Chapter 136 Box Office Champion in 83 Although the top box office of Hong Kong movies this year is not as much as last year, the overall box office is much higher than last year. Previously, "New Shaolin Temple", which Liu Hongmin believed was produced in 83, was ranked as 82 by the Hong Kong media, ranking second in the annual box office. In the 83 Spring Festival, "The Best Partner" continued the success of its predecessor and earned more than 2300 million yuan at the box office. Although it was 83 to million less than the previous film, it is still the box office champion of . The second place is "The Lucky Stars", with a box office of 2199 million. After the release of Five Lucky Stars, Chinatown Detective was released at the end of the summer vacation. Once it was released, it once again set off a wave of movie watching in Hong Kong. Unlike the popular slapstick comedies in Hong Kong, Chinatown Detective is much more restrained. It focuses more on the story, with comedy elements only interspersed in it. As the plot develops, unexpected reversals suddenly appear, which is very eye-catching. In addition to the reputation of Tomorrow Film Company, the absence of the Kung Fu Twins does not affect the quality of the film. Among them, Tang Ren, played by Stephen Chow, is even more ridiculous, messy but not annoying. Most of the dramatic parts of the film are on him. Qin Feng, played by He Jiajin, is not deliberately funny, but his stuttering and the way he is broken by Stephen Chow in various ways make him more likable. The most interesting scene in the film is the one where they hide in Ah Xiang's house. Every time something goes wrong, it makes people laugh.
Due to the times, many jokes were removed, but this does not hinder the comedy of this film. Kuntai's greasy, Huang Landeng's bad luck, Bei Ge's pretentiousness, Vietnamese boy's stupidity and King Kong's foolishness all left a deep impression on the audience. The audience's trust in Tomorrow Films made them rush to the cinema as soon as possible. On the first day, the box office of "Detective" exploded to 200 million, and the first week box office was a terrifying 1260 million. Theater owners thought that the summer season was coming to an end and the profits of theaters would be much less. However, "Detective" became a timely relief and made them a lot of money again. Starting from the second week, the box office of "The Detective" dropped by only 20% at its highest point. In other words, in the seven days of the second week, there was no single day when the box office was less than 100 million. By Saturday, the box office increased by more than 50%. In the second week, "The Detective" once again won nearly 1200 million at the box office, and the total box office reached more than 2400 million, surpassing "Best Partner" in one fell swoop, and temporarily became the box office champion of 83. Xu Xiaoming made some inquiries and found out that the only film that could threaten "The Detective"'s box office champion position in the next few months would be "Project A," the work that was released after Jackie Chan's return from Hollywood. He didn't know how much "Project A" would earn at the box office, but "The Detective" was already a phenomenal movie. It would be released in half a month, and even if the box office was bad, it would still earn three or four million. It can be said that it is basically a foregone conclusion that "The Detective" will surpass "Best Partner". "Best Partner" is a phenomenal movie in recent years. If "Inspector Gay" surpasses "Best Partner", it will definitely go down in film history. It is not easy to make a phenomenal movie. With the current scale of cinemas in Hong Kong, it takes luck to get a box office of 2000 million. Three movies have already exceeded 2000 million this year, so it is difficult to make a fourth one. Although Cheng Long's movies are very popular at the box office, even if he is lucky and successfully breaks the 2000 million box office mark, it is difficult to surpass "Detective". The Hong Kong media also praised "Detective" and especially praised Tomorrow Film Company. Since the establishment of Tomorrow Film Company, all the films it has produced are excellent. Not only have they gained a lot of box office, they have also been very popular abroad. In the report, many media outlets released interviews with employees of Tomorrow Films. The employees said that the reason why they shot all high-quality films was because they had complete scripts. Screenwriter Liu Hongmin is very famous in Hong Kong, and his status is comparable to Ni Kuang, only slightly lower than Mr. Jin Yong. But Mr. Jin Yong's achievements are in martial arts novels, while Liu Hongmin is very famous in many fields. His book Shao Bao successfully sparked a Bao Qingtian craze; Ming Dynasty 1566 became the most popular work among both the political and business circles in Hong Kong; and Lies established his reputation as an internationally renowned writer. It's a pity that he is from the mainland, otherwise when Hong Kong people ranked him, they would definitely rank him ahead of Mr. Jin Yong. Although Mr. Jin Yong is a senior, he is still far behind Liu Hongmin in terms of performance. These interviews were all conducted by employees who wanted to curry favor with Liu Hongmin. Although their words were fair, they were inevitably exaggerated. However, these interviews did play a role. Hong Kong's film companies began to pay attention to scripts. Everyone wanted to make high-quality films because they were making a lot of money. Although the Hong Kong film industry makes a lot of money, the cost is also very high. Given the prices in Hong Kong, if the actors' pay was not low, many movies would break through the sky. For example, the all-star cast of "The Lucky Stars" would cost millions of dollars if calculated based on the worth of the leading actors. But in fact, these actors are performing at a reduced price and actively reducing their pay in order to spend more money on film production. The grand scenes of "Best Partner" are a guarantee of box office success, but they also burn funds. There are also many big scenes in "The Detective", especially the final chase in the streets of Bangkok, which cost a lot of money. Coupled with some technical experiments, the cost of "The Detective" was directly pushed to 1000 million Hong Kong dollars.
So, it wasn't until Friday of the second week that "The Detective" recovered its costs. The cost of "Best Partner" was even higher than that of "Detective", and the box office in Hong Kong just recovered the cost. If it weren't for the presence of foreign companies, New One City would probably cancel this series of movies. Starting from the third week, the daily box office of "Detective" finally dropped below 100 million, and it did not exceed 470 million in the two days of the weekend. Despite this, the box office in the third week was still million. The box office in the fourth week was more than million, and then it was taken off the screen. In this way, "The Detective" broke the Hong Kong film and television record with a total box office of 3075 million Hong Kong dollars, becoming the Hong Kong film box office champion in 1983. The film company was jubilant tomorrow, and what made everyone even happier was that the overseas copyright of "Detective" had reached 100 million Hong Kong dollars. Because of "Lies", the Japanese did not want to introduce "Detective", but an executive of Random House saw an opportunity. His family runs a film company and directly spent 500 million US dollars to buy the copyright of the Japanese and European and American copyrights. At the current exchange rate, 500 million US dollars is equivalent to about 4000 million Hong Kong dollars. (End of this chapter)