Why was Shen Fang so confident? Because the release of "Hero" in 2002 had already begun to rewrite the history of mainland Chinese cinema. It was also in this year that mainland Chinese films entered the era of commercial blockbusters.

The history of Chinese cinema can be divided into two parts, starting with the reform and opening up in 1978.

A year later, China began a major transformation, transitioning from a planned economy to a market economy, which opened up endless possibilities for the development of film.

The effects of this transformation are considerable.

In 1979, "The Gunshots of the Secret Service" was released, attracting 600 million viewers and grossing 180 million yuan, making it the first domestic film in China to break the 100 million yuan mark after the reform and opening up. Many people have never even heard of this film, let alone seen it, and many believe that "Shaolin Temple" was the first domestic film to break the 100 million yuan mark, but that is not actually the case.

Following closely behind "The 405 Murder Case" in 1980 and "Shaolin Temple" in 1982, both films achieved box office miracles of over 100 million yuan in an era when tickets cost less than a dime. It's not one film, but "Shaolin Temple" was so famous that the other film, "The 450 Murder Case," was overshadowed.

Following the period of rapid growth in the 1980s, the cinema industry underwent market-oriented reforms in 1993, fully embracing the market economy. Subsequent imported films such as "The Fugitive," "Rumble in the Bronx," and "True Lies" broke the box office records in mainland China with grossing 26 million, 95 million, and 102 million yuan respectively.

P.S.: Many people say, "Author, you're illiterate. You don't do any research before writing. You say there aren't any movies in China that grossed over 100 million yuan?" Actually, there were such movies before 2000, and not just one. You just didn't know it. I'm not kidding you. Many chapters were written after careful research.

In 1997, Feng Xiaogang's "The Dream Factory" established the New Year's film season with a box office of 36 million yuan, and Chinese films began to pay attention to the concept of release dates.

The following year, Titanic caused a sensation, with a box office record of 360 million dollars, which was not broken until Transformers 2 in 2009.

The last time a domestic film grossed over 100 million yuan was in 2000, with "Life and Death Choice" in 2000, which was shown from the summer to the National Day holiday and grossed a total of 120 million yuan.

2002 was a year of tremendous change for Chinese cinema, all thanks to the arrival of a phenomenal star. His film, *Hero*, ignited the previously sluggish film market, grossing 250 million RMB in mainland China, accounting for a quarter of the year's total. Globally, it grossed over 1.2 billion RMB.

This film not only pioneered the genre in Chinese cinema but also established the blockbuster formula: big-name directors, big budgets, grand scenes, and big stars, with a master-level production team behind the scenes. Zhang Yimou, Zhang Weiping, and Jiang Zhiqiang joined forces to usher in the era of blockbusters for mainland Chinese films.

This has driven the commercialization of Chinese cinema, changed film distribution and profit models, and made film companies begin to pay attention to the importance of marketing. At the same time, it has also made the mainland Chinese film market, along with countries and regions such as South Korea and Japan, one of the few film markets in the world that has not been eroded by Hollywood films.

Perhaps seeing the unprecedented success of the collaboration between Hong Kong and the mainland in "Hero", Hong Kong and the mainland signed the CAPE agreement in 2003.

The agreement stipulated that Hong Kong filmmakers could receive the same treatment as mainland Chinese films in co-productions, thus ushering in the era of co-productions between Hong Kong and the mainland.

The following year, the Chinese-American brothers collaborated with Stephen Chow on "Kung Fu Hustle," which grossed 160 million yuan, making Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers" and Feng Xiaogang's "A World Without Thieves" no match for "Kung Fu Hustle."

Stephen Chow's achievement of winning the annual box office crown for domestic films has inspired more Hong Kong directors to move north to mainland China.

At that time, the Hong Kong film market was already in decline, and Hong Kong directors such as Peter Chan, Tsui Hark, Wong Jing, John Woo, Yip Wai-man, Andrew Lau, and Dante Lam seized the opportunity to come to the mainland.

It not only boosted the mainland film market and allowed a number of Hong Kong filmmakers to start working, but also brought the mature industrialized production of Hong Kong films to the mainland.

The production teams behind Wu Jing's films like *Wolf Warrior*, *Wolf Warrior*, and *Wolf Warrior 2* were all Hong Kong filmmakers and Bona Film Group's series of patriotic films. The role of co-productions extends beyond industrialization; they also play a significant role in terms of release date selection.

In 2008, thanks to China's rapid economic development, the film market also soared. "Painted Skin" broke 100 million yuan at the mainland box office on National Day, single-handedly opening the door to the National Day film season. This single day significantly boosted the daily box office growth rate of Chinese films.

The following year, "The Message" was released, and the cumulative box office during the National Day holiday alone reached 150 million yuan, successfully establishing the status of this period as a "golden period" and making it the second largest period of the year after the Spring Festival.

That year, Hong Kong actors were no longer the only dominant force, and mainland actors such as Huang Xiaoming, Deng Chao, Xu Zheng, and Huang Bo began to stand on their own.

However, the impact of the change in actors on mainland films is nowhere near as significant as the impact of "Avatar," whose box office of 1.34 billion yuan and 3D technology astonished the mainland.

This change directly led to the upgrading of domestic cinemas, a significant increase in the number of screens, made 2D movies a thing of the past, and enabled the mainland's annual box office to exceed 10 billion yuan for the first time.

However, the growth in box office revenue and the expansion of the market exacerbated the conflict between cinemas and film companies regarding the distribution of box office profits. At this point, the troublemaker Zhang Weiping stepped in again. He used "The Flowers of War" to negotiate with the cinemas, and after years of mediation, the box office revenue sharing ratio was finally changed from 3:7 to 4:6.

Although Zhang Wping is a troublemaker, he deserves credit for getting this much sharing.

This chapter is not finished yet. Please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!