sinovels Chapter 278 Two Fronts Blooming, The Grand Strategy of the Era
Chapter 278 Two Fronts Blooming, The Grand Strategy of the Era
Chapter 278 Two Fronts Blooming, The Grand Strategy of the Era
The post-production editing of "Shinjuku Incident" took more than a month to complete, thanks to Jackie Chan's extremely strict control and the ample financial support from Kitahara Studio. It was finally completed in the sweltering heat of mid-July.
After a brief discussion within the production team, Kitahara Shin made the decision without hesitation regarding the premiere location of the film:
Skipping Japan, the film will have its global premiere directly in Hong Kong. It will then return to Japan as a dubbed film, and finally be released in the European and American markets.
The reason is simple: the soul of this film lies in its authentic Cantonese dialect and the fighting spirit inherent in the streets of Hong Kong. More importantly, in Hong Kong, the name Jackie Chan itself represents an invincible box office legend.
It's no exaggeration to say that Jackie Chan's status in the Hong Kong film industry is a dominance earned through sheer hard work and dedication. From the groundbreaking "Drunken Master" in the late 1970s, which shattered the stereotype of traditional kung fu films, to the "Police Story" series in the 1980s, which ushered in the pinnacle of modern death-defying action films, and then to the successful entry into Hollywood with "Rumble in the Bronx" in the early 1990s, Jackie Chan has conquered audiences worldwide with his extreme leaps that have resulted in broken arms and legs time and time again.
In Hong Kong, Jackie Chan's fame and appeal are comparable to, and even surpass, that of Shin Kitahara among the lower-class, urban population. Watching a Jackie Chan movie requires no special skills; you don't need to delve into character arcs or profound acting. You simply buy a ticket, sit in an air-conditioned theater, and watch this man smash glass with his bare hands and risk his life on the big screen—that's enough to make the ticket price worthwhile. It's a direct and pure visual dopamine rush.
In late July, several major cinemas in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, were packed with movie fans and entertainment reporters waiting for premieres.
In recent years, Hong Kong audiences have become accustomed to fast-paced action films and poorly made copycat productions. Although they are still willing to pay for Jackie Chan's films, besides watching him continue to jump off buildings, they also hope to see something truly fresh in this so-called "international blockbuster."
When the movie officially started and this "new thing" appeared, the entire theater erupted in chaos.
It wasn't some cool explosion effect, but rather Kitahara Shin.
When Kitahara Shin appeared on the big screen in an extremely well-tailored dark haute couture suit and gold-rimmed glasses, surrounded by a group of black-clad yakuza, exuding a cold, cruel yet elegant aura of a "suit-wearing thug," a collective gasp rippled through the theater, followed by suppressed whispers.
In recent years, with the immense popularity of top-tier Japanese dramas such as "Tokyo Love Story," "The White Tower," and "Legal High" on ATV and TVB in Hong Kong, Kitahara Shin's face has long garnered a huge and devoted fanbase in Hong Kong. Hong Kong audiences are accustomed to him playing affectionate "Maruko," arrogant genius chaebols, or sharp-tongued and invincible lawyers.
Who would have thought that this "King of Japanese Dramas," known for his delicate acting skills, could play a ruthless gangster villain with such a chilling and oppressive aura that he could rival Jackie Chan's life-or-death aura!
But what truly amazed and thrilled Hong Kong audiences was Kitahara Nobu's very first line in the film.
There was no awkward post-production dubbing, no forced foreign accents. When faced with provocation from the Hong Kong gang, Kitahara Shin lowered his head slightly and uttered a long passage of extremely standard Cantonese, even with a touch of colloquialisms!
"Wow! No? But you speak Cantonese?!"
"Wow! Are you kidding me?! He can actually speak Cantonese?!"
"This accent is even more authentic than my cousin's, who lived in Kowloon Walled City for ten years!"
The audience in the screening room erupted in cheers. In any country, if a wildly popular foreign superstar is willing to use an extremely authentic local dialect in a film, it's an absolute definite plus! It represents respect and sincerity! Kitahara Shin's linguistic "lower-dimensional attack" instantly broke through the defenses of the Hong Kong audience, maximizing their goodwill towards him.
(Of course, when the film is released in Japan, Kitahara Shin will personally dub it into Japanese, showing his utmost sincerity.)
The word-of-mouth on the opening night swept through Hong Kong like a tornado. The next day, headlines such as "Suit-wearing thug Kitahara Shin", "Jackie Chan recreates his life-risking peak", and "Japanese drama king is actually a Cantonese master" dominated the entertainment front pages of major newspapers such as Oriental Daily and Ming Pao.
Even old photos of Kitahara Shin, Nakamori Akina, and Sakai Izumi wearing masks and eating typhoon shelter crab in Temple Street were dug up by gossip magazines and given the exaggerated headline "Multinational Giants Fall in Love with Hong Kong Night Markets," ruthlessly riding the wave of popularity.
With the combined success of its two blockbusters, "Shinjuku Incident" enjoyed phenomenal box office success. In 1996, the Hong Kong film industry was still dominated by Chow Yun-fat, Stephen Chow, and Jackie Chan. Although it faced stiff competition from films like Stephen Chow's "The God of Cookery," "Shinjuku Incident" still raked in an astonishing HK$15 million in its opening week, immediately taking the top spot at the box office and showing a strong potential to challenge for a top-three position in the annual box office rankings.
In addition to the box office success, another piece of good news came from Hong Kong that made Kitahara Shin a fortune.
The legitimate CD/DVD distribution company that Jackie Chan had previously helped connect with has now fully realized its potential. Jackie Chan is extremely reliable; the company's professional manager led the team north and signed long-term OEM contracts with more than a dozen large CD/DVD pressing factories in the southern coastal region of mainland China.
With this extremely low-cost production line, Kitahara Shin's vast copyright library—including works like *Flowers of Evil*—was effectively utilized.
"Legal High," phenomenal variety shows, and high-definition concerts and music videos by Akina Nakamori and Izumi Sakai began to be converted into a continuous stream of DVDs, which were dumped back into the Hong Kong and Southeast Asian markets like a tidal wave.
In terms of pricing strategy, Kitahara Shin demonstrated extremely shrewd capital skills.
He didn't naively set the price exorbitantly to appear high-end, nor was he brain-dead enough to drive the price down to cost and fight the pirates to the death, which would only push the entire piracy industry to its limits.
His strategy was "dimensional reduction attack": the price of the CDs was slightly higher than that of the inferior pirated CDs on the market (keeping it in a range that an ordinary student could afford with their pocket money), but the added value of the product was extremely differentiated.
If you buy a pirated copy, you'll only get a blurry disc. But if you buy the official Kitahara Productions copy, not only will the picture quality be straight from the master disc, but it will also come with exquisitely crafted celebrity postcards, unreleased behind-the-scenes booklets, and even limited-edition merchandise illustrations.
This "slightly more expensive, but with explosively high quality" marketing magic instantly tore a huge hole in that vast blue ocean market. In major music and video stores, countless viewers willingly opened their wallets for those exclusive merchandise items.
Everything was progressing smoothly. But on countless late nights, Kitahara Shin would sit alone in his hotel suite, staring at the Hang Seng Index on his computer screen, orchestrating another momentous scheme.
He had long ago registered multiple secret offshore financial accounts through Hong Kong brokers.
According to his past life's historical memories, July 1, 1997, was a momentous occasion of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. However, it was accompanied by the Asian financial crisis that erupted in July of the same year, sweeping across Asia and destroying the economic lifelines of countless countries!
If relying solely on his past life's limited historical memories as a bystander, Kitahara Shin wouldn't dare gamble in the meat grinder of an international financial giant like Soros. But don't forget, he's been in this world for a full ten years. During these ten years, with the system's enhancement of his brain's thinking, he's been frantically absorbing business and financial knowledge.
He is no longer the novice who could only speculate by predicting the future, but a top-tier financial predator with extremely keen intuition and practical skills. His current patience and strategic planning are all for the purpose of taking a huge bite out of the fattest piece of meat in the earth-shattering storm a year from now!
The series of good news from Hong Kong brought Kitahara Nobu back to Japan, making him extremely happy.
Back in Tokyo, filming for "GTO" is progressing steadily and efficiently.
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On this day, the film crew welcomed a special guest who seemed a bit awkward—the original author of the GTO manga, Toru Fujisawa.
In fact, the film and television adaptation rights for the manga were sold to Kitahara Office long ago, and the screenwriters made significant changes to the original work to suit the wider audience of television dramas. After all, manga can be extremely exaggerated, but television dramas need to consider realistic logic and the audience's ability to relate to the story. These are two completely different mediums of expression, and attempts to achieve 100% fidelity often end in failure.
However, Fujisawa Toru, as the "biological father," was still very curious about this big-budget production personally directed by Kitahara Shin, and specially applied to come and watch it on site.
The scene we filmed today was a key confrontation between Kitahara Shin's character, Oni-ya Eikichi, and Matsushima Nanako's character, Fuyutsuki Azusa, from the second episode.
Having shared life and death in the Kansai earthquake disaster area, developed a tacit understanding while filming "Ultraman Tiga", and already had a very close relationship in private, the chemistry between Kitahara Shin and Matsushima Nanako on screen has reached an extremely terrifying level.
"Action!"
In the scene, Onizuka Eikichi leans close to Fuyutsuki Azusa, looking at her with an extremely roguish yet teasing gaze. The rhythm of his lines is just right; any more would seem lewd, and any less would lose the oppressive feeling of a delinquent teacher.
Standing opposite her, Nanako didn't need the director to tell her how to act "panic." She understood the meaning behind Kitahara Shin's gaze all too well. Without a single extra word, Nanako simply bit her lower lip slightly, a hint of natural embarrassment flashing in her eyes. Then, she smoothly followed Kitahara Shin's steps, taking a half-step back. The feeling of panic at having her inner pretense exposed instantly overflowed the screen.
There was no trace of stiff acting; even the movement and breathing rhythm were perfectly synchronized, as if the two characters had come to life directly from the script!
Fujisawa Toru, sitting behind the monitor, was practically speechless. He had initially worried that the TV adaptation would ruin the soul of his work, but now, seeing this, it was even more captivating than his own manga!
During a break in filming, Kitahara Shin came over to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with the original author. Fujisawa Toru was so excited that he bowed repeatedly, saying that after watching these scenes, he felt completely at ease and would definitely promote the drama series extensively in the manga volumes when he got back.
In addition to the extremely smooth filming, the crew of "GTO" also developed an extremely rare "regular program".
Every afternoon, after Kitahara Shin finishes filming his scenes, he doesn't immediately go into his air-conditioned car to rest like other big stars. Instead, he stays on set for an extra hour without fail.
This hour is specifically reserved for "Q&A time" for the young actors in the crew.
At this time, Shun Oguri, Yosuke Kuboe, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, and even Takeru Satoh, who hadn't gotten a role but was granted special permission to observe, would crowd around Shin Kitahara like a flock of hungry chicks, script in hand.
Kitahara Shin never gave perfunctory answers to the questions posed by these young people.
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"In the scene where you were being hit, your center of gravity was wrong when you fell. When you're really hit, your body will have a physiological curling reaction, instead of falling straight down like a log." As he spoke, Kitahara Shin would even stand up himself to demonstrate to Oguri Shun the precise muscle control required to fall after being hit.
The experienced stagehands and director standing nearby smiled knowingly at the sight.
In the hierarchical Japanese entertainment industry, most seniors, either to maintain their aloof and mysterious aura or simply because they find it troublesome, would never personally guide juniors who are not related to them by blood. Everyone's time is precious.
But for Kitahara Shin, this calculation was all too clear.
These young upstarts who now surround him and call him "President" will most likely become half of the Japanese film and television industry within the next ten years! He is not only an actor, but also the helmsman of a vast entertainment empire. As long as these newcomers can learn real skills from him and quickly transform into towering figures capable of standing on their own, the terrifying profits that Kitahara's agency will generate in the future will be an astronomical figure.
What's more, when all of these people become movie stars in the future, and they all respectfully say in interviews, "My acting skills were taught by Mr. Kitahara," the sense of accomplishment of being a behind-the-scenes godfather is simply too awesome.
However, looking at the group of young boys who frantically called Kitahara Shin "teacher" every day, Matsushima Nanako, sitting on a bench not far away, couldn't help but feel a little sour.
You should know that before joining this production team, in all of Japan, the only person who was qualified and dared to call Kitahara Shin "teacher" was Matsushima Nanako!
Moreover, for Nanako, the title "teacher" has long since lost its original meaning.
It contains too much possessiveness, and can be considered an extremely private kind of pleasure.
Now, seeing everyone on set calling her "teacher," Nanako snorted softly and silently tightened the thermos in her hand.
On the surface, she maintained her dignified and gentle demeanor as a leading lady, but in her heart, she had already begun to secretly plan: after finishing work and going home tonight, she would definitely get her revenge on this "teacher" man, with interest, for this jealousy!
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