In 2000, Hong Kong films have completely entered the cold winter period. Basically, one film was made and one failed, and the box office was around 2 million. However, no one thought that "Infernal Affairs" launched in 2002 had a box office of 50 million, which made many people call the spring of the Hong Kong entertainment industry.
In fact, it is not easy for "Infernal Affairs" to meet the audience smoothly. Regardless of whether it was the pre-screening creation or the preparation of filming, there have been countless setbacks.
Script creation
Initially, the inspiration for "Infernal Affairs" was inspired by the "face changing" directed by Wu Yusen . At that time, after watching the movie, Mak Siu-fai found this setting very interesting, and decided to change the stage of exchanging faces in the movie into an exchange of the identities and hearts of two people.
Not only that, Mak Siu-hui has always communicated with Zhuang Wenqiang during the creation process, and after the creation, he also sent the script to Zhuang Wenqiang . However, after reading it, Zhuang Wenqiang felt that there were many areas that were not handled well, so he modified it again.
For example, Zeng Zhiwei has become a gang boss from the original ground-snake, which has greatly expanded the structure of this story. In addition,Mary, played by Sammi Cheng, has also become a novelist from an ordinary office worker.
However, in addition to Mak Siu-fai and Chuang Wenqiang, Liu Weiqiang also participated in the script creation, and added many elements on the original basis. A story line from the police to the undercover underworld has become a two-way story line from the members of the underworld to the undercover police and the undercover from the police to the undercover.
Although the script was created after twists and turns, it took two years for no investors to be found after it was written. It is said that after reading this script, many people said that "does not do it" , and even asked people to say that "does not do it" .
The starring actors don’t need a salary to have investment
In fact, this situation is reasonable. At that time, Hong Kong films were in a downturn, basically making a cool one, so that many filmmakers and entrepreneurs of began to develop in Hollywood and other places in the United States, and did not care about the life and death of Hong Kong films.
Even so, Mai Zhaohui and Liu Weiqiang have never thought of giving up and are always looking for suitable investors. However, in addition to the two of them, Andy Lau is also running around for this work,Hope to find a suitable investor.
The reason for this is that, in addition to Andy Lau, Michael Mak and Liu Weiqiang belong to the Sky Screen Company, the more important thing is that Andy Lau was particularly optimistic about this theme when the script was first written , and He also offered himself the role of Liu Jianming.
Unfortunately, most investors don't want to take a trip in this muddy water. It was not until Andy Lau and Wang Jing went to Thailand to meet the white dragon king , they met the Hong Kong tycoon Lin Baixin's son Lin Jianyue , and this work saw the dawn of shooting.
At that time, Lin Jianyue had just established Media Asia Film for a few years, and the popularity in the circle was not very good. Therefore, Lin Jianyue especially needs a high-quality work to help Media Asia Film and himself gain fame. Finally, after reading the script, he was very excited and prepared to invest money.
However, when he heard that the work required 20 million investment, Lin Jianyue was a little shaken for a while. You must know that at that time, the investment of 20 million yuan was absolutely 's high investment. Strong1strong's work, not to mention the fact that it was just a few years after the establishment of .Once the work hits the street, it is very likely that Media Asia will die.
It is precisely because of this that Andy Lau now proposes not to pay and only collect box office dividends, in order to alleviate the investment pressure of Asia Asia in the early stage. In this way, "Infernal Affairs" successfully got the investment of Media Asia.
Maybe many people think that Andy Lau is not paid for the performance, but also took the box office dividend, how can we get Media Asia to agree to take such a large investment?
Actually, before confirming the investment, Media Asia had evaluated the box office of "Infernal Affairs", and it was almost between 25 million and 35 million, which is considered to be an upper-middle level. However, Andy Lau's salary in the late 1990s fluctuated around 18 million .
However, the box office share of the movie includes 5% of the film development fund, 3.3% of the business tax; 50-60% of the theaters; the rest are producers and distributors. Therefore, even if the box office dividend is based on the estimated maximum box office of 35 million, the money that obtains will not keep up with Andy Lau's own remuneration.
Fortunately, in the end, this work did not disappoint the efforts of so many people. With a box office of 55.05 million, it won the annual box office championship of Hong Kong film. In addition, "Infernal Affairs" also won 16 nominations including Best Actor at the Academy Awards and Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards. So far, the film still maintains Douban 9.2 's high score under the evaluation of more than 1 million, which is enough to prove that the title of movie history classic is not a mere name.
At the same time, the movie hasn't been released for long, and many people want to buy a copyright remake. In the end, after bidding by five companies, Warner Bros. won the copyright with $1.75 million . This is how we saw the little plum starring in 2006.
Unfortunately, no one thought that this would be the last madness of Hong Kong movies. After that, one work was not as good as one, so that Hong Kong movies gradually faded out of the stage of history , Has become the memory of a generation.
Conclusion:
Perhaps, the silence of Hong Kong movies is an indisputable fact. However, we have owned it before and have witnessed every dazzling moment of it. Therefore, love will disappear, but memories will never disappear. I don’t know, do you remember this work? Which character does impress you the most?
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