In 1997, Hong Kong's Chinese-language box office champion was Jackie Chan's kung fu film "A Good Man", and the global box office champion was the American special effects blockbuster "Titanic".

Obviously, it was "Titanic" that defeated "A Good Man".

You must know that "Titanic" attracted 3 million moviegoers in Hong Kong at a price of 40 Hong Kong dollars per ticket, making the Hong Kong box office exceed 100 million for the first time, which is a desperate record.

In the future, the decline of Hong Kong films is the victory of the era of American blockbusters, in fact, the Hong Kong film market itself has not shrunk, but "Titanic", "Harry Potter", and "The Lord of the Rings" have seized the inherent market that should be Hong Kong films.

Traditional overseas markets such as Taiwan and Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have fallen one after another, and the narrow local market of Hong Kong films cannot support the high-cost investment in the blockbuster era.

After 2003, after the rise of the mainland market, comedy films lost their competitiveness due to cultural differences, kung fu and martial arts films were constrained by cost investment and defeated by mainland co-productions, and hot-blooded hero films were subject to the institutional environment and failed to make breakthroughs.

It can be said that the decline of Hong Kong films began to show signs in 1994, which occurred in the five years from 1997 to 2002, when the overseas market of Hong Kong films began to fall into blockbusters, but did not enter the Chinese market.

It was not until 2002 that Lao Mouzi's "Hero" was reformed and the mainland market began to take off, and Hong Kong films realized the importance of the mainland and began to enter on a large scale.

However, at that time, Hong Kong films had already declined.

In fact, the production level and ability of Hong Kong films at that time, Lei Weidong thought that there was no decline.

You must know that bad movies come in every period, and among the excellent movies, the production level of the Cold War and Drug War series of movies has not dropped significantly compared with the works of the mid-1990s.

Even this period gave birth to classic movies like "Infernal Affairs".

So why is Hong Kong cinema in decline!

Some people say that it is because of the decline of Hong Kong's economy, but Lei Weidong thinks this is unreasonable.

You must know that although Hong Kong's economy is not as dazzling today as it was in the 1990s, its GDP is still growing, and many pillar industries such as finance, real estate, retail, and tourism are still thriving, especially the overall box office of the Hong Kong film market has not decreased.

In terms of other entertainment industries, although Hong Kong's TV dramas and music have lost their influence in the mainland, they are still popular in the mainland and are also affected by piracy, but there are still singers like Eason Chan in Hong Kong, and TVB's TV dramas have not been affected in the local market share.

But movies have indeed declined even more seriously, and even Hong Kong people mainly watch American blockbusters, rather than local Hong Kong films.

The main reason for this, Lei Weidong thought about it carefully, is because of a key thing, which is also a key reason why our Eastern world's science and technology cannot catch up with the Western world, that is, it is only property rights, to put it bluntly, in East Asia except for Japan, the problem of piracy is too serious.

In all the entertainment industries in East Asia, we can see the problem of piracy.

Those entertainment products produced at a small cost, such as novels and music, are much more seriously affected by piracy than movies, and Lei Weidong, who was a writer in his previous life, knows how crazy pirated books are.

However, compared with other entertainment and cultural industries, the biggest difference between the film industry and other entertainment and cultural industries is that the investment in the production cost of a single product is much higher than that of other cultural commodities, especially in today's multimedia era, if the film wants to attract the audience to the cinema, the fantasy film model with large special effects and large scenes is the most important magic weapon.

In the era of blockbusters, it has a huge local market, which can provide large production investment at sky-high costs, and can widen the visual effects gap through high-investment digital technology and other countries' films, which is an important reason why American films can re-establish their hegemony in the world.

But its copyright protection is a magic weapon for Hollywood films to survive.

Many people have seen Hollywood movies achieve a shocking global box office and create a box office record, but I don't know if you have ever thought that in Hollywood, it can be said that there are very few movies that can recover their costs just by relying on the box office, and almost none in the blockbuster era, except for those few movies that have a sky-high box office.

Let's take the movie "Titanic" to talk about things, "Titanic" is James. A god film shot by Cameron, the hallmark of Hollywood movies, has captured one box office major after another, and set box office records one after another in various box office centers.

It was the big ship that kicked off the world domination of Hollywood films.

However, Did Titanic make money? Asking this question, many people may say stupid, how can the box office of Big Ship with such a high box office of 1.8 billion US dollars not make money, and how can 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures still fight a lawsuit and divide the money if they don't make money.

Yes, Big Ship has a box office of $1.8 billion, including $600 million in the United States and $1.2 billion worldwide, but have you ever thought about how much it costs to make?

James. Cameron is a big money spender, spending 250 million US dollars in order to shoot a big ship, and the shooting time is five years, precisely because the shooting time is too long and the money is too huge, 20th Century Fox finally La Paramount Pictures shared the cost together, and then the two companies worked together to use the distribution channels of the two companies to distribute together around the world.

$250 million is just the cost of shooting, and the cost of distribution, copying, advertising, etc., is at least $150 million, otherwise where does the overwhelming advertising come from, you must know that the big ship has been released for several months, which costs money, and it can be said that the total cost of the big ship is at least 400 million US dollars.

Of course, some people say that even 400 million US dollars has recovered its cost, but that is because you don't have a clear understanding of the box office, and the box office is not equal to profit.

In the United States, after the 90s, the share of the theater chain has been fixed at 50%, 50% of the box office is given to the theater chain, and the remaining 50% of the box office has just begun to be calculated.

In other words, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures can only get $300 million at the box office in North America, and fortunately, both companies have their own distribution companies, otherwise they would have to be divided by the distribution company.

The remaining 300 million US dollars can't be taken all, because there are still taxes, Lei Weidong has read a lot of novels describing movies in his previous life, and he seems to have forgotten one thing, that is, in the United States, box office income has to be taxed.

Don't underestimate taxes in the United States, because of taxes in California, many film companies go abroad to make films, not because of the low taxes in those areas.

Lei Weidong is not very clear about what the entertainment tax rate in the United States is, after all, he was not in this industry in his previous life, and the situation in the United States is even more unclear.

However, I have heard many people say that because the United States supports Hollywood films, the tax on American films is much lower than that in Hong Kong, let's just calculate it at 10%.

So in the end, the North American box office revenue was only 270 million US dollars, which can be said to be just the North American box office, and the two companies did not even recover the cost.