EFB Chapter 026 The Heng River Corpse Retrievers and the Grave-Digging Industry Chain
Chapter 026 The Heng River Corpse Retrievers and the Grave-Digging Industry Chain
October 28, Xu Ke Film Studio, Kowloon Tong.
After Rosamund Kwan, wearing sunglasses, entered the room arm in arm with Su Nan, the receptionist quickly stood up to greet them.
The polite young woman led the two into the waiting room outside Xu Ke's office.
Several people were already seated here, including Joey Wong, Li Jiaxin, and Cheng Xiaodong.
The glorious summer movie season has long ended, and A Chinese Ghost Story 2 made a lot of money with its HK$2000 million box office in Hong Kong Island and the sale of the film to other countries.
The production of a third installment is also under negotiation.
Su Nan visited the set of A Chinese Ghost Story 2 near the end of filming and learned about post-production. She wasn't very familiar with Lao Cheng and the others, but she did know them.
After the receptionist brought tea, Su Nan and Lao Cheng started chatting.
He also wanted to invite Ching Siu-tung to be an assistant director on (Kung Fu Hustle), which would also be a collaboration.
Sister Guan was talking to Wang and Li.
They have almost no collaborative projects and are not familiar with each other, but as well-known actresses, they can still have topics to talk about and socialize with each other.
The information that Su Nan heard from Lao Cheng's conversation was mainly Li Jiaxin complaining that she couldn't handle her contract issues.
The trouble is getting bigger and bigger.
That's pretty much true; this woman, who debuted as the most beautiful Miss Hong Kong in 90, has starred in a series of blockbuster films.
However, he didn't have any film or television projects throughout 1991 because his contract with TVB was blocked by Fong Yat-wah.
In 92, he transferred to Lai Ming's PepsiCo and began to appear in Swordsman II and Stephen Chow's Deer and the Cauldron series.
After chatting for a while, Lao Xu came out of his office to see off one of the visitors.
He came over to the waiting room to greet them, and Cheng Xiaodong politely invited Su Nan to go in first to talk business.
Lao Cheng and Xu Ke have been working together for many years, so a little extra time won't make a difference.
After exchanging a few polite words, Su Nan and Lao Xu entered the office together.
After he disappeared, Li Jiaxin, who had been chatting idly, suddenly took a sip of water and said to Guan Zhilin, "Sister Zhi, is this your new employer? Is it confirmed?"
"This Mr. Su is holding onto Ni Zhen's photo and won't let go of it. That scoundrel is too ashamed to even show his face now."
Have you seen those photos?
Rosamund Kwan was instantly flustered.
Wang Zuxian and Cheng Xiaodong, their gossip instincts ignited, stared intently at Sister Guan.
Even some tabloids have started publishing Rosamund Kwan's latest news; news from insiders spreads even faster.
Rosamund Kwan took a sip of water, looking disheveled, and shook her head. "I haven't seen it. Why would I watch that nonsense?"
Cheng Xiaodong interjected, "I'm curious about Su Sheng's bodyguards."
"I heard that the month before last, some thugs from Hutchison Whampoa deliberately picked a fight and provoked us."
"A man named Ah Shun easily wounded more than a dozen people with a small knife, and the least he suffered were three or four cuts."
"The worst case involved more than 20 stab wounds, yet it was classified as a minor injury."
"That Ah Shun was almost unharmed. Are all of Su Sheng's bodyguards this ruthless?"
The 10 bodyguards that Su Nan brought from the mainland also lived in Hong Kong for four months.
Their tasks include taking turns on duty and maintaining order at Skyworth stations.
The main focus is still on learning Cantonese and getting familiar with the social environment.
Hutchison? It's inevitable that Hutchison, with its two successive leaders suffering losses, would occasionally do something to test the waters.
Rosamund Kwan was stunned again. "Is there really such a thing? I didn't know."
Imagine Su Nan taking her to Moscow, where dozens or even hundreds of people are armed with various weapons.
Gunfights can happen several times in one night.
The kind of routine operations in Moscow are akin to a game-changer compared to the triads in Hong Kong.
This kind of tactical knife can handle minor matters, unlike the fact that a large force is not assembled after the fact to carry out the task.
There's no need to delve into matters like not prosecuting or suing others.
Perhaps it was this competition that led to her receiving less and less harassment and advances in her daily life.
To reiterate, her ex-boyfriend, Lao Ma, a real estate and banking tycoon, was with her when she met Su Nan this year, after he remarried.
Old Ma would also harass her from time to time by phone or pager, which drove her crazy.
Old Ma hasn't bothered her for several months now.
She met Su Nan in late March, and only made her way into his home at the end of September. She hadn't seen anyone with the surname Ma for almost a year.
Harassing phone calls are another matter.
This may also explain why mainstream newspapers haven't reprinted her various gossip and scandals.
When it comes to facing formidable figures in the martial arts world, let alone those hall masters, Yong Sheng Zhang Min has had very few scandals since his debut.
If Zhang Min receives this treatment, then the entertainment gossip media in Hong Kong are quite sensible.
Li Jiaxin exclaimed in surprise, "I've never heard of this before. Are all the masters in mainland China this powerful? Can they fight as well as Big Brother Long and Brother Jie on screen?"
Rosamund Kwan laughed and said, "Having weapons and not having weapons are two different things, two different natures."
"Brother Nan said that with guns and bullets, even killing a hundred people is not impossible."
"Gunfights in movies and TV series are too artistic and distort reality a lot."
Cheng Xiaodong, Wang Zuxian, and Li Jiaxin looked at each other in bewilderment.
Sister Guan's casual remark seemed to touch on quite a lot of issues?
Seeing the shocked expressions on the three people's faces, Rosamund Kwan realized she had said the wrong thing and quickly laughed awkwardly, "This is the result of communicating with a marksman expert when studying the script."
"He mentioned practical shooting techniques, and if we could film it, it would be amazing to see a gun king take on dozens or kill hundreds at once."
"This should also help to create a new star in kung fu."
These things have indeed been mentioned and explained in southern Jiangsu.
Similar to Hong Jinbao's first trip to Moscow and the sight of the spectacle there, which made him extremely doubt his own existence.
I wonder how a Hong Kong gangster from southern Jiangsu managed to pave the way and take down the mafia back then.
Rosamund Kwan asked about it out of curiosity when she got on the bus.
In a casual conversation in southern Jiangsu, projects like "Taken" and "The Chase" were mentioned as just casual chatter.
Skyworth wouldn't have started those projects if it weren't for an extreme need to save money.
Skyworth Systems doesn't want ordinary box office revenue.
The real money is made through trade with Moscow on one hand and investments in Microsoft or other US stocks in the future on the other.
Then, a few years later, they invested in Tencent to save Pony.com. They really have too many ways to make money.
Cheng Xiaodong excitedly slammed his hand on the table. "I see! That's a brilliant idea!"
Joey Wong smiled and chimed in, "I haven't congratulated Sister Zhi on your big money laundering deal yet. The money laundering story about the human skeleton trade is terrifying."
"Such outrageous things actually happen in real life."
"No wonder it caused a sensation in Southeast Asia; Su Sheng understands the world much more deeply than we do."
The movie "Money Laundering" ultimately grossed HK$1920 million before being taken off the screens.
Even excluding the yet-to-be-released "God of Gamblers," it was already the eighth highest-grossing film of 1990.
Besides the thrilling and novel nature of the human bone trade, it was also related to media hype during the film's release, reporting that India sold tens of thousands of complete skeletons every year in the early 80s.
This includes various industries related to retrieving corpses from the Ganges River and grave robbing.
The interplay between reality and film has given countless people a powerful shock.
Yuan Heping and Zhen Zidan benefited the most from this.
Su Nan and Rosamund Kwan followed, whether in the film print or videotape market.
Every production credits indicate that Su Nan was one of the film's assistant directors.
If they were to switch to a legitimate profession, with that resume, they could try to find a boss to invest in their first film.
Half an hour passed as they chatted, and then another new person arrived in the waiting room.
Xu Ke's office door was still closed.
Cheng Xiaodong laughed, "It seems Mr. Su and Director Xu are getting along very well. Sister Zhi, is it about (kung fu) special effects production?"
Before this, Lao Cheng hadn't asked, as it wasn't convenient to ask too many questions.
However, people in the industry are already familiar with matters concerning Skyworth, Shixiawei Nan Ge, and (Kung Fu).
Su Nan visited more than five film crews to learn from them; the construction of the Shanghu Republic of China Street started in May and has been going on for almost half a year.
Currently, among all special effects productions in Hong Kong, Tsui Hark's new visual effects are considered top-tier.
Rosamund Kwan shook her head. "It's a new film project."
Lao Cheng, Wang Zuxian, Li Jiaxin, and others looked at each other in bewilderment.
The old project has been going on for so long and still hasn't started, and now a new one is coming? Are they that confident in themselves?
Or are they simply not afraid of losing money?
Joey Wong made 12 films in 90 and 9 films in 91. That's real efficiency.