Chapter 261 272 [How can you win an Oscar without PR? ]

After sending Qingxia back to the luxury house in Repulse Bay, Li Yishu took Gong Li directly to the villa halfway up the mountain.

In the living room.

Seeing the trophy that Li Yishu took out from the suitcase, Gong Li couldn’t wait to walk over and take it in her hands. She played with it for a while and said, “Is this the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film?”

Li Yishu nodded: “Well, this trophy cost me nearly a million dollars!”

“100?”

Gong Li was surprised and asked, “Did you get it through PR again?”

“How fresh, how can you win an Oscar without PR?”

Li Yishu sneered, “The three major European film festivals at least have some fairness. The American Academy Awards is not a film festival. It is just a film award for the American film industry to entertain itself. The judges are always the same group of people.”

Last month, at the 3th Academy Awards held on March 21, “Farewell My Concubine” directed by Lee Ye-soo successfully won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but his “The Sixth Sense” did not win any award.

This is also because Li Yishu did not go for public relations, otherwise she would still have a chance to win the Best Original Screenplay award.

After Lee Yi-su won the Best Foreign Language Film Award, apart from the Xinhua News Agency’s US office reporting the news back to China and some mainland newspapers and film weekly magazines reporting on it briefly, it did not cause any widespread discussion.

In fact, this is normal. Lee Yi-su is now the godfather of Asian films reported by Time magazine and has won gold awards at the three major European film festivals. The Oscars were not as well-known as they would be a few years later, and ordinary audiences and movie fans, and even filmmakers in the industry, were not as obsessed with the Oscars as they were later.

The Academy Awards really became popular because of the popularity of imported blockbusters in China, the bombing of the Century Ship which grossed $1.8 billion worldwide, and Li An’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which successfully grossed over $100 million in the United States after winning the Best Foreign Language Film Award. This gradually increased the weight of the Oscars in the minds of domestic filmmakers.

To put it bluntly, the Academy Awards is not an authoritative award in the minds of domestic filmmakers.

The reason why Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” and Chen Kaige’s “The Promise” were both aiming for the Oscar was that they believed that as long as they won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, their films would be able to get high box office in the United States!
Because Li An set a very good and positive example for them!

The box office of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in mainland China was only 1500 million, which can only be described as a poor number. The box office in Hong Kong was even lower, only 1476 million Hong Kong dollars.

Compared with the film’s production cost of $1500 million, it can only be described as appalling.

But after winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was released in North America and successfully grossed over $100 million.

Do you really think that everyone is chasing after the Oscars because they are good? They are all chasing after the dollars!

At that time, domestic filmmakers were thinking about getting their films released in the United States to make money, and winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film was the door to a North American release.

Gong Li was disappointed: “Does it mean that I need PR to win all the film awards in the world?”

Li Yishu laughed and said, “Sister Gong Li, it’s not that exaggerated. At least the European Film Festival is relatively fair. Otherwise, how could my film “That Mountain, That Man, That Dog” win the Golden Lion Award?”

“That’s true. You were very poor at that time and couldn’t even afford a suit.”

Gong Li couldn’t help but burst out laughing when she thought of Li Yishu who was so embarrassed that she couldn’t afford a suit at that time.

“You don’t need to buy a suit now, someone gave it to you.”

“Someone sent it?”

“Remember the Piero handmade suit shop we went to together?”

“Of course, you really opened my eyes by getting a handmade suit for free, and the material is very good. You are still wearing it now.”

“Yes, Piero wants to set up a company and invites me to be the spokesperson for the brand named after him…”

Li Yishu told Gong Li about Piero’s story, and Gong Li was surprised and asked, “So, you will be the boss of a luxury goods company in the future?”

“I can’t really be called the boss, I can only be called one of the shareholders.”

Li Yishu smiled slightly. Monica called her some time ago and she had already talked to Piero.

Although he was exempted from the lifelong endorsement, Li Yishu also successfully obtained a 15% investment share. However, there was a condition, which was that he had to wear Piero brand suits for the next three years.

Piero himself will personally make no less than two new suits for Li Yishu every year.

In other words, Piero will personally make and purchase all the suits for the next three years.

Li Yishu is very satisfied with this. It is very good to be the suit spokesperson for three years in exchange for a 10% investment share.

It is not certain whether Piero can become a luxury brand comparable to new brands like Armani in the future, but at least it will definitely not be bad.

Piero’s handicraft shop has been run for more than ten years, so it has a certain foundation and will be able to display advertisements for top Italian luxury brands in the future.

Add to that Piero’s own hard work and Lee Yi-su’s rise from a small person, and it can be said that they are working in both directions.

Luxury goods, if you want people to pay for them, you have to tell a good story. Lee Yi-su went from being a film school graduate to becoming the godfather of the Asian Film Festival in just a few years. The three awards he won were all related to Piero’s handmade suits. What a wonderful and meaningful story!

“One of the shareholders is the boss!” Gong Li said with a smile, “So from now on, as long as I have a good relationship with you, I can be the spokesperson for Piero?”

“Haha, even if we have good relationships, Piero currently focuses on men’s clothing, but I think it will definitely develop into women’s clothing and handbags in the future.”

Piero is currently positioned as a men’s luxury product. Although the pricing is not yet known, it will definitely not be too cheap. The most important thing about a luxury product is its quality. Once the price drops, it will be difficult to raise it again in the future.

Just like before Li Yishu’s rebirth, BBA started a price war. In the future, it is conceivable that BBA’s market will gradually decline, and it will gradually decline from a luxury brand to a mid-range brand.

The two chatted for a while, and Li Yishu also smiled evilly: “Sister Gong Li, it’s getting late, go to bed early, you have to go to the crew tomorrow, and I have to go back to Yanjing.”

“Virtue!” Gong Li rolled her eyes at the other person, but the smile on her lips still betrayed her.

The next morning, Li Yishu met Zhang Manyu and made an appointment to go to Cannes, France together in a few days. He then went to find Qingxia, had lunch with her, and then flew directly back to Yanjing in the afternoon.

He has to go back to the Beijing Film Studio to take a look at the current partial audition list for “Red Cliff of the Three Kingdoms”.

After more than a month of auditions, there are now more than 3000 applicants, of which more than 1000 meet the requirements.

Li Yishu needs to select the main characters of the three camps of Cao, Liu and Sun in advance.

Inside the conference room of Beijing Film Studio.

Han Sanping, Wang Fulin, Xie Jin and others are already here.

After Li Yishu hurriedly arrived, the group began to discuss the identities of the main actors of the three families of Cao, Liu and Sun.

“Chen Daoming is quite good in playing Liu Bei, and the audition result was also quite good.”

“No, Chen Daoming is not as good as Sun Yanjun, his Liu Bei is so good!”

“Guan Yu still has to be played by Lu Shuming. The two episodes aired during the Spring Festival were very successful. Audiences wrote in saying they liked Lu Shuming’s Guan Yu very much and felt like Guan Yu was reincarnated.”

“I think Zhang Shan’s performance as Guan Yu is also pretty good. He also played Guan Yu quite well in the TV series Guan Gong that aired last year.”

“How about Li Qingfei for the role of Zhang Fei?”

“Zhao Xiaorui, I think he is quite suitable to play Zhang Fei.”

“Cao Cao…”

Seeing Han Sanping and Wang Fulin talking to each other, Li Yishu also had a headache.

If you want to make a movie version of “Red Cliff”, you may have to involve the actors from the crew of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” which is about to be aired.

Wang Fulin is one of the casting directors. He naturally believes that the actors who filmed Romance of the Three Kingdoms are the most suitable for this movie, because they have all been filming Romance of the Three Kingdoms for several years and have already integrated into their roles. After a little training, they will be able to perform perfectly.

However, Han Sanping did not quite agree. What he wanted was to make a blockbuster “Three Kingdoms” rather than another movie version of the TV series “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, so he preferred to use new actors.

There are so many actors from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Hong Kong, and there are thousands of people coming for interviews alone. There are too many actors with similar images.

Just like Li Qingfei and Zhao Xiaorui, the former played Zhang Fei in the 94 version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the latter played Li Kui in the 98 version of Water Margin. Many people confuse the two, but in fact, apart from a beard, the two look really different.

However, the images and temperaments of these two are so similar that anyone who can play Zhang Fei can definitely play Li Kui.

It’s like anyone who can play the role of Xiaolongnu well can definitely play the role of Wang Yuyan.

“Director Li, who do you think is more suitable?”

Han Sanping looked at Li Yishu. He knew he couldn’t convince Wang Fulin because in his opinion, the actors in the TV series were all very good and there was no problem in getting them all to act in the movie.

“How about this, let’s find a date at the end of May and hold a large-scale audition.”

Li Yishu said in a deep voice: “Now I feel that the candidates you mentioned are all suitable, but after all, I haven’t seen the effect of the makeup trial. Wait until the end of May to spare a week to audition these Cao Liu Sun’s main actors.”

In his heart, he agreed with Han Sanping that the movie version should be separated from the TV series. If “Red Cliff” was filmed ten years later, it would be a sentimental show, but in a few months “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” would be broadcast on CCTV.

After waiting for two years for “Red Cliff of the Three Kingdoms” to be released, the audience’s preconceived impressions made it easy for them to be pessimistic about this or that.

Therefore, the best way is to finalize the actors in May, and then before the TV series “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” is broadcast, ask someone to take photos of the actors of Cao, Liu and Sun in advance, and then cooperate with a pictorial weekly to customize a magazine and print the finalized makeup looks of these actors.

This way, when the TV series is broadcast in the future, people will be dissatisfied with certain casting choices in the movie. An advance announcement will give the audience a sense of anticipation and prevent them from being affected by the TV series.

　I didn’t write for the Oscars because I wanted to win the big prizes in the future. Now I have three awards in my hands, and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language is just so-so. Please give me some monthly votes

　
(End of this chapter)