Tokyo Literary Godfather

"Infernal Affairs" was released for half a month, and the box office revenue reached 9.5 billion.

If this momentum continues, it will not be a big problem if the box office exceeds 15 billion, but it will still be difficult to reach the 20 billion box office originally predicted.

The rainbow fart of "Japanese Filmmaker" magazine turned over slightly.

But no one cares about the negligible difference between the final result and the predicted result. Tens of billions of box office is rare in today's movie market. Many well-known filmmakers have been making movies for more than ten or twenty years, but their cumulative box office may not reach this figure.

In addition to the previous "Confession", Kei Fujiwara has already entered the 20 billion yen club less than two years after he officially started filming. This only counts the films he supervised, not his screenwriting works.

The Silver Lion Award-winning "The Embalmer" supervised by Ono Nagaharu will also be broadcast after "Infernal Affairs".

"The Embalmer" has fulfilled its mission to a certain extent and won important film festival awards. Although he failed to reach the height of the Golden Lion Award, Kei Fujiwara was also very satisfied. He originally only thought of getting results at the Tokyo International Film Festival and Academy Awards. After all, the Venice Film Festival is the world's three major film festivals. More stylish.

And with the blessing of the Silver Lion Award, it will not be a problem for this movie to win a box office of more than 3 billion.

Of the five films produced by Shuibo, three have now been declared successful.

The other two are about to leave their infancy and become adults.

During this period, both Otomo Keiichi's "Deep Sea City" and Oshii An's "Your Name" asked Fujiwara Kei for another sum of money as production funds. Kei Fujiwara was very generous, but also told them clearly that this was the last pursuit of investment. If it was not enough, Ghibli would have to look for investment from outside.

And the money spent was very immediate. Less than two months later, when Fujiwara Kei asked about the progress again, he found that both movies had basically taken shape, but some details had not been polished and needed to be refined. Deal with it.

It's like a baby that's still in the womb, but in the CT photos, the limbs, fingers and even facial features have become very clear, and it's almost time to give birth.

Of course, the seagull always dies just before landing. As the production time of the two films gets closer and closer, the pressure on Oshii'an is also increasing.

Especially among the five films produced by Mizuha, the other three have been hugely successful, making money and winning awards. The pressure Oshii-an feels is almost suffocating.

Once this movie fails, the problem cannot be blamed on Fujiwara Kei's script and Mizuha's production. If you blame him, fans of the two movies "Infernal Affairs" and "My Sassy Girl" will turn to you. Came with doubtful glances.

Moreover, "Your Name", as an animation that uses cutting-edge technology, far exceeds several other movies in terms of financial investment, number of personnel, and production time. As the two movies have exceeded 10 billion in succession, Oshii An felt the invisible rope around her neck tightening.

The production cycle and production budget of those two movies are less than half of mine. If the box office of my movie cannot reach tens of billions, then it will be too embarrassing.

Oshii-an thought to himself.

Over the weekend, Oshii-an also deliberately went to see "Infernal Affairs" at a theater in Shinjuku. This theater had just been purchased by Mizuha Productions from a pair of brothers not long ago. Mizuha Productions' intention to turn to distribution is very obvious. , we now have more and more theater resources in our hands.

This is a great thing for producers and directors like them under Shuibo Production. This means that after their movies are released in the future, they will have more resources for theaters to schedule films.

But this also puts more pressure on Oshii-an. Although there is a better screening environment, if the box office is not ideal, then I...

Oshii-an felt a little bitter in his heart. The new Studio Ghibli was highly anticipated, but this expectation was also a heavy burden for them.

Before Oshii An officially filmed "Your Name", he was actually quite confident in his work, but this confidence allowed him to make a box office estimate of only around 5 billion, although he is still confident that he can achieve this Results... But the situation is different. For him now, 5 billion is not a good result at all.

It seems that following a boss who is super capable, knowledgeable, and especially able to charge into battle and take the lead is not entirely a good thing. In many film production companies, top-notch directors, screenwriters and other artists have the arrogance of being artists when facing the company bosses, and they are worthy of these managers.

But in front of Fujiwara Kei, the group of "artists" produced by Mizuha didn't even have such arrogance.

Because when it comes to artistic achievements, this man is second to none... Who has the nerve to act big in front of him?

When Oshii-an saw the script of Kei Fujiwara's "Your Name", he was very surprised. Many images appear in my mind unconsciously, and making a movie is to transform these images into reality.

But as Oshii-an became more and more familiar with his works, when he watched the images in his mind become reality, he no longer had the original sense of wonder. This also made him feel anxious, not knowing if he had really reproduced the essence of the script; and he also didn't know if when the audience saw these scenes, they would be as amazed as the imaginary scenes in his mind when he read the script?

This is the indiscriminate curse imposed by the God of Art on creators, so that they can never view their works from the perspective of ordinary audiences 100%...

Oshii'an's stress index reached 65%.

There are many audiences in the theater. Some are sitting in the waiting area waiting to watch the movie, and some are walking out after watching the movie. The movie market has been very popular recently, and with the release of several popular local movies, the audience has become more interested in local movies. The enthusiasm for the film actually surpassed that of Hollywood, which was something rarely seen before.

Take the recently released "Swordsman" as an example. Before its release, the publicity campaign was extremely strong, with overwhelming posters all over Tokyo. Many people in the industry speculated that this movie would be very popular and even devour "Infernal Affairs" on a large scale. "Tao" box office. The two movies may become rivals in the next half month.

But what was the final result? On the day "The Man with Two Guns" was released, it was true that the box office of "Infernal Affairs" took a huge dive on that day, and the average daily box office dropped by 50%. However, only on the second day, the box office of "Infernal Affairs" rebounded again and has remained the same ever since. In a high position. On the contrary, "The Man with Two Guns", although it was a blockbuster Hollywood movie, did not do well at the box office.

Oshii-an originally wanted to buy the show that was released half an hour later, but the ticket seller told him that the tickets for the recent "Infernal Affairs" show were almost sold out, and only the first three rows of tickets were available.

It's been half a month and it's still so hot... Oshii-an felt that he would feel dizzy sitting in the front row, so he bought a show more than an hour later.

When the time came, we came to the screening room. The screening room with nearly 150 seats was almost full. The huge crowd made Oshii feel both envious and scared.

The stress index instantly reached 75%.