Chapter 338: Fire at the Censors, You Speak a Little Quieter

*Aftermath*, produced by Emperor Motion Pictures and directed by the two directors of *Infernal Affairs*, Mai Zhaohui and Zhuang Wenqiang, which had been highly anticipated by the Hong Kong media, has been released.

The cast is quite luxurious, with Gu Xiaozhang, the Best Actor Liu, and A Zu joining with passion.

Facts have also proven that police-and-thief style Hong Kong films are what Hong Kong directors are truly skilled at.

The film's opening day box office was 18 million; although this result is not particularly eye-catching compared to domestic commercial blockbusters that easily pull in 40 or 50 million on their first day.

But compared to the film's production cost of less than 50 million, it is already considered a very good result.

The key is that the word-of-mouth online is also good, with a rating as high as 7.6 on Yinxiang Net.

According to these figures, it shouldn't be much of a problem for this film's subsequent box office to break 200 million, and it even has a chance to exceed 300 million.

This has caused the Hong Kong film circle to reach a collective climax; one must know that previously, when Wu Jing publicly looked down on Hong Kong films, they could only call the other party "ungrateful," yet they couldn't refute the fact of the decline of Hong Kong films in the slightest.

But now, the success of a genuine Hong Kong film has given the entire Hong Kong film circle the confidence to stand tall and speak.

Consequently, the Hong Kong media began reporting in an overwhelming manner, as if this film had already topped the box office charts.

"'Aftermath' hits theaters strongly, with an opening day box office of nearly 20 million, achieving a flying start!"

"The return of pure Hong Kong film, box office expected to exceed 500 million!"

Although the slogans and goals were shouted loudly, both Mainland China filmmakers and audiences were already used to it, and all watched it as a joke. — In the Chairman's office at Shanhe Building, Chen Zhiming was reporting on work.

Wei Jin smoked while listening patiently, nodding from time to time.

For the past month or so, he had been busy with the filming and post-production of his movies, but fortunately, the company's operations were all running smoothly.

The post-production of *Hello Old Times* was completed at the end of last month. A few days ago, the company organized a screening, and after some fierce competition, the first-round broadcast rights were jointly won by Shanghai Television and Jiangsu TV, at a price of 1.8 million per episode.

This 30-episode youth campus drama had a production cost of no more than 30 million, and by selling the first round for 54 million, it directly achieved a large profit.

Counting the subsequent second and third rounds plus online copyrights, the revenue would be at least 70 or 80 million, which is definitely a huge profit.

The post-production of *Eastern Palace* was also proceeding in an orderly manner, and it is expected to be completed in early November.

*The White Storm* and *Storm* have both started filming; the former is estimated to wrap up by the end of this month, and the latter is estimated to finish its scenes after the National Day holiday.

After chatting about work, Lao Chen handed over another stack of documents.

"President Wei, these are the resumes submitted during this period; take a look and see if any meet your fancy."

"Whoa, there are so many? Have they all been screened?"

Wei Jin took the documents and asked in surprise.

"President Wei, 90% of them have already been screened."

Chen Zhiming explained with a smile; with the examples of the previous assistants, the position of Wei Jin's assistant could be called an excellent springboard for newcomers.

Especially after the incident with *The Four*, there were far too many female artists and students who wanted to become the next "Bai Bin."

So, once the news of this assistant recruitment was released, female students from the three major academies flocked over, and even many students from non-performance majors submitted resumes; the competition was quite fierce.

"Alright, you go get busy first. I'll look through the materials later, and if I pick a suitable one, I'll send it to the administrative office."

"Very well, President Wei."

Just as Chen Zhiming was about to leave the office, a thought suddenly arose in Wei Jin's mind, and he called him back.

"Lao Chen, for this Venice Film Festival, you take the crew and head out. Also, for the copyright sale of *The Thieves*, China Film Group will be responsible for it; just arrange for someone to cooperate when the time comes."

Although a bit surprised, Chen Zhiming did not ask any further questions.

"Very well, President Wei."

After Chen Zhiming left, Wei Jin began to carefully flip through the resumes; after all, it was a personal assistant, so he couldn't be careless about the selection.

In the stack of materials, Wei Jin saw many familiar figures; height, leg length, measurements, all kinds of data were clearly presented on the resumes, as if it were a beauty pageant... — Sure enough, *Aftermath* did not create a miracle; after the first four days of the weekend, the box office barely broke 70 million.

The film's word-of-mouth was also slipping. The reason was simple: audience aesthetic fatigue. The Hong Kong actors were just those same few people over and over again, with absolutely no sense of freshness.

Perhaps this was also the reason why the Hong Kong Circle would rather risk public anger to forcefully promote the Best Actor Xie; there were indeed no successors left.

Different from the "peak at the start, then sliding all the way" of *Aftermath*, the performance of *The Piano Tuner* broke the conventional trend of film box office.

From an opening day box office of less than 20 million, it climbed all the way up. This low-budget film, at the end of the Summer Slot, forcefully displayed the momentum of a blockbuster.

As of now, *The Piano Tuner* has been released for 10 days, and the box office has reached as high as 188 million, with weekday box office still stable at over 10 million; it can be said to have great staying power.

Media have already predicted that the final box office of this film might even break 300 million.

The circle has already exploded, because the cost had been announced before; even counting the promotion and distribution expenses, the total investment for *The Piano Tuner* would not exceed 30 million.

It was another low-budget hit, a dark horse, and there wasn't a single company in the industry that wasn't green with envy.

Han Sanping was very regretful at this moment; *The Raid* was one thing, as it was a project from Hong Kong, making it hard to intervene, and by the time he knew about it, it had already started filming.

But this *The Piano Tuner* was a project he watched get approved. At the time, he completely looked down on it and couldn't bring himself to get involved, but now, looking at the box office results, he felt very stifled.

Compared to the envy of industry companies and Han Sanping's stifled feeling, Cao Baoping appeared to be in high spirits.

He had been frequently accepting media interviews during this period, but fortunately, he remained clear-headed.

"I am very grateful for Wei Jin's script. This is my first attempt at a commercial film, and I have learned a lot. In the future, I will continue to maintain my passion for film, try different styles and types of movies, and bring more wonderful works to the audience and fans..."

Cao Baoping's statement was still very sensible; although *The Piano Tuner* had succeeded, to put it bluntly, no one in the circle would think this was his credit.

In the eyes of most people, for this film to have its current results, over 70% of the credit belonged to Wei Jin.

This also made many older-generation directors feel very uncomfortable, because the one Wei Jin chose was not them. — In the Shanhe Ink Editing Room, Wei Jin was burying his head in editing.

After working for two hours, Wei Jin was just about to take a break, smoke a cigarette, and clear his head, when he heard Ning Hao's somewhat excited voice.

"Junior brother, come look quickly, Feng Dapao has started firing cannons!"

"Oh? What's the situation?"

Hearing there was fresh gossip, Wei Jin instantly perked up and asked hurriedly.

"Feng Dapao's *1942* was sent back. The reason given is that the script content is too straightforward and dark, which might cause discomfort to the audience..."

"Isn't this bullshit?"

Before Ning Hao could finish, Wei Jin interrupted him directly; this reason was truly too far-fetched.

"That's exactly it! Would Feng Dapao let them get away with it? He turned around and wrote a little essay, quite spectacular. Want to come take a look?"

Taking the phone handed over by Ning Hao, Wei Jin took a look; good heavens, it really is true that there are only wrong names, never wrong nicknames—Feng Dapao is truly worthy of being called "Big Cannon."

"The current power of censorship is held in the hands of a bunch of laymen; they are either experts from this unit or leaders from that institution, completely uninvolved in film production and understanding nothing at all.

"For the films submitted for review, they interpret them according to their own whims, or even take things out of context, maliciously speculating on the original intentions of the creators; this will greatly harm and shackle the enthusiasm of film creators."

The actions of these censorship masters had long since caused dissatisfaction within the industry, and Wei Jin saw that this article by Feng Dapao had been liked and reposted by many industry insiders, Ning Hao among them.

"Senior brother, what kind of excitement are you joining in on?"

"Heh, my hand slipped, what of it?" "Hahaha, slipped well."

After watching the commotion for a bit, Wei Jin returned to the editing room to continue burying himself in post-production work—upon leaving the company, Wei Jin instructed Zhu Wei to drive him over to Liu Yifei's place.

The young girl's birthday was coming up, and he didn't know if she would like the gift he had prepared.

Just as he walked into the villa, Wei Jin saw Liu Yifei playing with her phone in the garden, completely unaware of his arrival, and couldn't help but tease her.

"Yifei, the sun is so bright, aren't you afraid of getting tanned?"

Hearing the voice, Liu Yifei looked up and saw who it was, feeling somewhat pleasantly surprised.

"Brother, why did you come over? You didn't even give me a heads-up."

As she spoke, the young girl had already walked quickly toward Wei Jin, who then took the opportunity to wrap his arm around her slender waist and continued to tease her.

"What? Don't tell me you were up to something bad behind my back?"

"As if."

Watching the young girl pout, Wei Jin laughed out loud.

"I'm just teasing you, come on, let's go inside."

Wei Jin held the girl's hand and walked toward the house; he had to admit, the sun in Beijing was truly vicious—in the short distance from getting out of the car to the house, he was already starting to sweat.

Entering the house, Wei Jin felt an instant coolness, then looked at the young girl whose pretty face had been tanned red, feeling a bit of reproach.

"Look at you, running outside in the middle of the afternoon; what will you do if you get tanned or sunburned?"

Sensing the concern in the man's tone, Liu Yifei felt very touched, and a sweet smile appeared on her face.

"Hee hee, Brother, I have sunscreen on, there won't be any problems."

Wei Jin was momentarily stunned; in his past and present life as a man, he had never used such things, and for a moment, he had forgotten.

"Alright, but you still need to be careful, and also, eat fewer snacks lately."

Saying this, Wei Jin used his hand to pinch the young girl's cheek, lamenting her tendency to gain weight; it was fine when they were on set and could control it, but now that filming had wrapped and she was back, she had probably gained several pounds in less than half a month.

"Yifei, you have to control yourself; Venice is right around the corner, you don't want to leave behind ugly photos on the red carpet, do you?"

Seemingly imagining herself looking dark and fat and being plastered on the headlines, Liu Yifei shivered.

"Brother, I'll listen to you; I won't eat snacks or go out in the sun these days."

"Mm."

Watching the young girl's serious expression, Wei Jin knew she had taken it to heart, so he took the opportunity to sit on the sofa and pull her onto his lap.

"By the way, what were you looking at just now? You were so engrossed."

Hearing the man's words, Liu Yifei became instantly excited and took out her phone.

"Brother, look at this, the internet is so lively right now."

Wei Jin took the phone and looked; it was indeed incredibly lively.

Just yesterday afternoon, Best Actor Xie and Zhang Baizhi had officially announced their divorce.

It wasn't a big deal to begin with, but the Hong Kong media couldn't resist the drama, with all sorts of speculations emerging and press releases flying everywhere.

Some said Xie Feng had a change of heart, others said Zhang Baizhi and Chen Laoshi had rekindled their old flame, and so on.

Hong Kong film and television companies and a large number of artists also began to take sides, accusing one another.

Zhang Baizhi had a bit of a performative personality, highlighting her identity as a single mother in front of the media, playing the victim to win sympathy, and she really did win the support of quite a few female artists and fans.

Unfortunately, Best Actor Xie had Emperor Group backing him, and combined with the public sympathy he already had, he occupied the moral high ground, taking on a whole group by himself without losing any ground.

The two sides were arguing incessantly, but that wasn't the most spectacular part.

The most spectacular part was the official Weibo of Chen Shiren's company, which was densely packed with comments from netizens underneath.

"Director Chen is awesome! The number one prophet in the world!!!"

"I finally understand The Promise!"

"Five years, do you know how I've spent these five years? Director Chen is awesome!!!"

"Can The Promise be re-released? I owe Director Chen a movie ticket."

"..."

Looking at the netizens' comments, Wei Jin couldn't stop laughing; they were truly too talented.

"How about it, Brother, isn't it exciting? Do you think Chen Shiren knew about this all along?"

Looking at Liu Yifei's gossipy expression, Wei Jin dotingly ruffled her hair.

"I'm not clear on that."

"I see. Brother, why do you think they ended up like this? Even if they divorced, couldn't they have parted on good terms?"

"That might not necessarily be the intention of the two of them."

Seeing the young girl's puzzled look, Wei Jin continued to explain.

"Zhang Baizhi still has film contracts to fulfill; neither her agency nor the production teams behind her want her to carry the reputation of having cheated during her marriage.

And Best Actor Xie is the only young actor in Hong Kong worth mentioning; Emperor Group would absolutely never allow him to have even a hint of a stain on such a matter, so this farce is entirely a game of chess played by the capital behind the scenes."

Seeing the young girl looking thoughtful, Wei Jin ended the topic.

"Yifei, for your birthday this year, let's go on a trip; we'll play for a week, and it will be just in time to catch the opening ceremony of the film festival."

"Really?"

The young girl looked pleasantly surprised, but then became a bit wary; was this man going to act first and report later again? "Just the two of us?"

Looking at the girl's earnest expression, Wei Jin couldn't help but chuckle, then nodded.

"Yes, just the two of us."

Hearing this, a smile appeared on the girl's face.

"That's great, mua, mua."

Feeling the girl's joy, Wei Jin looked up at the clock on the wall, stood up, picked the young girl up, and walked step by step to the second floor.

Liu Yifei naturally knew what was about to happen next and shyly wrapped her arms around Wei Jin's neck.

"Brother, Mom is coming back later."

"Mm, then remember to be a little quieter."

Second update of the day (End of this chapter)