This year's Chinese summer movie season closed with a total revenue of 12.498 billion RMB. "The Kungfu Girl" leads the summer box office with 2.314 billion RMB (about 8.979 billion VND), followed by "Welcome to Long Restaurant" and "Eight Immortals".
Notably, "The Kungfu Girl" directed by Stephen Chow has the lowest Douban score in the top 5 leading films, but is at the top of box office revenue. This once again shows the box office attraction of "comedy king" Stephen Chow.
He is both a screenwriter, director, producer, and directly involved in brainstorming ideas, casting actors and crews. From choosing Zhang Xiaofei, Dilraba Dilmurat to inviting Qin Pengfei to co-direct, many important decisions have his mark.
Despite making the largest contribution and enjoying revenue sharing as a producer, Stephen Chow is only second in terms of income from the summer movie season.
The "Kungfu Women's Football Team" has 18 production units and 6 co-producing units. Stephen Chow's Star Overseas Company ranks second in the list of producers. When revenue is divided and excludes production, distribution, and promotion costs, the actual profit of each party will decrease significantly.
To understand this difference, we can look back at "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons", a movie that once caused Stephen Chow to dispute with Hoa Nghi Brothers. At that time, Hoa Nghi invested 88 million CNY and was in charge of distribution, while Stephen Chow was in charge of production. The two sides once agreed that if revenue exceeded 500 million CNY, Hoa Nghi would pay an additional 86.1 million CNY.
The film eventually reached 1.248 billion CNY, but Hua Yi refused to pay the additional share because the contract appendix had not been signed and stamped. After that, Stephen Chow lost the lawsuit.
The case shows that the publisher may enjoy a larger profit share than the producer, especially when they are responsible for publishing, promotion or advance funding. With "Kungfu Women's Football Team", Maoyan is responsible for publishing and promotion, so according to convention, the revenue of this unit may be higher than Star Overseas.
However, director and producer Ning Hao is considered to earn the most in this year's Chinese summer movie season.
Welcome to Long Restaurant" (Thẩm Đằng plays the main role) is a project controlled by Ninh Hạo's Bad Monkey company. Director Văn Mục Dã is also a person who grew up from Bad Monkey's directing training plan and has a long-term cooperation process with Ninh Hạo.
Bad Monkey topped the list of production units, helping Ninh Hao enjoy most of the profits from the production side.
More notably, another company, Shangshi Culture, run by Ninh Hao, both participated in production and was in charge of distributing the film. Therefore, he continued to receive profits from the distribution stage.
Plus the remuneration for the role of supervisor, Ninh Hao's total income is said to exceed Chau Tinh Tri's, even though he is not a prominent face in front of the media.
