Mili Pictures has a valuation of 4 billion yuan after Series C, high-quality films create good sales for overseas distribution

the lesson of losing the first battle is quite profound for the rice film industry and for Zhang Qing himself. Why was the budget of the Dragon Valley movie overspent on such a large scale? Zhang Qing summed up the four words "lack of experience".

"the inexperience of that year is reflected in several places. First of all, in terms of process time, we have signed a tight contract with Shanda, and we will release "the Valley of the Dragon" in two years. Now, it seems that two years is unreasonable, because the situation at that time is that the film does not even have a script, and it may not be too late if it is just produced. " Zhang Qing said.

this unreasonable timing led to the second problem in the rice film industry at that time-- the team. For the 2-year period agreed in the contract, rice grains began to recruit on a large scale. Of course, behind this kind of wanton recruitment, there was also a layer of anxiety of Zhang Qing at that time: she was afraid that there was not enough labor reserve behind and not enough people to be recruited.

theoretically, the early stage of an animated film should not put too much manpower into it. But at that time, the rice grain was just the opposite. before entering production, the production personnel were already in place, so many links were done ahead of time. For example, when the design is not perfect, the model begins to be done, and then the model is redone because of the change of the front-end design style, which leads to a lot of early investment into a kind of capital consumption.

< strong > < / strong >

< strong > accidentally waded out of a path of overseas distribution < / strong >

the serious overexpenditure of the "Valley of the Dragon" film and the limited domestic box office brought great pressure on the income and expenditure of rice grains at that time. As a result, the rice grain can only look overseas, but unexpectedly, this unintentional act of inserting willow has brought great surprise and harvest to the rice grain.

it is understood that the "Valley of the Dragon" film has since been released and sold in 35 countries and regions around the world, while Universal Pictures, one of the six major Hollywood studios, has distributed and sold it in North America and English-speaking regions. This animated film from China has made a lot of money in overseas markets.

Zhang Qing also said bluntly: "Rice grains have unexpectedly waded out the road of overseas distribution."

this overseas distribution income brings Zhang Qing a great belief: to persist in doing boutique animation. And this has also become a benchmark color for the rice grain film industry to polish other film works in the future.

"if there is no such thing as Universal Pictures, if there is no overseas distribution revenue, I may not insist on making high-quality movies." Because the cost is so high and there is no good market, why do you insist? " Zhang Qing sighed.

Today, almost all animated films of Rice Grain will take full account of overseas markets. It is reported that the new rice grain film "the Elf Throne", which will be released this summer, has signed a contract with Odin's Eye for overseas distribution, and "Invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" has received a guaranteed cut of tens of millions of dollars.

according to rice grain's forecast, basically any future cartoon will be able to maintain its capital by relying solely on overseas income, and under a reasonable income structure, overseas income should be twice as much as domestic box office revenue.

Zhang Qing said that he is very glad that the rice grain did not start to go down after the failure of the first film, but is improving step by step, especially in the current good time, not wasting the opportunity given by the market.

< strong > the ceiling has been opened: < / strong >

< strong > the upper limit of Chinese animated films is 1.5 billion at the box office < / strong >

since July 2015, the Chinese animated film market has been shrouded in controversy. The bullish side believes that the emergence of "the return of the Great Saints" has broken the box office ceiling of domestic films. In the past, the box office ceiling of the young animation market represented by "Bear haunts" and "Pleasant Goat" was basically around 300 million yuan. "return of the Great Saints" has a box office of 960 million yuan to let the market see a new hope.

but the bears believe that the popular box office style of "return of the Great Saints" is difficult to continue to copy, and judging from other animated works in the second half of 2015, whether it is "where is the Dragon", "Little door God" or other animated films are still not satisfactory at the box office.

according to Zhang Qing, the current box office ceiling of the domestic young market under K12 will probably be around 300 million if we refer to the box office results of "Bear haunts." But on the adult side, Disney's "Zootopia" in China in 2016 swept more than $1.5 billion at the box office after "the Great return" pushed the ceiling to 960 million, meaning that as long as the content is good enough, the Chinese market currently has a box office capacity of as much as 1.5 billion for a single animated film. This is a great encouragement to the producers of domestic animated films.

in Zhang Qing's previous plan, Rice Grain Pictures will produce 12 animated films, which will hit the global box office of $1 billion over the next three years and achieve $1 billion in derivatives sales. The first animated films that will be released in the 2016 summer season are "the Elf Throne" and "three Little Pigs 2: Kung Fu Panda", the former is adult-oriented, while the latter is low-young.

Zhang Qing said: "Today, it can be called a successful animated film, and its global box office should reach 300 to 400 million US dollars. So I said 1 billion US dollars in the hope that Rice grains will make at least three animated films of this level. And the surrounding area of $1 billion depends more on the game. If you look at the mobile game "Miracle of the whole people", there are three or four billion dollars a year. So if rice grain has a monthly flow of about 100 million movie games of the same name, then it's about $1 billion in derivatives. "

from the beginning of the birth of Rice Grain Pictures, Zhang Qing defined the company's brand as "a world family entertainment brand originating from China." "in order to meet the position of the company, we must have a good film of this mass." He said.

now, Zhang Qing is patiently waiting for Rice Kernel's first blockbuster work. He said that everyone in the circle knows that the animation of rice grain is good, but he is worried that it will get a false reputation, because so far there have been no high-grossing films.

so, who is the first popular style of rice grain? The answer may be in the following.

< strong > the product of script paranoia: < / strong >

< strong > the fourth reincarnation of "Invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" < / strong >

Zhang Qing's definition of a good movie is, first of all, it must be a good story.

"production and technology have never been the main issues that determine the quality of an animated film. Let me give you an example. Toy Story, which was released in 1993, is the first CG animated film in the world. I can say that every Chinese animation company has better technology than Pixar at that time. But what Chinese company dares to say that its own animation is better than Toy Story?

at present, among Mi Grain's many film projects, the one that most satisfies Zhang Qing with the story script is the invincible Table Tennis Rabbit, which will be released in the summer of 2017. From the director to the screenwriter, to the producer, to the art designer, the work employs a team from Hollywood. Disney gold medal producer Bill Burton (Bill Borden) is the director of the film, and the famous director Mike Johnson, who was nominated for best animated film Oscar, is the director of the film.

Director Mike Johnson

the really interesting point lies in the birth of the script" invincible Table Tennis Rabbit ". Three gold medal Hollywood screenwriters handled the animation from China (the names of the first two Hollywood screenwriters were removed at the request of rice grain), while Zhang Qing joked that when the last amendment was proposed, his inner world collapsed.

the first screenwriter to participate in "invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" is a gold medal screenwriter in the United States, with many well-known classics. But the first edition of the big-name screenwriter's work did not satisfy the rice grain. "maybe he did it on behalf of his friends. after reading the whole work, we felt that the emotional input was too little, and it seemed that the film was very dry."

soon, Millet hired a second well-known screenwriter from Hollywood, and under his rewriting, the script of "Invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" was much more vivid than the first edition. However, the fastidious Zhang Qing always felt that there were still some problems in the structure of the whole script, and some of the plots were not very persuasive and a little stiff.

after reading the script, Mike Johnson, the director of the film, asked Zhang Qing: can the script be reconstructed? Zhang Qing recalled to the reporter: "this is a very difficult decision, because the script has already been written by two Hollywood writers, which is already very expensive, but the director asked me if I could write it from scratch." As soon as I gritted my teeth, I said, let's start all over again. " So the script of "Invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" went back to zero again.

Mike Johnson's new script from scratch makes Mimi feel satisfied, but this is not the end of the story. "Kung Fu Panda 3" was released, but Zhang Qing was dumbfounded after watching it. "the plot settings of the two works are so close that they are simply a rabbit version of Kung Fu Panda." It is a pure coincidence that there is any resemblance, but this coincidence is aimed at the rice grain.

Zhang Qing said: "my inner world absolutely collapsed at that time, but because I had been waiting for such a long time, I didn't care about any more time, so I said I agreed to revise it again." So the fourth draft of the script "invincible Table Tennis Rabbit" was published, and Zhang Qing said bluntly that he was very satisfied with the fourth draft of the script.

there is a popular saying in Pixel: the predecessor of any good movie, that is, the first edition of the script is rubbish. Monster Hunt, which made a miracle at the box office in 2015, is already a remake. Because of Ke Zhendong's drug-related reasons, Monster Hunt was forced to be remade, but it was precisely because of the remake that the second edition corrected and iterated many of the hard injuries that were lacking in the first edition.

of course, this kind of extravagant remake often happens only under special circumstances. Monster Hunt won 2.4 billion. What will be the end of Invincible Table Tennis Rabbit?

< strong > Chen Tianqiao's "disciple": < / strong >

< strong > the road to diversification of rice grains < / strong >

before founding the rice grain film industry, Zhang Qing was the director of Shanda Network. Times have changed, and now Chen Tianqiao's Shanda Group has long been transformed into an asset management company after the sale of industrial assets, and among the former executives of the Shanda department, the business form is closest to that year's Shanda, only Zhang Qing's rice grains.

at that time, Chen Tianqiao started as a game and laid out in pan-entertainment. Today, Zhang Qing started out as an animated film and explored pan-entertainment. At present, Rice Pictures' assets include: animated movies, live-action movies, two-dimensional series, game development, VR movies, VR theme parks.

Zhang Qing said frankly that the ideas of Shanda Network and Chen Tianqiao had a great inspiration and influence on his founding of the rice grain film industry.

"at that time, General Manager Chen (Chen Tianqiao) also wanted to turn Shanda into an ecology, connecting all the sub-businesses, but there was always a lack of a needle-and-thread product among the various sub-business sectors of Shanda at that time. This product is not a game, nor is it a starting point novel. In fact, it seems that what is missing is film and television." Zhang Qing said.

Shanda Network of that year also tried film and television products. On November 12, 2009, Shanda Network and Hunan Radio and Television announced that they jointly contributed 600 million yuan to set up Shanda Film Co., Ltd. Shanda officially entered the field of film and television production and distribution and related derivative business. However, ShengTV Pictures did not open the road to grand film and television, and the only works that can be seen by the outside world are the film and television adaptations made by IP from the Stars change of the starting point literature. And the reason should not be explained too much here.

and if you want to find a company around the world that is enough for Rice Pictures to admire, Zhang Qing says his best one is Pixar Animation. In Zhang Qing's view, the characteristic of Pixar is that it never talks about a sexy business model, but continues to create high-quality animation works, and every film surprises the outside world. Always full of creativity, never stagnant.

Edit: nancy