Millennium director

"Compared with the original?" Liu Yifei frowned and thought about it.

Of course, she had seen the original animation. After all, when the animation of "Mulan" was popular in China, she was just over ten years old and loved to watch this animated movie.

But after thinking about it carefully, she still shook her head: "The script of this live-action movie is still very different from the original animation."

"After all, the original animation is less than 90 minutes, which is a bit short, and the original is too traditional. It is almost an ancient Chinese story, but there is an interesting Mushu dragon."

"Disney's current live-action princess movies are still dominated by magical styles, so this "Mulan" movie also adds a lot of magical elements, and there are witches, and the settings of various protagonists are also richer, and there is also the appearance of the grassland Khan."

"The scene must be more grand, it is an S-level Hollywood production."

Hearing this, Wu Yuan's mouth twitched wildly. How come it was a year late, and this "Mulan" is still the same as he remembered.

Indeed, Disney really takes this princess movie very seriously and is targeting the global market. It can be said that it has put a lot of effort into this movie, and even the promotional song is in four languages.

However, if the script of this movie remains unchanged and encounters force majeure, the possibility of this movie failing is almost 100%!

"When does the crew plan to start filming?" Wu Yuan frowned and asked again.

"In the second half of next year, the early preparations will still take a lot of time. There are more than 40 people in the costume team alone, and more than 1,000 sets of costumes need to be made. It may take more than three months to complete them."

"In addition to the selection of shooting locations and the construction of scenery, it may not be started until the second half of next year. If everything goes well, it will not be released until early 2021 or the summer of 2021."

"The people at Disney told me that this movie will be the most important project for Disney in the next two years, and it is more important than "Beauty and the Beast"!"

"Beauty and the Beast", a live-action princess movie released by Disney last year, the heroine became popular all over the world because of the role of Hermione, and became the "first love" of a generation of British and American young people Emma Watson.

This movie received little response in China. When it was released last year, it only achieved a domestic box office of 500 million yuan. However, the performance of this movie in the global market is terrifying. The North American box office exceeded 500 million US dollars, and the global box office was 1.263 billion US dollars, becoming the world's No. 1 box office in 2017.

It is also because of the outstanding performance of this movie that Disney has set its sights on live-action princess movies.

Before this, after the end of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, Disney has not been able to launch live-action movies with international influence, and once returned to the old path of animated movies.

It's just that in the field of animated movies, Disney's competitive pressure is getting greater and greater. In front, DreamWorks has risen, and in the back, Universal, which holds the IP of the "Despicable Me" series, is competing for the market. Although Disney's "Zootopia" has also performed well, it is different from the 1990s when Disney was the only one.

In this case, Disney has re-opened the market for live-action princess movies, which must be taken seriously.

Therefore, even under Wu Yuan's butterfly effect, Hollywood pays more attention to the threat of Chinese films. In the past two or three years, after the Chinese film market surpassed North America, Hollywood giants have even secretly discussed how to suppress Chinese films.

Under such circumstances, Disney hesitated for two years and finally decided to make the live-action movie "Mulan", which shows its determination and attitude.

There is no way. Disney was originally hesitating between the two IPs of "Mulan" and "The Mermaid", both of which are excellent princess films for Disney.

In the end, Disney chose "Mulan" because the animated film "Mulan" has achieved great success worldwide, especially the European and American markets have a very high acceptance of its cultural elements. These elements have not only not become an obstacle to the audience's understanding, but have become a plus for the film.

It can be said that the animated film "Mulan" can represent Disney princess films until the emergence of "Frozen", which replaced "Mulan".

But it is difficult for "Frozen" to be changed into a live-action movie, and the animation value of this IP is still very high, so it is not time to change it to a live-action movie.

In this case, Disney only has this option left.

"Hmm" Wu Yuan thought for a while before hesitating and said: "If it is not scheduled to be released until early 2021 at the earliest, it is not impossible to shoot."

"Just participating in this movie will be very risky."

"Disney's live-action princess movie will not be accepted by Chinese audiences, especially this kind of movie with a Chinese cultural background. If the script is similar to the "Mulan" animation of the year, it may be a win-win situation."

"But if Disney wants to make a big change to the script and add some settings such as witches and qi, then domestic audiences will definitely not be interested, and may even criticize it as a bad movie."

"If you really want to make this movie, you have to consider the polarization of word-of-mouth that this movie may face."

"But if the target is entirely the overseas market, this movie is indeed a good choice."

Although Wu Yuan clearly knows how badly the original "Mulan" movie was criticized in China, it is undeniable that this movie was aimed at the international market from the beginning, not the domestic market.

It is normal for domestic audiences to dislike Disney-style princess movies.

The word-of-mouth feedback of the live-action movie "Mulan" abroad is actually quite good. Even if it encountered the force majeure of the epidemic, the movie was forced to be released on Disney+ streaming media without being released in theaters, but its performance after being released on streaming media is really good, whether it is on-demand data or evaluation or the number of paying users attracted is very considerable.

Even this movie has gained a group of fans overseas, who spontaneously promoted the movie on foreign social platforms and took photos with various "Mulan" materials.

In general, as a princess movie that Disney targets the global market, especially the European and American markets, this "Mulan" is qualified.

It's just that this movie can't please Chinese fans, and even its "deviant" content will disgust Chinese fans.

But even if Liu Yifei wants to take this movie, her main consideration is to expand the international market. Her influence in China is already high enough, and she doesn't need to use domestic box office results to prove herself.

For her, taking on the movie "Mulan" is beneficial, especially now that the start date of this movie has been postponed. In this way, it will not be scheduled for release until early 2021 at the earliest.

But Wu Yuan is very clear that Disney will definitely choose to postpone the release by then. In the original time and space, "Mulan" was released on streaming media in August 2020 because it could not be delayed any longer. It has been 4 years from the casting in 2017 to 2020. Disney can't afford to delay it even if it is big.

But now it has been postponed for one year, and the movie is likely to be released normally in theaters. Not to mention that it can get a good box office like "Beauty and the Beast", but with Disney's influence, the global box office of 500-800 million US dollars is still guaranteed.

In this way, this is a good pie! (End of this chapter)