Will "Journey to the West: Fugitive Demon Chapter", which cost 120 million yuan in publicity, be another "Mermaid"?

and he Pictures, as one of the main investors, have a lot of money to enter the market through them. The newly added Horgos and he Pictures are its related parties. Chen Kun of Dongshen (Shanghai) Pictures is very close to Yang Wei, chairman of he Pictures, which is a shareholder of he Pictures, and he also used to guarantee Chen Kun's "hot pot hero".

Horgos Lianrui is a related party of Lianrui Pictures. Previously, Lianrui was able to invest in the Mermaid, that is, through matchmaking. Shanghai Mengcha Film and Television Investment is a company associated with Wuxi Huichi. At present, the shareholders of the two companies are the same. Wuxi Huichi's legal person is Zhou Wenji, Zhou Xingchi's sister. The company also participated in the Mermaid and Chow Xingchi production "Yangtze River 7: Super cute Secret Service."

Xiangshan Zeyue Culture Communication Co., Ltd., behind it is the Xinghui Hongmeng Fund, which is owned by Jincheng Group of Hangzhou. The fund was established in June 2014, and its first cooperation with Xinghui overseas was to invest in "Mermaid". And the fund won the priority to invest in Zhou Xingchi's works in the next five years. This fund, formerly known as the Hongmeng Cultural Industry Fund jointly built by Shanghai Film Group and Zhejiang Jincheng Wealth, was once involved in investing in Jackie Chan's "Tianjun Lion".

New Culture, as a company that cooperates with Stephen Chow in Mermaid, recently bought Zhou Xingchi's stake in PDAL51% for 1.326 billion, obtaining the right to develop derivatives of Xingye Film and the priority investment right of no less than 20% in its film and television productions. And relevant people have confirmed to reporters that Stephen Chow has also packaged part of the income from "Journey to the West" to PDAL.

and Huayi Brothers, who had made trouble with Zhou Xingchi in "Journey to the West", is also miraculously among the products.

< strong > 2 declare that the investment is as high as 120 million yuan to lock in the first day production rate? < / strong >

and Yang Wei, chairman of he Pictures, have disclosed that there are a total of nine investors in Mermaid, and in the overall publicity work, the main executives are Xinghui, he he, Matt and Lianrui. And as the main guarantor of the film, the distribution link is divided into two parts: bottom guarantee and execution.

in the promotion of "Journey to the West", these old distributors once again used the operation of "Mermaid". For example, they also chose the Spring Festival, adopted the strategy of "hunger marketing" and did not watch the film before the release. During the release of the Mermaid, Stephen Chow led the creators to complete the roadshow in 20 cities, and the "Journey to the West" also opened the roadshow on January 16. The announced roadshow cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou. It is expected that later roadshows in other cities will be announced one after another.

the investment cost of "Journey to the West" has risen to 440 million yuan, and the cost of publicity has also gone up. During the roadshow, the film announced that the film's publicity investment was 120 million yuan, which is equivalent to the production budget of "wreaking havoc."

behind the high publicity investment, in addition to the competition from many capital parties of the film itself, it is also a reflection of the increasingly fierce competition during the Spring Festival in 2017.

of the seven films currently shown during the Spring Festival, all competitive films are buying screenings from cinemas. A cinema manager told reporters that according to the requirements of each side of the film, "Journey to the West" 40%, "wreaking havoc" 30%, "kung fu yoga" and "riding the wind and waves" 25% each, "bear haunts" 12%, "forgetful village" 10%, add up to nearly 150%, can not be arranged at all.

in order to strive for the production rate, the release direction of "Journey to the West" promised to give cinemas a certain distribution fee as long as the film's first-day screening rate reached 40%. "the fee is different in different cinemas, but the overall is very high. The films of Stephen Chow and Tsui Hark have never been said to have paid for film production at the studio this year, and a lot of ticket replacement activities have been done online at the same time. And in order to ensure that word-of-mouth does not collapse, the film has not been held, which shows that the producers have no confidence in the film. " A studio manager revealed to reporters.

< strong > 3 the guaranteed amount is about 1.5 billion, so the film is not confident? < / strong >

can the competition between film arrangement and ticket compensation make "Journey to the West" re-create the box office success of "Mermaid"? Comparing the pre-sale situation between the two, it does not seem very optimistic.

as of January 20, the week before the film's release, the pre-sale of "Journey to the West" had grossed more than 30 million, while the Mermaid had already reached this level half a month before its release, and more than 100 million in the week before its release. At present, the gap between the two is not small.

however, this may be expected by the film side. A person familiar with the matter told reporters that the guaranteed amount of the "Journey to the West" is about 1.5 billion yuan. From this point of view, perhaps the box office of "Journey to the West" is expected to be lower than that of "the Mermaid". From this point of view, it is rumored that the guarantee of "the Mermaid" of "the Mermaid" has dropped to a certain extent.

and a person familiar with the matter once told reporters that if the guarantee is successful this time, the film will have a 100% return, and if the actual box office can reach the level of 24-2.5 billion yuan, the film can get a return of more than 150%. We don't know how the guaranteed amount was agreed on, but it must have something to do with the overall downturn in the film market in 2016. in addition, the most important reason for determining the film box office is the quality of the film.

at present, "Journey to the West" has not yet been released, and its cast has been questioned.

in Douban's popular essays, the ones at the top are basically negative comments about actors.

however, after the Mermaid was released, it still generated nearly 3.4 billion yuan at the box office despite serious word-of-mouth polarization, and the value of Zhou Xingchi is self-evident. This time, Tsui Hark was called to help. Wang Jian Wang's group and fans' feelings for Zhou Xingchi could not match the word-of-mouth consumption brought to the film by the young fresh actor. After all, some netizens said that in the past, we owed him a movie ticket, and now he owes us a good work.

in fact, as early as after the Journey to the West, some netizens commented that "after boasting, there is no more journey to the West." Box office aside, the reputation of Stephen Chow's films has been on the decline in recent years. Although "Journey to the West" grossed 1.248 billion at the box office, its Douban score of 7.1 fell far short of the high scores of the two "A Chinese Odyssey" films, while the subsequent "Mermaid" Douban score dropped to 6.9.

from this point of view, for Zhou Xingchi, perhaps he can give an explanation to the investors for his works in recent years, but not to his fans. I wonder what the situation will be like in this "Journey to the West"?

Edit: yvette