hooklinebooks Chapter 33 Dimensional Reduction Attack: Destroying Shaw Brothers Films
Chapter 33 Dimensional Reduction Attack: Destroying Shaw Brothers Films
Zou Wenhuai was stunned. He suddenly felt that Gu Yuhan was planning a comprehensive crackdown on the Shao family. Shao Yifu also felt a chill run down his spine.
To his utter astonishment, the driver he had arranged had actually killed Jin Yaqiang. Nothing could be more humiliating than this. Shao Yifu felt a sharp, intense pain in his face.
Jin Yaqiang was his front man, and then his own driver killed his front man with his own hands? Doesn't this mean that Gu Yuhan has infiltrated the people around him? Did he bribe even his own driver? From another perspective, Gu Yuhan did indeed bribe Shao's driver with five million.
This was a terrifying thing for Shao Yifu. If his driver could kill Jin Yaqiang today, would his driver do the same to him tomorrow?
"Sixth Uncle!" Just as Shaw Yi-fu was feeling a headache, Fang Yi-hua quickly came to his side: "Golden Princess Cinemas and Golden Harvest Cinemas have just launched their promotions. During the Spring Festival season, everyone who goes to see a movie will get a 20% discount. Two people get a 25% discount, three people get a 30% discount, and five people get a 40% discount!"
"What?" Shao Yifu was slightly taken aback, then couldn't help but ask, "That bastard Gu Yuhan, is he going to target our cinema chain?"
At this moment, Shao Yifu was extremely angry. This guy was determined not to give up, and he started slapping Shao Yifu across the face with both hands!
Gu Yuhan never intentionally targeted Shaw Brothers from the beginning. His thinking has always been open-minded, aiming for everyone to make money together and establish a virtuous cycle. Yes, Zhou Jun did poach talent. But, from beginning to end, didn't Zhou Jun pay you a breach of contract fee? Zhou Jun did, didn't he?
You actually broke someone's leg! If Gu Yuhan could tolerate that, he'd be a coward.
Now, forget about the film market; I'm going to relentlessly attack Shaw Brothers. Besides that, there's the television market. I absolutely must compete with Shaw Brothers for ratings. So far, the only talent show in Hong Kong is the Miss Hong Kong pageant, while Gu Yuhan has prepared a whole host of entertainment programs—talent shows, reality shows—I have over forty years more experience than you.
Shaw Brothers, you want to compete with me? What do you have to compete with me with? This isn't a competition if I don't cripple your TVB. The Lunar New Year film season is always a fierce battleground, and Shaw Brothers will also bring out its well-prepared big-budget productions. Don't be fooled by Golden Harvest's success in recent years; even during Bruce Lee's heyday, Golden Harvest could only take first place at the box office, with Shaw Brothers taking second through tenth.
Overall, Shaw Brothers is still a very strong company. However, now, Shaw Brothers has met its match: Gu Yuhan.
By first partnering with Golden Harvest and then expanding its own cinema network, it was clear that Cha Ma was preparing to follow Shaw Brothers' lead. Shaw Yiu's revenge against Zhou Jun was partly driven by personal feelings.
For the past few months, Gu Yuhan has been relentlessly dominating Shaw Brothers. He's done a lot with "Happy Ghost," needless to say, and also starred in several Jackie Chan films, including "The Fearless Hyena," "Snake in the Shadows," and "The Young Master."
Basically, every film he made grossed over ten million. Moreover, he collaborated with many film companies, and many of them also achieved millions in box office revenue. In particular, Golden Harvest, which was considered a traitor by Shaw Brothers, also collaborated with Gu Yuhan, and his subordinate, Sammo Hung, even managed to generate over ten million in box office revenue.
In comparison, the moral climate at Golden Harvest has really gone downhill in the last few months.
When he heard that Gu Yuhan had started poaching TVB artists, Shao Yifu could no longer tolerate it and directly retaliated against Zhou Jun.
Upon hearing Fang Yihua's report, Shao Yifu felt a chill run down his spine.
"What did Gu Yuhan say? How many movies are going to be released?" Shaw took a deep breath, feeling a little worried.
In the past six months, Shao Yifu has suffered considerable losses.
Several films flopped in a row, and for the first time, Shaw Brothers, which had always been a steady moneymaker, started to lose money. Mona Fong chimed in, "They were *Happy Ghost 2*, starring Wong Pak-ming himself; Jackie Chan's *Drunken Master*; and a zombie film called *Uncle Vampire*, starring Lam Ching-ying, who had a minor role!"
Shaw felt a chill run down his spine. After Gu Yuhan appeared, he single-handedly raised the bar for cinematic taste, allowing Hong Kong films to evolve in just a few months.
Firstly, the evolution in aesthetics has led audiences to accept comedies and modern dramas more readily. Secondly, there has been an evolution in action films. Undoubtedly, Jackie Chan was a landmark figure in driving the evolution of action films. Bruce Lee was the pioneer, while Jackie Chan opened up a completely new realm.
This led to a decline in the popularity of Shaw Brothers' traditional, formulaic action films, including those set in the martial arts world. Audiences were now looking for films with more fluid and continuous action sequences. Shaw Brothers was falling behind the times.
Moreover, what's most terrifying is that the battlefield Gu Yuhan invaded wasn't just Hong Kong, but also the entire Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
Although Shaw Brothers had many connections and networks in Southeast Asia, his cinemas also needed to make money. And to make money, connections certainly weren't the deciding factor.
Shaw Brothers' headache stemmed from this: he suddenly realized that Shaw Brothers was falling behind the times. It's said that Gu Yuhan still held a script meeting, inviting a large number of film companies to select scripts, introduce screenwriters, and discuss collaborations. This sparked the emergence of countless new screenwriters.
Golden Harvest received several scripts, all of which grossed over ten million at the box office. However, Shaw Brothers simply didn't have that opportunity.
Originally, if Shaw Yifu had been willing to back down, Gu Yuhan wouldn't have minded bringing Shaw into his family. However, unfortunately, Shaw chose to resist.
So, since they are Gu Yuhan's enemies, Gu Yuhan doesn't mind showing the Shaw Brothers what cruelty and how to deliver a crushing blow really are.
This year, Shaw Brothers has prepared a film called "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin," which tells the story of the monk San De. After his family was massacred by the Manchu Qing dynasty, he went to Shaolin Temple to learn martial arts. He took the Dharma name San De and practiced all 35 chambers of Shaolin. He reached a high level in hand, eye, body and footwork. He went down the mountain to seek revenge and took in lay disciples to learn martial arts to resist the Qing dynasty. He founded the 36th chamber in the temple.
This movie, you can't really say it's bad, but sorry, it's really outdated. Gu Yuhan then started to take action.
They unleashed three blockbuster films right off the bat: *Happy Ghost 2*, *Mr. Zombie*, and *Drunken Master*. That's what you call a dimensional reduction attack—that's a dimensional reduction attack.
My movies are faster-paced, have better fight scenes, more engaging storylines, and more about national sentiment. You just can't beat me.
Actually, Gu Yuhan wasn't really looking forward to "Happy Ghost 2" and "Mr. Zombie". He had watched them several times in his previous life, and later he felt they weren't very interesting. What Gu Yuhan was really looking forward to was "Drunken Fist".
The entire Drunken Master series has been completely altered. He provided the script for Drunken Master 2 (ciaj) and forced the screenwriter to ensure that the theme, pacing, and scope were not worse than Drunken Master 2.
The final story actually completely deviated from the original script. The original "Drunken Master" only told the story of Wong Fei-hung's clever son, played by Jackie Chan, who liked to play pranks while practicing kung fu and caused trouble outside the martial arts school. Wong Kei-ying asked Su Fa-tzu to discipline Wong Fei-hung.
Finally, after learning the Drunken Eight Immortals Fist, Wong Fei-hung was able to defeat his father's enemy who had bribed a thug to harm him.
However, now it has been slightly modified. The character settings have not changed much, but the plot has been completely changed. Gu Yuhan took a look and suddenly realized that this was somewhat similar to Wong Fei-hung: The Legend of the Condor Heroes.
However, the similarities are only partial, namely the thinking about martial arts and foreign guns and cannons.
Upon closer inspection, the screenwriter was none other than Xu Ke. This surprised Gu Yuhan quite a bit; Xu Ke had actually started working as a screenwriter? The Spring Festival had finally arrived!
Subsequently, "Drunken Master," "Happy Ghost 2," and "Mr. Vampire" were released simultaneously.
Each of the three films will have 20% of the screenings allocated to them; the remaining 40% should be given to other films. Then...
With the movie's release, the data quickly reached Gu Yuhan's account.
Of the three films, "Drunken Master" and "Happy Ghost" had an average attendance rate of 95% for their first screenings, while "Mr. Vampire" fared slightly worse, with only 60% attendance. This was because many people couldn't get tickets and went to see "Mr. Vampire" instead.
However, Mr. Zombie's reputation quickly exploded, and the second and third screenings were sold out. At the start of the Spring Festival season, it instantly sparked a comprehensive boom.
Jackie Chan has already amassed a considerable number of fans.
"Happy Ghost 2" has been highly anticipated for a long time. "Mr. Vampire" relied on word-of-mouth to achieve its success. Among these, "Drunken Master" has the best reputation. The style and level of "Drunken Master" are obviously higher than the other two films, coupled with Jackie Chan's unique kung fu comedy.
The word-of-mouth is phenomenal!
Of the three films, "Drunken Master" grossed 220 million on its opening day.
"Happy Ghost 2" grossed 2.5 million on its opening day. "Mr. Vampire" grossed 1.9 million. Needless to say, these three films immediately broke last year's record set by "Happy Ghost." And, what's most terrifying is that all three films were produced by Gu Yuhan's company. Zou Wenhuai, seeing this, simply gave up and decided not to compete with Gu Yuhan for the Spring Festival slot—it was too scary. Gu Yuhan, meanwhile, directly increased the screenings of the three films to 33%. By the second day, the box office of each of the three films had exceeded 4 million. In just two days, even the lowest-grossing film, "Mr. Vampire," approached 6 million. What does that mean? These days, a film reaching 6 million in box office is considered a huge success.
This number shocked countless people.
Is this a sign that the box office will break ten million within three days? Both Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers are stunned at this moment. Zou Wenhuai sighed. Gu Yuhan may have come up with discounts and promotions, but in reality, he still managed to get more people into the cinema. Secondly, in the second half of the year, Gu Yuhan was constantly expanding the cinema network.
While it appeared to have a 33% screen share, it was actually comparable to the entire Shaw Brothers cinema chain. Breaking ten million in three days completely shattered Hong Kong's box office record. Shaw Yi-fu immediately felt unprecedented pressure, because, with Gu Yu-han's side going all out, his "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" only had a pitiful 5% occupancy rate.
Their film grossed over two million in a single day, while his own film had only grossed less than 20 so far. It was a flop, and a major one at that. Shaw Brothers felt a chill run down his spine. The problem wasn't just that he had lost money on this one film; it was that Shaw Brothers had been losing money throughout the second half of the year, and facing this continuous loss, Shaw Brothers films were beginning to crumble.
The film industry is essentially finished! Shaw Brothers felt a chill run down his spine. In just over half a year, Shaw Brothers films had already begun to decline, but what Shaw Brothers never expected was that now, all the films he had meticulously prepared were being...killed. Completely powerless to fight back.
The problem now is that Gu Yuhan has released three films to beat you up. The major media outlets in Hong Kong immediately went wild. For the past six months, the Hong Kong media had known that Gu Yuhan had been expanding his territory.
Following "Happy Ghost," the film indeed greatly stimulated the development of Hong Kong cinema, with several films grossing over ten million at the box office. This also led more Hong Kong residents to go to the cinema. Overall, Gu Yuhan began to drive the development of the Hong Kong film industry chain.
At the time, the media hailed "Happy Ghost" as the savior of Hong Kong cinema, and in hindsight, that seems to be true. Indeed, a number of excellent films have emerged in the past six months. This pace has surprised even the Hong Kong media. And now, the media is raving about Gu Yuhan.
Hong Kong residents have developed a habit of watching movies, and their spending power has greatly increased. After praising the movie itself, they started talking about the viewing experience. They described how cramped the seats were, and how amazingly, there was air conditioning. Frankly, they'd be happy to pay for air conditioning for hours.
For Shaw Brothers, the viewing experience was poor. It was too crowded, and the picture quality was bad. In fact, Shaw Brothers' biggest problem and most troublesome issue was that Shaw Brothers' founder, Shaw Yiu-fu, was stingy. Many of their theaters' facilities were outdated, and they lacked air conditioning. In comparison, Golden Princess and Golden Harvest theaters were naturally more comfortable.
Shaw Brothers didn't even consider the air conditioning issue. Isn't that how it is? Before, having a movie to watch was already quite good; who needed air conditioning? What more could you ask for? But times have really changed now.