Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 400 I Will Become a Famous Person
"The Chess Master" is the third film adapted from Lin Chaoyang's original novel and the fourth film written by Lin Chaoyang. This film can be said to have maintained the consistent high standard of Lin Chaoyang's films.

Not only does it accurately restore the essence of the original novel, but more importantly, it also maintains the texture and style that a high-quality movie should have.

In addition to the contributions of the original novel and screenwriter Lin Chaoyang, this is also inseparable from the ingenuity of director Chen Huaikai.

As a meritorious director of Yanying Studio, Chen Huaikai's directing skills and artistic sense are quite outstanding.

He followed the film "The Chess Master" from beginning to end for two years and was very demanding in his pursuit of perfection.

The novel "The Chess Master" has a deep readership base. Coupled with the hot topic of the China-Japan Go Tournament in the past one or two months, the movie "The Chess Master" quickly triggered a large-scale viewing craze among the audience as soon as it was released.

After more than half a year, cinemas in various districts of Yanjing once again saw long queues of audiences queuing up to buy tickets to watch movies.

Many cinemas have also begun to spontaneously advance and extend screening times to ensure that audiences can see the movies.

All these phenomena illustrate the popularity of "The Chess Master", which can be said to be the most popular movie since the beginning of 84.

More than half a month after the movie was released, a wave of movie-watching swept across the country, almost identical to that in Yanjing.

In early November, a new issue of "Popular Movies" was released. The cover featured a handsome face full of bookish and noble air, which was a still of Tony Leung in "The Chess Master".

As the number one magazine in the Chinese film industry, Popular Cinema has a very high status and influence both within the industry and among movie fans, as evidenced by its sales of millions of copies per issue.

It uses a still of Tony Leung Ka Fai as the cover of this issue of the magazine, which also shows the popularity of "The Chess Master".

When "The Last Emperor" was released last year, "Popular Cinema" even made a special issue to report on the film, but Tony Leung's stills only appeared on the inside pages of the special issue.

This time, "The Chess Master" was very popular. It was the first time that Tony Leung Ka Fai appeared on the cover of this national film magazine. It was also the first time that a Hong Kong film actor appeared on the cover of "Popular Cinema", which set a record.

A Hong Kong actor went to the mainland to shoot two movies in a row, and was said to be planning to shoot a third one. He was also said to have been banned by Taiwan because of this.

What great promotional material this is!
He is simply the living treasure of the barrel station department!
Originally, "Popular Movies" wanted to do an exclusive interview with him, but unfortunately Tony Leung returned to Hong Kong recently, and has also been promoting the release of "The Chess Master" in Hong Kong.

"The Chess Master" was jointly invested, filmed and produced by Yan Film Studio and New Kunlun Pictures, so it is naturally not a problem for it to be released in Hong Kong.

However, New Kunlun Pictures is just a small workshop in Hong Kong. In the Hong Kong film industry where Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and Cinema City are the three major players, it is not easy for them to find a powerful distributor.

It is true that "The Chess Master" is a co-production, but it is basically just a co-production in disguise. The vast majority of the film's front- and behind-the-scenes staff are from the mainland, with only one male lead, Tony Leung, and a few behind-the-scenes staff being from Hong Kong.

Moreover, these people are not very famous in Hong Kong. Even though the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai has just won the Best Actor Award at the Academy Awards, he is still just an insignificant little figure in the film industry.

The Hong Kong film market is highly commercialized, so distributors were naturally cautious about a film with a "mainland" label. In the end, Li Hanxiang had no choice but to choose the United Chinese Cinema Chain.

Since the 1970s, there have been four major cinema chains in the Hong Kong film market.

These cinema chains together control nearly 90% of the cinemas in Hong Kong's film industry. Cinemas are the channels for film distribution and the lifeblood of the film industry.

Controlling the cinemas means that these theater chains have the greatest say in the Hong Kong film industry.

Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and Princess Royal, all of which are well-known to later generations, are film industry giants that own their own cinema chains.

As early as the 1960s and 1970s, apart from the Shaw Brothers, a giant in the film industry, there were not many production companies in the Hong Kong film industry that were tied to theaters.

But in the 1970s, Shaw's right-hand man Zou Wenhuai left and founded Golden Harvest. He deeply realized that cinema chains meant the right to speak in the film industry.

So he invested heavily in cinema chains, and at the same time vigorously promoted the independent producer system and satellite company system.

Allowing creators to participate in profit sharing provided a freer creative environment than Shaw Brothers, and gradually cultivated Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Mak Dang-hung and other popular figures in the Hong Kong film industry.

This decision allowed Golden Harvest to rise rapidly in its early days, and also made Golden Princess, another cinema giant, realize that Shaw Brothers' studio system and salary system could no longer keep up with the development of the times.

The combination of cinema chains and production companies and the flourishing satellite dividend system are the general trend.

So Princess Jin followed the example of Golden Harvest, using talents in an unconventional way and vigorously supporting small and medium-sized production companies. Cinema City was one of the production companies supported by Princess Jin.

In addition to these three, there is another cinema chain in the Hong Kong film industry that is not very famous but has considerable strength, and that is the United Chinese Theater Chain.

The Lianhua Group is a cinema alliance with Nanyang, Nanhua, Yindu, Huadu, and Guobin cinemas as its backbone.

Compared with the previous three, the independent United Chinese Film Group is more loosely organized and less powerful, so it has a poor reputation in the Hong Kong film market.

But the Lianhua Group has one advantage, that is, they all belong to Chinese-funded cinema chains, so it is not difficult for mainland films to be released here. If "The Chess Master" is to be released in Hong Kong, this is naturally the first choice.

However, even though the film has been released, promoting it is still a difficult problem.

"The Chess Master" has a small investment scale, no big company or funds behind it, and no star lineup. It is too difficult to attract audiences to go to the cinema to watch the movie.

Li Hanxiang had invested hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong dollars, and he didn't want all this investment to go down the drain, so he could only rack his brains to get some publicity resources for "The Chess Master". Tony Leung Ka Fai had just won the Best Actor Award at the 3rd Hong Kong Film Awards, and was banned by Taiwan. This was a pretty good publicity point and could be used as a publicity focus.

The rest of the actors are from the mainland and have no fame in Hong Kong, so it is useless for him to promote them.

Then there is the cast behind the scenes. Director Chen Huaikai is also unknown in Hong Kong, and screenwriter Lin Chaoyang...

When Li Hanxiang looked at the name "Lin Chaoyang", he couldn't help but think of the days three months ago when Lin Chaoyang was dominating Hong Kong Island.

This guy has been on the headlines of gossip magazines several times in the past few days. It would be a shame not to make good use of it.

Two days later, a promotional article about "The Chess Master" appeared in some entertainment tabloids in Hong Kong, "For this film, the Hong Kong Film Award winner was banned in Taiwan" and "The Hong Kong Film Award winner was banned and moved to the mainland to make a living"...

At first, the style of these entertainment tabloids' press releases was relatively normal, but after a few days, the content gradually became outrageous.

"The latest movie of Lin Qingxia's rumored boyfriend is released" "The Chess Master is released, the film that sealed the relationship between Lin Qingxia and her rumored boyfriend"...

Entertainment tabloids are shameless. The headlines of their articles are filled with all kinds of eye-catching words, but the content is basically groundless.

Although readers attracted by headlines often curse after reading newspapers and magazines, their bad nature as human beings still makes them fall for it again and again.

After more than a week of promotion, "The Chess Master" was finally officially released in Hong Kong on November 11.

The United Chinese Cinemas chain is the weakest among the four major cinema chains in Hong Kong, with only 23 screens used for the showing of "The Chess Master".

Fortunately, the publicity campaign launched by Li Hanxiang in entertainment tabloids these days has been quite effective. On the first day of its release, the average attendance rate of "The Chess Master" exceeded 40%.

Such attendance rates mean that the cinema chain is profitable and the start is pretty good.

On the second and third day, the attendance rate of "The Chess Master" increased further, exceeding 60% at one point, which meant that the cinema could make a lot of money from "The Chess Master".

For three consecutive days, the cumulative box office of "The Chess Master" reached 105.6 million Hong Kong dollars.

Compared with those annual blockbuster movies that easily gross more than 20 million Hong Kong dollars, such results are certainly nothing.

But "The Chess Master" is, after all, a "three-no" movie produced in mainland China, without big-name stars, without big investment, and the cinema chain where the film was released is the weakest of the four major cinema chains in Hong Kong, the United Chinese Theatre Chain. It is not easy to achieve such a result.

In the following days, the word of mouth of "The Chess Master" continued to grow, attracting more and more Hong Kong audiences to the cinema.

Half a month after its release, the film’s cumulative box office has exceeded HK$720 million. If nothing unexpected happens, the box office is expected to exceed HK$ million by the time the film is removed from theaters.

This box office figure can squeeze into the top 20 of Hong Kong films of the year. It is a co-production led by domestic capital, with no big-name stars and no decent publicity and distribution resources, but the box office has exceeded 10 million Hong Kong dollars, which is considered a small hit in any case!
Therefore, in recent days, more and more Hong Kong film companies have turned their attention to this "three-no" movie from the mainland.

After careful investigation, these people were even more surprised.

It turns out that this movie was adapted from the work of a mainland writer who caused a heated discussion in Hong Kong a few months ago. The original novel has sold millions of copies in the mainland and has a huge influence.

The cast of the film is basically composed of mainlanders. The only Hong Kong actor, Tony Leung, has just won the Best Actor Award at the Academy Awards, but he is not very famous in Hong Kong.

In addition, he was banned by Taiwan last year, and has long been automatically classified as a top-notch "box office poison" actor by various film and television companies.

But now, these Hong Kong film and television companies are surprised to find that Tony Leung, an actor who had long been banned by Taiwan, is actually alive and well, and seems to be getting better and better.

From last year's "The Last Emperor" to this year's "The Chess Master", the cumulative box office of the movies in which he played the leading role has quietly reached nearly HK$4000 million.

Such box office performance is definitely not what one would expect from a first-tier star in Hong Kong, but for a newcomer who has only been in the industry for two or three years, it is already an extremely exaggerated result.

The success of a movie is the result of the efforts of the director, screenwriter, and film and television company, but the success of two movies in a row is not such a simple matter.

As the story spread, many producers began to believe that Tony Leung was a lucky guy.

Hong Kong people have always been very superstitious in this regard, and many people believe that by cooperating with such people, they will also gain good luck.

As Tony Leung Ka Fai's fame grows, the ban from Taiwan has little deterrent effect on Hong Kong's production companies.

After all, compared with the unpredictable Taiwan Island market, the real sales in Hong Kong may be more important.

As a result, production companies began to contact Tony Leung, hoping to invite him to star in their movies. His salary also increased continuously, and one production company even offered him a salary of 50 Hong Kong dollars.

This standard of remuneration has reached the level of Hong Kong's top movie stars, and it is something that newcomer Tony Leung Chiu-fai had never dared to imagine before.

The hot sales of "The Chess Master" have made Tony Leung the most popular movie star in the Hong Kong film industry in the past two months, and he is the most popular person at the moment.

Compared to his fame, Hong Kong film and television companies do not pay as much attention to Lin Chaoyang, the original author and screenwriter. After all, most film and television companies are still pursuing immediate benefits.

How can the effects and benefits brought by chasing after a screenwriter be as great as chasing after a celebrity?
But not everyone in this world is short-sighted. A few people with unique vision often bet on bigger treasures than those speculators!
(End of this chapter)