"The Chess Master" is the third film adapted from Lin Chaoyang's original novel, and the fourth film written by Lin Chaoyang. This film can be said to have maintained the consistently high standards of films written by Lin Chaoyang.
Not only does it very accurately restore the essence of the original novel, but more importantly, it also maintains the texture and style that a high-quality movie should have.
In addition to the credit of the original work and screenwriter Lin Chaoyang, this is also inseparable from the originality of director Chen Huaikai.
As a meritorious director of Yan Film Studio, Chen Huaikai's directing skills and artistic sense are quite outstanding.
He followed the movie "Chess Master" from beginning to end for two years, and he was very dedicated to the movie.
The novel "Chess Master" has a strong reader base, and coupled with the hot topic of the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament in the past month or two, the "Chess Master" movie quickly triggered a large-scale viewing craze among the audience as soon as it was released.
After more than half a year, movie theaters in various districts of Yanjing once again saw long lines of audiences queuing up to buy tickets to watch movies.
Many cinemas have also begun to voluntarily advance and extend show times to ensure that audiences can see movies.
All these phenomena illustrate the popularity of "Chess", which can be said to be the most popular movie since the beginning of 1984.
More than half a month after the movie was released, the movie-watching craze swept across the country, almost exactly the same as in Yanjing.
In early November, a new issue of "Popular Movies" was released. The cover showed a handsome face full of bookishness and nobility. It was none other than Tony Leung Ka Fai's still from "The Chess Master".
As the first publication in the Chinese film industry, "Popular Film" has a very high status and influence both within the industry and among movie fans, as evidenced by the millions of copies sold per issue.
It uses Tony Leung Ka Fai's stills as the cover of this magazine, which also illustrates the popularity of "The Chess Master".
When "Behind the Curtain" was released last year, "Popular Cinema" did a special issue to report on the film, but Tony Leung's stills only appeared on the inside pages of the special issue.
This time "Chess Master" is so popular that Tony Leung Ka Fai appears on the cover of this national film magazine for the first time. This is also the first time that a Hong Kong film actor appears on the cover of "Popular Films", which can be regarded as a first.
Record.
An actor from Xiangjiang went to the mainland to shoot two movies in a row. It is said that he will shoot a third movie. It is said that he was banned by the Bay Island authorities because of this.
What a great promotional material!
It is simply the living treasure of the barrel station department!
Originally, "Popular Cinema" wanted to do an exclusive interview with him, but unfortunately Tony Leung Ka Fai returned to Hong Kong during this period, and was also recently promoting the release of "The Chess" in Hong Kong.
"Chess Master" is jointly invested and produced by Yan Film Studio and New Kunlun Pictures, so it is naturally not a problem to release it in Hong Kong.
However, New Kunlun Pictures is just a small studio in Xiangjiang. In the Xiangjiang film industry where Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and New Art City are three pillars, it is not easy for them to find a powerful distributor.
It is true that "The King of Chess" is a co-production, but it is basically a co-production. Most of the film's front and back-stage staff are from Mainland China. Only the leading actor Tony Leung Ka-fai and a few behind-the-scenes staff are from the Mainland.
People from Xiangjiang.
Moreover, these people are not well-known in Hong Kong. Even if Tony Leung Ka-fai, a Hong Kong actor, just won the Academy Award for Best Actor, he is just an insignificant figure in the film industry.
The Hong Kong film market is highly commercialized, so distributors were naturally wary of such a film with the "Mainland" label. In the end, Li Hanxiang had no choice but to choose Lianhua Cinemas.
Since the 1970s, there have been four major theater chains in the Hong Kong Film Market.
Together, these theater chains control nearly 90% of the cinemas in the Xiangjiang film industry. Cinemas are the channels for film distribution and the lifeblood of the film industry.
Controlling movie theaters means that these theater chains have the largest say in the Hong Kong film industry.
Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest, and Golden Princess, as they are known to later generations, are all film industry giants with their own theater chains.
As early as the 1960s and 1970s, except for the behemoth of the film industry, Shaw Brothers, there were not many production companies in the Hong Kong film industry that were tied to theaters.
But in the 1970s, Boss Shao's right-hand man Zou Wenhuai left to found Golden Harvest. He deeply realized that theater chains meant the right to speak in the film industry.
So he invested heavily in theater chains, and at the same time vigorously promoted the independent producer system and satellite company system.
Allowing creators to participate in dividends provides a freer creative environment than Shaw Brothers, and gradually cultivates Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung, Cheng Long, Yuen Biao, McDonald and other popular figures in the Hong Kong film industry.
This decision allowed Golden Harvest to rise rapidly in the early stages of its business, and also allowed Princess Jin, who was also a theater giant, to see that Shaw Brothers' studio system and salary system could no longer keep up with the development of the times.
The combination of theater chains and production companies, and the satellite dividend system where a hundred flowers bloom is the general trend.
Therefore, Princess Jin followed the example of Golden Harvest, used talents in an eclectic way, and vigorously supported small and medium-sized production companies. New Art City was one of the production companies supported by Princess Jin.
In addition to these three, there is another theater chain in the Hong Kong film industry that is not well-known but has great strength, and that is Lianhua Cinema.
Lianhua Group is a cinema chain alliance composed of Nanyang, Nanhua, Yindu, Huadu, Guobin and other cinemas as its backbone.
Compared with the previous three, the fragmented Lianhua Clique is more loosely organized and less powerful. Therefore, it has a poor reputation in the Hong Kong film market.
But one good thing about Lianhua is that they all belong to Chinese-funded theater chains, so there is no difficulty in releasing mainland movies here. If "The King of Chess" is to be released in Hong Kong, it is naturally the first choice.
But now that it's released, movie promotion is a problem.
The investment scale of "Chess Master" is small, there is no big company behind it, no funds, and there is no star cast. It is too difficult to attract audiences to the cinema to watch the movie.
After all, Li Hanxiang invested hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars, but he didn't want all these investments to go to waste, so he could only rack his brains to get some publicity resources for "The Master of Chess".
Tony Leung Ka Fai just won the Best Actor Award at the 3rd Hong Kong Film Awards, but was banned by the Bay Island authorities. This is a pretty good publicity point and can be used as a focus of publicity.
The remaining actors are all from the mainland and have no reputation in Hong Kong. It is useless for him to promote them.
Then there is the behind-the-scenes lineup. Director Chen Huaikai is also unknown in Hong Kong, and screenwriter Lin Chaoyang...
Li Hanxiang looked at the name "Lin Chaoyang" and couldn't help but think of the days when Lin Chaoyang dominated Hong Kong Island three months ago.
This kid made quite a few headlines in gossip magazines in those days. It would be a pity not to take advantage of it.
Two days later, a promotional release about "The Chess" appeared in some entertainment tabloids in Hong Kong. "In order to make this film, the Academy Award-winning actor was banned from Bay Island." "The Academy Award-winning actor was banned and moved to the mainland to maintain his career."
livelihood"……
At first, the style of press releases of these entertainment tabloids was normal, but after a few days, the content gradually became outrageous.
"The latest movie of Brigitte Lin's rumored boyfriend is released" ""The Chess Master" is released, the story of Brigitte Lin and her rumored boyfriend's romance"...
The entertainment tabloids are unscrupulous. The article titles are full of all kinds of eye-catching words, but the content is basically based on gossip.
Although readers who are attracted by the headlines often curse after reading newspapers and magazines, their bad nature as human beings still makes them deceived time and time again.
After more than a week of publicity, "The Chess" was finally officially released in Hong Kong on November 3.
Lianhua cinema chain is the weakest among the four major cinema chains in Hong Kong, with only 23 screens for "The Chess".
Fortunately, these days, Li Hanxiang's propaganda campaign launched by entertainment tabloids has been very effective. On the first day of release, the average attendance of "The King of Chess" exceeded 40%.
This kind of attendance rate means that the theater chain is profitable and has a smooth start.
On the second and third days, the attendance rate of "Chess Master" further increased, once exceeding 60%, which means that theaters can make a lot of money from "Chess Master".
For three consecutive days, the cumulative box office of "Chess Master" reached HK$1.056 million.
Compared with those annual blockbuster movies that often gross more than 20 million Hong Kong dollars at the box office, such achievements are of course nothing.
But "The Chess" is, after all, a "Three Nos" movie produced in the mainland without big-name stars or big investment. The theater where the film is released is Lianhua, the weakest of the four major theaters in Hong Kong. How can it achieve such success?
The achievements have been extremely difficult.
In the days that followed, the reputation of "The Chess Master" continued to grow, attracting more and more Hong Kong audiences to the cinema.
Half a month after its release, the film's cumulative box office has exceeded HK$7.2 million. If nothing else, the film's box office is expected to exceed HK$10 million when it is released.
This box office figure can put it in the top 20 of Hong Kong Films of the year. It is a domestically funded co-production with no big-name stars, no decent publicity and distribution resources, and the box office exceeds 10 million Hong Kong dollars. It is considered a small hit no matter what!
Therefore, in recent days, more and more Hong Kong film companies have turned their attention to this "three noes" movie from the mainland.
After careful inquiry, these people were even more surprised.
It turns out that this movie is actually an adaptation of the work of a mainland writer who caused a lot of heated discussion in Hong Kong a few months ago. The original novel has sold millions of copies in the mainland and has a huge influence.
The cast of the film is basically all mainlanders. The only actor in Hong Kong, Tony Leung Ka Fai, has just won the Academy Award for Best Actor, but he is not very well-known in Hong Kong.
In addition, he was banned by the Bay Island authorities last year, and has long been automatically classified as a first-rate "box office poison" actor by various film and television companies.
But now, these Xiangjiang film and television companies are surprised to find that Tony Leung Ka Fai, an actor who has been banned by the Bay Island authorities for a long time, is alive and well, and seems to be getting better and better as he lives.
From last year's "Curtain Curtain" to this year's "Chess", the cumulative box office of his films as the leading male lead has reached nearly 40 million Hong Kong dollars.
This kind of box office performance is definitely not considered a first-line star in Hong Kong, but for a newcomer who has only made his debut for two or three years, it is already an extremely exaggerated performance.
The success of a movie is the credit of the director, screenwriter, and film and television company, but it is not that simple to have two movies in a row become a hit.
Everyone spread the word, and many producers began to believe that Tony Leung was a lucky guy.
Xiangjiang people have always been very superstitious in this regard. Many people believe that if they cooperate with such people, they will also get good luck.
As Tony Leung's reputation grows, the blocking order from Bay Island no longer has much of a deterrent effect on Hong Kong's production companies.
After all, compared with the unpredictable Bay Island market, real sales in Hong Kong may be more important.
Since then, production companies have begun to contact Tony Leung Ka Fai, hoping to invite him to star in their films. His salary has also increased all the time, and some production companies have even offered him a salary of HK$500,000.
This salary standard has reached the level of Hong Kong's first-line movie stars, and it was something that Tony Leung Ka Fai, a newcomer, had never dared to think about before.
The hit movie "Chess" has made Tony Leung Ka Fai the most popular movie star in the Hong Kong film industry in the past two months, and his popularity has been unprecedented.
Compared with his fame, Xiangjiang film and television companies do not pay that much attention to Lin Chaoyang, the original author and screenwriter. After all, most film and television companies are still pursuing immediate benefits.
Following a screenwriter will not bring as much effect and benefit as pursuing a star!
But not all short-sighted people in this world are short-sighted. There are a few discerning people, and their bets are often bigger than those of speculators!
Chapter completed!