Xu Zheng: The talent incubation mechanism in the film industry is far from keeping up with the capital investment craze

However, in his view, while "capital from various channels has entered the film industry showing a barbaric growth trend", what is out of balance with the myth of 44 billion yuan box office is that "the talent incubation mechanism in the film industry has not kept up."

In the eyes of the audience, director Xu Zheng is an "actuary of comedy". He is good at appropriately grasping the rhythm, feelings and jokes in the movie. Behind the screen, Xu Zheng tried to grasp and judge the new rhythm of changes in the wave of capital in the development of the barbaric film industry.

In his view, although he has multiple identities-actor, director, producer and investor, he has an almost consistent investment positioning for Zhenle Road and Huanxi Media.

Xu Zheng told reporters that in addition to participating in different investment cooperation, Huanxi Media will also establish a video platform through the Internet, select the best quality and most topical movies, and involve Social networks,"becoming a '+' between the Internet and movies."

Zhen Le Tao will invest and operate works that are similar to its own cultural positioning. "Otherwise, even if it makes money commercially,(Zhen Le Tao) may not invest and will ask Huanxi Media to invest." Xu Zheng said.

Xu Zheng, who has been "careful", has always tried to find many balances-the core expression and commercialization of the film, word of mouth and box office, capital profit-seeking and the input of content values.

However, in his view, while "capital from various channels has entered the film industry showing a barbaric growth trend", what is out of balance with the myth of 44 billion yuan box office is that "the talent incubation mechanism in the film industry has not kept up."

Pay attention to the "Internet + movie" effect

In Xu Zheng's impression, he first visited Boao, Hainan in 2003, and a friend introduced him to travel. At that time, Xu Zheng was still a "diligent rather than particularly successful" actor, and the box office of China films at that time was only about 1 billion yuan.

Thirteen years later, China's film market set a new box office record, exceeding 44 billion yuan. Xu Zheng attended the forum as a representative of the film industry in Boao.

"Because of the Internet, the rules of the game in the film business are different from the past," Xu Zheng told the 21st Century Economic Report reporter."It can intervene on all capital and resource sides (the Internet)."

Xu Zheng is undoubtedly a filmmaker who is good at using Internet resources.

At last year's press conference for the movie "Lost in Hong Kong", Xu Zheng imitated Jobs and promoted the movie as a technology product. "(This) provides an opportunity to ferment topics on the Internet, and the publicity effect is particularly good." Xu Zheng believes that the Internet not only intervenes in early IP exploration, but also opens up commercial barriers in later marketing, publicity, and distribution, effectively and quickly reaching the audience.

With the promotion and marketing of "Lost in Hong Kong", Xu Zheng's Zhen Le Tao developed movie derivatives from different periods such as mooncakes and the "Lost" brand.

In Xu Zheng's vision, Zhen Le Tao's next step is to develop the overall commercial development of the "Lost" series and make the brand unique. Xu Zheng told reporters that as the content of the next movie is determined, there will be more attempts to design and implant related products.

From early IP mining, accurate audience positioning, to back-end movie information acquisition, ticket purchase, and derivative consumption, Xu Zheng saw that the Internet connected everyone's series of activities around movies. He also tried to explore larger business space in this chain.

The core value of the movie is

the content of "Lost in Hong Kong", which was released last year, and the box office finally exceeded 1.6 billion yuan. The bigger focus of public opinion is that the commercial effect brought by "Lost in Hong Kong" to investor Xu Zheng comes from the capital operation behind it.

Before the release of "Lost in Hong Kong", Xu Zheng's Zhen Le Tao transferred 47.5% of the film's net box office revenue to Hong Kong-listed company 21 Holdings (later renamed "Huanxi Media") for 150 million yuan. Xu Zheng was the company's second largest shareholder holds 19% of the shares.

Xu Zheng did not respond positively to the 21st Century Economic Report on whether this method will become the main capital operation method for his films in the future. He said that compared with Zhenle, Huanxi Media will have a wider investment scope, but "only choose the most high-end works in the industry."

He believes that capital investment in various industries has fueled the film market,"but these are only from the perspective of financial structure. Looking back, on the most traditional side of the film industry, there is still a need for ingenuity."

In the tide of capital profit-seeking, many investments pursue efficient cost recovery in the film market. Xu Zheng, who is both an investor and a filmmaker, believes that this is a crux that has existed in the film market for many years.

In his view, from the perspective of investment, development and growth are definitely good, but if you want to truly become international, you must realize value export,"(first embodying) a civilized concept, then embodying commercial values, and returning to the content itself."

For example, among this year's Oscar-winning films, Xu Zheng believes that films such as "Focus","Big Short", and "Bridge of Spies" may not be highly commercialized from the statistical perspective, but have humanistic value. Excellent work.

"It is not necessarily possible to summarize through data when to laugh and when to cry, but it is left with people's rational thinking and aftertaste, which is the value brought by cultural products." Xu Zheng said.

He told reporters that this is also a more important investment focus for Zhen Le Tao, the choice of scripts and themes."In this era, we need to think about what kind of stories we need to tell and what kind of materials we need to select."

Xu Zheng believes that American films have opened up the global market because they have found their own way of expression from the film's themes and sense of form. China can learn and learn from it at the story level and find China stories so that China audiences can fully understand, digest and appreciate them, and at the same time be accepted by the whole world.

Talent training cannot keep up with market demand.

On the one hand, Internet capital and resources have catalyzed the entry of China film market into an unprecedented hot period. On the other hand, China films still need to explore more stable and mature story expressions and content cores.

The gap between them, in Xu Zheng's view, is that "the talent incubation mechanism is far from keeping up.""Only the Beijing Film Academy, the Central Academy of Drama and the Shanghai Academy of Drama are far from meeting our industrialization and the box office demand of 40 billion yuan a year."

A reality in the China film market is that more and more actors are beginning to transform into directors. In fact, they have no choice but to choose them. Compared with artistic films, the market needs commercial film directors more.

Xu Zheng believes that studying artistic films actually comes from our educational tradition, but now our educational tradition cannot keep up with the needs of the market. There is a lack of directors and producers who make professional commercial films in the market.

At the Boao Sub-Forum "Hundreds of Billions of Box Office and the Quiet New Long March of the Film Industry", Ye Ning, CEO of Huayi Brothers Pictures, made an analogy,"We lack good stories and good screenwriters, but after getting good stories, we have to ask Xu Zheng (such a director) for four years, and everything is missing. This is the biggest problem and challenge. But there are very professional editors and talent in Hollywood."

In the eyes of many people in the film industry, compared with Hollywood's film industrialization, the China market is still at the stage of manual workshops and lacks systematic cultivation in talent cultivation.

Xu Zheng told reporters that insufficient professional talents will be a pain that China's film development will have to face."Now whoever can grasp talent training and let works speak will be the king. There's still a lot of space inside."

Editor: yvonne