Rebirth of the Director in Korea

On January 24, 2007, after a three-day short holiday, the downtown area of ​​Seoul resumed its former bustle and hustle and bustle, and all major shops and shops were opened for business. Merchants still reluctant to get money at their fingertips.

There is no major event happening in Seoul on this day, and in the entertainment industry, if you have to say something worth noting, it is probably the premiere of “The Host” at midnight tonight.

As a movie that has already aroused the appetite of the audience, it has received wide attention from many fans at the beginning of the project, not only because it is a domestically produced special effects disaster film, but also Because of the title of director Bong Joon-woo’s work, there is also the relationship between JHJFilm.

Take a breakdown of the several films that JHJFilm has invested in, whether it is “Welcome to Dongmakgol” or the film work “Old Thousand” directed by Jung Hyuk-jae, all of them are domestically produced in South Korea in recent years. The best in the movie. Although South Korea movie until now advertises the benchmark of Asian movies, in fact South Korea’s domestic movie market is also full of darkness, full of money laundering and bad movies. It can stand out from these, naturally JHJFilm has become a good idea for many fans in mind. The company, although the movie has not yet been released, the audience is already waiting for the movie to be released with anticipation.

Film fans are looking forward to what a wonderful story Bong Joon-woo and JHJFilmthis time will bring to everyone, while the expectations of the filmmakers in the circle are somewhat different, but what they hope in their hearts It was Waterloo at the box office of the opponent this time.

Film production costs are not considered confidential in the circle. The cost of many movies is a secret in the circle, just like the movie “The Host”, although it is external In terms of publicity, JHJFilm claims that the production and distribution costs of movies are as high as 15 billion. In fact, there is a certain degree of moisture. The film production cost of 8 billion is about the same, and the publicity cost of 5 billion is not too much. Speaking of which 13 billion is actually also It is not false propaganda.

Even if the 1 billion and 12 billion production and publicity costs are removed from the water, this is absolutely unique in the South Korea film circle, and the major film companies in the film circle guessed it. All are good. The production cost of the movie is about 14 billion, but because the special effects companies are all subcontracted by first-line special effects companies in South Korea, the cost of special effects is actually much less than the budget. One of the special effects required by patriarch The company is still a subsidiary of JHJ Entertainment, and the cost is much lower.

Jung Hyuk-jae used all his own resources in the promotion and distribution of the film before its release, from offline events in its cinemas to OCN cable TV advertising, in a single day Just repeat it more than three times. Good quality requires good publicity, right?

So in the end, the cost of publicity, distribution and production of the film was just over 10 billion. Although it is still a significant investment in subsequent publicity, the cost can probably be controlled at 13 billion, which is far from the circle. Everyone guessed as high as 15 billion. Nevertheless, JHJFilm has become a thorn in the eyes of many film companies. When many film companies are still following the old ways of controlling costs and pursuing low-cost and high-return movies, JHJFilm has already taken the lead.

Disaster special effects films until now are all good Hollywood movies, but this time the domestic special effects films were taken first by a film company that has just been established for more than a year. For last year’s movies, there are only a handful of movies with a production cost of more than 5 billion. Among them, there are many movies produced and released by major film production companies. The great generosity of JHJFilmthis time is not bad, and the movie production costs in the circle have been increased to 100%. It is worth knowing that a film with a production cost of tens of billions requires at least 4 million viewers to recover the cost from the theaters. Last year, there were only three movies with more than 4 million viewers, one “Head Master One 2” “One “Beauty’s Trouble” and one “Old Thousand”, the final audience of these three movies reached more than 6 million people, and JHJFilm accounted for two, but the rest of the movies? One “Korean Peninsula” got stuck in 3.88 million, and “Family Glory 3” was 3.46 million viewers, but it also failed to reach 4 million viewers. It can also be seen why the film company is so inadequate for major production movies. The reason for the heart is that the rate of return is too low, and the rate of loss is too high.

In 2002, the number of viewers of South Korea’s local movies exceeded 50 million for the first time. Considering the Korea-Japan World Cup that summer, this result is already pretty good, but there was no phenomenal level this year. film. In addition, a particularly obvious change is that the “hot money” of investment in film projects has rapidly cooled down. According to data from the South Korea Film Promotion Committee, in 2002 alone, venture capitalists lost up to 40 million U.S. dollars in investment in film projects. In other words, after the release of a large number of high-cost films on Hollywood-like major themes that were produced before, they almost lost their money.

With the successive box office failures of major productions in 2002, external capital began to withdraw from the film industry on a large scale, and the investment climate gradually became rational. After that, the four major domestic Daebak merchants in South Korea at that time CJ ), Showbox, Lotte and CinemaService (acquired by CJ in 2006) have replaced venture capitalists as the main investors. By 2003, venture capital had cut off nearly half of its investment. Due to the heavy losses of investment companies, they withdrew their previous commitments to investment in follow-up films. This move directly led to the bankruptcy of some production companies. This is why JHJFilm was able to enter the market after 2005 and still be able to speak from many established film companies. The reason for biting a piece of meat.

JHJFilm has worked hard to promote the movie. Billboards about “The Host” can be seen everywhere on subway station signs. This way, the effect is naturally very significant. The film first faces Naturally, it is the office workers. As the main force of watching movies, they naturally need to win.

As a big punch for the South Korea domestic film in 2007, the premiere of “The Host” was filled with stars and guests. The premiere ceremony this time is still set in JHJ theater, and It’s an advertisement for my own theater.

As early as two days before the premiere, the movie tickets for “The Host” were already fully booked. The fans who got the news looked at the red seats on the full screen and secretly regretted it, wishing that time could turn back. . Not only the premiere, but the daytime tickets on the day of the premiere are almost sold out. The rest are the seats in the theater that are not very effective for viewing the movie. There are a few tickets left, just when the fans are ready to pay, they are on the computer. The show has been booked again.

“The Host” won the first battle!