Chapter 465: A movie with an investment of more than million
At noon on October 10, the Chinese Internet was still immersed in the aftermath of the Golden Rooster Awards, Dongpei City.

Wang Chengguang arrived at the gate of a large middle school and saw a middle-aged man not far away. He was dressed in shabby clothes but holding a clean lunch box waiting for school to end. He walked over with a smile and said, "Mr. Ma, are you bringing lunch to the children?"

Mr. Ma, who was in his early 40s and had some gray hair, was surprised. "You called me? Do we know each other?"

Now is the time when The Wandering Earth is preparing for large-scale development and preparations. Wang Chengguang has long been considering how to configure the large team, including the casting of some personnel for the sequel.

The world is big and there are many people.

However, with his divine sense sweeping across the sky, it was not difficult to find suitable actors. For example, he easily found Ling Jing, Fang Keming, Gao Wenshan and others from the crowd to play important roles in the Infernal Affairs series.

The Ma Haowen in front of him is the person in the story of Galaxy Tutorial Class. He is in his early 40s and looks gentle and his temperament is not very good but not bad either.

Wang Chengguang smiled and took out a business card and handed it over. "I'm a director. I want to invite Mr. Ma to join my new crew to play a role as your son who is in the second year of high school. When the sequel starts filming in the future, I may invite him to play a role as well."

Ma Haowen is a talented person!
He took the business card with a confused look on his face. When he saw Wang Chengguang's name, Ma Haowen was shocked again. "Are you Director Wang? The famous director of Infernal Affairs Part 1 and Part 2?"

"Although I don't pay much attention to those, recently everyone is talking about your two masterpieces. They are said to be great works that ushered in a new force and new pattern in the film industry since the millennium... Can I be an actor?"

Ma Haowen really wanted to complain, are you really the famous director whose fame spreads all over the world, including the streets and alleys of Dongpei City? A new superstar who rose to fame by living off women?
There's no way. Even if people don't pay attention to triad-type works like Infernal Affairs or black-and-white confrontation works like police anti-drug operations in real life, the fact that Wang Chengguang is a gigolo and one-on-two or one-on-three is also a huge scandal gimmick. The two Infernal Affairs films may not be so explosive even if they hit the HK$600 million box office in China and South Korea.

The impact of the scandal of being a gigolo is very strong.

Especially the poor boy from Beijing, who squandered all his money on his first business venture and had to sleep on the street, and then he became a gigolo of the super white, rich and beautiful little princess from South Korea... This is the big news that spread all over the streets.

Although Ma Haowen has not watched Infernal Affairs, it does not prevent him from often hearing gossip about the king of gigolos in his daily life.

Wang Chengguang smiled and smoked cigarettes. "I think Mr. Ma is talented, and so is your son. Doesn't he like aerospace and dream of becoming a pilot or an astronaut? My new work happens to go deeper in this area. Let's find a place to talk about it."

Ma Haowen's 17-year-old son Ma Fei, who is in his second year of high school, is a good match for the role of the teenager Liu Qi in Wandering Story.

It's another father-son duo like Huang Jianzhi and Huang Zhenhua.

Ma Haowen was shocked again, "You even know this? School is almost over..."

Wang Chengguang nodded, "It's not a big problem. Many actors in my new work have to learn how to fly airplanes, go to the International Space Station, and adapt to life in the space station, including weightlessness training for astronauts going to the moon, moonwalking, etc."

"This is closely related to the space theme, and your son will definitely be interested in it."

The story of Galaxy Tutorial is about a father named Ma Haowen who was taken the blame for an accident and went to jail for seven years. His wife remarried and little Ma Fei became a rebellious teenager.

After Ma Haowen was released from prison, Ma Fei had poor academic performance, loved to skip school, and was often at the bottom of the class and was about to be expelled from school. However, under Ma Haowen's personal education, his test scores improved from the bottom of the class in more than half a year to the top ten in the entire grade.

The biggest transformation of Ma Fei was that before the 1998 Zhuhai Air Show, Ma Haowen helped him take a half-month leave and traveled to the vicinity of the air show by bus. He played during the day and took tutoring classes at night. Because he couldn't buy a ticket, he found a natural mountain forest and went to the top of the mountain to watch the fighter planes soaring in the sky like eagles.

After witnessing the fleet of planes breaking through the air at close range, Xiao Ma Fei was completely transformed. As the saying goes, he finally had his own goals and dreams, and he had matured.

Then, in order to realize his dream of aerospace, he always ranked among the top students in his grade at Boyu Middle School, the best school in Dongpei City. Two years later, while other students were still worried about the college entrance examination, he had already received the admission letter in advance.

Continue to grow until 2019, and become China's youngest astronaut! Go to space on the Dawn .

As for Ma Haowen in front of him, he is also quite funny. He was born in 1960 and was a college student in the early 80s. This gold content is too valuable. After graduation, he joined the Dongpei Municipal Design Institute, which has a similar organization to Huang Zhenhua Architectural Institute.

However, before the 1990 Asian Games, he built the largest Dongpei Bridge in Dongpei. He was bribed by his apprentice Lu Datou, and was cheated by other leaders for embezzlement... When the Asian Games torch relay was passed to Ma Haowen, he held his son and the torch to show off that the Dongpei Bridge in front was his work.

As they were talking, the bridge collapsed!

Because he had been taking the blame in court for seven years, after he was released, apart from educating his son and working hard to make money, he was busy looking for all kinds of information to appeal for himself, hoping to restore his personal reputation.

It was not until 2019 that his reputation was restored and his appeal was successful.

A college student in the early 80s, a bridge designer, and with seven years of prison experience, he was a man with a lot of experience.

Ma Haowen was even more shocked by his words. "Aerospace movie? Director Wang, if you say so, you really hit upon my son's biggest dream..."

"But my son is really good, but I am not. I have a criminal record and have been in prison. Now I have been running around collecting materials to restore my reputation, but many departments have been kicking me around like a ball, and I can only do odd jobs."

Wang Chengguang laughed, "There are many talented people in prison. Do you ever need to show your acting skills? I guess there are quite a lot. As long as you are willing to come with me and try, I promise to help you restore your honor within three years."

"As long as you join the crew, your jail time stain will become the topic of the crew and will be hyped by countless media. Who was the one who took bribes and cheated Dali for money back then? Some gossip paparazzi will help you find out."

When it comes to fishing, Wang Chengguang is a professional!
What Ling Jing and others wanted to learn most was how to run a 1000-meter dash in full-speed winds, while Bai Erru and Jiang Xueqiong wanted to get a chance to purchase or just help exhibit valuable antiques.

Designer Ma Haowen's biggest pursuit is to train his son into a talented person and restore his own reputation. After all, he did not take a penny of bribes, and he had already found out that the various construction parameter data of the Dongpei Bridge during its construction were completely different from his design data.

This was a good section of bridge for the Asian Games torch relay. It had just been built and was not yet open to traffic. When the torchbearers passed to this place, the bridge collapsed... Fortunately, they hadn't run on it yet.

Otherwise it would have been far more than seven years!

That is quite extraordinary shoddy construction in the world.

Ma Haowen, "???"

He nodded after a moment of confusion. "Director, you are right. I am being kicked around by many departments. If I become famous, or get a huge reputation or a hot topic, it will also attract a lot of interest."

"Director, what role do you want me to play in your work?"

Just then, the school bell rang.

Wang Chengguang smiled and said, "Let's go. I'll ask for leave for your son. Let's go out and find a place to have a big meal. I've brought the script with me. As long as you're willing to join us, we'll definitely be able to keep up with the pace."

Regardless of whether Ma Haowen's acting skills can keep up, he will have Teacher Yin Bing to back him up. However, the old Ma in front of him may not need Teacher Yin Bing to keep up. The role reserved for him by Wang Chengguang is Tu Hengyu.

Do you think there are similarities between Ma Haowen and Tu Hengyu? There are many similarities. They are both masters or junior masters in the field of science. One of them had his wife die in a car accident, and his daughter had to transform into a digital life to survive.

One was blamed and went to jail, his wife married someone else, and his son became a problem.

As for the various emotions towards family, in terms of method acting, the various emotional performances that Tu Hengyu needs to show, Ma Haowen can basically find them easily from his own experience and perform them instead of the designed plots of the script.

As for Liu Peiqiang? He plans to find Pan Wanli, the chief commander of the Beijing Space Control Center in the story of the Galaxy Tutorial Class 18 years later.

Eighteen years later, Pan Wanli would be in that position, and his rank would not be low. It is probably too early now, considering that The Wandering Earth has such a strong and grand aerospace attribute...

Originally, there would be a lot of communication with the Space Agency and the Space Control Center.

I had lunch with Ma Haowen and his son, and gave them a copy of the script, which was a color comic version with only text but no storyboards. They were already very excited and said it was great.

Their biggest dream is to live a successful and wonderful life. In the future, they just want to go to the sky. But what about the wandering script? The sun goes out, the planetary engine stops the planet, the moon explodes, and tens of thousands of engines push the earth to escape the solar system! !

For a man who has a dream of aerospace, this is simply irresistible.

…………

After Wang Chengguang returned to the capital, he only asked Pan Wanli out. Pan Wanli was already an elite aerospace person and a small leader with a regular position, and his treatment was to get a color comic-level script.

How surprised to learn that such a protagonist had happened to him?

After dinner, Pan Wanli found a group of experts to study the scientific nature of the script, whether it was reasonable and conformed to physical, chemical and other scientific principles.

Then many people get more and more obsessed with it the more they study!
Most people feel that this scenario, in which humans face a world-destroying crisis and the Chinese are one of the leading figures in their escape, is too romantic and almost ignited the souls of many aviation professionals, like Yugong moving mountains or Dayu controlling floods.

Similar to the Transformers robot, it feels exciting to be ignited by the fire source!
…………

On October 10, Infernal Affairs 29, which had been released for nearly a month, grossed over 3.3 million Hong Kong dollars in China and South Korea, shocking the film and television industry.

Including the cumulative number of one film, the figure has completely exceeded 600 million.

When Wang Chengguang was still making phone calls and screening the cast in the hotel, Mr. Guo knocked on the door. He had just come in and found the water dispenser to drink a few cups of warm water. Then Mr. Guo excitedly said, "Director Wang, a buyer from Europe and the United States has come to us. He wants the European and American theater and DVD distribution rights. He can give 1000 million dollars for two Infernal Affairs movies."

"An Asian film company also came to us and offered 300 million dollars for the distribution rights in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. They didn't want DVDs, only theatrical distribution. If they sell the rights, they can earn more than those professional award-winning directors."

"No matter how much of the box office revenue of the two films, which is over 6 million Hong Kong dollars, you will get this 1300 million US dollars after paying taxes."

Based on the current exchange rate of US dollars to RMB, 1300 million US dollars is just over million RMB.

When the box office in mainland China was sluggish and at a complete standstill, there were many professional directors or those from the academic school who specialized in making movies that would win European and American awards. Once they won the awards, it would be easy to sell the European and American distribution rights.

But after the first and second parts of Infernal Affairs made crazy profits in the cinemas, they were still able to sell at high prices that even award-winning directors could not afford!

This really opens up a new landscape in the film industry.

Wang Chengguang was delighted and personally made Guo a cup of inferior tea that could slightly refresh him but would not significantly change his body constitution. "Only 1000 million in Europe and America? That's for both the cinema and the DVD. Lao Guo, can you help me get 1500 million dollars back? I can also sell the rights to remake it."

He doesn't lack this small amount of 10 million dollars. Only when the movie is actually released in theaters and made into a DVD can the expansion power be stronger, and he will always have to pay a price.

"As for the island countries and various parts of Southeast Asia, they will be sold for $500 million, but not the remake rights."

Is it expensive? In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of blockbuster films with a total North American box office of 300 to 500 million US dollars and a global box office of over 1 billion were produced in North America. That’s why the impact of industrialization on the global market is so strong and fierce.

There were also blockbusters that could make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office in the mainland with the help of special effects, and this was in an era when piracy was rampant.

As for the island country? Actually, it's not bad. Whether it's a European and American romance blockbuster or a special effects action blockbuster, there are many movies that have grossed over 100 million US dollars in the island country alone.

Basically, in the 90s, there was a Hollywood blockbuster that grossed over 2002 million US dollars every year in the island country. Even the worst ones would be 1500 to million US dollars. Some cartoons could also make to million US dollars in the island country. The original track, a heroic blockbuster released in the mainland in , sold million US dollars just in the European and American theaters! That was the beginning of the era of mainland blockbusters, and now it has been cut short by the two trilogies of Infernal Affairs.

Teacher Guo finally woke up from his dream and was no longer so excited. He slapped his thigh and said, "Yes, we can still bargain. Look at me, I am superficial. The main reason is that the span of Infernal Affairs is so big that I am confused. In the past, the most the film producers offered for a movie was 300 million dollars."

"The highest price for the two films before was only $700 million, and it has suddenly soared to tens of millions. The unit progress is too big. I will go and bargain now."

After saying that, Lao Guo grabbed the Nokia in his hand and ran out to make a call.

If the US$2000 million is agreed upon, even if it goes into Wang Chengguang's pocket, he is still an important participant. He is the producer of the first and second parts of Infernal Affairs. How great is his experience to handle such a big thing? !

After all, Mr. Guo’s main job is still a teacher in the directing department of Beijing Film Academy.

Wang Chengguang smiled and continued to make the call. Today is October 2001, 10, and the Wandering Earth project can basically be officially launched.

Speaking of which, on September 9, he returned to Beijing from Hong Kong Island to discuss the construction of a special effects studio base with Mr. Han from China Film Group. At that time, they had already started selecting a site in Huairou, and the construction had been going on for more than a month.

It includes a green screen shooting location where the actors need to perform flying states, a moon walk shooting studio where they can perform a strong sense of weightlessness, and an aviation training reaction studio, etc.

Little Broken Ball is officially open for business!

Huang Yimei can come back and learn how to shoot special effects. Taken 1 has not been completed yet, but the problem is that Huang Yimei is just a vase in it, and her role is much less than that of her father.

If we focus on shooting her scenes in advance, she can finish filming.

…………

December 2002, 5.

In the Huairou Film and Television Base, a long filming base, Wang Chengguang sat behind the monitor and finished shooting the last set of shots, which was a certain part of the reshoot. He then grabbed the loud speaker and said, "Filming is finished. Don't go home until you are drunk at the celebration banquet tonight."

It has been half a year. The entire crew has been shooting in different film and television bases, different physical scenic spots, including the exteriors of some buildings in New York, Antarctica, etc. It is really normal to finish shooting in half a year. The shooting period of the original Tracks: Wandering 2 was also half a year, and that was during the epidemic.

As long as the actors' performances are good, the script can be handled.

But for a big movie, especially a special effects blockbuster, the end of the actors' shooting period is actually the beginning of the film production. If there are many special effects shots, it is normal to take an extra year to complete the film.

If we add the half year or more of polishing of the initial high-quality script, the production process of a good movie will be extended to two or three years.

The core group of this crew, except Huang Yimei, who does not have personal guidance from the Yinbing acting teacher, basically all the others have it.

Of course, roles such as the diplomat, the commander-in-chief, the space elevator attacker, etc., which do not deserve to have their own names, can be easily filmed without the use of ghost soldiers as long as a group of veteran actors from the film and television industry are selected.

At these words, the entire crew cheered.

Applause and screams rose up together. No one knew whether the final film would be as gorgeous and expensive as the color comic storyboard script, but over the past six months, tens of thousands of costumes and props had been invested in the crew.

On the surface, a small half of them came from South Korea and were produced in factories controlled by Nancy, a fallen chaebol princess. The other large half was purchased and rented by the crew from various factories in the mainland, including some units.

For example, there are airplanes, various special vehicles, automatic moving door robots with a strong sense of science fiction, drone swarms, and a physical version of a space elevator that can go up and down to a height of more than ten floors, but is a large model that cannot actually go into space.

Moon base model, lunar rover model!

wait wait wait.

Just on the surface, the investment in the film cost more than 800 million RMB! Although the crew of The Wandering Earth has been closed for a long time and has not been open to the public, its reputation of spending money has already spread throughout the film and television industry.

For example, Wang Chengguang made use of his knowledge of physics, power engineering, etc., and from the overall framework design, he really designed a mobile robot door that looks like the one shown in the movie... This is not only a waste of money but also promotes technological development.

More than 800 million was spent in half a year, and how many more will be spent on the post-production special effects? This is really as much as the spending of various Hollywood industrial blockbusters. A Hollywood blockbuster investment is 100 to 200 million US dollars, which is also a lot.

There is such a strong spending power.

Countless film and television personnel involved in this movie felt their hearts beating faster and their blood burning. Even at the peak of Hong Kong film industry, there had never been an heard of a blockbuster with such a huge investment.

With so much investment during the production period, the pay of the leading actors is just a drop in the bucket compared to this investment. The male lead Liu Peiqiang got 20, the female lead Han Duoduo got 50, and Tu Hengyu, Zhang Peng, Zhou Zhezhi, Ma Zhao, etc. are all cheap.

The manufacturing of a lunar base model and several special vehicle models is more expensive than the lead actor’s salary!
People outside began to suspect that Wang Chengguang, who had gotten his fortune by living off his wife, was about to eat up all of Nancy's family assets.

Of course, this is just fast, because in the past six months, Spark Blog has gained 800 million active users in Greater China and 1 million active users in South Korea, and these are active users! ! Various external institutions have estimated the market value of Spark Blog to be million US dollars.

After all, this was the dot-com bubble bursting in the millennium…

If it weren't for the brilliant revenue from the first and second parts of Infernal Affairs, for example, the distribution rights in Europe, America and Southeast Asia were sold for 2000 million US dollars, and China and South Korea shared the box office revenue of more than 6 million Hong Kong dollars.

Also, during the Lunar New Year holiday, Taken 1 grossed over 4 million Hong Kong dollars in China and South Korea, and the distribution rights were sold for another 1500 million US dollars.

Due to the combination of multiple factors, many outside observers would say that Lao Wang is living off the rich woman and is almost bankrupting her.

Without Infernal Affairs 1 and 2, Taken 1, and Nancy's family background, this movie would never have been possible to complete successfully.

Countless people are now paying attention to Wang Chengguang's The Wandering Earth. Will it squander billions of dollars again and attract global attention, or will it really create a great work that will pioneer Chinese science fiction blockbusters?

The crew members were venting their passion in the midst of all the noise. A large group of people also came over to Wang Chengguang. Huang Jianzhi, Huang Zhenhua, and Huang Yimei all felt a bit like they were in a dream. Huang Yimei was the first to speak, "Director, if you lose this bet, my brother and I will sell film contracts to help you make up for it."

"You've raised our family. We'll support you for the next ten years."

Huang Yimei once shaved her head for a few shots, but a few months later she had a new short hairstyle.

Huang Jianzhi, "..."

Huang Zhenhua, "..."

The father and son looked at each other and wanted to cover their faces. When Nancy laughed, Huang Jianzhi, a professor of physics at Tsinghua University, coughed and said, "Rose's mouth is a bit stupid, but it also expresses a very simple outlook on life."

"I have been teaching and educating people for most of my life, but I never thought I would become famous in my old age. I never dreamed that the movie "Taken" which was shot so quickly would make 1.2 million RMB at the mainland box office. This is the first blockbuster movie with a clear record of breaking 80 million RMB since the s."

The Spring Festival box office was dominated by Hurricane Rescue. The combined box office of Infernal Affairs 2.1 and 448 only exceeded million yuan in mainland China, but Hurricane Rescue broke that record. However, this movie grossed million Hong Kong dollars in South Korea, which is equivalent to million moviegoers.

There is no way. Hurricane itself has created a new action genre. It is not just ordinary wild and domineering. It can be described as a retired old man who is like mowing the grass to eliminate evil and save his daughter. This is also the masterpiece of Nancy's real nominal director and deputy director Zhou Wenwen.

Considering her current popularity and appeal in South Korea, the fact that she hasn't yet generated more than 500 million viewers can only be attributed to the fact that too many South Korean netizens have called her shameless... It's outrageous that such a rich, talented, elegant and beautiful princess would throw herself at a Chinese man.

During the Spring Festival holiday period, the filming of The Wandering Earth has been progressing for two or three months. Investments in various costumes and props, especially the production of various special vehicles and models, have driven the industry chain to invest two to three hundred million yuan.

In South Korea, people online disliked her for being too generous and gave away everything she had, which led to another kind of opposition.

In the Wandering Earth project, Huang Jianzhi plays Han Duoduo's father Han Ziang. He sighed again, "In the past few months, many crews and film companies have offered me 4 to 5 million yuan to play the elderly male lead, similar to Hurricane Rescue."

"If Director Wang needs my popularity to attract audiences or play a role, I promise to be there whenever he calls."

Today, May 5th, the 5st Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony ended more than ten days ago. Infernal Affairs Part I and Part II once again won a lot of trophies. Nancy and Zhou Wenwen were the ones to accept the Best Director, Best Screenwriter, and Best Film trophies on behalf of the award winners.

At this stage, the Hong Kong film industry is in a superior position and looks down on mainland directors, actors, etc. However, when faced with a big director like Wang Chengguang who directly brought the declining Hong Kong film industry to shore and made crazy money, they can only support him.

Nancy herself was nominated for the Best Director at the Academy Awards for Taking the Wheels, but lost to Infernal Affairs. The Hong Kong film industry is also envious of South Korea's explosive box office.

With the help of Hurricane, Huang Jianzhi was nominated for the Best Actor Award at the Academy Awards, and Huang Yimei was nominated for Best Actress...but they lost to Ling Jing and Jiang Xueqiong respectively.

What the Taken crew actually won were a series of small awards including Best Action Direction, Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Art Direction.

Wang Chengguang smiled and waved his hands, "It's not that serious. You can just wait and wait for a year or so for the finished film to come out. Our wandering crew can't make it to the summer season, but if we act quickly, and let Nancy lead you to shoot Hurricane 2, we can still make it to the end of the 02 summer season."

The next step is to take various films to South Korea’s special effects production base to liven things up.

There is also a production base in Hong Kong Island.

The next moment he said to Nancy, "You and Wenwen are both assistant directors of the Wandering Project. You can post a blog to congratulate the filming on its completion, and be more honest, saying that this China-Korea cooperation has helped the two countries' film industries to start and develop, catching up with Hollywood."

"The filming is in mainland China, and the supercomputer special effects are done at the Seoul base, which also lays the foundation for the South Korean film industry. In addition, we recruited a few South Korean actors with strong abilities and big names to play supporting roles in the Hurricane 2 crew..."

With just a little bit of pull, South Korea's vote base will explode further.

Hurricane I earned 440 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office with more than 2.1 million moviegoers. Once it makes it past that, it will have to chase a result of at least 5 million Hong Kong dollars.

In this version, Nancy continued to guest-star in the Space Elevator Raiders, which could be considered a friendly performance. She also invited another South Korean movie star to be her companion, which gave the series some potential to become a big hit in South Korea.

Nancy nodded decisively and hurried off to do her work.

Zhou Wenwen came over and said with a smile, "Everything has been arranged for the wrap party. Boss, shall we take a group photo? I'll also post a few blogs later."

She was the largest shareholder of Spark Blog during the Internet bubble period, holding 80% of the shares, and was one of the richest women emerging in the Internet world.

Wang Chengguang didn't care about this little thing. The two took photos individually, including with the Huang family. Later, even Teacher Guo and other people behind the scenes came to take a group photo. Zhou Wenwen started to post updates, "It lasted for more than half a year, and more than 800 million yuan was invested. The special effects production is estimated to cost several hundred million yuan."

“It’s an end but also another beginning. I can’t wait for The Wandering Earth to be completed!”

Dynamic coordination filming, let alone ordinary netizens, even the staff or actors who have not left the crew yet, when they see this on the computer... they all feel so jealous that their stomachs will burst.

(End of this chapter)