Special feature of 1905 film network From the summer movie, Love O2O, and to the National Day movie, the position of novel IP in the movie market can be seen, and its strong fan base is equivalent to the guarantee of box office for investors. However, after the novels with a large number of fans are put on the big screen, it often leads to questions. What kind of works is a good adaptation? Will the upsurge of novel IP adaptation continue in the film market? 1905 Movie Network talked with novelists, professional screenwriters and critics, trying to find the answers to the questions.
Four Great Classical Novels mixed street literature? Novel IP craze may cool down
In recent years, the novel IP has developed rapidly in the film market, and the novel IP that can make a difference at the box office has gradually developed from two or three novels to nine or ten novels every year. In 2013, Jing M.Guo officially met with the audience with a film, and in the same year, he also had a good box office; In 2014, movies such as,, and were also adapted from novels. Although these films were frequently vomited by netizens, the doubts did not affect the next development of novel IP.
By 2015, the number of films adapted from novel IP not only soared, but also began to show greater ability to attract gold: it became the runner-up of the annual Chinese film box office with a score of more than 1.6 billion, and earned 700 million and 680 million box offices respectively, and the final box office of Hehe also exceeded 400 million. In 2016, IP-adapted movies of novels such as Tomb Raider Notes, Love O2O, never gone, etc. have been concentrated in the summer file to meet the audience, and those that have not been released include I am not Pan Jinlian, Grand Prix, Passing Through Your World, One sentence is worth ten thousand sentences, and so on.
The upsurge of IP adaptation of novels has attracted constant controversy. Last year, Alibaba Pictures said that professional screenwriters would no longer be used, and professional screenwriters were also accused of "adapting IP". Wang Hailin, a screenwriter, once said that fostering IP was "helping others to abuse", which devalued the screenwriter industry. In this regard, screenwriter Yu Fei explained, "Resisting changing IP is not really denying the adaptation of this matter, but resisting adapting junk IP with high-quality professional screenwriters. For example, Wang Hailin, let him change The Journey to the West and A Dream of Red Mansions, he certainly has no opinion, but he won’t want to let him change some dirty street literature. " Yu Fei believes that the concept of novel IP completely mixes Four Great Classical Novels and street literature, which is really unscientific.
For the future development of novel IP, many people in the industry believe that this upsurge will not last forever, and the number of high-quality novel IP is limited. When online novels no longer break out on a large scale, the market will return to a normal state. Yu Fei said, "Now the online novel that has been saved for more than ten years has broken out. It can break out once, but it will not break out all the time. In the future, the market will return to a normal state."
Is the author’s adaptation an absolute prescription? There is a difference between the creation of novels and scripts.
Nowadays, the slogan of "the original author personally wrote the script" can often be seen on movie posters. It seems that the original author has the guarantee of "loyalty to the original" when he goes into battle, and this also avoids the problem that the original author may come out and tear the frame after the film is released. From Liu Zhenyun, Yan Lianke and Yan Geling, to Wu Xuelan and Bao Jingjing, who started from online literature, they have all adapted film and television works that are popular, but there are also many cases of writers’ mistakes: the film starring Huang Xiaoming and Angelababy was written by Haiyan himself, the screenwriter of Left Ear was the original author Rao Xueman, and Feng Tang participated in the screenwriter work. The screenwriter of Tiny Times series was also Jing M.Guo himself & HELIP. … However, the reputation of these films is generally lower than that of novels.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, a well-written novel and a well-written script are two different things. Novel creation can be unconstrained and descriptive, but the script needs to focus on promoting the plot. Yu Fei said, "It doesn’t have any special significance for the original author to adapt, that is, the management hired a screenwriter again, but it just happened that the original author did it. It doesn’t mean that he must change it well when he adapted it, nor did Mo Yan change it." In addition, because the original author grasps too much discourse power, he often interferes with other people’s opinions with "what I thought at that time, so what should I do?"
Not long ago, the Tomb Raiding Notes was released, which was the "screenwriter’s first novel" by the original author Nanpai Sanshu. Previously, the online drama of "Tomb Notes" was sprayed, which made his uncle unable to sit still and felt that "it is better to adapt it yourself." However, after the film was released, the word-of-mouth was not satisfactory, and even many original powders were not bought. Nanpai’s uncle, who has written novels for many years, also encountered the dilemma of choosing the plot of the novel. He once revealed at the press conference that the first draft of his script had written 80,000 words, and finally he had to let the director make drastic cuts and change it into a movie script with 20,000 fonts. Speaking of the reason, his uncle said frankly, "I know very well that the manuscript has been filmed for forty hours. If you want me to delete it myself, I don’t know which one to delete. Let the director delete it."
What is a good adaptation? It is more important to translate the taste than to be loyal to the original.
The author of the novel and the professional screenwriter also have different opinions on the understanding of the adaptation of the novel into a film. Nanpai Sanshu believes that the most important thing in adapting a novel is to "choose a side" first. "When you want to adapt a novel to a movie, you have to choose which side first. As long as you complete this choice, everything will be easy. Standing on the side of the movie, if you want to make a good movie, you should do it with the logic of the movie. If you stand on the side of the novel and want to make a movie of a good novel, then you should do it in the way of the novel. Everything is your choice, and the consequences are at your own risk. "
Nanpai’s uncle thinks that adaptation is a multiple-choice question in position, but professional screenwriters don’t agree with the view of "choosing a side station" Yu Fei said, "Of course, we should stand in the perspective of film and television works. If we stand in the perspective of novels, then write novels. Why do you adapt films and television? Or do you please fans from the perspective of novels, do fans really buy your account? " In his view, if the work is really good, it doesn’t matter whether it is loyal to the original, while if the work is not good, it is useless to be loyal to the original. Yu Fei believes that screenwriters should start from the rules of script creation, otherwise even if the box office is successful, it will be a pseudo-success. "If you don’t treat it as a literary work, but cater to capital, broadcast platform, fans’ psychology and people with the right to speak, and finally shoot and broadcast, pretend to be very prosperous, but actually?"
Chen Shaofeng, vice president of Peking University Cultural Industry Research Institute, also believes that "loyalty to the original" is not the most important thing in adaptation. He said that many of Zhang Yimou’s works have been successfully adapted: Red Sorghum, Red Sorghum, Red Sorghum, Red Sorghum and Red Sorghum were adapted from the novels of writers Mo Yan, Liu Heng, Su Tong and Chen Yuanbin respectively, but Zhang Yimou did not completely adapt the original works one by one, but used film skills to make his own style. In addition to these traditional novels IP, there are also successful adaptations of online novels. Although TV series nirvana in fire, Wu Ershan’s Searching for Dragons, Chen Kaige’s, Zhang Yimou’s and Huatao Teng’s were born out of online novels, they can still be recognized by the audience after being adapted into film and television works.
When it comes to the specific operation of adaptation, Yu Fei believes that some well-known classic novels can hardly be changed. "Like A Dream of Red Mansions and Jin Yong’s novels, there is nothing to change." But for most online novels, the adaptation needs to be subversive. He said, "Generally, it is what kind of artistic conception and atmosphere the novel creates for us, and there are several good characters in it. Just bring these things, and there are only a few big events."
Regardless of traditional novels or online novels, Yu Fei believes that the most important thing in adaptation is to translate the flavor of the original, rather than sticking to the specific plot of the novel. Yu Fei takes the upcoming "I am not Pan Jinlian" as an example. "Just that unique taste, if you translate it, there are many things, and other stories are very simple. It is very difficult to translate the absurdity and black humor of the novel, otherwise why does Feng Dao always want to translate him (referring to Liu Zhenyun)? This is not a regular commercial film, but something more upscale. "
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