November 10, 2008, sunny.

Tokyo.

In the past week, the well-known Chinese films "Red Cliff Up" and "Gravity", which have become famous in Japan, have been officially released in more than 400 cinemas in Tokyo.

Rarely, the Tokyo Film Market, which has been deserted for a year this year, has begun to heat up, with long queues forming in major movie theaters, and fans in Tokyo and from surrounding cities and counties waving their banknotes to buy movie tickets for the upcoming screenings.

Among them, two-thirds of the audience bought tickets for "Red Cliff Up", and less than one-third bought tickets for "Gravity".

Compared with ordinary space sci-fi films in the eyes of Japanese audiences, the Three Kingdoms-themed "Red Cliff Up" is indeed more pleasing to the audience.

At least on the day of the opening, more fans chose to watch "Red Cliff I".

This also made Wu Baige very excited and regained some face.

The Japanese market has always been regarded as Wu Yuan's big box office, and among the directors on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and three places, there is no one like Wu Yuan who has a huge box office appeal in Japan.

But now this "monopoly" seems to be about to be broken by Wu Baige.

With the Three Kingdoms + Jin Chengwu, two points that are very interesting to Japanese fans, the opening of "Red Cliff Up" has triggered a movie-watching boom.

On the Internet, the Heisei boys who watched this movie for the first time are also commenting on this movie.

In general, although mainland audiences are not very satisfied with Wu Baige's magic plot in "Red Cliff", Japanese audiences are still quite acceptable.

Even let Lin Chiling play Xiao Qiao as the protagonist, they have no opinion.

Originally, Xiao Qiao was a well-known beauty of the Three Kingdoms in Japan, and the story centered on her and Zhou Yu, so it didn't matter.

As for the sentence "Meng Meng, stand up" that was ridiculed by the mainland audience, because of the re-dubbing, and the word "Meng Meng" lost its flavor after being translated into Japanese, it did not cause any complaints among Japanese fans.

This made "Red Cliff I" three days after its opening, and its word-of-mouth and box office performance in Japan were very good, with a cumulative box office of more than 1 billion yen in three days, and it was sought after by many Japanese fans.

In comparison, the box office performance of "Gravity" in Japan is relatively flat, with a three-day box office performance of only 400 million yen, although it also shows an upward trend, but this kind of hard science fiction movie does not have a good soil in Japan.

Japanese fans have always been not very interested in the "science fiction" theme, whether it is the once global hit "Star Wars", "Star Trek", or the later surreal soft sci-fi Marvel series of movies, they have failed many times in the Japanese box office market, but they can't do local small fresh movies.

Wu Yuan naturally can't rely on his own to reverse the preferences of Japanese fans.

However, the Japanese reputation and score of "Gravity" are still very high, and on the Japanese film review website, the opening score reached 8.5 points, and it is still rising.

In terms of plot depth and ideological depth, "Gravity" is a few dimensions higher than "Red Cliff Up", even the most tricky film critics have to admit that this movie is excellent.

Although it is a little worse than "Red Cliff I" at the box office, in terms of word-of-mouth score, "Gravity" is higher than "Red Cliff I", which can be regarded as a regain of a city.

However, what really makes Wu Yuan proud is that after the two movies were released at the same time, "Gravity" grabbed market share from "Red Cliff Up".

Judging from the current box office trend, the box office forecast of "Red Cliff Up" in Japan is around 4 billion yen, which is 1 billion yen less than the 5 billion in the original time and space.

The Japanese box office forecast of "Gravity" is around 2.5 billion yen, which is not much, at least compared with the box office of more than 10 billion in "Your Name", the gap is very huge, but when converted into RMB, there are also 150 million, and 40 million can be obtained in the era of light and shadow.

I have to admit that making high-cost hard sci-fi movies is really thankless.

In the absence of a global market, "Gravity" only relies on the Asian market, with a cost of 350 million, even if you add the money from selling distribution rights in Europe and the United States, it will earn about 100 million yuan, which is Wu Yuan's work with the lowest profit ratio until now.

However, there are indeed many other hidden benefits that this movie has earned for Wu Yuan in Huaxia.

It is a good thing to awaken the "science fiction dream" of domestic fans, it is another good thing to become the business card of Chinese films, and it is another good thing that Chinese films have mastered the science fiction field in the crown of films.

If Zhang Yimou became a national teacher after the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, and opened a level gap with other directors in the mainland, then Wu Yuan can be regarded as jumping out of the level after the release of "Gravity" and standing on the same level as Zhang Yimou.

Although there may be no way to compare the position of the national teacher, it is only half a step behind at most, and there is still a significant gap with other directors who are not at the same level.

Even the Golden Rooster Award, which has always kept Wu Yuan out, was ordered by the top this time that Wu Yuan must be invited to participate and give the award to "Gravity".

Although the new Golden Rooster Awards will open in October next year, it is basically decided now, and the best film of next year's Golden Rooster Awards will be "Gravity".

Gong Li will also win the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress for the third time with this movie, becoming the first actress to win three Golden Rooster Best Actress awards.

In fact, Wu Yuan, who got the news, first thought of not holding the golden rooster stinky feet.

However, the person who informed him was the leader of the Ministry of Culture, and the leader of the people was a soft-spoken, and he didn't say a lot of good things, and he also came up with the argument of "uniting domestic comrades", and Wu Yuan didn't want to refuse to participate.

But he can see it clearly, the golden rooster is really hopeless, and the important awards are either determined by the cronyism organizing committee to their juniors, or they are designated by the above, and it has nothing to do with fair selection at all.

On the other hand, Jinma also sent an invitation to Wu Yuan this year.

It's not "Gravity", but "A Man Named Li Wen Decided to Die" was shortlisted for five nominations at the 45th Golden Horse Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress.

God knows why "A Man Named Li Wen Decided to Die", which was not released on Taiwan, received so many nominations.

Anyway, this kind of operation is not the first time that Jinma has done it, so that some award-winning guests have asked their souls about Taiwan's movie release mechanism: "Why haven't we seen many of the shortlisted movies on Treasure Island?" ”

"More excellent mainland films should be brought into the cinemas of Baodao, so that fans of Baodao can also enjoy them."

Look, there are still sober filmmakers on Treasure Island, although there are not many.

It is also because of this that after receiving the invitation of the Golden Horse this time, Wu Yuan pinched his fingers and calculated, there are still ten years left before the 2018 Golden Horse, and he can go to the Golden Horse for a spin this year.

Relatively speaking, "the fairest and most just gold of the three golds" is indeed worth participating in the three golds in Chinese.

However, even the most fair and just Golden Horse, in the original time and space, this year's "Casting the Name" will beat "The Assembly" to win the best feature film, and "Cape No. 7" to win the best director.

You tell me that this award is fair and just?

If you're serious, you'll lose.

(End of chapter)