The latest round of script announcements by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has just been released. We found out that DreamWorks' "Kung Fu Panda 3" has actually become a Sino-US co-production. No one could have imagined this situation when the first episode of this series was released in 2008, but now the result is But few were surprised. Some friends may ask, kung fu and pandas are both specialties of China, isn't it logical to be in harmony with China? This statement is also reasonable, but you can see that DreamWorks' "Prince of Egypt" and Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" were not co-produced with Egypt or France; "Mulan", which is also a Chinese theme, has been shot for two consecutive films, and both are also co-produced with China doesn't matter.
So what is the reason? Quite simply, it's about money. Since the founding of the United States, the history of the United States has only been more than 200 years old. There are no knights, no knights and musketeers. It is rare to have some conflicts with the Indians. Before the 1960s, it was also badly filmed by westerns. So what should we do? The workers on the Hollywood assembly line are faithful believers in the doctrine of borrowing. From King Oedipus to Elizabeth II, the official history, legends and myths of Europe have basically been photographed. The Epic of Horses raised a lot of people in the 1950s and 1960s. The European theme is tired of being photographed, it doesn't matter, the world is so big, there is no need to worry about the theme, so the Hollywood adventurers are divided into two groups, all the way to be trapeze, surveying and shooting all over the world; A style photo studio. Not counting the tricky films like "Around the World in 80 Days", Hollywood stars brought "Solomon's Treasure" found in Africa to Australia to compose a song "Australia's Troubled World", and just finished filming "The King and I" in Thailand ", by the way, go to Hong Kong to talk about "Love of Life and Death". It is not enough to visit several ancient civilizations, and even the frozen Antarctica has to come to "Polar Adventure".
But Hollywood's exotic themes basically have a common problem, that is, no matter what they shoot, they are "Hollywood-style". Specifically, it doesn't matter which country, because almost any country only acts as a fresh background in this kind of film: the Middle East The Ali Baba can go out to fight the Forty Thieves in America, and the affair of "An American in Paris" can also work in London and Rome. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this. For example, the United States has to remake "Troy" every 10 or 20 years. Greek audiences may scold the filmmakers for making things up, but more non-Greek audiences around the world will be attracted by the film because of the film. simple and easy to accept.
Of course, films like "The Last Emperor" and "Gandhi Biography" that are generally loyal to history and have a reputation for film quality cannot be ruled out. I only got one copy of "The Tyrant Burning the City"; what's even more regrettable is that after a group of people traveled around the world, they thought they were waiting for flowers and applause, but unexpectedly it was a Waterloo. Therefore, most people have become more and more conservative, and try to eliminate the characteristics of different cultural backgrounds as much as possible. The only differences are skin color and scenery.
However, the situation is slowly changing. The purpose of filming exotic stories was originally to enrich local film themes, but the media has become more and more developed and the world has become smaller and smaller. Hollywood's overseas box office has gradually become the icing on the cake from the initial icing on the cake. , Now the top ten annual box office harvests basically account for more than half of the overseas box office. For example, last year's global box office champion "Transformers 4" earned a billion dollars, while the North American box office was only in the early 300s. This situation was unimaginable in the 1950s and 1960s.
Some friends may be a little strange, why is it that China's box office has become overseas instead? In fact, this is a conventional concept. In order to count the acceptance of the film in various countries, Hollywood filmmakers generally refer to the box office in the United States and Canada as the North American box office, and the others are collectively referred to as the overseas box office. But this statistical method is becoming more and more outdated, because with the continuous expansion of the Chinese film market, the mainland can lift a film to the top of the overseas box office by itself.
Nowadays, from movie websites to post bar forums in China, including soft and hard advertisements of many films, they like to put the box office in a very conspicuous place. In fact, the film industry has developed up to now, and the box office only accounts for a part of the total revenue, or even a small part. The release of a movie has more of an advertising effect. Disney's "Frozen" has also sold more than one billion yuan worldwide, but this movie has sold more than three billion yuan for derivatives such as princess dresses, not counting game licenses, theme parks and other outputs. If Disney, an established film company, is not representative enough, streaming media overlords such as Netflix simply gave up the box office and put the premieres of several films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2" that they invested in directly on the website. . Even movie theaters, which seem to make a living selling tickets, don't care too much about the box office because they make more money from popcorn and Coke.
When it comes to mainland China, there are some exceptions. Most audiences do not have the habit of re-consumption of movies. This is also determined by a variety of reasons. To give a basic example, before the rise of streaming media, the original CD of the film was an important income for the film party. There are many movies whose CD revenue is higher than the box office, and some low-cost movies are not even released directly. Audio and video products, but the choice of domestic genuine Blu-ray is very limited. Some films are not released on Blu-ray, and the quality of the release is mostly unsatisfactory. Compared with the massive tidbits of mature European and American disc dealers such as Standard and Eureka, there is basically only a bare feature film. Naturally, it also fails to attract consumers. However, this situation is slowly changing. With the deepening of mainstream video sites, many viewers have developed the habit of paying to watch genuine copies, but at present, box office revenue still accounts for the vast majority in the mainland.
Of course, at the end of the day, no matter how much you earn at the box office or peripheral derivatives, it has nothing to do with us ordinary audiences. These numbers always grab the headlines because the filmmakers often don’t have better topics.
Although the ratio of box office to total revenue has been greatly reduced, China, which has just won the second largest box office in the world, can still produce a huge amount of money. Last spring, "Need for Speed", a medium-sized production based on a game, was released in the mainland, and finally earned more than 400 million yuan, equivalent to nearly 70 million US dollars, becoming the first mainland Hollywood film to surpass North America's box office. This is just the beginning. Last summer, "Transformers 4" sieged the city all the way in the mainland, and finally cut down 1.98 billion yuan. Even the hometown of "Transformers 4" is slightly inferior to North America, and this is a co-production film. . In a milestone, no Hollywood blockbuster had ever grossed more in a country than North America before, and it has made the Beverly Hills gods rethink their distribution strategies. Including Universal, which entered Beijing in the second half of last year, the six oldest Hollywood companies have all had semicolons in China.
Now it comes to "Kung Fu Panda 3" that we started with. There are two types of films sold by overseas filmmakers to the mainland. One is the batch films that the Chinese side buys out and releases, and the other is the so-called "blockbusters" that have ten films a year since 1994. This number has turned over since China joined the WTO in 2001. At one point, President Xi's visit to the United States in 2012 added 14 more "special films". However, the accounting method of these 30 or so films has not changed according to international standards. Specifically, 35% for the producer, 17% for the distributor, and 48% for the exhibitor; after removing various factors, the final producer can get 25% about. And if an imported film becomes a co-production film, it will be treated the same as a national film, and the share of accounts will reach 43%. Taking the 2 billion of "Change 4", it is 18% more, but it is an extra 400 million.
Of course, co-productions do not mean that they change, and Chinese actors and investment must account for a certain proportion. For example, "The Expendables 2" and "Iron Man 3" just find a small show of mainland actors, and even concoct a special Chinese version, Will eventually be beaten back to its original shape. And the extent to which "Kung Fu Panda 3", which has become a co-production film, can be used in China and the West is not discussed in this article, and this issue is left to the factories of the East to worry about.
*Science popularization essays written on a whim are of limited level, and some views and contents are inevitably naive and ridiculous. Comments and corrections are welcome.
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