Millennium director

"Brother Cheng Long, it's still the same old topic."

"You have to switch to literary drama to start a second spring in your career."

"I can't help you much in this regard."

"Of course, if you just want to invest in movies, you can still cooperate more with Light and Shadow Times. I absolutely support you in this regard."

In the VIP lounge of the equestrian arena, Wu Yuan was chatting with Cheng Long.

Cheng Long's career has indeed been difficult in recent years.

Although he won the Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award and the total global box office of the "Kingsman" series has exceeded 1 billion US dollars, the glory can't always last.

In Hollywood, after the "Kingsman" series, Cheng Long tried to shoot a few more movies, but the box office performance was very average, with only 20 to 30 million US dollars in North America and 50 to 60 million US dollars worldwide. Don't count it as making a lot of money. In addition to copyright operations, the investors just barely recovered their investment.

In the mainland, the Chinese-language movies he shot after "The Chinese Zodiac" have not made any breakthroughs. The upper limit of the box office is about 500 million yuan, and it has continued to decline in the past two years.

The Detective Pu Songling, which was released during the 2019 Spring Festival, had a box office of 160 million yuan in the mainland, 56.952 million yuan in the box office share of the producer, and an investment cost of 350 million yuan. The box office loss in the mainland was 290 million yuan, which was a huge loss.

The Vanguard, which was released during the 2019 National Day, performed better, with a cumulative box office of 294 million yuan, plus a box office of over 300 million yuan in Hong Kong, but it was definitely a loss, and the Douban score was less than 5 points.

The Mystery of the Dragon Seal, co-produced by China and Russia and co-starring with Arnold Schwarzenegger, had a global box office of less than 10 million US dollars.

To sum it up in one sentence, the era of Cheng Long has passed, and he has also produced many bad movies.

After Wu Yuan was no longer there to help him, Cheng Long's acting career returned to its original track.

There is no way around it. After all, an actor at his level actually has so many choices. If Wu Yuan hadn't intervened, the result would have been predetermined.

But Cheng Long was still unwilling!

After all, his son is a hopeless case, and there is no successor. He can only work hard on his own. Otherwise, he would not be able to release two or three movies a year at the age of nearly 70.

But if you can't fight, you can't fight. Time is unforgiving, and no one can escape it.

Now Cheng Long is in urgent need of transformation, or to be more precise, he is in urgent need of Wu Yuan to help him. After all, Wu Yuan has strong connections in China and Hollywood, and his vision is very sharp. There is no failure in the projects he values.

So when Wu Yuan invited him to star in "Mulan", he agreed without hesitation, and took the initiative to come to participate in equestrian training.

But Wu Yuan really can't help!

There are really no movies suitable for 66-year-old Cheng Long in the market now.

His identity as a martial arts superstar is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. It is impossible for people to watch him perform in literary dramas, but he can't fight anymore.

In fact, Cheng Long only has one way left, that is, to retire decently and enjoy the life after success.

After all, the Oscars have given out the Lifetime Achievement Award, which is generally given to veteran film industry figures whose acting careers have come to an end.

To put it in an unlucky way, many people who received this award were buried a few years later.

The Oscars gave this award to Cheng Long, which actually hinted that he could leave the stage with dignity. His era has passed, and there is no place for him in Hollywood.

Unfortunately, Cheng Long still wanted to persist.

In this regard, Wu Yuan encouraged him and gave him a suggestion: "You can shoot the second part of "The Karate Kid" to sell more feelings." He could not give more help.

Even in the "Mulan" crew, Cheng Long only played an important but not very dramatic general, which was completely using his fame and status, but he did not actually need to work harder.

Not only him, but also the old batch of Hong Kong male actors who are still active in the film industry, in fact, their era has passed.

Andy Lau, Louis Koo, Tony Leung, the two Ka Fai, Lau Ching Wan, etc., the last sunsets of Hong Kong Island, have all come to an end.

It is only because there is no successor that these old movie stars, who are 60 years old on average, have to continue to work despite their old age.

Otherwise, who would those Hong Kong film companies invest money in to make movies?

This is also the reason why they can still make movies every year even though their movies are losing more and more money.

If they are not asked to make movies, they will lose more money!

The idiom "drinking poison to quench thirst" is vividly reflected in the current Hong Kong film industry.

Unfortunately, all this has nothing to do with the booming mainland film industry, let alone Wu Yuan.

After bringing a group of actors who have signed intention contracts to the equestrian field, and watching them start to learn horse riding under the guidance of the coach, and staying here to observe for a few days, Wu Yuan took his private plane and left Beijing after confirming that everything was going well.

In the past two months, domestic air traffic control has not been so strict. As long as you are not going abroad, you don’t need to be strictly isolated when flying around in the country. You only need to have a green code.

And Wu Yuan also embarked on his location scouting trip.

"Mulan" definitely needs many filming locations in China, and one of the most important filming locations is the place where the war in the movie takes place, that is, the grassland.

Fortunately, China is a country with most of the world's landforms. On its 9.6 million square kilometers of land, there are all kinds of landforms, including grasslands.

It was only after checking the information that Wu Yuan learned that China is one of the countries with the richest grassland resources in the world, with a total grassland area of ​​nearly 400 million hectares, accounting for 40% of the country's total land area!

If he hadn't seen this information, he would never have imagined that 40% of China's land was grassland. He couldn't feel this at all in his daily life. He even thought that China only had grasslands in Inner Mongolia.

But in fact, China's grasslands are from the three northeastern provinces to the far Xinjiang!

And there are four major grasslands, namely Hulunbuir Grassland, Xilin Gol Grassland, Yili Grassland, and Nagqu Alpine Grassland!

And Wu Yuan's destination this time is Hulunbuir Grassland, which ranks first among the four grasslands.

Hulunbuir Grassland is one of the three famous grasslands in the world, a world-famous natural pasture, and is known as the best grassland in the world.

More importantly, Hulunbuir Grassland is the birthplace of many ancient civilizations and nomadic peoples. Donghu, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Shiwei, Huihe, Turkic, Khitan, Jurchen, Mongolian and other ethnic groups once lived and multiplied here. It is praised by historians as the "cradle of nomadic peoples in northern China" and occupies a high position in world history.

In other words, most of the nomadic peoples that have appeared in history books started from here.

There is no doubt that this is the most suitable place to shoot "Mulan". It is perfect from both a historical and scenic perspective.

Isn't this much better than the prairie of New Zealand?

Wu Yuan once again didn't understand why Niki Caro left such a suitable filming location unused?

It's hard to understand from all aspects! (End of this chapter)