Millennium director

Beijing, somewhere in a mid-range community.

Li Xuejian, wearing glasses, was sitting on the sofa, reading the newspaper at hand and listening to the news on the TV.

Since he was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer while filming in 2000, and then returned to film "The Embalmer" in 2002, although Li Xuejian gained popularity in the literary and art circles because of this movie, he did not take on roles very frequently.

Cancer is not an easy disease to deal with. Even if the surgery was successful, Li Xuejian still focused on resting in the past few years and made a movie in three or four years.

Li Xuejian, who has been acting all his life, is really not used to taking a break all of a sudden.

Although he didn't act in many movies in the past, only one every year or two on average, he was still a drama actor at the Central Theater of China and performed in a large number of dramas.

Now that the drama performances have stopped, I stay at home every day, drink tea and read the newspaper, and enjoy my retirement life in advance.

After a few years of such leisurely days, Li Xuejian was exhausted.

I want to act!

Li Xuejian sighed slightly while looking at the publicity for the release of the movie "The Sun Also Rises" in the newspaper.

At this moment, his cell phone suddenly rang.

He picked up the phone casually, and after just listening to a few words, the expression on Li Xuejian's face changed again and again.

"Director Wu's new movie?"

"Protagonist?"

"Act, definitely act!"

Yes, when the selection range was not large, the first thing Wu Yuan thought of was Li Xuejian, whom he had worked with before.

Compared with You Benchang, Li Xuejian is more suitable to play this kind of lonely and eccentric old man.

You Benchang's appearance is so kind, especially as he gets older, he looks like a kind grandfather, without feeling withdrawn at all.

Li Xuejian is different. As a man who has played the role of King of Qin, he was chosen to play Ying Zheng because he looks unusually cold when he is not smiling.

And if he smiles, it can dissolve the frost like the spring breeze blowing on his face, and suddenly he becomes a cheerful old man again.

This is undoubtedly very suitable for the role of "Li Wen".

When they last collaborated on "The Embalmer", Wu Yuan even jokingly made an appointment with him to collaborate again next time, and now he has just fulfilled this agreement.

Wu Yuan's invitation was naturally not rejected by Li Xuejian. Li Xuejian, who had been recuperating at home for a long time, had long wanted to go out again.

The two decided to cooperate after a quick discussion. Around December at the end of the year, on a snowy day in Beijing, they started filming "A Man Called Li Wen Decides to Die"!

Now that the most important male protagonist has been finalized, the preparations for "A Man Called Li Wen Decides to Die" are almost complete.

For a literary film like this, the early preparations are quite easy.

Decide on a few leading actors, find a few capable actors who are familiar to the audience to match the roles, choose a suitable shooting location, and you can start filming.

Wu Yuan only put a small part of his energy into the preparation of this film and easily solved the preparatory problems.

The assistant director and producer of the crew will naturally handle other details.

And his attention turned to the new movie that the company was about to release.

On September 12, the debut film "Don't Knock" by Liu Meichuan, a young director supported by the company, will be released in mainland China.

The production of this movie was not easy.

As we all know, the General Administration is very strict in censoring movies involving the theme of "ghosts".

In the impression of many movie fans, it seems that they have watched many Chinese horror movies, and they all have plots about ghosts harming people.

But in fact, these horror films in my impression were all shot on Hong Kong Island.

It's just that the pirated discs flowing into the mainland are all Mandarin dubbed versions, to be precise, they are Taiwanese versions.

Therefore, some uninformed movie fans thought these movies were shot in the Mainland.

In fact, the Mainland's General Administration is very strict, and the restrictions are getting stricter as the years go up. They do not allow any horror films involving ghosts to pass the censorship.

Liu Meichuan's "Don't Knock" is a very typical Asian horror film that combines the characteristics of Japanese and Hong Kong horror films.

The whole process uses a terrifying perspective, without any bloody and violent scenes, but it is always shocking. The climax mostly exists in its hallucinations and sudden force majeure shots. This kind of horror is very challenging to the nerves of movie fans.

For example, at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, there was a sudden knock on the door in the silent corridor, which made the audience and the protagonist tense up, and the tension began to build.

Then the protagonist cautiously approached the door step by step, leaned over the peephole and looked out but saw nothing, no one.

Just when the protagonist in the picture and the audience looking at the first-person view breathed a sigh of relief, the protagonist turned around, and a woman with disheveled hair and an invisible face stood behind him, cheek to cheek, only one centimeter away from him.

Then the protagonist and the audience were frightened at the same time, and they could feel goosebumps all over their bodies.

This is the characteristic of Asian horror films, which always use environment, background music, step-by-step action, and sudden shocking shots to exaggerate the terrifying atmosphere.

"Don't Knock" is such a movie. In the movie, the protagonists are a group of recently graduated college students who share a shabby apartment together for cheap.

After they moved into this apartment, all kinds of strange things started happening.

The knock on the door at 12 o'clock every night, the reflection in the mirror, the creaking sound under the bed, the sound of marbles jumping upstairs, and the sudden appearance of a white figure in the corridor.

All kinds of weird things challenge their spirits and torture their brains.

I want to escape from this apartment, but I find that no matter how I escape, I will always come back here at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night.

It turns out that this is a cursed apartment.

Of course, if the movie is really shot like this, the General Administration will never pass the review.

It's useless no matter how much face Wu Yuan has.

So, at the end of the movie, everything ends and the protagonists all go crazy and are admitted to a mental hospital.

Then after inspection and police investigation, the truth finally came out. It turned out that it was not a ghost that was seeking life, but a female classmate who was violently raped by the protagonist group on campus and forced the female classmate to jump off the building.

His boyfriend has been waiting for an opportunity to retaliate, and finally found a drug that can cause hallucinations and cause neurological problems if taken for a long time, and has been drugging the protagonist.

All the strange things they encountered in the apartment were actually caused by hallucinations caused by ghosts in their hearts. Because they were afraid of being killed every day, they actually fantasized about being killed by wronged ghosts, which eventually led to a nervous breakdown. crazy.

Yes, everything has a scientific explanation. It is a deliberate revenge, not something like a real ghost seeking life.

After making up for such an ending, the General Administration reluctantly gave it a pass.

As for why Wu Yuan insists on supporting Liu Meichuan when the domestic environment does not encourage the filming of such horror movies, of course it is because he has a higher perspective.

Liu Meichuan does have some talents as a horror film director. During the interview, the horror short film he shot with a handheld DV really scared Wu Yuan.

It feels a bit like James Wan when he was filming "Dead Silence".

It would be a pity not to cultivate such a talented director.

Wu Yuan's positioning of Light and Shadow Times has always been that it is not a mainland film production company. He is targeting the entire Asian market.

In the Asian market, apart from Mainland China, several other major movie theaters have a huge market for horror films.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and later Thailand all have a large number of fans who love watching horror movies.

Even in Japan and Thailand, horror films are one of the pillars of their film industries.

Especially in Thailand, some of Thailand’s excellent horror films are popular throughout Asia.

Of course Wu Yuan wants to train an excellent mainland horror film director to compete with these excellent Asian horror film directors for food.

This "Don't Knock" is an attempt.

Not only in mainland China, Light and Film Times is also actively planning to release the film on Hong Kong Island, and plans to release DVD video tapes in Japan and South Korea.

The real area where horror films are developing is not in movie theaters, but in the DVD market.

Compared with watching horror movies with other people in the cinema, it is more exciting to be alone at home on the sofa, at least this is what most horror movie lovers think.

From North America to Japan and South Korea, horror movies have always been the best-selling genre in the DVD rental market.

Moreover, most movie fans are not very picky and watch horror films from all over the world. Korean horror films, Japanese horror films, Thai horror films, and Hong Kong horror films are all favorites of horror film lovers.

If mainland horror films can do well, they will have great potential in this market!

Liu Meichuan, who had high hopes from Wu Yuan, immediately felt an unprecedented sense of pressure after hearing that the company was in charge of the Asian DVD release of the film.

Liu Meichuan is very young, only 26 years old this year. He is a cutting-edge young director.

Before he was selected into the Young Director Support Program, his biggest dream in life was to make his own horror film.

After watching an American horror movie "The Shining" in a video store when he was 12 years old, he fell in love with this nerve-stimulating movie genre. From then on, he became obsessed with horror movies, American, Japanese, From Hong Kong Island, he had watched a lot of horror movies, and an idea came to his mind.

He also wants to make a horror movie like this!

Then, he studied hard and worked hard. After two failures, he was finally admitted to Nortel and became Wu Yuan's junior student.

Later, as soon as I graduated, I came across the youth film support program of the Light and Shadow Era.

With the mentality of giving it a try, he submitted his resume, rough DV self-filmed works, and the script of "Don't Knock" to Light and Shadow Times.

Unexpectedly, among nearly a hundred competitors, he stood out and was selected.

Now, "Don't Knock" has been filmed and will be released nationwide soon, and even has overseas DVD distribution.

All this is like a dream to Liu Meichuan!

On September 12, sitting in the No. 2 screening room of the Beijing Light and Film Times Cinema, Liu Meichuan still couldn't believe it.

He tightly grasped the hand of Lei Jiayin, the actor sitting next to him, and murmured: "Big Head, am I not dreaming?"

Lei Jiayin reluctantly shook off Liu Meichuan's hand: "Director, you are not dreaming."

"But can you stop calling me Big Head?"

"My head is really small!"