Millennium director

Although Ready Player One has not been released yet, the film has already achieved a record of achievement.

That is the most expensive Chinese-language film in history.

According to the current budget and actual expenditure, Ready Player One is expected to cost nearly 600 million yuan in production costs.

This is indeed different from the 1.5 billion yuan cost of the Spielberg version, but considering the actual film market, 600 million is the maximum cost that Wu Yuan can spend.

If more is spent, the film will not be able to make a profit.

Based on 600 million, Ready Player One must have a global box office of at least 1.8 billion to recover its costs!

A box office of more than 1.8 billion is a pure profit!

Wu Yuan's box office estimate for this film is at most 1.8-2 billion in the mainland, and 500-800 million in other Asian countries.

Ready Player One is expected to be released in 2016.

The highest-grossing film in 2016 was The Mermaid, which had a box office of 3.3 billion, but this result is of no reference value.

The Mermaid's 3.3 billion was achieved by Stephen Chow because he overdrew his past and future, and with the right time, place and people, he himself could not replicate it.

In terms of the content of this movie, it is not worthy of this box office performance.

Rather than saying that this box office performance is from "The Mermaid", it is better to say that two or three generations of mainland fans of Stephen Chow bought movie tickets for the pirated discs of Stephen Chow that they had watched in the past. It is just the mainland tickets for all his Hong Kong movies.

The second highest-grossing movie is "Zootopia" with 1.5 billion, which is of reference value.

"Zootopia" can achieve 1.5 billion, so Wu Yuan set the mainland box office expectation of "Ready Player One" at 1.8-2 billion.

As a local director, Wu Yuan is still confident that the box office will exceed "Zootopia", but he does not have a Stephen Chow complex, so the limit potential is 2 billion.

As for other Asian countries, at most they can contribute 500-800 million box office. This is not Wu Yuan's problem, nor is it a problem of "Ready Player One", but the film market in East Asia is so big. It is the same for other Hollywood blockbusters. These are all top results.

Results like 20 billion yen box office in Japan and 10 million viewers in South Korea are only achieved by their own films, and they are only released every few years, which is impossible for foreign films to achieve.

Wu Yuan's "Your Name" can create miracles in Japan because "My Name" is originally a Japanese movie.

It is just exported and sold domestically.

Wu Yuan himself can't repeat this success.

Having been a director for so many years, he may not be able to predict the box office of bad movies, but he can predict the box office of hit movies.

After all, Wu Yuan has the trend of the film market every year in his mind and knows where the box office limit of mainland movies is every year.

This limit has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, but is completely based on the number of people entering the cinema at present.

Just like "The Wandering Earth" is so good, it is impossible to get a box office of 4.6 billion in 2010, which has nothing to do with the content of the movie itself.

In his estimation, if "Ready Player One" is released in 2016, the global box office (mainly in East Asia) will be around 2.5 billion at most.

Under this upper limit, if the film costs 600 million, the profit is about the same as the profit of an ordinary feature film with a box office of 1 billion.

But once the cost is increased to 700 million, it will immediately not make as much as an ordinary movie, and 800 million can only barely break even.

This is something that cannot be reversed by human power. Unless "Ready Player One" can become a global hit, even if the cost is 200 million US dollars, there will be a way to make a lot of money.

Unfortunately, this is impossible. Hollywood's cultural hegemony cannot be broken for the time being, and domestic films do not have any distribution and promotion channels in European and American countries.

Unless you go to Hollywood to shoot.

Don't say it, you really don't say it.

Just when Wu Yuan was worried about the post-production of "Ready Player One" and thought of those blockbuster directors in Hollywood who could easily spend 100 million or 200 million US dollars to shoot blockbusters, it was so cool, there was really a long-distance call from Hollywood to Wu Yuan.

It was from Marvel.

I don't know how many brainstorming sessions, meetings, and quarrels Marvel has conducted internally.

In short, in the past two or three months, Marvel's main executives have made a big change in their mentality.

The Chinese special edition of Iron Man 3 has been reviewed many times within Marvel.

They don't take the Chinese film market seriously, and even fooled Chinese movie fans.

Before, they didn't think it was a big deal. They did Sino-US co-production just to bypass the movie import quota and release it directly in China. They wanted this quota, not to pay attention to the Chinese film market.

Now, after seeing that the box office of X-Men: Days of Future Past exceeded 100 million US dollars in China, they have to pay attention to the Chinese film market.

This is 100 million US dollars!

In order to make up for the mistakes they made in Iron Man 3, Marvel immediately thought of the cooperation with Wu Yuan on Doctor Strange.

Originally, Marvel planned to shoot this movie in the third quarter of 2015 and release it in the fourth quarter of 2016.

But now, they think the progress of this movie can be faster, maybe shooting in early 2015 and releasing it in early 2016 is better.

And Marvel also hopes that more Chinese actors can appear in Doctor Strange.

Originally, the screenwriter kept the role of "Wang", the assistant of Doctor Strange, and gave it more plots.

Now Marvel is considering that Ancient One, who was originally set to live in seclusion in the Himalayas and whose real name is Yao, and who appears in the comics as a typical Asian white-bearded grandfather, can also be played by a Chinese actor.

Yes, the original design of the screenwriter for the image of a Celtic woman with a bisexual personality was rejected by Marvel executives.

Before this, Marvel executives thought this design was quite interesting, and they would rather the powerful and mysterious character of Ancient One be a European and American.

But now.

Marvel has to respect and understand the Chinese film market.

Changing Ancient One, a powerful "superhero" originally set by the Chinese, into a Celtic does not seem to be a good thing.

Comic readers will find it very strange. In the comics they read, Ancient One is obviously a Chinese old man, how come he suddenly became a bald woman?

And after learning about this, Chinese movie fans will also feel that Marvel is deliberately discriminating against and disrespecting Chinese people.

Why are there almost no changes in other superhero adaptations? Even the casting is to find actors with similar images and temperaments. Robert Downey Jr. is like Tony Stark who walked out of the comics.

When it comes to Ancient One, you become a woman from a man, and a Chinese becomes a Celtic. What do you mean by this?

So, Marvel called Wu Yuan.

"Of course I think it is better for Ancient One to maintain the character in the comics."

"Why change him into a female Celtic? What does it mean to the movie itself? It seems to have nothing to do with the main story?"

"If a female character is needed to embellish the movie, isn't Doctor Strange's girlfriend enough? She will be a big blonde beauty who conforms to American aesthetics!"

Wu Yuan talked freely on the phone and agreed very much with the idea of ​​Marvel executives insisting on Ancient One's character.

However, he strongly refused to shoot the film in advance: "No, there is no need to advance the schedule!"

"I don't have time, and the screenwriters should redesign the plot according to the Ancient One in the comics, so let's stick to the original schedule!"

"Please!"

Wu Yuan really doesn't want to work non-stop anymore (End of this chapter)