This documentary film has some background to compete with Zhang Yimou's "The Great Wall" at the box office

At the end of every year, there will be a lot of highly acclaimed movies released. For producers, some are for the box office impact, some are for the awards season, and for movie fans, the end of the year with good movies every week has become a carnival month.

In addition to the high-quality imported films such as Your Name, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Sully, the most noteworthy film in December is Zhang Yimou's The Great Wall, which will be released on the 16th. This film is of Hollywood standard and brings together more than a dozen old, middle-aged and young stars from China and the United States. It is expected to achieve another success at the box office. Its competitor on the same day is The Wasted Time, which is led by Ge You and Zhang Ziyi and is also not to be underestimated.

On December 16, a domestic documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" was released at the same time. As a low-budget documentary film, it dared to compete with "The Great Wall" for box office. One has to worry and ask: "Will anyone be willing to pay for a documentary film?"

Today, I was fortunate to be invited by the producer Weijing to watch the movie version of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" in advance, and chat with readers about the front and behind the scenes of this documentary film.

On stage: Director Xiao Han is not too worried about the box office

At the beginning of this year, when "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" was broadcast, it gained extremely high popularity on Bilibili, with nearly 2 million clicks and a Douban score of 9.4, surpassing other popular documentaries such as "A Bite of China" and the hit TV series "Nirvana in Fire", and attracted countless fans.

Director Xiao Han has his own logic for turning it into a movie and sending it to theaters. "Documentaries should be watched in theaters because the real and simple emotions conveyed in the images are most suitable for quiet places like theaters."

Compared with the TV version of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", the movie version of "Repairing Cultural Relics" chose to abandon the original narration. The entire narrative plot is completed by the oral narration of the cultural relics restorer. The main line of the story is the process of a group of cultural relics being restored from being restored to being successfully restored.

For fans of the Forbidden City, the movie version is more like a review of the TV version.

In terms of box office, director Xiao Han had released the documentary "Himalayan Ladder" in 2015, which had a box office of 11.55 million. The box office of "Himalayan Ladder" benefited from the fact that it was a "spectacle", while the biggest selling point of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" is IP, because it already has a good audience base, coupled with some "tap water", the box office should be guaranteed to be tens of millions.

Xiao Han said, "We don't have that much pressure. After all, it's a low-budget movie, and the production level is not on the same level as The Great Wall. So as long as we have some success at the box office and the audience is willing to accept the documentary film format, we will be successful."

Behind the scenes: Whale's first feature film

The movie version of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" is the first feature film produced by WeWhale. Many people would ask why WeWhale, backed by Chinese culture, did not directly invest in well-known directors such as Zhang Yimou and Guo Jingming like LeTV for its first film production, but instead chose a relatively niche art film.

Chen Dairong, the person in charge of production at Weijing, said that the Weijing brand is born different for the new generation, and it continues to launch content that young people like with the "Weijing production", leading the development trend of young culture, and insists on being very exciting and explosive in the direction of content selection. It must not only ignite the audience's adrenaline but also inspire their hearts. The content must be hopeful, active, youthful, and explosive. In terms of production, it adheres to word-of-mouth to go around the world, insists on good stories, good quality, and good production. On the premise of "three good", it cooperates with ingenious teams such as the main creators of "I'm Repairing Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City". While presenting excellent works to the audience, it also lays a good foundation for its own long-term development.

The word-of-mouth communication of the TV version of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" has created miracles, which is consistent with the concept of Weijing production. Weijing chose to bring the documentary to the big screen, focusing on the mainstream young market. Weijing focuses on investing resources, capital and manpower in the content field. Weijing production adheres to the ingenuity shown in "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", is not impatient, prefers to have nothing than to have something sloppy, insists on selecting good content for incubation, does not pursue short-term profit, and takes the boutique route. Under the guidance of the concept of "very exciting and explosive" and "word of mouth goes around the world", a large number of well-received works ultimately promote the reputation of the Weijing platform, and continue to develop. It is committed to controlling the content trend with "Weijing production", innovating and operating content resources, enriching the content dissemination methods, and continuously launching more excellent content such as the movie version of "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" to serve the vast new generation of people.

Faced with the fierce competition from blockbusters in the same period, theaters may not be able to schedule enough screenings for documentary films such as "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City". However, fans of the Forbidden City do not have to worry too much. As long as you own a Whale TV, users can still enjoy this ingenious work at home 20 days after the film is released.

Finally, let me give you a spoiler: after the movie ends, you must listen to the ending song before leaving the theater, because the ending song sung by the national husband Chen Li specifically for this film is definitely worth listening to.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.