On the eve of the Halloween release of "Memento" in November 2000, Wang Yang agreed in his living room to invest in the new project of Christopher Nolan and his wife. With a $65 million budget, they planned to adapt the biographical novel "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" into a biopic about the tycoon's early life, entitled "Mr. Hughes."
At that time, Nolan was just an emerging director who had received a lot of praise at Sundance and other film festivals. However, there were many other directors who hadn't proven their "money-making ability," so the industry assumed that the "Mr. Hughes" project was just a publicity stunt by Flamingo Films to hype "Memento." But in fact, in the five years since its establishment, Flamingo Films had only engaged in viral marketing and had never resorted to publicity stunts.
