The National Holiday Period every year has a fixed audience base. But now that two popular movies have been released, wouldn’t that squeeze the box office space for my "Space Fortress"?
In this parallel world’s Xia Country, it’s now 2021, and the nationwide box office record for a film is only a little over 30 billion yuan.
Movies that pull in over 20 billion yuan at the box office are all hot bestsellers, and the ones that surpass 1 billion yuan are all the favorites of the year!
Ma Wenhai has previously made several billion-dollar box-office movies, and the box office of his last sci-fi movie was also a big hit.
However, unexpectedly, this year’s "Space Fortress" encountered a Waterloo!
"Leaving aside the matter of having the box office space squeezed, when I analyzed the quality of the film itself, compared to your previous sci-fi movie, it doesn’t seem to have made much progress," Chen Dachun pointed out the problem.
One must admit that Chen Dachun has a unique vision.
Being one of the country’s renowned directors/producers, he was able to pinpoint the problem with old friend Ma Wenhai’s "Space Fortress".
"What more progress could be made? The special effects have been used very well already, and we cast popular internet celebrities, the props, voice-overs, sound effects, I have all used a mature system!"
Ma Wenhai said to Chen with a frown.
"To be honest, old horse, your habit of hiring popular internet celebrities should change." Chen Dachun shook his head, suggesting.
"Without popular internet celebrities, how can we guarantee the basic audience?" Ma Wenhai’s eyes widened instantly.
Since entering the internet era, Ma Wenhai believes popular internet celebrities are key. Their acting can be somewhat downplayed, but famous actor/actresses are irreplaceable.
Therefore, most of Ma Wenhai’s movies involved popular celebrities.
The early ones were popular actors, but the later ones were basically pure internet celebrities. This year’s "Space Fortress" even cast super popular internet celebrities. As for acting skills, are they important?
In Ma Wenhai’s understanding, they were not important at all!
However, in Chen Dachun’s opinion at the moment, this was an old horse’s misunderstanding.
"Old horse, in recent years, the reputation of the internet celebrities, apart from within the fan circle, is generally not that good. The public doesn’t really have a good impression of internet celebrities."
Chen Dachun had to seriously analyze the current situation for his old friend: "Admittedly, a few years ago, many directors did make a lot of money from using internet celebrities to make movies. But times are changing. From my observations over the years, the weight of the internet celebrities in movie casting is increasingly losing balance. What do audiences watch? Story, special effects, acting. What do internet celebrities have? They might not even be able to make a good story!"
Chen Dachun’s words made Ma Wenhai fall into deep thought.
"Chen, this statement of yours..."
Ma Wenhai initially wanted to refute his old friend’s words.
However, upon careful thought, Chen seemed to make sense.
There are still many directors casting internet celebrities in movies and TV series, but the profits have gradually dwindled.
His own "Space Fortress" has indeed taken a huge tumble and it seems to signify that making movies with internet celebrities is on the decline.
Unless it’s a low-budget movie, using internet celebrities might still be profitable.
If you want to make a high-budget movie with large-scale special effects and still use internet celebrities, the movie itself might seem disjointed due to their abrupt acting performance and the requirements during shooting.
"Have you taken in what I said?" Chen took a puff of the cigar in his hand and asked.
"Tsk... how to say it, I just thought what you said made some sense." Ma Wenhai frowned heavily and said: "Take the lead actor of our "Space Fortress" for example, he had many demands during shooting. As he is a top-tier internet celebrity, he was hard to cater to, which indirectly increased our production cost!"
Seeing his old friend Ma Wenhai having such thoughts, Chen Dachun showed a slight smile: "Of course, that’s just one of the reasons. For the control over the entire movie, I think you might have lowered it because of the actor problem. I remember you used to have strong control over the pace of the movie!"
"Yes, that’s indeed the case."
Ma Wenhai nodded and said softly.
"Old horse, we encounter a Waterloo when making movies, it’s nothing. As long as we find out the cause and solve all the problems, we will earnestly make the next movie and your reputation, old horse, will come back to public view!"
Chen Dachun encouraged his old friend.
A loss of 35 million yuan meant quite a sum of money for Ma Wenhai, but it would not knock Ma Wenhai, a renowned director, off his feet.
The failure of "Space Fortress" mainly challenged the fame and status of Ma Wenhai, a first-line director.
A decline was certain.
But since Ma Wenhai had such a good foundation before, even the failure of "Space Fortress" wouldn’t knock him down completely.
Chen Dachun believed that as long as old horse’s next movie held steady, he would be able to maintain his position as a renowned first-line director in the country.