These stories are behind China Capital’s best film Oscar.

Special feature of 1905 film network "We invited the media to watch the film yesterday, and this afternoon, they all came to ask if we had tickets."

This is what a staff member told us at a movie-watching event held in Beijing on the evening of February 25th. At noon that day, this film about a working-class white and black musician touring the southern United States, which has long discriminated against blacks, just won the Oscar for best picture.

At 6 o’clock in the evening, at least four halls will show this newly-released award-winning work. The cinema is crowded.

At about 9 o’clock, after the screening of the three halls ended, there were still audiences with Green Book’s movie tickets. After this screening, Green Book will be officially released on March 1st, just four days after this year’s Oscar ceremony.

It can be called the most synchronized time for China audience and Oscar-winning movies in recent ten years.

One of the reasons for the rapid release is that Alibaba Pictures participated in the film last year. But forAlibaba Pictures, as a listed company, its president Zhang Wei said it is inconvenient to disclose the specific amount or proportion of the investment.

Zhang Wei said that introducing Green Book to China is a challenge:

"This film is not a commercial film that sells well in the traditional sense, and the racial theme has never been on the big screen in China. Last year, the film about NASA black female scientists received a very good response overseas, and it didn’t go to the China cinema line. There is also a film produced by our participant media company, which is also the theme of black whites. The story he told about black whites in a specific era has never been on the big screen in China."

Although it is a rare imported film theme in China. However, after the Oscar ceremony, the pre-sale in Green Book has reached 1.62 million, and the proportion of pre-arranged films is 19.7%.

In addition to the awards, Gao Xiaosong, as the representative of investors and the chairman of Ali Entertainment Strategy Committee, appeared on the red carpet of the Oscars on the day of Weibo. He took a selfie of himself on the red carpet, and took a photo with Green Book screenwriter and producer, Nick Willenger, the son of the hero Tony Willenger.

In the past day alone, the screening ratio in Green Book increased to 22.6% on the evening of 26th. On the first day of its release on March 1st, the number of pre-screening sessions in China exceeded 20,000, and the pre-sales exceeded 2 million.

Although this achievement is a little "stingy" compared with the Spring Festival stalls and Hollywood blockbusters, it is a pre-sale achievement with the remaining temperature and the same day’s release.

What is even more sensational than winning the prize is that Ma Yun appeared at the movie-watching ceremony on the evening of February 25th.

During the day’s activities, the media were only told that besides Alibaba Pictures’s top management, there were also mysterious guests coming. Near the start of the event, Xiao Dianjun learned that Ma Yun was going to make an appearance, but it was unknown whether he would open the platform for Green Book.

The movie-watching ceremony full of guests is like a big gathering of Ma Yun and his friends. Lenovo CEO Liu Chuanzhi, Softbank Asia President Yan Yan and actor Jing Tian all came to the scene to support the film.

Finally, Ma Yun, who watched Green Book three times, stood up and said something like this: "A good movie is not made of money, and it doesn’t have to have an earth-shattering story. It can be as touching as it seems dull."

China film practitioners should return to their true love of movies and pay more attention to the social significance behind them, instead of being trapped by the fame and fortune brought by movies. Ma Yun said that if these can be done, then "China movies are not far from the Oscars."

Zhang Wei defines Green Book as a "word-of-mouth film", which is the impulse of the audience to share after watching it.

She told Xiao Dianjun that Green Book had been shown in the cinema since November last year in the United States. Therefore, I hope that relying on word of mouth can make the film stay in the cinema in China for a long time.

In the United States, many film critics thought it was a "tailor-made" film for the award season at the beginning of its release. Zhang Wei revealed that due to the influence of awards on film arrangement,After watching the film, the decision-makers of the film industry decided that the release date in the mainland was the first weekend after the Oscar awards.

Has this decision predicted that Green Book will swim to the end in the award season?

For this consideration, Zhang Wei did not respond positively, but borrowed a sentence: "There is still a dream, what if it comes true?" She said: "There is another sentence because I believe, all see, and these two sentences are especially applicable to this film. Some things really have to dare to think and have a goal. "

But Alibaba Pictures’s Green Light Committee was surprisingly unanimous in its decision to invest in the film.

The so-called green light Committee is a decision-making meeting of senior executives of film companies for investment, budget approval, from development stage to main photography stage.

Zhang Wei told Xiao Dianjun,The members of the green light Committee made a decision to participate in the film one night after watching it in the fastest time.

She revealed that after the members of the Committee saw Green Book, no one predicted the box office: "This film is very interesting. Sometimes when a film is taken out, everyone will discuss it. After watching this film, the Green Light Committee was surprisingly unanimous. No one said what the box office estimate was, and everyone said that the story was too good to go."

By the end of 2019, three of the nine best Oscar films born in 2010 have been shown to the audience on the mainland big screen. But nine years ago, the audience couldn’t feel the charm of the Oscar for best film on the screen as quickly as they do now.

After winning the prize in 2011,After a lapse of one year, it was released in China on February 24th, 2012, with a box office of 6.28 million.

In 2012, he won the prize. The film was released in the mainland at the end of the same year, which was two months shorter than the interval of The King’s Speech. The Artist entered the mainland cinema in the form of a buyout film.It is understood that the copyright fee in that year was about 3.7 million yuan, but the box office was only 4.17 million.

The reason why these two films were cold in the mainland market was that the mainland cinemas at that time preferred Hollywood special effects blockbusters — — It is the era when 3D is revived and people scramble to enter the cinema — — It is that the interval between the award-winning time and the release schedule is too long. Oscar fever has passed, the target audience has lost, and the best release time has long passed.

Since 2012, the Oscar for Best Film has been out of the mainland’s commercial cinemas. After winning the best film in 2018, it was quickly released in the mainland on March 16 of that year, and the time interval from winning the prize to the release was only 10 days. The speed is a miracle.

This film, which is extremely small in subject matter and expression form, finally got 100 million box office.Is there an award bonus in this? We can do the math.

The winner of three awards was released in September 2017, focusing on war and big scenes, with 339 million yuan, and the box office was even lower than its previous performance in the mainland. At this time, the audience still doesn’t know whether the film will be affirmed by the Oscar.

As a historical biopic, it also locked in the mainland cinema before the Oscar. After the release on December 1, 2017, although the reputation was good, the box office was only 37.313 million.

It was released in the mainland three days before the 2018 Academy Awards. As a film that is not traditionally loved by mainland audiences from the main creation to the story, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri only relies on the release of the Art Association, with a final income of 64.99 million.

Secondly, the weekend box office was almost the same as the first weekend, just in the middle of the Oscar.

Further exploration, in 2015, it was released in the mainland five months after winning the Oscar for best adapted screenplay and being nominated for best film.The box office still reached 52.557 million.

At the 88th Oscar in 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Best Actor, while the film that helped him realize his dream won two awards: Best Director and Best Photography.

The award was presented on February 28th, and was released in the Mainland on March 18th, with a box office of 377 million.I have to say that with the popularity of the Oscars, art cinema, which originally seemed to be "not selling well", had a higher box office.

This shows that,Winning the Oscar, especially the awards of performance, director and best film, has played a lot of bonus effects on the distribution and box office of movies in the mainland.

It was only released after a lapse of one year in the past, and now it is almost synchronized with the award ceremony. Naturally, China’s participation in the international film market is getting higher and higher.

Taking Green Book as an example, Alibaba Pictures made a decision to participate in the voting in 2018. Zhang Wei, president of Alibaba Pictures, revealed that the rapid filing of films is also related to Huaxia Film Company:

"Because there is a set of procedures for China film import, our most hopeful schedule is the first weekend after the Oscar awards. All things need to be planned for all processes in this industry to be realized. He didn’t happen to win the Oscar award by accident, but happened to be on this weekend, which requires a lot of mutual cooperation. I am especially grateful to Mr. Fu of Huaxia, because I showed it to Mr. Fu while showing it to the Green Light Committee. Because he is very senior, and many other imported films cooperate with Huaxia, I hope he will turn it off for me, and he also watched the film quickly. "

The reason why Alibaba Pictures was able to enter the game saved by Hollywood was related to the company behind Green Book.Green Book’s major producers are DreamWorks and Participant Media, both of which are inextricably linked with Spielberg’s company Amperin.

Unlike the film "Tale of Water", which was directly handed over to the six big Hollywood companies for global distribution, Green Book chose the way of finding distribution partners in each region. In the United States, it was handed over to Universal Pictures. One of the partners in China is Alibaba Pictures.

Zhang Wei introduced this strategy to us, saying:

"In the distribution system of Amperin, the United States is doing it globally, and overseas distribution has found the strongest local partner, which is also based on his understanding of the film industry. When he reorganized Amperin in 2015, he set aside an investment share for a China partner, and he especially set aside all the rights of China from the global arrangement. He said that I believe that the best partner is a local company, instead of giving it to a global company for film promotion in China. What’s more important is to find a local grounding partner. This is the strategy he set at the beginning. This is very difficult because you have to have a certain strategic plan and be very persistent. "

Apart from Green Book, the Oscar movies that have been able to enter China quickly in recent years are more or less related to China Capital.

Revenant was jointly produced by Aofei Film. It has reached a monthly cooperation with New Regent Entertainment, the production company of revenant, with a total investment of no more than 60 million, and shared the global box office of these three films according to the contribution ratio.

Bai Jie, head of the revenant project of Aofei Film, revealed in an interview that the company had already participated in the script creation stage of revenant, and had long known that Leonardo was the star, and the whole cooperation process was very smooth.

For another example, behind it is the cooperation intention reached between Dianguang Media and Lionsgate Films.

On January 28th, 2015, Dianguang Media signed a cooperation agreement with Lionsgate Film (Summit Entertainment) to jointly invest $1.5 billion in the production and development of film projects in the next three years, while Dianguang Media Film invested no more than 25% in a single film, which was also the largest content cooperation project in the history of mainland films at that time.

China Capital’s recent attention at the Academy Awards has even reachedIn the short film broadcast at the 2018 awards ceremony, the logo of China Wanda also appeared.

It can be predicted that there will be more and more China capital behind the Oscar films in the future.

From the emergence of such Chinese filmmakers in the early years, and now as the driving force of movies, China elements have participated in the Oscar games in a new form.

As for the cliche "China’s bid for the Olympics", let’s not forget that the Oscar is just an American award.

Its understanding of China and even Asian films is very clear in this year’s mourning session:In the time of a song, among the filmmakers’ faces that flashed by, the only Asian filmmakers were Zou Wenhuai, who founded Jiahe Film, and Gao Tianxun, the director of Japanese animation studio Ghibli.