in memory is only more than 27 million, of course, now that this movie has been completely transformed, the reference value of the box office data in my memory is not large.

It doesn't matter if you make less money, it can be regarded as the only intersection between Li Lianjie and Hong Jinbao on the screen.

Lin Youlun's frowning brows slowly relaxed, and when he made his decision, the anticipation on Huang Ziqiang's face, who was sitting opposite, finally turned into uncontrollable joy.

——

After Huang Ziqiang left, Lin Youlun did not leave this café, he was still waiting for someone.

Liu Zhenwei arrived ten minutes earlier than the agreed time, and when he saw Lin Youlun sitting there, he thought to himself that this is bad, could it be that he has misread the time?

On the way over with the waiter, Liu Zhenwei secretly glanced at the wall clock behind the café bar counter, and found that he was not wrong about the time, that is, Lin Youlun misread the time?

No matter what the situation is, it seems that it is himself who is unlucky, Liu Zhenwei smiled bitterly in his heart.

"Mr. Lin, I'm sorry, I'm late."

Liu Zhenwei was happy, and he took the initiative to admit his mistake as soon as they met, but Lin Youlun was confused by his actions.

"It doesn't seem like the time for us to make an appointment has come yet, right?"

The expression on Liu Zhenwei's face stiffened suddenly, and the muscles under the corners of his eyes twitched even more unconsciously, Lin Youlun came to himself this time, wouldn't it be for Xingshi to ask for guilt?

Sure enough, Lin Youlun then mentioned what Liu Zhenwei was most worried about.

"I saw the sample you sent......

Liu Zhenwei noticed that Lin Youlun's eyes were staring at him, and his heart was furious, and he didn't dare to open his mouth rashly, so he had to pick up the coffee cup and hide his inner uneasiness with the action of drinking coffee.

Lin Youlun asked Liu Zhenwei to use the original cast of Xu Ke's version of "Zhu Xian" to start filming a funny version of "Zhu Xian" last year, and Liu Zhenwei agreed to come down.

Wang Jiawei's matter made Liu Zhenwei feel that he owed Lin Youlun a great favor, so he had no way to refuse this matter.

Fortunately, Lin Youlun did not stipulate when Liu Zhenwei's drama should be filmed, only that it should not be released later than Xu Ke's version of "Zhu Xian", Liu Zhenwei thought to himself that Xu Ke loves to play stunts, and movie stunts have two characteristics. One is to burn money. The second is time-consuming. Thinking about it, it would take more than a year for this movie to be completed in Xu Ke's hands, so he was not too anxious to adapt the script in the first place.

At that time, Liu Zhenwei felt that there was still more time, so he put this movie aside and went to make other movies, but the movie was not very smooth, and it took a year to complete the movie that was originally planned to be completed in half a year.

Liu Zhenwei turned around and immediately thought about coming back to shoot this funny version of "Zhu Xian", and then he contacted Xu Keyi to find out. Xu Ke still has three months at most, and the post-production can be completed.

For three months, Liu Zhenwei thought to himself that it was okay, although the time was a little tight, it should be in time, so he was not particularly panicked at that time, but what happened next made him unable to sit still.

Xu Ke's film version of "Zhu Xian" in his hand, the cast can be said to be unprecedentedly strong, and the starring actors alone include Liang Jiahui, Zhou Comian, Wang Guxian, Qiu Shuzhen, Zhao Yazhi; The supporting roles are a lot of stars, Liu Dehua, Liang Chaowei, Zhang Xueyou, Zhang Yurong...... Because of the schedule. It is not easy to get these people together to film, for the sake of Lin Youlun's face. These talents specially squeezed out a period of time to film this film.

Lin Youlun's original intention was to let Liu Zhenwei and Xu Ke start filming at the same time, and the actors worked hard and ran at both ends, which saved time and ensured the smooth completion of the film.

Xu Ke started filming on time, but Liu Zhenwei didn't keep up with it, these actors were busy after filming Xu Ke's film, and when Liu Zhenwei remembered to make this movie, it was impossible for these people's schedules to get together.

Liu Zhenwei begged his grandfather to tell his grandmother, and finally persuaded several leading actors to spare two weeks to help him shoot this scene, and the other actors could only spend a period of time to help him make up some scenes.

At this time, Liu Zhenwei didn't even come up with a script.

Liu Zhenwei sat in front of the desk for three days, and found that he couldn't think of a clue at all, until one day Wang Jiawei asked him out for tea, Wang Jiawei saw that he looked very bored, as if he was about to die, so he asked him what happened.

Liu Zhenwei will face such a problem, in the final analysis, it is all because of Wang Jiawei, seeing that he was embarrassed to ask, he immediately became angry, saying that he couldn't write the script himself, and asked Wang Jiawei to help him write it.

Wang Jiawei was a scoundrel and said: "I can't write it, you write better than me, or you come, I'll go first." ”

Liu Zhenwei grabbed him and threatened: "Don't forget who I made this movie for, if the film is smashed, you and I don't want to have good fruit to eat." ”

Wang Jiawei reluctantly sat back in his seat, saying that he really couldn't write the script, but the idea was to help Liu Zhenwei come up with one.

Liu Zhenwei also had no choice but to use a dead horse as a live horse doctor, and planned to listen to what Wang Jiawei had to say first.

As soon as Wang Jiawei spoke, Liu Zhenwei regretted it, because this guy didn't have any idea at all, but talked about a movie he thought of when he was filming "The True Story of A Fei".

Xu Ke started the wave of new martial arts movies in Hong Kong, Wang Jiawei was also excited to follow the film, it was too hard to think of a ready-made story, so he thought of adaptation, and the first choice must be Jin Yong's work.

And Jin Yong's works are also different, TV series such as "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" have been filmed in several versions, but there are not many movie adaptations, and TV series like "Smiling Proud Jianghu" and "Blue Blood Sword" are not filmed much, but they are popular themes for movie adaptations.

It's not that the Hong Kong film industry and the TV industry have any tacit understanding on this issue, but the martial arts works that are familiar to TV dramas, there is very little room for film adaptation, or how to say that Wang Jiawei is a literary and artistic youth? This guy likes to play with personality, and no one else likes to touch the subject, so he wants to try it.

I heard that this guy actually wanted to adapt Jin Yong's "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", Liu Zhenwei rolled his eyes directly at him, which means that you should save it, this novel is a classic, but it has been adapted by others so many times, what tricks can you shoot?

Wang Jiawei didn't see it that way, saying that others were filming according to Jin Yong's novels and going step by step, but what he wanted to shoot was stories that were not told in Jin Yong's novels, such as the stories of the East Evil and the West Poison, the Southern Emperor and the Northern Beggars when they were young.

Wang Jiawei said this, Liu Zhenwei couldn't help but nodded, these people died in the novel, and those who didn't die were already top masters, and it was a very novel idea to shoot the story of their youth, at least no one had done it before.

Wang Jiawei then said, you can use this idea.

Liu Zhenwei was stunned for a moment, thinking to himself that yes, "Zhu Xian" doesn't also have a group of characters like the East Evil and West Poison Southern Emperor and Northern Beggar, if you write the stories of these people, you can directly jump out of the framework of the original novel, which not only reduces the controversy caused by the adaptation, but also reduces the difficulty of the adaptation.

Tian Buyi, Dao Xuan, Wan Jianyi, Su Ru, Master Shuiyue, and Ghost King The stories of these people when they were young, even if they are mentioned in the novel, they are all brushed aside, and they don't write how they want to write after the end?

The more Liu Zhenwei thought about it, the more excited he became, and the more he thought about it, the more excited he became, and a story soon came to his mind.

The script has eyebrows, but a new problem is coming, the cast that Lin Youlun specified for Liu Zhenwei is based on the main characters in the novel "Zhu Xian", and now it is necessary to replace it with the stories of Tian Buyi, Dao Xuan, and Wan Jianyi, the actresses are enough, but the male actors are short.

When Wang Jiawei heard this, he said happily that it doesn't matter, didn't the actors Zhang Yurong, Liu Dehua, and Liang Chaowei in "The True Story of A Fei" also play some cameo roles in Xu Ke's version of "Zhu Xian"? Who did Liu Zhenwei fancy to these people, and Wang Jiawei helped him coordinate.

Liu Zhenwei said without hesitation, who else to choose, I want all these people!

Because of the tight time, Liu Zhenwei only had three days to write the script, and then the sets and everything were set up casually, and the special effects were all used in the traditional techniques of Hong Kong films, which were so rough that they couldn't be rougher, and it took 20 days to complete this "Da Lu Laughing and Laughing Immortals".

Excluding the actors' salaries, the total cost of the movie is less than 2 million, and the total cost is only 13 million, while Lin Youlun's budget for Liu Zhenwei was 40 million, and only one-third of it was used in the end.

It is said that this movie is made so cheaply, Liu Zhenwei should not have been the frightened appearance when he saw Lin Youlun, but in fact, Liu Zhenwei did not have the courage to look directly at the other party when facing Lin Youlun's gaze at the moment.

Because of the hurry, this "Da Lu Laughing and Killing Immortals" is a product on the assembly line, for other filmmakers, as long as the box office does not lose, they can explain the past, but in front of Lin Youlun, this approach feels a little perfunctory.

Therefore, Liu Zhenwei is very weak now. (To be continued......)