Chapter 976 Awesome!

Wednesday, July 25, 2004.

On the fourth day after "The Matrix" was released, after Zhou Baoshan finished his promotion in Japan, he temporarily changed his route and flew directly from Japan to Los Angeles, USA.

There, he will officially start his North American publicity tour after receiving a one-day emergency training on dealing with the media-although he received a certain degree of English training before and during the filming of "The Matrix", English is still very difficult. It's bad, but it's okay, this time he passed, the focus that needs to be shown is Chinese Kung Fu.

As for He Yingyu, after finishing her promotion in South Korea, she continued to go to Southeast Asia as planned for a six-day promotion.

Then, He Yingyu will fly to the United States to join Zhou Baoshan, and will continue to stay in North America for a few days before leaving for Europe to promote.

In short, their schedules are full, and the global influence of "The Matrix" is gradually expanding.

…………

On the same day, Shuntian Mansion.

Lu Ping didn't bring any entourage, and went to the cinema where he often went to watch movies in a low-key manner alone. He wore sunglasses and a sun hat, and covered his head and face as tightly as possible.

He doesn't want to be known that he took the initiative to go to the cinema to watch "The Matrix".

It would be even worse if the reporters knew about it.

Although in front of the public, he and Li Qian, the brothers of the same school, have never had any obvious conflicts, have never been close, and even had competition caused by their schedule conflicts, but at least on the bright side, in the media According to the reporters, the relationship between the two is not bad.

However, he knew in his heart that even if the two walked across from each other, they would not say hello.

At least he knew he would never!

And from his point of view, Li Qian's feelings towards him will not be any better!

The two are rivals in love twice.

Lu Lingxi, Qin Jingjing.

Therefore, if I went to watch "The Matrix" and was discovered and reported by the reporters, it would be a great shame and humiliation to me--Li Qian would probably be very happy!

However, the box office in the first two days in China was more than 180 million yuan, and the box office in North America exceeded 50 million U.S. dollars in the first week. The overwhelming good word-of-mouth made Lu Ping really curious about this movie.

So he endured it several times, but in the end he couldn't hold it back. He wanted to come and see what kind of movie this was, which was touted so much on the Internet, and which was so popular in North America. High box office—it is said that this is the best sci-fi movie in China, and even one of the best sci-fi movies in the world so far. Lu Ping would not believe anything: Chinese people can make good sci-fi movies ?

Wouldn't it be good without that soil? It's good not to have that cultural gene!

Therefore, he was dissatisfied and disdainful, but could not suppress his curiosity, so he decided to come to the theater to see it. After reading it, I have my own judgment in my heart, and then I can refute those weird remarks one by one with a sneer—on the level of "The Matrix", do you have the guts to brag? If it wasn't because Li Qian was too famous and too good at hype, would this movie be so popular?

However, he came here with the mentality of looking for faults, thinking that once he finished watching it, he would definitely be able to criticize it to pieces, but when he walked to the cinema, he found that there was a queue.

The Wuyang Wuyang crowd lined up in the movie theater, no one would notice who the other people were at all.

He felt that he had come early enough, it was only a quarter past eight.

Moreover, today is Wednesday, a working day!

On a normal day, the movie theater is often empty, but where did so many people come from today? Don't you have to go to work?

Lu Ping knew the manager of this cinema. After all, this was the place where he often went to watch movies, and he was a famous film director himself. This cinema specially invited him to sign it. So, of course he could get the ticket with just one phone call.

However, he is unwilling to do this because he doesn't want anyone, including the manager of the cinema, to know that he has come to see "The Matrix".

So, he could only follow the tail of the team and start queuing up to buy tickets.

The time spent queuing up was unbelievable, and he deliberately raised his head to carefully look at the film schedule on the newly erected large screen this year-looking at the number of shows, "The Matrix" was in this large cinema with eight halls. Simultaneous screenings in all halls!

Take a closer look, Wu Han's "Laughing Heroes", Guo Yulong's "Fenghuo Opera Princes", and Zhao Meicheng's "Blood", there are several other Hollywood movies, and a domestic movie just released on Monday, so many movies Add it all together, and actually only got 15 filmings in the whole day!

Eight halls, in theory, more than 60 or nearly 70 games a day is no problem.

Adding all the other movies together, they only got fifteen scenes!

And "The Matrix" itself won more than fifty games!

This is crazy!

When "The Gate of Life and Death" was the hottest back then, it didn't get this level of screening rate here. Last year, "Huang Feihong: A Man Should Be Self-improvement" was popular enough, but he came to it, including "Big Name" and the like. I've seen it, they've never gotten such a terrifying screening rate!

You know, this is a large movie theater with eight projection halls, they are not like those small movie theaters with only one or two or two or three projection halls.

Those small movie theaters have limited screening resources, so once they find a certain movie is popular, in order to grab more audiences and grab the box office, they often dare to squeeze other movies in the same period directly to a day and arrange a movie, even if the box office is not so good at that time. Well, they dared to release temporary screenings directly, and put all the freed up screening resources on the popular and best-selling movies at that time!

And here, there are eight screening halls. Under normal circumstances, the most popular movies get 50% to 60% of the box office here, which is already at the top! In order to meet the viewing needs of more audiences, even if one movie is hot, they must also guarantee the screening of other movies at the same time-because some people like to watch unpopular movies, and those people are often particularly loyal. For movie theaters, the viewing needs of people who usually come in the off-season are of course what they must take care of.

But now, this large movie theater is doing the same thing as a small movie theater with only one screening hall, and it loses its style-simple calculation, they actually gave nearly 80% of the movie "The Matrix" to the schedule! And all other movies were suppressed by them to the point where they could only be regarded as "still showing"!

Lu Ping was inexplicably shocked.

He's not one of those old antiques.

When he loved movies, entered the film academy to study, and started his own film career, the commercialization of the domestic film market had already started vigorously. Therefore, when he was still in school, he often paid attention to the trends of the outside film circle and various analysis reports. , It is already the truth that the box office of commercial movies is king.

Therefore, after he started making movies, even if he had artistic pursuits in his heart, he still insisted that his movies must make certain inclinations, concessions and sacrifices towards commercialization.

In short, he will never be fooled by those old artists to make those purely literary films.

He doesn't make films that don't make money.

Of course, the graduation work when he was in school was an exception. At that time, he knew that as an ordinary film school graduate, if he wanted to surpass many people in one step, he had to do something that others dared not do. , Build up your reputation first!

That's why there was that money-losing pure literary film, "Old Town"!

It's all done on purpose. Rather than being praised by old artists and professors, I am a "good seed" for making art films.

Even if he is a good seed, he will not be so stupid as to struggle to make some art movies.

A movie that makes money is a good movie!

This is the justice in the hearts of most filmmakers of their generation.

Therefore, in the face of such a large-scale inclination in the filming of "The Matrix" by the cinema, although he was extremely shocked, and he didn't understand it. It seemed that he was full of dissatisfaction and urgently needed to vent, but he was very clear in his heart— —It has nothing to do with anything else to make the movie theater make such a big tilt in film scheduling, it has nothing to do with one thing: whether the tickets are sold well!

After queuing for more than twenty minutes, it was finally his turn.

He moved forward with the team while lowering the brim of his hat, but he began to hear such conversations again and again in his ears——

"Two copies of The Matrix."

"The morning and noon tickets for "The Matrix" have been sold out. Do you want the show at 2:45 pm?"

"Yes, two!"

"OK, just a second."

"Six hackers are needed."

"The tickets for the morning and noon shows of "The Matrix" have been sold out. Do you want the 3:10 pm show?"

"want."

"..."

Finally it was Lu Ping's turn, but he already felt a little numb.

Without waiting for the conductor to speak, he said directly, "For the 3:25 p.m. show, I want one."

"The Matrix, right?"

"right."

After buying the tickets, I walked out of the queue and checked the time. It was not even nine o'clock in the morning.

There are still six hours before the show starts when he bought the ticket.

Holding the movie ticket in his hand, Lu Ping pursed his lips and couldn't help looking at it again and again.

…………

After three o'clock in the afternoon, he came to the cinema on time again.

At 3:18, the ticket check-in was officially entered.

At about the same time, in another movie theater in Shuntianfu, the famous 200 million director Wu Han was also taking a movie ticket from his assistant, joined the flow of people alone, and walked into the screening hall.

Unlike Lu Ping who is currently idle, his movie "The Laughing Hero" is still in theaters, and although the box office is not a big hit, it is definitely not bad.

It's just that it doesn't compare with Minghu Culture's series of phenomenal movie box office.

At this time, he was also surprised by the box office of "The Matrix" in the first week, so he took time out and decided to go to the cinema to see this movie for himself - when "The Matrix" held its premiere ceremony, he was leading the team It was publicized in other places, so I didn't have time to come back to participate.

And the reason why he went to see it at this time is that his psychology is probably similar to that of Lu Ping.

The box office of this movie is too strong, and at the same time, the word of mouth is really good, and what's even more amazing is that its box office in North America and Japan are actually so good.

To be honest, everyone makes movies, and they are all successful directors. You, Li Qian, are more popular, handsome, well-written and sung songs, have investment vision, have more women than us, and even make better movies than us. I admit it, but if you say that you are so good at this level... then... you can't do it, right?

So, not convinced.

Even, it was originally unconvinced.

I am also a talented young man, and I have made it all the way since I graduated from the Film Academy! Maybe you are indeed very powerful, but I don't think you are really that much better than me!

Unconvinced!

Your first film was a hit all over the country, your second film was able to compete with Master Qin, and even though it was an honorable defeat, your third film swept Berlin and earned more than 500 million at the box office. Your screenwriter and The two films you supervised both sold more than 500 million dollars. You made a cartoon that earned more than 500 million U.S. dollars at the global box office. Now, you actually played a sci-fi movie, and it was released simultaneously worldwide. big sale!

Unconvinced!

Then check it out.

And this time, I almost went with a magnifying glass.

Known as the most outstanding student in the history of Suncheon Film Academy, we were all trampled under his feet.

It is said to be an existence that crushes Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters, so of course it has to withstand all kinds of nitpicking.

On the first day of its release, the domestic box office exceeded 100 million Chinese yuan, and the global box office exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars. In two days, the domestic box office reached 180 million Chinese yuan, and North America was 50 million U.S. dollars. Of course, it is amazing.

I'll watch it, to "learn" some.

Ten minutes later, the corners of Lu Ping's mouth twitched slightly, although he was extremely surprised, but also faintly disdainful: Is this what science fiction movies are like? Mysterious and mysterious?

Twenty minutes later, Wu Han frowned tightly, and his mind was running at high speed following the plot of the movie, speculating on the sci-fi world view that this movie might peddle.

Thirty minutes later, Lu Ping frowned, faintly feeling, well, he did have some tricks in handling the previous thirty minutes. As a commercial film, his storytelling is still very successful. And especially the processing of color and mirror image, it is the opposite of "Red Sorghum", completely different poles!

This skill is indeed not weak.

An hour later, the two of them almost stopped criticizing in their hearts, and instead devoted more energy to the plot of the movie.

Although they themselves are film directors and excellent storytellers, they can vaguely guess the general plot of the following, but it has to be said that the world structure of this film is established and can be justified . And under this brand-new world structure, all old-fashioned stories and old-fashioned techniques seem to have a new look.

Moreover, the outcome of the story can be guessed, but how to achieve this, how to tell the story in a reasonable and unexpected way, is still a huge suspense, even they have no way of guessing.

Then, the movie ends.

Less than ten minutes apart, Lu Ping and Wu Han, the two fellow brothers of Li Qian, these two influential and well-known directors in today's Chinese film industry, walked out of the cinema in silence.

Feeling a little gloomy.

So the brim is lowered down.

It wasn't until he got into his own car that Wu Han finally sighed with emotion, "Awesome!"

And in the same way, after walking back to his home and shutting himself in the study, after a long silence, Lu Ping sighed helplessly.

"awesome!"

***

I knew that as soon as this climax came, there would be more voices scolding me for watering me.

How about you guys let it go first, save up and watch it later?

Killing me is only two hundred catties of meat, the level is so high, other tricks can't be done!

Maybe let it go for a while and watch it again. When the "slow update" is avoided, it will look good again?

Think logically: if you don’t chase the update, it will look better and you don’t feel like it’s watery. So, does it mean that I’m not actually flooding it, but the update is slow?

But I really can't write fast, why is it swollen?

pulling hair...