General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Dream Factory (甲方乙方)

The Dream Factory (甲方乙方) is a 1997 Chinese comedy directed by Feng Xiaogang (冯小刚), in which four freelance friends run a business called "Dream Fulfillment for One Day" (好梦一日游) that stages customers' fantasies for a day. It was the first film released in mainland China under the "New Year film" (贺岁片) label, and it opened the New Year release season that became a fixture of the Chinese film market¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Release	24 December 1997, mainland China; 87 minutes; Mandarin-language comedy¹
Director and writers	Directed by Feng Xiaogang; screenplay by Feng Xiaogang and Wang Gang; adapted from Wang Shuo's story You Are Not a Vulgar Person (你不是一个俗人)¹^•³
Lead cast	Ge You (葛优) as Yao Yuan, Liu Bei (刘蓓) as Zhou Beiyan, He Bing (何冰) as Liang Zi, and Feng Xiaogang as Qian Kang⁴
Box office	30 million yuan nationwide by one account; 36 million yuan and ninth place among all 1997 China releases (including imports) by another²^•⁵^•⁶
Awards	Best Feature and Best Actor at the 21st Hundred Flowers Awards (大众电影百花奖)¹
Reception	Douban score 8.5 from 358,852 users, rated better than 98% of comedies on the site¹
Legacy	Established the New Year film season and the "Feng-style" New Year comedy formula continued in Be There or Be Square (1998), Endless (1999), and Big Shot's Funeral (2001)⁷

Spoilers

Plot and structure

The film opens with a voiceover in which the character Yao Yuan, played by Ge You, introduces himself as an out-of-work actor who, with an idle assistant director, a props man, and a screenwriter, has started a service called "Dream Fulfillment for One Day": for a fee, the team makes a customer's dream come true for a single day³.

The customers' wishes drive a series of self-contained episodes. A wealthy man bored with fine food asks to experience poverty; a famous star wants a taste of ordinary life; an ordinary bookseller wants to play General Patton; a cook who cannot keep secrets wants to be a tight-lipped hero; a bullying husband is taught a lesson; and a terminally ill wife is granted a reunion⁴^•⁵. The Paper's retrospective counts the "dreams", each independent of the others, giving the film a sketch-like, episodic structure rather than a single through-line⁵.

As the team stages these fantasies, its members move from charging for the service to helping people without payment, and the closing line, spoken over a departing figure, "1997 is over, and I miss it", became one of the most quoted lines in Chinese cinema⁵^•⁸.

Production

A comeback project. Feng Xiaogang came to the film after two of his projects had been shelved, and the production manager Lu Guoqiang recalled that the team felt it could only succeed⁹. In early 1997 Feng had directed a New Year special of Stories from the Editorial Board for Beijing Television, an attempt to compete with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala that did not achieve the hoped-for result, and he then joined the Zijincheng (Forbidden City) film company, for which this film was his first production⁷. Feng later wrote that the China Film leader Han Sanping suggested he play to his strengths and make an entertaining New Year film, and he thought of Wang Shuo's story, whose central device was the dream-fulfillment service⁷.

The script went through eight rounds of discussion and eleven revisions, with cinema managers invited to give feedback based on audience taste; the result was the episodic, sketch-style structure¹⁰. Feng wrote the script in seclusion in a village on Beijing's outskirts in early 1997⁹. Shooting ran from 14 August to 30 September 1997, a 45-day schedule that Feng later called the smoothest of his career, and a rough cut was completed within a week of the wrap³.

The title. The film had earlier working titles including A Good Dream Offered to You (好梦献给你), A Heart Hotter than Fire (比火还热的心), and Fulfilling You, Refining Me (成全你陶冶我). Zhang Heping, general manager of Beijing Zijincheng Film and the film's producer, thought of "Party A, Party B" (甲方乙方, the contracting parties in a Chinese contract) while waiting at Guangzhou airport, because the story is about signing contracts to realize dreams; Feng accepted the title as oblique but crisp and distinctive⁹^•¹⁰.

Risk-sharing pay. Because investors had little confidence in the untested New Year film format, the creators were paid fixed salaries plus a share of box office at a self-chosen ratio. Ge You's fee was 600,000 yuan; unsure of the film's prospects, he took 500,000 in cash and left 100,000 invested in the revenue share, which grew to 270,000. Feng Xiaogang put his entire director's fee into the share and ultimately received 1.1 million yuan².

Zhang Heping also wrote the lyrics of the theme song Xiang Zhi Xiang Ai (相知相爱, "Knowing and Loving Each Other"), with music by Chen Xiangyu and vocals by Han Lei, reportedly composed on the spot in a dumpling restaurant after he watched the footage¹⁰^•³.

Box office and the New Year film season

Before 1997, mainland cinemas had no New Year release season; audiences had no habit of going to the movies around the lunar new year, and many cinemas closed for the holiday. Hong Kong New Year films such as Rumble in the Bronx (1995), which earned more than 95 million yuan in Chinese-speaking territories, showed mainland planners the commercial potential of the slot⁵^•⁷.

The film was a commercial success against modest means. Its total investment was just over 4 million yuan; Beijing alone contributed 11.5 million yuan in ticket sales, which at the prevailing 38 to 40 percent revenue-split already recouped the entire cost⁵. Nationwide totals are reported differently: the China News Service and a Sina retrospective give 30 million yuan²^•¹¹, while The Paper and a Sohu review give 36 million yuan, ninth on the 1997 China box office chart including imported films⁵^•⁶. The film's strong Beijing performance reflected its heavy Beijing flavor; it did noticeably better in the north than in the south⁵.

The success established the New Year film (贺岁片) as a mainland release season and made Feng Xiaogang's name nearly synonymous with it. He followed with Be There or Be Square (不见不散, 1998), Endless (没完没了, 1999), Big Shot's Funeral (大腕, 2001), and Cell Phone (手机, 2003), each released in the slot⁷. The formula he set here, Ge You as the star, Beijing-flavored humor, a common-person viewpoint, and stories about ordinary people, became the recognizable signature of his New Year comedies⁵.

Style and reception

Feng later described the film's comedy as deliberately un-Hong Kong and un-Hollywood: it relies neither on slapstick expressions nor exaggerated physical performance, and the actors play their absurd scenarios straight. He attributed the film's appeal to this deadpan treatment of everyday life, which let audiences laugh at, and vent frustration about, the dislocations of a rapidly changing economy³.

Contemporary critics were less kind than the market; some reviews faulted the acting as stagey and Ge You as less subtle than in his earlier The Troubleshooters⁵. Over time the film's standing rose: on Douban it holds 8.5 from 358,852 users, with 86.3% of votes at four or five stars, and it ranks better than 98% of comedies on the site¹. It won Best Feature and Best Actor at the 21st Hundred Flowers Awards¹.

The film's afterlife includes a loose remake by Feng himself. Personal Tailor (私人订制, 2013) reused the same premise, lead actor, and story type sixteen years later, but drew far weaker reviews, scoring 5.2 on Douban against The Dream Factory's 8.1 at the time of that release; critics read the difference as the loss of the earlier film's idealism, its slogan changing from "fulfilling you refines me" to "fulfilling others, disgusting myself"¹². A film project titled The Dream Factory: The Layoff Advisor (甲方乙方之劝退师) was listed among titles in development by a Hong Kong-listed content group in 2024¹³.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1995 to 1999 › Black and satirical comedies › Released 1995 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?