The prospect of the Chinese teen sensations of Tiny Times taking on the giant robots of Transformers in a pitched battle hardly seems like a fair fight, but with the Chinese government keen to give domestic movies a chance at the box office, Guo Jingming’s label junkies are sure to get a big outing in the world’s second-largest film market.
Guo has unveiled the third installment in his Tiny Times franchise and joked that if the teen smash makes more than $80 million he would publish nude photos of the film’s two male heartthrob leads.
In a week where Transformers: Age of Extinction became the biggest box office triumph of all time in China, Tiny Times 3 is still expected to perform well when it opens on July 17.
The previous two Tiny Times tell of the love lives and burgeoning careers of four girls who come from different backgrounds, who live in luxury dormitories and are obsessed with branded products.
Unashamedly superficial, Guo dismisses criticism that his movies give young people distorted values. He believes the generation born in the 1980s and thereafter simply want to live their lives like their peers in the West.
“Compared to the first two movies, Tiny Times 3 has happiness and joy in it, and at the same time there are a lot of moving scenes. At this stage of youth, life is more rich and colorful,” said Guo.
The series has been described by the Xinhua news agency as being "like "Sex in the City," without the sex."
“And if the box office is more than 500 million yuan ($80 million), I will show nude pictures of Ko Chentung and Chen Xuedong,” he quipped.
Guo, who is China’s richest writer, started shooting the third part last year, a relatively slow schedule for him, given that he filmed and released both of the first two Tiny Times within months of each other last year.
Tiny Times 3 is co-produced by Huace Film Corporation and Heli Chenguang International Cultural Media Corporation, as well as LeTV, Dragon TV, Ruyi Xinxin Culture Development Corp and others.
The movie stars Yang Mi, Ko Chentung, Amber Kuo and Cheney Chen.
In December, Guo signed a five-year $30 million deal with the Shanghai-based TV company Huace TV to cover the production of films and TV series.
Despite the dominance of Age of Extinction, the domestic romantic comedy The Breakup Guru has managed take a solid $40.67 million to give a cume of $65.48 million after 10 days, and the feature version of the online smash Old Boys is also expected to bring in audiences in China.