Tokyo Literary Godfather

In fact, there is nothing wrong with Nobi Shisuke's judgment. Japan is indeed not a fertile ground for the development of the film industry. In the final analysis, neither is South Korea.

Because the populations of these two countries are not too large, unlike China and the United States, there is no way for the entertainment industry to become a hugely profitable industry in a short time.

In the past 15 years or so, China's entertainment industry has developed rapidly and has become an inexhaustible money-grabbing machine. The famous "fresh meat economy" started at that time. A young idol with many fans can earn as much in one year as the revenue of a listed company in two years. A film can earn up to 100 to 200 million yuan in salary, and there are countless advertising endorsements. Almost comparable to Hollywood.

This aroused the dissatisfaction of many people at the time, who felt that it was a waste of money to make a fortune, so they often compared Japanese and Korean artists. The ultra-low salaries of Japanese and Korean artists often shocked many domestic audiences. They are also popular idols, and almost even domestic Less than one-twentieth of an artist.

Many people use this to explain the abnormal development of the domestic entertainment industry, but in fact it is also biased. It’s not that Japanese and Korean artists don’t want to pay high salaries, but the market is restricted and they won’t be allowed to do so. And once they have a market as broad as China and the United States, they will not be polite when they open their mouths.

For example, after "Squid Game", the male protagonist Li Zhengzai's film salary directly reached 1 billion won for an episode, which is equivalent to about 5 million yuan. In South Korea, it is an unimaginable astronomical figure. Even in China and the United States, this figure cannot be underestimated. The main reason is that with the promotion of Netflix, his audience has expanded from South Korea to the whole world.

Why should artists be paid such high salaries? Are the producers stupid? Of course, the production team is not stupid. There is only one reason why employers are willing to offer high wages, and that is that they can earn more. So as long as the market is big enough, the entertainment industry is a terrifying money printing machine. However, Japan and South Korea do not have the raw materials for this money printing machine by nature, and they are doomed to be unable to produce such monster-level film and television companies (such as Disney).

Nobi Shisuke recognized this, so his mentality was a bit messed up. He had no ambition to expand, and no confidence to defeat Dongzhen and become Japan's number one film and television company. It was enough to maintain the smooth operation of the company.

However, there are also those who seem not to realize this point, such as Eiji Shirai and Kei Fujiwara.

As the executive of the production department, Eiji Shirai has devoted himself to finding film talents over the years. He is present in almost every newcomer film festival. Although Kei Fujiwara was not discovered by him, the choice of Matsunichi Films for the first film he made had something to do with him.

Eiji Shirai hopes that the local film industry can also replicate the glory of the animation and game industry. The first step is to defeat Dongzhen and become the number one local film and television company. However, what kind of film and television company is a film and television company without self-produced films? If it is true that from now on, it is only responsible for distribution, not production, then what is the difference between Songri and an OEM factory?

Fujiwara Kei let him see this hope, but due to the position restriction, he couldn't realize his ideal after all.

…

The box office statistics report of "Confessions" was also presented to Kei Fujiwara's desk. During this period, he was constantly performing road shows and accepting interviews. He was almost too busy to leave his feet. His daily work schedule was packed to the brim, and he had already had several consecutive For several days, lunch was eaten in the back seat of the car.

The initial promotional activities were deliberately arranged by him in order to keep the popularity of the movie from dissipating. However, after a week, the box office of "Confessions" fell, and then it began to rise all the way, and more and more media came to visit.

The production team no longer needs to deliberately create publicity heat, the fire is already burning, and those media will actively gather like night moths.

The entertainment section of some newspapers also predicted the box office of the movie "Confession". It achieved a box office of about 800 million in one week, and the final box office of this movie will be around 2.5 billion.

The editor in charge of the prediction is a senior film critic with more than ten years of experience. This is the conclusion he reached through the box office in the first week. For most movies, the box office in the first week is often the highest. It is impossible to maintain the high level of the first week every week, so this number is in line with the rules.

And the reversal of this movie on Saturday and Sunday did not continue. This is the first weekend after the movie was shown, and it is normal for the audience to be larger. On Monday, the box office will drop again, and the second and third weekends may not be able to reverse the decline again.

The prediction about the movie was written by the editor on Monday morning and sent to the editorial department for editing, with the intention of publishing it in the next day's newspaper.

However, at midnight, we got a new piece of news. According to real-time statistics, the box office of "Confession" today reached 150 million... The reverse decline over the weekend was no accident, as this upward trend has been successfully maintained.

And this is Monday's box office... What day is Monday? It is not only a working day, but also the day when dramas are broadcast on the 9th of the month.

As a miraculous phenomenon in the broadcasting industry, the influence of Yuejiu drama has even spread to the film industry. People in the film industry have long discovered that no matter which movie it is, as soon as it is Sunday, when the drama is broadcast, the box office performance on this day will be greatly reduced. Because many viewers didn't want to go out that day and stayed at home watching TV series.

Therefore, many filmmakers sigh when they mention "Moon Nine", but Kei Fujiwara, the initiator of this phenomenon, does not seem to be much affected...

In fact, there must be an impact. It is precisely because it will affect the box office to a greater or lesser extent, so the editor predicted that by Tuesday, the box office may be even higher...

I didn't expect that it could maintain such box office vitality on weekdays. From this point of view, the final box office of this movie may be far higher than previous predictions.

Thinking of this, the editor suddenly trembled, quickly grabbed the phone receiver, and called the editor-in-chief.

"Hi, Murakami, it's me, I'm Takagi. Has the newspaper started printing yet? I want to revise the article I wrote on the entertainment section about box office forecasts. Yes, it's an urgent revision! There are data errors in it, so I can't just Hair like this."

"Dude, I'm not mistaken. Let's see what time it is now? Amend it now? I remember you are writing film reviews, right? The entertainment section... is almost enough. It's not about political and economic news."

"How can that be done? I am responsible for every word I write!"

"It's going to be printed soon, so it's really inconvenient to change it! I read your article, and it's mostly subjective. If it's wrong, it's wrong. It doesn't matter."

"My wife's sister just graduated from college. She just broke up with her boyfriend last month, and she asked me to introduce her to her boyfriend."

"Uh...how does it look?"

"I used to be a fashion model when I was in college."

"If you want to change anything in that article, tell me immediately!"

The editor thought quickly, and then said: "Just change a number, that article contains my box office forecast for the movie "Confession", the number I wrote before was 2.5 billion, you change it to... "

How much should it be changed to? The editor couldn't help thinking about it seriously. He suddenly felt that he was too conservative before. Maybe he was not optimistic about this kind of original live-action movie in the Japanese market, so he kept guessing lower when guessing the box office.

This conservative attitude has never been wrong when predicting the performance of other movies before, because the movie market is indeed sluggish. But he ignored that the director of the movie "Confession" was Kei Fujiwara.

Who is Kei Fujiwara? He is a mudslide in the Japanese cultural industry. He is a strange person who has never failed since his debut. Regarding his works, we cannot use common sense to infer...

Thinking of this, the editor suddenly had a bold prediction number. It would be better to abandon the previous conservative thinking and be bolder.

Thinking of this, the editor said word by word into the phone receiver: "Just double it, 5 billion, change it to 5 billion."