Chapter 212 Jiahe's Frequent Actions

Looking back to the past, Liu Zhou went to Hong Kong with a huge sum of 20 million US dollars.

At that time, Liu Zhou recruited Zhong Lifang, his most capable assistant.

At that time, Liu Zhou founded Zhoushan Capital.

It was also at that time that Liu Zhou bought the stocks of the three major portals, Amazon and Penguin at the bottom.

Now five years have passed and the situation has changed dramatically.

The 35.5 million US dollars brought Liu Zhou a long-established Hong Kong film company, Golden Harvest, % of the shares of Sina Group, several shares of Penguin, and million US dollars in cash.

Of course, Liu Zhou’s achievement of all these was also due to the hard work he put in.

But the most important thing was the gains that the 20 million US dollars brought to him, which gave Liu Zhou the confidence to acquire Golden Harvest and take over Sina.

It can be said that Liu Zhou made a lot of money from the bottom-fishing investment in 2001.

Now that my business empire has basically taken shape, I just need to continue to add bricks and tiles to make it grow and develop.

After a period of time, Liu Zhou finally had some free time.

Now both Jiahe and Sina have dedicated people busy with various company affairs, and Liu Zhou only needs to approve some documents.

However, Liu Zhou did not dare to be careless before the threat posed by Duan Yongji was completely eliminated.

So during this period of time, Liu Zhou has been staying at Sina headquarters, not giving him any opportunity to take advantage.

Everything was calm on Sina's side, but on Golden Harvest's side, things started to get busy.

The first was to invest 1566 million to shoot the historical political drama "The Ming Dynasty " written by Liu Heping, and Golden Harvest General Manager Zhang Zhao personally served as the chief producer.

Zhang Zhao knew very well that even good wine needs to be hidden if it is not well-known, so he started to make a name for himself from the moment the project was launched.

Thanks to Golden Harvest's promotion, almost everyone in the circle knew that "The Ming Dynasty 1566" was a TV series carefully produced by Golden Harvest.

Considering that Golden Harvest has previously produced hit dramas such as "Snow Goddess Dragon", "Conquer" and "The Sky of History", as well as drama kings such as "Drawing Sword".

This not only attracted the attention of people in the circle, but also attracted the attention of some TV stations.

However, most of the actors needed for this drama are veteran actors, so it did not receive much response among the actors.

However, a project announced by Golden Harvest afterwards made most of the actors uneasy.

On April 2th, Golden Harvest announced that the project of "Blade Runner " was officially approved, and the famous director Xu Ke will be the director of this popular sequel.

Andy Lau returns and continues to play the male lead, Shen Lian, while Fan Xiaopang plays the female lead, Hokusai.

As for other roles, Golden Harvest will conduct an open casting.

From Zhou Shan Studio to the current Golden Harvest, Liu Zhou's films have almost never involved casting, as the casting is usually decided directly by him.

Although it is not directed by Liu Zhou now, this is also the first public casting of New Golden Harvest.

What's more, this is the sequel to a popular martial arts movie. No matter what, the box office is guaranteed to be at least 100 million.

Besides, the screenwriter of the second part of "The Blade of Embroidery" is still Liu Zhou, and together with the great director Xu Ke, who is particularly good at martial arts movies, the quality of this sequel is absolutely guaranteed.

According to some of the characters that have been announced, people like Lu Wenzhao, Ding Baiying, Pei Lun and Ling Yunkai all have considerable roles to play.

With the promotion of Golden Harvest, "Swords of Passion 2" has become the most popular movie at the moment.

In fact, this open casting is also a form of publicity.

For example, when Zhang Da Huzi was filming Jin Yong's dramas, there was always a lot of noise when selecting actors before filming began.

By the time of The Return of the Condor Heroes, the roles of Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu had clearly been decided, but they kept pulling in different actors to hype them up, and in the end the audience became a little fed up with it.

Of course, Zhang Zhao would not be so tasteless. Except for Pei Lun, who was confirmed to be played by Huang Xiaoming, the other roles were actually auditioned.

In addition to these two major projects, another move by Golden Harvest has attracted the attention of people in the industry.

Golden Harvest acquired the Liuhe Cinema Chain in Hunan Province for 80 million yuan and renamed it Golden Harvest Cinema Chain.

This indicates that Golden Harvest Media has obtained the cinema chain license and officially entered the mainland cinema market, which undoubtedly raises Golden Harvest's status in the industry to a higher level.

Considering that Golden Harvest has already built luxury cinemas in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which are first-tier cities in mainland China, this fully demonstrates Golden Harvest's ambition in the cinema market.

Everyone seems to have seen a cinema giant slowly taking shape.

The bigwigs in the circle did not expect that although Liu Zhou was busy with Sina's affairs, he did not relax at all for the development of Golden Harvest.

This couldn't help but make them feel a sense of urgency.

But the people in the family know their own business. It is not easy for the mainland's Golden Harvest Cinemas to expand its scale.

Not to mention that the construction of the four luxury cinemas will take a long time. If they are to be put into use, it will take at least until the end of next year.

The most valuable thing about the acquired Liuhe Cinema Chain is its cinema chain license.

Liuhe Cinema Chain has eight cinemas, mainly distributed in several major cities in Hunan Province and Changshi and Jiangzhou in Jiangxi Province.

These cinemas are all old-fashioned ones. Not only are their projection equipment outdated, but their facilities are also rather shabby.

So Liu Zhou and Gao Jun discussed temporarily closing the business and modernizing it. The cost of this renovation is not a small amount. If it weren't for the huge profits from "New World" and "Crazy Stone", there would be no money to do this work.

Therefore, Golden Harvest Cinema Line will have to wait until Golden Harvest Media Group goes public before it can truly begin large-scale expansion.

However, Golden Harvest did not publicize the acquisition of the cinema chain, so people outside were not very aware of it.

Within two days, there was another highly anticipated event in the entertainment industry: the 25th Academy Awards ceremony will be held on April 25th.

This forced Liu Zhou to leave Beijing and go to Hong Kong to attend the award ceremony.

"New World", which was the box office champion of Chinese-language films last year and almost broke the box office record of Hong Kong films, was frequently nominated for this year's Academy Awards.

Andy Lau was nominated for Best Actor, Raymond Leung and Simon Yam were nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Liu Zhou was nominated for Best Director.

In addition, the movie "New World" was nominated for four awards: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Sound Effects, and Best Editing.

A total of 8 nominations, slightly less than the 11 nominations of "If Love" and the 10 nominations of "Initial D".

The main reason is that "New World" does not have any outstanding female characters, and its music and design are not particularly outstanding either.

However, although "New World" received fewer nominations, it is definitely a favorite for this year's Academy Awards, or even the biggest favorite.

"New World" can be said to be the face of Hong Kong films last year, and its influence is much greater than "If Love" and "Initial D".

Liu Zhou's popularity in Hong Kong is now not much less than those popular stars.

And because he had just acquired Sina, not only Hong Kong's entertainment media but also the financial media were looking forward to Liu Zhou's arrival.

So two days in advance, most of the Hong Kong media gathered at the airport.

But Liu Zhou had long known the nature of the Hong Kong media. In order to avoid being entangled by them, he never took a plane to Hong Kong.

Liu Zhou first went back to his home in Guangzhou, and then asked the driver to drive to Hong Kong, so they could only squat there lonely.

But Liu Zhou was thinking, should he also buy a private jet?

April 4th, Xiangjiang Stadium.

This year's Academy Awards was held here.

Thousands of spectators gathered on the red carpet at the entrance. Many Hong Kong stars appeared one by one, causing cheers and support from the spectators on the red carpet.

The crew of "New World" was arranged to walk the red carpet in three groups, with Andy Lau and Fan Xiaopang walking together, Liang Jiahui, Simon Yam and Wu Zhenyu walking together, and Liu Zhou walking alone.

Liu Zhou was the first to take the lead, and in front of him was the crew of "If Love".

Zhou Gongzi, wearing a black off-shoulder V-neck long dress, appeared on the red carpet with Jin Chengwu, who was wearing a white suit, attracting screams and applause from the audience.

Both of them are very popular in Hong Kong, especially Jin Chengwu, who was once known as the most handsome man in Asia and has a lot of female fans.

After they entered the venue, as soon as Liu Zhou got out of the car, he attracted a lot of flashes and cheers. The noise was no less than when the two of them walked on the red carpet just now, and even louder.

This made Zhou Gongzi and Jin Chengwu in front of them look back curiously.

The two immediately saw Liu Zhou, dressed in a black suit, waving and walking quickly into the venue.

Liu Zhouke doesn't need exposure, so the red carpet means nothing to him.

After briefly dealing with the host outside the venue, Liu Zhou went straight into the venue. The whole process took less than ten minutes.

Liu Zhou Yi walked into the meeting room, which also caused quite a stir.

The chairman of this year's Academy Awards, Wen Jun, the award presenter and host Eric Tsang and Zha Zha Hui seemed to be waiting for him. As soon as Liu Zhouyi came in, they came forward to greet him.

Afterwards, various Hong Kong stars stood up to greet Liu Zhou. At this time, Liu Zhou truly felt the treatment he was receiving as a big shot in the entertainment industry.

It was not until Liu Zhou was called upon by Emperor Entertainment Group's boss Yang that people stopped moving forward.

"Mr. Liu, I think your influence in Hong Kong is greater than mine, haha."

"This is just temporary. How can I compare with you, Mr. Yang?"

The reason why these people are so enthusiastic about him, apart from his wealth and status, is mainly because of the news announced by Golden Harvest Films' Hong Kong branch not long ago.

In 2006, Golden Harvest will invest in the production of six films.

In the mainland, there are no good books, and in Hong Kong, there are books but no funds.

Since Liu Zhou retained the Hong Kong branch of Golden Harvest Films, he naturally did not use it as a cover, but let it actually operate.

Six movies require a lot of behind-the-scenes staff and actors.

"You are too modest. Recently, not only you but also Golden Harvest Company has made a lot of big moves. You are not in Hong Kong, but you are a legend in Hong Kong."

"Boss Yang, we are so familiar with each other, please stop praising me like this. It makes me feel embarrassed."

"Hahaha!"

The two chatted for a while, and the award ceremony was about to begin, so Liu Zhou returned to his seat.

(End of this chapter)