Chapter 367: No Man's Land Premiere and Unruly
On June 12, the movie "Empire of Money" directed by Wang Jing was released, officially kicking off the summer season.

This movie stars James Leung and Eason Chan. Maybe not many people have seen it, but I guess quite a few people have seen related clips of the movie through short videos.

It’s the movie where Eason Chen’s character takes over nine wives.

The prototype of the character played by Liang Jiahui is the Chief Chinese Detective Lui Lok, who has a strong presence in Hong Kong films, or Lei Luo. Lei Luo is actually the Cantonese pronunciation of Lui Lok.

I don't know whether Wang Jing has a special liking for this character or he really has no more stories to film, but he has made several movies about Lei Luo. "Empire of Money", "Chasing the Dragon" and "Chasing Tigers and Catching Dragons" all have him as the protagonist.

Together with other Hong Kong films such as "Inspector Lei Luo", "Three Flags" and "Untold Story", Lei Luo was made into a top star of Hong Kong variety shows.

If the male protagonist of a Hong Kong online novel who traveled back to the 1950s and 1960s had no intersection with Lei Luo, he would be embarrassed to go out and say hello to other people.

However, Lei Luo is also well-known in mainland China because of the two classic movies "Inspector Lei Luo" starring Andy Lau and "Unleashed" starring Ray Lui. But "Empire of Money" is obviously a follow-up work that rehashes old stuff.

Although it cannot be called a bad movie, it is far inferior to the quality of the previous two movies. In addition, Wang Jing was affected by the anti-Zhou incident not long ago.

Therefore, the box office performance of "Empire of Money" was very average, with only three million on the first day, and after three days of release, the total box office was barely ten million.

Nowadays, this kind of purely Hong Kong movie is completely unpopular. Many movies released in mainland China only have a box office of 20 to 30 million yuan, and the better ones can get 40 to 50 million yuan.

However, for the producers, there is actually still some profit to be made, after all, the production cost of such a movie is not high.

The largest part of the expenditure may still be the pay of the leading actors. After all, the efficiency of filming in Hong Kong is very high, and now the wages behind the scenes and supporting actors are very low.

So a movie like this may only cost a few million to make, and the cost can be recovered through the box office in mainland China.

Then the box office in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas is pure profit, with several million in revenue, but it is of course impossible to make a lot of money.

Although "Empire of Money" starred Tony Leung and Eason Chan, it did not cause much waves.

What everyone is paying attention to is the upcoming release of "No Man's Land".

On June 16, "No Man's Land" held a fairly grand premiere at Golden Harvest Cinemas in Beijing.

This time the media put Ning Hao and Lu Chuan together for hype. Not to mention the two parties involved, even the companies behind them don't want to lose.

So for "No Man's Land", Golden Harvest will of course stick with it to the end.

In fact, it was Liu Zhou who caused the two men to face off.

Because the release date of "No Man's Land" was set by Liu Zhou, and the main reason why it was set on June 16 was that he saw that Lu Chuan's "Jinling Jinling" was scheduled for June 21.

Although Liu Zhou could not prevent the release of "Jinling Jinling", he did not want his movie to have an easy time.

So Liu Zhou was very attentive to the premiere of "No Man's Land" and kept helping to attract people.

This also led to the premiere of "No Man's Land". Although there were not many guests, most of them were heavyweights.

Not only were all the artists under Golden Harvest present, but also big stars such as Liu Zhou, Han Shanping, Zhang Yimou, Cheng Long, Stephen Chow and Andy Lau all appeared at Golden Harvest Studios.

This caused Golden Harvest Cinemas to be packed with people, and they had to start limiting the number of people admitted.

Otherwise, with the main actors of "No Man's Land", the most famous one might be the director Ning Hao, followed by Xu Zheng and Huang Bo, so there might not be any need for a premiere at all.

As the guests arrived one after another, although the protagonists of this premiere were the main creators of the film such as Ning Hao, some of them were invited by Liu Zhou after all, so he had to greet them.

"Director Zhang, I didn't expect you to actually come here."

"You've called my leading actor away, so the movie can't be made. Why don't you stop for a few days and come and take a look?"

"Although most of the scenes in the movie are played by Liu Ye, can't we shoot other scenes? Liu Ye will only take this day off."

"Are you not welcoming me?"

"That's impossible. Director Zhang, your coming here will immediately raise the level of this premiere."

"You are still as talkative as ever. No more jokes. In addition to attending your premiere, I was also invited by Nanjing Jinling.

And there happened to be some special effects stuff I needed to discuss with the special effects studio, so I decided to take a few days off and come back.”

"I see. Then there won't be any problems with the filming of the movie, right?"

"No, don't worry. If nothing unexpected happens, Moon should be able to be released during the Lunar New Year holiday this year."

Hearing Zhang Yimou's words, Liu Zhou smiled and said:

"That's perfect. We at Golden Harvest don't have any heavyweight movies coming out during the Lunar New Year period this year."

"I heard that you have started preparations for your new film. How is the preparation going?"

“It’s still in preparation. The preparatory work this time is more troublesome than that of The Martian, so the preparation time may also be longer.

Besides, the leading actor of my new film is also Liu Ye. If you haven’t finished shooting here, I can’t start the filming here either.”

"I'll go and watch it when I have time."

"No problem, Director Zhang is welcome to come and give us your guidance."

"Stop joking. Go and greet the other people. Don't worry about me." Liu Zhou and Zhang Yimou were not polite. They were already very familiar with each other, otherwise Liu Zhou would not have spoken to him so casually.

After separating from Zhang Yimou, Liu Zhou glanced around and saw Zhou Xingxing and Liu Dehua chatting enthusiastically.

He could probably guess what the two were talking about, and it was most likely that Andy Lau took the initiative to contact Zhou Xingxing.

So Liu Zhou didn't go up to disturb the two of them, but came to Han Shanping's side.

"You put a lot of thought into the premiere of No Man's Land."

"I can't help it. Lu Chuan has such a strong background and network, and Ning Hao only has Jiahe behind him. Now that the competition between the two has begun, of course I have to support him."

"Haha, it seems that Ning Hao really found a good boss."

"Mr. Han, have you seen Lu Chuan's "Jinling Jinling"? "

"Not yet, but I have to go to the premiere of his movie in a few days, I'll watch it then. What's wrong? Are you here to spy on the enemy?"

"How is that possible? Lu Chuan hasn't even achieved anything impressive yet, so what is there to be afraid of?

Besides, you have also seen Ning Hao's "No Man's Land", the quality is not bad at all, so why would I need to ask you about the other party's situation?

The reason why I mentioned Lu Chuan's "Jinling Jinling" is that I heard that Lu Chuan used a different perspective to shoot this heavy subject this time. Mr. Han must take a serious look at it when the time comes."

"real or fake?"

Han Shanping has been very busy recently. In addition to being busy with the post-production of "Founding of a Republic", he also has a lot of things to do in the group and is also busy with the preparations for "Interstellar".

So there is much less attention paid to other things.

Han Shanping was of course familiar with Lu Chuan. In fact, he was one of the people who advised Lu Chuan to accumulate some experience before filming "Jinling Jinling".

But there was nothing he could do since the other party wouldn't listen. However, he felt that there was a high chance that Lu Chuan would mess up.

Now, seeing that Liu and Zhou have given high praise to "Jinling Jinling", is Lu Chuan also a genius? How can she make a good movie of this theme at such a young age?

But if Lu Chuan was really a genius, she wouldn't have been almost made to cry by Jiang Wen and had to come back to find her parents.

"of course it's true."

"Okay, I'll watch it carefully during the premiere."

Liu Zhou could only pray that Han Shanping's blood pressure wouldn't rise too high when he saw him.

At this time, Han Shanping looked at Zhou Xingxing who was chatting with Liu Dehua and said:

"Don't you have a good relationship with Xiang Huaqiang? Why are you suddenly losing face for Zhou Xingxing?"

Although Han Shanping was busy, he must have heard about the anti-Zhou incident that had been going on for so long.

However, he is not interested in the grievances in the Hong Kong circle. In his opinion, this incident is just a fight between dogs because of interests.

Although the words sound a bit harsh, Han Shanping really thinks so.

What made him a little curious was that Liu Zhou would actually offend Xiang Huaqiang just for the sake of cooperation with Zhou Xingxing.

In his opinion, although Stephen Chow has a great influence and the movies he makes are also very good, the box office is just so-so, less than 200 million.

This is not a very outstanding result for Golden Harvest.

In comparison, although the Xiang family is not as big as before, the benefits it can bring are definitely much greater than those of Zhou Xingxing.

In response to Han Shanping's doubts, Liu Zhou smiled and said:

“There’s no particular reason. From a filmmaker’s perspective, I think what Ning Hao said before was very good.

At the very least, Stephen Chow is very serious about movies and is also a very good filmmaker. His contribution to the film industry is much greater than that of the Xiang family.

From the perspective of a film and television company boss, I felt that Zhou Xingxing could bring me greater benefits, so I helped him.

What's more, it's not easy to get the Xiang family's money, and Jiahe is so big now that I can make much more clean money by running the business honestly.

Why would you take such a big risk just for the Xiang family's petty profits?"

"Are you saying that there's something fishy about the Xiang family's movie project?"

"From what I've learned, there's something fishy going on. You should know that they used to do this when the Hong Kong film industry was booming."

"No wonder." Han Shanping's face changed and he said, "He is a dog that can't change its nature. He thought that the mainland would be the same as Hong Kong in the past, where he could do whatever he wanted without restraint."

"Although our supervision is much better than that of Hong Kong back then, there are still loopholes, and they can always find a way to fix them."

"Forget about them. Since they don't make good movies, they won't be able to make good movies in the mainland in the future."

Liu Zhou was expecting Han Shanping to be angry. He knew very well that what Han Shanping hated most were people who didn't follow the rules.

(End of this chapter)