Chapter 440: Mr. Meng can also make mistakes
[Daily Economic News, a few days ago, the Hong Kong-listed company Hengten Network officially launched a full-owned acquisition of Ruyi Pictures, with a total amount of up to HK$11.6 billion. According to the current market value of Hengten Network, after the acquisition is completed, the original Ruyi Pictures shareholders will hold 32% of the shares and become the second largest shareholder of Hengten Network. It is reported that a profit betting agreement was also set up for the acquisition of Hengten Network. Ruyi Pictures needs to achieve a total profit of 1.5 billion yuan within three years...
"Three years and 1.5 billion."
In the Bad Monkey Film and Television Studio, Ning Hao said with emotion: "Right now, only President Meng and you have the courage to achieve the goal."
"How can I have any courage? It's not that I couldn't cut it down during the negotiation." Meng Bai, who was sitting opposite, took a sip of tea and chuckled, "In fact, it is understandable. They offered a high price for the acquisition, so their requirements will definitely be higher."
Ning Hao laughed and said, "Evergrande is quite confident in the film and television market. They dare to rush in at this time."
Meng Bai shook his head: "They are not confident, they are obsessed. Evergrande established Evergrande Film and Television a few years ago, but all the movies it invested in lost money. Later, it wanted to start from the channel end and acquired the Times and Amy theaters through Jiakaicheng. Isn't it thinking about continuing to expand the upstream production end?"
"It's also good. With such a new capital entering the market, life in the film and television industry will be better." Ning Hao sighed.
Hearing his depressed tone, Meng Bai raised his eyebrows: "Director Ning, isn't it just that the performance of our movie is not as good as expected? Besides, we didn't lose money. Why are you so depressed?"
Ning Hao didn't say anything. Shen Ao, who was sitting in the lower position, said with a guilty look: "I'm really sorry, Brother Ning, President Meng. It's my ability that caused the box office failure this time."
"It has nothing to do with you, Xiao Shen." Ning Hao sighed: "Although you directed the movie, in fact, I, the producer, had the final say most of the time from beginning to end. Now that the box office is not good, the problem should be mine."
The movie that the three were talking about that "didn't do well at the box office" was "The Beneficiary" which was released a few days ago.
As the fourth movie of the "Bad Monkey 72 Transformations Plan", it is also a realistic theme, and it is also a combination of "Producer Ning Hao + New Director". The style of the film is also similar. Many people think of "Dying to Survive" which was a big hit in the summer of last year.
Although the two films can be found to be not of the same level from the investment point of view, it does not affect the audience's expectations for it.
Ning Hao and his team also had high hopes for this movie. Not to mention the 3 billion box office of "Dying to Survive", it would be quite good to have 700 to 800 million, after all, the production cost of this movie is only 50 million.
However, it turns out that everyone thought too much.
"The Beneficiary" was originally scheduled for this summer, but later had to be postponed due to some problems in post-production. The National Day file is limited by the subject matter and this year's node is not suitable, so it can only be put in the ordinary time period after the National Day.
This is actually not a big deal. Affected by the cold winter of the film and television last year, the number of works this year is relatively small. As long as the quality of the movie is excellent, more films are scheduled in ordinary time periods, which may be more comfortable than colliding with those popular works in the popular period.
It's a pity that the quality of "The Beneficiary" is also average. One is the actor, not to mention that the leading actor Dapeng has a huge collapse in popularity because of the original "Pancake Man", and he is still paying off his debts. Just in terms of acting skills, compared with Xu Zheng with hair, he is not a little bit worse.
Many viewers who have watched the movie have given him the same evaluation - "I want to play a poor and struggling person at the bottom, but I can't let go of my airs, and I always inadvertently reveal that I am very awesome. It's like I'm always telling the audience: Look, how similar I am to this ordinary person!"
The female lead Liu Yan received quite high evaluations, and many people think that her performance as "female anchor Yue Miaomiao" is a true performance.
However, the actor's problems are only minor problems. The biggest problem of this movie is the failure in plot design and character creation.
I don't know if it was influenced by the original "No Man's Land", but Ning Hao's movies in recent years always have this kind of "I want to say something but I don't know if it's appropriate, but I feel uncomfortable if I don't say it."
This feeling actually existed in "Crazy Alien" at the beginning of the year, but it was saved by the novel setting and the two leading actors "Huang Bo and Shen Teng".
Now it has changed to "The Beneficiary", a low-cost movie with a realistic theme, and the problems in the story text are immediately revealed.
Although Shen Ao is a director, he is also a newcomer. Ning Hao, the "senior and boss", is definitely more important in terms of the right to speak. In addition, he is indeed not as good as Wen Muye in "Dying to Survive" in terms of text ability, which leads to the whole movie full of forced reversal of plot logic and impetuous character settings.
The movie started with a score of 7.0, but it dropped to 6.9 in a few days. There is no hope for box office results. It barely broke 100 million after one week of release. It has been nearly 20 days now, and there is still no improvement. It will be considered good if it can exceed 200 million by the time it is released.
For investors, this result is poor, but acceptable. The box office share plus the income from the video platform later, at least there is no loss.
But for Ning Hao and Shen Ao, the main creators, it seems very uncomfortable.
Especially Ning Hao, he is now full of guilt towards Meng Bai. At the beginning, he pulled people to invest in his "Bad Monkey 72 Transformations", but the first project became like this, which is really a bit unreasonable.
Meng Bai comforted him that no one could predict the result of a movie project before it was released, and it was normal to have losses and gains.
But it was hard for Ning Hao to accept this statement. After all, before "The Beneficiary", the projects that Arclight had participated in over the years had basically not performed so poorly. It just happened that it had just started working with him, and it became like this.
Fortunately, this movie did not lose money after all, otherwise Mr. Meng's "unbeatable golden body" in the film and television industry over the years would be ruined in his hands, and that would be a huge sin.
"Director Ning, let's usually watch those marketing accounts less." Meng Bai said: "Arclight also has many projects with mediocre results, but they have not been promoted much, so where does the "unbeatable golden body" come from."
Arclight Film and Television has invested in many other cooperative projects in recent years, in addition to the projects that Meng Bai has taken out himself, and there are many projects that perform mediocrely like "The Beneficiary".
It's just that Meng Bai's personal record is too dazzling, so it covers up these mediocre projects.
But a company can't always rely on one person after all. He has plenty of inspiration fragments, but the problem is that he doesn't have that much time and energy. So as long as the final profit can not lose money, Arclight will not refuse the project.
"And Director Xiao Shen, you don't have to worry too much about the box office results. It's a success for a newcomer's first film if it doesn't lose money." Meng Bai looked at Shen Ao and said, "I think the Bad Monkey Project is still meaningful. At least it can train more cutting-edge directors for the film industry."
Although he is a few years older than Meng Bai, Shen Ao has no objection to the name "Xiao Shen".
Mr. Meng is in charge of the film and television industry at a young age. What's there to say about me being a few years older? On the contrary, he was quite happy with this affectionate name, thinking that Mr. Meng treated him as his own.
But he didn't have anything to show for it right now, and he didn't have the confidence to say that his next movie would definitely get a good score. Therefore, he could only swear in his heart that if there was a chance next time, he would never disappoint Mr. Meng's hopes.
Meng Bai naturally didn't know that his casual words of comfort would make the new director feel so much. After all, he usually wouldn't think about the inner fluctuations of an old man.
Looking at Ning Hao, he continued to ask: "Have you planned the next project? If the script is suitable, we will continue our cooperation."
"I did, but I rejected it now." Ning Hao said: "The previous works were too smooth, especially the big hit of "Dying to Survive", which made me a little overoptimistic about the "Bad Monkey Project". Now it seems that I still have to think about it seriously."
At this point, Ning Hao smiled again: "Don't worry, Mr. Meng, it's rare to find such a reliable investor like you, and I will definitely not "let you go" if there is a new project."
Meng Bai laughed: "Haha, okay, then I'll wait for your new movie, Director Ning."
——Speaking
of which, Ruyi Films is also one of the producers of "The Beneficiary". Chen Zhixi and Dapeng started working together since "The Pancake Man" and have always participated in his projects.
Although the first project after the merger and acquisition had some failures, Evergrande didn't care at all. The "Sky Hunter" they invested in at the beginning lost 100 million yuan, which directly stopped Evergrande Film and Television, which had just been established. In comparison, "The Beneficiary" at least did not lose money, and if you are lucky, you may be able to make some money later.
The failure of a small film project did not affect Evergrande's expectations for Ruyi at all. The film business is proceeding step by step, and the streaming media platform has also started to promote it.
At present, the most impressive thing about "Heng Video" is the "Return Trilogy" in cooperation with Arc Light. In order to attract traffic, even if only one work has just been filmed, all the relevant information of the three works has been announced.
Many viewers were confused when they first heard the concept of "returning", until they read the synopsis of the three dramas, and then they suddenly realized that this is not time travel.
But then again, although the setting of "time travel" is not new in movies or American and Japanese dramas, it is really rare for domestic dramas.
Not to mention TV dramas, the freshness of online dramas has been declining since the review standards were benchmarked against TV dramas last year. The suspenseful criminal investigation trend brought about by Arc Light has also become less popular under increasingly strict review.
Apart from other things, "Day and Night Chase", the masterpiece of the year that was a big hit, has now become a typical case of "audit error".
"Non-police personnel cannot investigate the case", "cannot exaggerate blood and violence", "the villain must be bad to the end and cannot show good qualities"... Various requirements have led to the repeated overturning of the sequel script of Arclight.
Nowadays, the popular themes in the film and television market have returned to the traditional youth city, ancient idol fairy tales, etc. Occasionally, a few so-called "suspense criminal investigation dramas" are mostly just a gimmick, and in the end they are basically anticlimactic.
However, the theme of "suspense" itself has been retained as a plot element. Even today's ancient puppet dramas like to add some suspenseful plots at the beginning to attract the audience, and the effect is better than the orthodox "criminal investigation drama".
Like "The Song Dynasty Youth" produced by Arclight some time ago, and the male-oriented IP "Celebrating Yu Nian" that New Classics Media is about to launch, they are all similar "costume suspense" styles, and the popularity is higher than one.
The previous summer hit "The Hidden Corner" made many people think that Arclight was going to "return as a king" and return to the orthodox suspense track. Unexpectedly, Arclight immediately announced the cooperation with the new platform and launched a new "Retrospection Series".
For many viewers, this is good news - who doesn't like works with fresh themes?
As for the fact that the theme of "time travel" requires extremely high plot logic, no one is worried about it. After all, the script of this series was written by President Meng himself, and it is a "S+" level project.
In addition to the three new dramas in the "Retrospection Series", Heng Video also announced several planning projects. Including the documentary observation reality show "Guarding Blue Mountain Shanxi" in cooperation with Arclight, the social observation slow variety show "Fifty Kilometers Taohuawu" proposed by Meng Bai and cooperated with Tencent Video, and several other similar plans.
However, the most eye-catching one is the "30+" girl group talent show called "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves".
For the audience, one of the main points of talent shows, especially idol talent shows, is "cultivation".
Like the "Produce 101" that Yang Chaoyue participated in, all the girls were 17 or 18 years old. The mainstream audience is a little older, and they can have some sense of superiority from age and experience in front of them, which is the fun of training.
Wow, you now have a group of "sister contestants" who are over 30 years old, much older than the audience, how can we train them.
Of course, some netizens think this format is quite novel. Everyone has watched a lot of traditional idol talent shows in the past two years. Next year, Qiyi TV and Tencent Video will each have a girl group program to be released. I am a little tired of watching too much.
It just so happens that this "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" will also be broadcast next year, and it can compete with the other two "girl talent shows" - who said that women in their thirties have no charm.
Many people on the Internet are divided into two camps. Some think that this program is just a "gimmick" and it will definitely be a mess. Others think that this plan is quite interesting and they can support it when the time comes.
But overall, most netizens are still not optimistic, especially with several girl group talent shows next year.
Although the outside world is not optimistic, since Heng Video has already announced it, it will definitely go ahead. So the platform is now forming a team while inviting non-first-tier female artists in the circle who were born in 1990s and before.
Chen Zhixi is very interested in this program, so he took on the position of chief producer and was responsible for coordinating the production of the entire program.
As for Meng Bai, although he also participated in the planning and proposal at the beginning, he himself was not very interested in this kind of talent show, so he did not get involved. On the contrary, he focused more on another less popular program "Fifty Kilometers Taohuawu".
This project is the slow variety show he promised Meng Ziyi before, which focuses on "friends reunion and experiencing life."
(End of this chapter)
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