Zhang Yimou Corruption Allegation Lingers On ...
Nearly 40% of the sky-high production fee of director Zhang Yimou‘s (张艺谋) promotional film for the Ministry of Railways has ended up in the wrong hands — as shameful kickbacks.
An insider at the Beijing-based production company which contracted the project from the ministry said, of the documentary film’s 18.5 million yuan ($3 million) cost, the director was paid over 3.6 million yuan, including a personal income tax of close to 1.18 million yuan.
The insider added the actual production cost for the bitterly criticized promotional film was about 7 million yuan.
So now everyone is asking: Who took the remaining 7-plus million yuan?
The ministry responded it would thoroughly investigate who pocketed the profits.
Reportedly, Commie Ministry of Railways pays China #1 Filmmaker Zhang Yimou a cool $18.5M yuan (US$3M) for a 5-min crappy video that you and I can probably produce the same, if not better !
Christian Bale, Zhang Yimou, Ni Ni
Remember the "Nanking Massacre" bullsh** (acted by Batman Christian Bale) that cost God know how many hundred millions to make ? That bullsh** is directed and produced by Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou criticized for pocketing big cash from Ministry of Railways
Recently, China's National Audit Office has released an auditing report of the Ministry of Railways’ annual budget performance and other financial income and expenditure. The report shows the MOR had invested 18.50 million yuan in producing its promotional film between 2009 and 2010, under the circumstance that the MOR did not follow public bidding regulations.
Netizens have dug out this 5-minute long film, and found that it was directed by Zhang Yimou (张艺谋). Since the film is in poor quality, netizens have severely criticized Zhang for pocketing such a huge amount of money for it.
May Daily posted the video and said,
Watch the video clip and judge for yourself whether it's worth 18.5 million yuan ($ 3 million).
Bear in mind, the money is double the production cost of the comedy blockbuster Love Is Not Blind (失恋33天), and 1.5 times the expenditure of the award-winning film A Simple Life (桃姐), which features "Heavenly King" Andy Lau (刘德华) and veteran actress Deanie Ip (叶德娴).
Naturally, corruption was involved.
On Monday, responding to the criticism, Zhang’s assistant Pang Li said in a phone interview that when Liu Zhijun was the railway minister, there was a production company coming to the director for the promotional film. But Zhang proposed to give suggestions only instead of using his name, which the production company had agreed.
Pang Li added, “When Liu Zhijun was expelled, the filming program had once been stranded. Later, when it was re-started, the program had been revised several times, which varied much from the director’s initial ideas. The director was not involved in shooting at all, but just raising some advice afterwards.”
However, facing the questions that Zhang Yimou was paid very much high for the film, Pang said, they asked for similar costs for other advertisement shootings as Zhang is in this high level..
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