Chapter 51: Acquisition of United Cinemas

  After the establishment of Yan Huang Yingye, the first problem to be faced is the issue of the film studio. Since previous film companies did not have their own studios, they usually rented external studios for filming. Therefore, after the new company was established, the first problem that needed to be faced was whether to set up its own studio or continue the practice of renting external studios for filming.

  For this issue, Wang Wei thought for a moment and decided to set up his own studio.

  As Wang Wei's status rose, his ambition grew bigger. If it were in the previous life, being able to be a director would have been a huge joy for Wang Wei, let alone opening his own film company. However, after rebirth, the probability of meeting famous people was like picking up cabbage, and with the success of Tangshan Big Brother, Wang Wei's ambition was further stimulated. Cao Cao initially only wanted to be a general who pacified the west, but in the end, he became a powerful hero who controlled the emperor and commanded the vassals. Why couldn't he create a huge business empire?

  Wang Wei had just decided to set up a film studio, and Long Hua, who had just been appointed by Wang Wei as the head of the company's distribution department, came to see him. He said he knew of a relatively large film studio that was for sale at a reasonable price. The only question was whether Wang Wei had any requirements for the scale of the studio.

  As soon as Wang Wei heard that Longhua had a ready-made studio for sale, he immediately inquired about the information of this studio. As a result, after asking, Wang Wei only knew that the studio mentioned by Longhua was actually the studio of Guolian Film and Television, which went bankrupt last year. This studio is known to Wang Wei.

  In that year, Li Han-hsiang had the ideal of a Chinese film dream and brought a batch of technical and performing talents from Hong Kong with his own connections accumulated in many years at Shaw Brothers. In Taiwan, he established the National Film Corporation, which was able to compete with Shaw Brothers and Cathay Organisation, two giants in the film industry at that time. Initially, they rented studios, but later Li Han-hsiang felt that renting studios could not make National Film strong enough, nor could it thoroughly achieve his original film dream. Therefore, Li Han-hsiang raised funds everywhere and finally established his own studio in Banqiao District, New Taipei City.

  According to Wang Wei, the first phase of the National Union's film set covers an area of about 4,000 square meters, including a Central Plains ancient street, pavilions and water features, as well as two large studios. Later, buildings like the Chinese Ancient City and some garden architecture were also constructed. By now, this film set should have covered an area of over 2,000 mu (about 1.33 million square meters).

  However, according to Wang Wei's memory, this studio was later acquired by Jiahe, but now Jiahe has not proposed the acquisition of this studio. Thinking of this, Wang Wei secretly congratulated himself on his good luck. At first, apart from sympathy, he just appreciated Longhua's talent in distribution, and didn't expect that due to his own momentary idea, he would gain such a large studio. Moreover, according to Longhua, he is quite familiar with the person in charge of Guolian Studio, so he can give some discount on the price.

  Since Jiahe didn't acquire it, this filming location of Guolian is mine. Wang Wei said domineeringly in his heart.

  Through Longhua's introduction, Wang Wei met Zhao Yi, the person in charge of Guolian's studio. According to Zhao Yi, after Guolian went bankrupt, the studio had been relying on rental income to maintain its daily operations. In the past, there were also film companies that expressed interest in buying Guolian's studio, but ultimately failed to reach an agreement due to price issues, and the acquisition was put on hold until now.

  Wang Wei learned from Li Yi about the current situation of Guolian Film Studio. When Li Hanxiang first bought it, he wanted to build a super-large studio, so he bought 5,000 mu of land. However, due to funding issues, only over 2,000 mu have been developed so far, and the remaining over 3,000 mu are idle. At the time of the land purchase, Li Hanxiang invested about 30 million yuan. Adding the buildings constructed later, the current selling price is 60 million.

  When Wang Wei heard Li Yi quote 60 million, he almost agreed on the spot. To know that in Taiwan, the land you buy is your own and not just for use like on the mainland, so when Li Yi quoted 60 million to buy this piece of land, Wang Wei's first reaction was that he would become a landlord.

  Fortunately, there was a meticulous manager standing beside Wang Wei.

  When Li Yi quoted 40 million, Li Bin, who was standing next to Wang Wei, immediately began analyzing the shortcomings of Guolian Film Studio and its current predicament from all aspects. With Longhua chiming in on the side and Wang Wei's promise, Wang Wei told Li Yi through Longhua that if he was willing, he could continue to stay at the studio as the person in charge. With Longhua as a precedent, Li Yi naturally wouldn't have any doubts.

  After three days of negotiations, Wang Wei finally used 55 million to take down the studio, which is over 5,000 mu in size, making it the largest private film studio in Taiwan.

  The scene has been set, and the next thing is to arrange the scene and conduct experiments related to blasting.

  For this war film co-produced with Central Pictures, Wang Wei's attention is even higher than that of "The Big Brother of Tangshan" before.

  Because during this period of returning to Taiwan, Wang Wei could see slogans everywhere on the streets to defend Diaoyu Island and boycott Japanese goods, as well as students sitting quietly in the streets, which was heart-wrenching.

  These scenes reminded Wang Wei of the time before his rebirth. After the Diaoyu Islands incident broke out, he had also put down the book he was writing and ran to the streets to demonstrate.

  So Wang Wei still has a deep feeling about the Diaoyu Islands incident, in his past life he could only go on the streets to protest because of his limited energy, but in this life he can use film to influence millions of people, therefore Wang Wei attaches great importance to this anti-Japanese themed movie cooperating with China Film.

  The film's story has been finalized and it tells the life of General Zhang Zizhong.

  After Wang Wei got the outline of the movie story from Zhongying, he immediately started drafting the script. For two days and three nights, Wang Wei slept for less than ten hours. He managed to rush out the script. The script was still called "Eternal Hero". However, compared to the original play, Wang Wei added a lot of civilian scenes to the script, making the play more vivid and engaging.

  After the script was completed, Wang Wei found more than 20 soldiers who were about to retire from the military through China Film's connections. Originally, Wang Wei thought that if China Film could find four or five professional demolition personnel, it would be a great blessing. Unexpectedly, they came with more than 20 people, which made Wang Wei marvel at China Film's power and secretly feel that having the government as a backing is different.

  A professional blaster was found, and next was the application for explosives and blasting equipment. This matter was still handled by Wang Wei through his relationship with China Film, and it was done very efficiently.

  After the blasters and devices were in place, Wang Wei began a month-long blasting test that did not see daylight.

  To know that these sappers are all from the troops, although each is an expert in blasting, but there is still some difference between filming a real blast and a movie blast. In addition to the requirement of accuracy, the explosion scene in the movie is more about rendering the picture of the explosion site.

  Of course, for these experienced combat engineers in blasting, adapting to film blasting technology was quick. However, no matter how fast it is, there must be a process. Therefore, over the next thirty days or so, Wang Wei was like a million whys, asking various questions from the perspective of a director to these blasting elites.

  The result was that in a deserted area of the film set, the sound of explosions "bang... bang... bang" kept coming out all day. This made Li Yi, the owner of the film set, nervous and anxious to check on the blasting experiment site every day. Only after confirming that Wang Wei was fine did he reluctantly leave. Li Yi didn't want to have just joined a boss who seemed very capable, only to be blown up before achieving anything. Of course, Li Yi still had great respect for Wang Wei's spirit.

  Because of Wang Wei's impressive skills, he was able to subdue the twenty or so workers and make them obedient. This is because soldiers all respect the strong. I remember the first day when Wang Wei arrived at the blasting site, those workers were all cocky, every time Wang Wei asked a question, they would glance at him and say "you don't understand this".

  In the end, Wang Wei had no choice but to let these twenty people choose two of their best fighters to come out and fight him. As a result, the two representatives who were pushed forward were beaten by Wang Wei so badly that they couldn't get out of bed for two days. From then on, these twenty or so workers were extremely obedient to Wang Wei, listening to his every word.

  "Brother Wang, we've tried dozens of times already. Is there a problem somewhere?" Wang Wei said to the middle-aged man with a dark face standing beside him. This man was called Wang Bing, and in the army, he was responsible for leading an explosive demolition team, with the rank of Colonel. The explosive demolition team of twenty-odd people led by Wang Wei was under Wang Bing's command.

  " Birds, it's definitely not a problem with the method, Ah Wei. It's not that I'm saying you're wrong, but your requirements are too high, aren't they? You want something with great power, yet it can't hurt people. Think about it, three meters away, if an explosive were to go off, just like in real life, and still require that it doesn't harm anyone. Is this something you came up with on your own?" Wang Bing glared at Wang Wei, his face twisted in anger. If he weren't afraid of being beaten by Wang Wei, he might have already slapped him.

  Seeing Wang Bing's bitter face, Wang Wei smiled reluctantly with a black face: "Wang brother, I really didn't cheat you. The old beauty can completely control the smoke and fire to be one foot away from the actor after the bomb explodes, creating a realistic explosion scene."

  Wang Bing immediately shut up when Wang Wei mentioned that Lao Mei Zi had already reached this level, because since the Diaoyu Islands incident broke out, Wang Bing hated two countries' people the most, one was Lao Mei Zi and the other was Japanese.

  So at this time, Wang Bing heard Wang Wei say that the Americans had already reached this level, and Wang Bing immediately fell silent, starting to work. In Wang Bing's simple worldview, if Americans and Japanese can do it, why can't we Chinese? So every time he heard Wang Wei say that America has already reached this level, he would suppress his grievances in his heart and continue experimenting with a burst of energy.

  A loud "boom" was heard in the distance. Several members of the blasting team went up to check and found that the straw men set up at the blasting point were not damaged at all.

  "Haha, haha, we finally succeeded!" The members who went up to check were excitedly laughing and shouting loudly as they came this way.

  As the inspection team's report came out, all the sappers on the entire blasting test base couldn't help but dance with joy.

  Looking at these sappers dancing on the test base, Wang Wei secretly rejoiced in his heart: "It seems that I have picked up another group of treasures."

  Just a few days ago, these workers had completed their retirement procedures and signed ten-year contracts with their companies.

  According to Wang Wei's estimation, even if his company's pyrotechnicians are placed in the entire Asian film and television circle, they are also among the top. At present, the film and television industry does not pay much attention to the training of pyrotechnicians, but Wang Wei believes that in a few years, pyrotechnicians will definitely enter the vision of film companies and become the backbone of the company.

  For these workers, Wang Wei's treatment was also very good, with a monthly salary of 1,000 yuan for each person. To know that at that time, civil servants had a monthly salary of only 500 yuan, and soldiers had a monthly military pay of just over 200 yuan. So when Wang Wei paid these workers a salary of 1,000 yuan.

  Wang Wei suddenly became majestic in the hearts of these simple-minded comrades. More than 20 people, led by their leader Wang Bing, with red eyes, pledged allegiance to Wang Wei, which made Wang Wei wave his hand repeatedly and say: "If Chairman Mao knew about this, I'd be done for."

  After the successful explosion, the next step is casting, but in his heart, Wang Wei had already determined the candidate for the movie role.

  PS: Everyone, I've had a bit of a cold the past two days, hopefully it's not the bird flu. I can only update one chapter for now, once I'm feeling better I'll work harder to update more. Finally, thanks to Ti Huan Ziran, Chen Zhong Xingzou, STBD and several other big brothers for their rewards!