Asia-Pacific Future Dong Wenjie talks about Penguin Random House cooperation: Layout upstream for the world

Recently, the news that "Asia-Pacific will enter the global IP treasure house Penguin Random House Studios" has attracted industry attention. Many people are curious about what kind of company Asia-Pacific will be in the future and can successfully win this global IP treasure house? To this end, the reporter made a special trip to interview Dong Wenjie, chairman of Asia Pacific Future Film and Television (Beijing) Co., Ltd., and conducted an in-depth exploration of the background and reasons for this cooperation.

Recently, the news that "Asia-Pacific will enter the global IP treasure house Penguin Random House Studios" has attracted industry attention. Penguin Random House, which belongs to Random House Studios, is a world-renowned publishing house under the Bertelsmann Group in Germany. The original works of many classic film and television masterpieces come from this publishing house. Many people are curious about what kind of company Asia-Pacific will be in the future and can successfully win this global IP treasure house? To this end, the reporter made a special trip to interview Dong Wenjie, chairman of Asia Pacific Future Film and Television (Beijing) Co., Ltd., and conducted an in-depth exploration of the background and reasons for this cooperation.

The company does a low-key project with a high-key project

APAC Future was established in 2013. In the film and television industry, where everyone competes for exposure, the future of Asia-Pacific will be as low-key as an unusual one-it never holds press conferences or publishes film lists. It is an out-and-out pragmatic and action-oriented group. Dong Wenjie advocates "do it first and talk later". The formation of this corporate culture and corporate style in the future of Asia-Pacific is not unrelated to the personality of the founder.

Dong Wenjie is a senior media person and filmmaker with more than ten years of rich industry experience. Before establishing the Asia-Pacific Future, Dong Wenjie once led the production and distribution of film and television works such as "Ip Man" and "Thousands of Arrow Heart". After the founding of Asia-Pacific Future, the company jointly invested in and produced films such as "The Quest for the Dragon" and "Running Brothers". The action comedy "Trump Trump", which will be released during this year's National Day, is also a co-producer. The English-language films "No Home for Children" and "Purgatory Messenger" wholly produced by the company have also attracted the attention of the overseas film market. Among them,"Purgatory Messenger" appeared on the first day of the Cannes Film Festival as soon as it was filmed.

Just as Asia-Pacific's future cooperation with Ang Lee's long-term partner and internationally renowned producer James Shams, this cooperation with Penguin Random House is also accidental but inevitable. Dong Wenjie and Peter Gethers, senior vice president of Penguin Random House and CEO of Penguin Random House Studios, met by accident. However, their common pragmatic style and love of movies made the two feel like they were at first sight. Over the past half a year, the two sides have been closely communicating and discussing the form and positioning of cooperation, and have finally finalized the simplest and most efficient form of cooperation: Asia-Pacific will be solely responsible for the development, investment and production of Penguin Random House Studios in the future. Film projects and manage and operate its film-related businesses.

The source of IP to go to the world has planted the banner of China film companies

. Nowadays, more and more film and television works are adapted from literature. As many as 70% of American film and television works are adapted from publications. Oscar-winning films are basically adaptations of novels, and literary IP has also become a resource that major film and television companies compete for. Penguin Random House, which publishes more than 15000 new books and sells more than 700 million publications every year, is undoubtedly the world's largest treasure house of literary IP resources. "Mars Rescue","Fifty Shades of Grey","The Great Gatsby", etc., which have been popular in recent years, all came from the company.

After cooperating with Penguin Random House, Asia-Pacific can obtain information about the company's upcoming new book or unfinished or unfinished manuscripts 12-18 months in advance, and judge whether the work is suitable for film and television adaptations. This is based on the fact that the film and television industry, whose IP is a scarce resource, has undoubtedly taken a great lead. According to Dong Wenjie, since the launch of the cooperation, Asia-Pacific Future has immediately purchased the rights to adapt a new book to be published in 2017. The film types are action, suspense, thriller, and have the potential to be made into Chinese and foreign co-productions.

In order to ensure the quality of every literary IP development, the cooperation between the two parties does not impose any restrictions on the number or partners. Dong Wenjie said: "Asia-Pacific will be a platform-based company in the future that will welcome various collaborations with an open mind and a flexible way-the IP we have discovered with Random House Studios may cooperate with the six major Hollywood studios, or it may cooperate with China film and television companies without any restrictions or prejudices. The film and television companies that are already working with us include Universal, Focus Features, France's Studio Canal and other world-renowned film and television companies. Providing the best quality films to fans around the world is our ultimate goal."

Better to miss out on not doing wrong

In recent years, China's film and television industry has developed extremely rapidly. More and more foreign film companies have entered the China market, hoping to get a piece of the pie. China capital is also seeking opportunities to go abroad. Against this background, the proportion of international projects in the Asia-Pacific in the future will also be increasing. The projects such as "Children's Heart No Home" and "Purgatory Messenger" mentioned above are all the results of the future overseas layout of the Asia-Pacific.

In comparison, Asia-Pacific will pay more attention to overseas projects and invest more in the future. One of the important reasons is the "difference in cost performance between Chinese and foreign film production and investment recovery." Dong Wenjie said: "The bubble in China's film and television market is still very large, and the high cost has become abnormal, resulting in huge risks in investment and production of film and television projects. Faced with such a domestic market, we have become more and more cautious when doing projects. In the future, Asia-Pacific will not hoard and plunder IP, and will not ignore market conditions and blindly increase production costs. We often measure the reasonableness of the project's cost and budget by backward pushing. Many people have seen that there are many hits in the movies we co-invested in and produced. In fact, due to the principle of "risk control first", we have missed several hits. When making movies, not losing money is the most important thing, and striving for fame and fortune can only rank second. Therefore, when we make project judgments and trade-offs, the first thing we have to consider is how big the risk of losing money is, and the second is whether it is possible to make a profit? How big is the profit space?" Dong Wenjie often warns her colleagues that "I would rather miss it than do it wrong."

Project positioning is the most important thing: Chinese and foreign co-production is difficult.

Because of the different cultural backgrounds of China and foreign countries, there are also many factors that need to be considered in investing in overseas film and television projects. In recent years, many co-productions between China and South Korea have suffered from box office and reputation failure. The different cultural backgrounds and development status of the two sides have made many co-productions "acclimatized". After the cooperation with Penguin Random House, will Asia-Pacific encounter the same difficulties and challenges in the future?

In Dong Wenjie's view, if China wants to build a cultural power and a cultural power, exporting works with more types of elements and truly entering the international market will be an important step. "The reason why Hollywood can become Hollywood is that they can make films with various elements, types, and themes from various countries. If domestic films are limited to only employing China people and using China funds to shoot China elements and China themes, how can we export culture and values and become a cultural power?" Regarding the overseas films recently invested in by Asia-Pacific in the future, Dong Wenjie said: "If" Childhood of Heart "is defined solely by the investors, it should be regarded as a domestic film, but its subject matter and market are both American; the director of" Purgatory Messenger "is French, the original author of the novel is British, the leading actor is American, the investor is a China company, and the local production team and quite a number of actors are Thai. How should such a film define its country? I believe that with the growth of China's capital strength and the improvement of the professional strength of China's film and television companies, in the future, the definition of domestic films, imported films and co-productions will face many vague and difficult to define problems, which require our industry authorities and leaders to pay attention to, think, and solve them intelligently."

In Dong Wenjie's view, how to define the country in which a film is produced is not important. The most important thing is the market and audience positioning of a film. "Our project positioning is very clear. For example,"No Home for Childhood" is a movie suitable for English-speaking audiences. When estimating its market and sales, we did not include the China market. However, if this film wins an award at an international film festival in the future, there may be an opportunity to introduce it to China, which is an extra reward. The failure of many movies nowadays is due to unclear positioning. Co-production films are the most difficult of all film genres to make. Some companies co-production for the sake of co-production, and there will definitely be problems if they squeeze inappropriate stories and characters together."

Dong Wenjie, who has many years of overseas work and life experience, found that when communicating with foreign filmmakers, similar to the anxiety of domestic filmmakers, foreign producers and film and television companies are also eager to find good IP with potential that can be adapted into film and television works. Dong Wenjie said: "Some people may have a misunderstanding that if you have money, you can buy good IP and cooperate with excellent producers. But successful filmmakers do not lack capital, what they lack is good materials and creativity. Nowadays, many foreign filmmakers are considering what they can do for the China market and what the China market can do for them. Take our cooperation with Penguin Random House as an example. We can use their professional capabilities and Penguin Random House, the world's largest IP treasure house, to attract more outstanding filmmakers to work together. These high-quality IPs and excellent filmmakers can also produce chemical reactions with China, the world's largest market through our efforts."

Strengthening yourself is more powerful than pleasing capital

. Today, the scale of film investment in mainland China has reached 100 billion yuan. Although only 10%-20% of films actually make money, there are still many people who are eager to become this 10%.

Speaking of the capital craze in China's film market, Dong Wenjie said: "Many people just see successful cases like" Lost in Thailand "and" Mermaid "and think that movies are a profiteering industry, just like real estate more than ten years ago, crowded in. Unfortunately, no one promoted the corpses behind these successful cases, and no one knew and paid attention to them. Movies cannot be produced on assembly lines or standardized. Good scripts usually take a long time to polish, and good films take years to sharpen the sword. But most capital is not patient and tolerant, and they urge filmmakers to produce works quickly and demand high returns. The chaos in the industry caused by this kind of capital chase may end in another year and a half. When those ripening projects lose all investors 'money, and when blind and impetuous capital loses so much that their eyes turn green, those who can persist should be the capital that truly understands the business, the capital that has both feelings and professionalism, and the filmmakers who truly love movies, have professional ability and integrity."

When asked whether the Asia-Pacific region would have capital operation arrangements such as financing and listing in the future, Dong Wenjie said that her attitude towards capital was "not rejecting or passive." "Since last year, many investors have paid attention to the future of the Asia-Pacific and hope to cooperate with us in various aspects such as equity investment and project investment. We have always been very cautious about this because we know that the attributes of capital are basically icing on the cake and will not provide help in times of need. Therefore, we are careful to avoid being kidnapped by capital. We believe that doing a solid job in business is the most important and fundamental. We firmly believe that strengthening ourselves is more powerful than pleasing capital."

Dong Wenjie also has very clear requirements for what kind of capital he hopes to cooperate with in the future: "The three views are consistent, knowledgeable, reliable and professional." She said,"On the road to internationalization of China's film companies, it is our style to be low-key and pragmatic, and to talk less and do more. Therefore, we hope that the capital for cooperation is consistent with our tone, and we are all doing things down-to-earth. We will inevitably stay away from the capital of 'say first and then doing'."

Editor: yvette