Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 98 If I don't show off, who will?

Li Qiutang is very busy, so busy that she seldom pays attention to news from the outside world.

But the wind of "Red Cliff Part 1" still blew into his ears.

This is probably the third movie that the whole nation is looking forward to after "Hero" and "The Promise".

It is no exaggeration to describe the lineup as "extremely luxurious", and it is no exaggeration to say that it is the strongest Chinese band.

1400 copies were released in the mainland, the most in history. The first wave of movie-watching enthusiasm attracted thousands of people, and the film took in 2700 million on the first day, setting a new first-day record in domestic film history. The 4 million in the first four days of the first weekend also set a new record for the fastest box office revenue of over 1.08 million.

The film grossed $2500 million in its first week in Asia.

But the bigger the blockbuster, the louder the criticism.

While "Red Cliff: Part I" was a big hit, it also inevitably attracted doubts and criticisms.

Zhou Liming: "... the crew spent a lot of manpower and material resources to create a war scene that is quite grand. For example, the director chose to shoot a panoramic view from the air for the Bagua formation, and the effect was quite good. But compared with previous blockbusters such as "The Curse of the Golden Flower" and "The Warlords", the fighting scenes in this film have not made much progress. ... I think the performances of all the actors in this film are not very good. It may be that in order to make it understandable to Western audiences, the actors deliberately played at a shallow level. Whether it is Zhang Fengyi from the mainland or Liang Chaowei from Hong Kong and Taiwan, their performance mode is a bit pretentious, but they seem to be very sophisticated inside... At first I didn't understand why the actors all looked like they came out of the same mold. When I saw at the premiere, they all said that their characters looked like Wu Yusen, and then I suddenly realized that they were all learning from the same prototype."

Online comments: "When I saw Liu Bei saying 'Let the refugees go first!' and 'Bei wants to borrow Jingzhou to settle 100,000 refugees', I felt that China had already entered XXism more than a thousand years ago! Guan Yu is even more like a political commissar, giving earnest instructions to the children: 'When you grow up, you will know that reading is very useful', but why did he teach the children to recite 'Guan Guan Ju Jiu'? It's really embarrassing.

"And Cao Cao was portrayed as a Japanese devil, who was lusting after Xiao Qiao. Xiao Qiao's image in the movie was too much like a KMT female spy. The Shu-Wu alliance became a KMT-CCP alliance to resist the invasion of Japanese imperialism... I was dizzy."

The latter statement actually touches upon the reason why those big directors are not good at making blockbusters.

On the night Li Qiutang returned to Yanjing from Zhuolu, his assistant director invited him to watch "Red Cliff".

There will definitely be no problem with the scene, after all, so much money has been spent.

It’s not a bad movie. As a commercial blockbuster, it is definitely worth the price of the ticket. But if you ask me how good it is, Li Qiutang didn’t think it was that good after watching it.

It was money well spent to while away the night.

The assistant director invited him to watch a movie, so Li Qiutang invited him to have a midnight snack

The next day, Li Qiutang had no work on his schedule.

But when Xinlang Entertainment's editor-in-chief Lei Zhenjian heard that he had returned to Beijing, he specially invited him for an interview.

They were all friends, so they just did it. It didn't matter in any studio or filming studio. Lei Zhenjian asked Li Qiutang to meet him at a night snack stall, saying that the weather was hot now and they would be more comfortable chatting while eating.

Why wouldn't Li Qiutang agree to this?

When they arrived at the agreed location, Lei Zhenjian first congratulated Li Qiutang: "The 1.5 million yuan for "Famous" is even higher than "No One in the Eyes"."

"Fame and Fame" was released for 33 days and closed with a box office of 1.52 million yuan, a result that satisfied everyone.

Li Qiutang began to pretend: "1.5 million dollars didn't kill that foreign panda."

"Get Famous" suppressed "Kung Fu Panda" for a period of time, but as the word-of-mouth of "Kung Fu Panda" spread and the popularity of "Get Famous" ebbed, "Kung Fu Panda" gradually caught up with and is expected to surpass "Get Famous".

The market's expectation for "Kung Fu Panda" has been adjusted from 1.2 million to 1.6 million. From the current perspective, it should not be difficult for "Kung Fu Panda" to take the top spot in the animated film box office.

In June before the release of Red Cliff, two films with a box office of over 6 million yuan heated up the market. The film authorities were certainly happy to see this. The performance this year should be very good. Lei Zhenjian wanted to pour wine for Li Qiutang, but Li Qiutang stopped him: "Drunk driving is being cracked down recently. I drove here alone and don't drink anymore." The crackdown on drunk driving was not strict before, but with the Olympics approaching, Yanjing began to crack down on drunk driving.

"Boss, give me a bottle of Coke."

Lei Zhenjian laughed: "It's okay if you don't drink Coke, but when you drink this I realize that you are only 24 years old."

"What does drinking Coke have to do with age?" Li Qiutang said with a smile, "Sugar replenishes energy, refreshes the mind, and makes people happy. I drink Coke on the set."

Lei Zhenjian asked Li Qiutang to drink Coke, but he wanted to drink alcohol. If he didn't drink alcohol while eating barbecue, the barbecue would be in vain.

Although the two were eating barbecue, Lei Zhenjian did not forget that he was here for an interview.

"Two years after debut, three movies, and each one was a big success at the box office. To be more precise, each one was more successful than the last. How does it feel?"

Li Qiutang laughed and said, "Crazy, confident."

When Lei Zhenjian heard these two words, he knew that Li Qiutang was not crazy.

Li Qiutang went on to say: “I can’t pretend to be modest and say that my current results are not good enough, that would be too fake.

"Three movies in two years, the total box office is almost 2 million. If I don't show off, who will?"

Lei Zhenjian continued his words: "Such an achievement is indeed something to be proud of."

Li Qiutang said: "But creation requires this kind of confidence. My work is awesome. If you don't approve of your own work, how can you expect the audience to approve of it?"

Although the words were rough, Lei Zhenjian could understand the logic behind them.

“What impact has this success had on your life?”

Li Qiutang thought for a moment and said, "Except for being busier at work, there doesn't seem to be much impact on my life."

"No physical changes?"

"It seems not." Li Qiutang knew that the other party wanted to lead him to say that he had made money and turned from a poor boy into a rich man, but he did not feel any obvious changes in his material life. "I am not a person with high material desires. I can live in a five-star hotel, stay in a small studio, and sleep in a bed with two classmates.

"In fact, there have been changes in my life. My parents finally know what I do. When my movies are released, they will invite relatives and friends to watch them, but my grandmother still thinks I haven't found a job. I told her that I'm a director and I make movies. She doesn't know what a director is or what a movie is. It's quite fun to explain it to her.

"Speaking of this, there's something funny. 'No One' was released in April, and 'Famous' was released in June. My parents invited me to watch two movies in a row. People said, 'You're there to buy the movie tickets for people.'"

Lei Zhenjian asked again: "Have you watched the recently popular Red Cliff?"

"I saw it. I came back yesterday and watched it with our assistant director."

"How do you feel after watching it?"

Li Qiutang smiled bitterly and shook her head, saying something that Lei Zhenjian didn't expect: "I feel very sorry for Zhao Yanzi and little Song Jia."

"Oh? How do you mean?" Lei Zhenjian had never thought of starting with Zhao Yanzi and Xiao Songjia in "Red Cliff".

(End of this chapter)