Chapter 525 Conversation with Matt

Matt Damon is indeed one of the few Hollywood A-list actors who can carry the show alone.

In the Mission Impossible series, he is almost the only one who carries the show, and other actors can only be regarded as supporting roles.

As he said, in the whole Hollywood, perhaps only Leonardo is better than him and can perform a solo show.

Perhaps this is also the reason why Ridley Scott, the director of the original Martian, chose Matt Damon.

By the way, Ridley Scott is the director of Alien, which has now been renamed Heaven and will eventually be named Prometheus.

In the original time and space, Prometheus and The Martian were both produced by Fox, and The Martian bought the copyright of the novel.

However, in this time and space, Wu Yuan took the copyright of the novel in advance and established the project together with Prometheus, which made Ridley Scott have no chance to direct this movie. Wu Yuan also got the materials and a large number of props for the modeling design of Prometheus for free.

In terms of relationships, Daniel Wu and 20th Century Fox have a good relationship.

"Potatoes?" Wu Yuan raised his eyebrows and said as a matter of course: "Of course, in the studio in Hungary."

"In order to ensure smooth filming, the crew created three identical planting areas at the same time and planted three potato fields at different times."

"One for each of the newly sprouted potatoes, half-grown potatoes, and fully mature potatoes."

"This way, when you shoot, you don't have to wait for the potatoes to grow little by little."

The growth cycle of potatoes is very short, at least shorter than corn, but Wu Yuan doesn't want to be like Ridley Scott and really plant potatoes from beginning to end during the 65-day filming period. It's more convenient to plant them in advance.

"You are worthy of it, Daniel." Matt Damon had a look of as expected. "When we were filming Interstellar, you asked the crew to rent a piece of land to grow corn."

"I knew you would grow potatoes this time."

"You and Nolan are the only directors in Hollywood who pursue real shooting."

"You are also directors who like to make science fiction movies. This is really a wonderful fate."

"Now Leonardo is hanging out with Nolan, and I am hanging out with you. I hope we can surpass them!"

"This is inevitable." Wu Yuan smiled and said a little frivolously: "Nolan's box office performance has never beaten me."

Nolan is Wu Yuan's idol, a real idol, so he knows Nolan's movies better than most people.

Nolan's movies are really good.

But because they are too good, his movies are not so popular. After all, every movie has to have some profound physics knowledge.

This kind of high-end science fiction movie, no matter how good it is, is not as popular as popcorn movies.

Interstellar is a clear example. Although this movie has performed well at the global box office, it is still not as strong as the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and even the box office of the girls' book Twilight cannot compare.

In comparison, The Martian performed better at the box office, with a final box office of $630 million, which caused a sensation in Hollywood.

It's not that the box office of this movie is so high that it's scary, but that the cost of this movie is only $100 million, and the return rate is the highest among science fiction movies in recent years.

It's even higher than Avatar.

Although the box office of Avatar has reached a record in film history, the production cycle of this movie is too long. It took ten years from the establishment of the project to the actual shooting, and the budget was overspent several times. The time cost plus inflation plus production cost, the actual return rate is not as high as The Martian.

From the perspective of Hollywood film capital, let them choose between Avatar, which took ten years to produce, and The Martian, which can be shot in less than two years. It is definitely more cost-effective to choose the latter.

Wu Yuan believes that with his current international fame and influence far exceeding Ridley Scott, the box office performance of "The Martian" he presents should be higher than the original version.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the film itself, but the name Daniel Wu is worth $100 million in the international film market!

This is the word-of-mouth influence accumulated by his undefeated record since his debut.

No matter how bad his new movie is, there will be a group of people who blindly choose to go to the cinema to watch it.

"Matt, you have to keep working out, don't slack off."

Looking at the time on his watch, Wu Yuan pondered, "There's another month and a half before the film starts shooting in Hungary, and the production cycle is expected to be 65 days."

"You won't have much to do in the first ten days of shooting, and you'll mainly shoot the Earth scenes at NASA."

"Then the crew will move to Hungary and Jordan to shoot your scenes."

"After the film is mostly finished, I'll take the crew back to China to reshoot the scenes in China, and then start post-production."

"Your completion date is expected to be January 10th, in Jordan."

"Be prepared."

"No problem." Matt Damon gave a thumbs up, as if he would do whatever Wu Yuan said, and played the role of an obedient person.

Wu Yuan smiled with satisfaction, he liked to work with such well-behaved actors.

As for the filming in China, of course, it was the scenes in "The Martian" that involved the Chinese Space Agency helping with the rescue.

In this part of the script, Wu Yuan changed the name of the Chinese rocket, the Apollo rocket, to Long March-9, but did not make any other changes. He even increased the drama.

Hollywood screenwriters really don't pay attention to China. Anyone who pays attention to Chinese aerospace knows that China's rockets have always been the Long March series, and it is impossible to come up with a "Apollo rocket" full of European and American style.

This is completely a name that Hollywood screenwriters came up with based on the United States' own Ares series rockets.

This kind of low-level mistake is not something that Wu Yuan, a Chinese director, would make.

In addition, Wu Yuan directly invited Wang Xueqi and Gong Li to guest star in the roles of the director and deputy director of the Chinese Space Agency, which is a small easter egg linked to "Gravity".

They are also the only familiar faces of Chinese science fiction films in the world.

There are not many scenes in this part. Even if Wu Yuan added some of the scenes for his own selfish reasons, he only needs to borrow the office of the Chinese Space Agency and shoot it in two or three days. There is no need to take Matt Damon to China. He can finish the shooting directly in Jordan.

"Then, the specific situation is like this." Wu Yuan spread his hands and said to Matt Damon with a smile: "You go back and prepare, and then we will set off for Hungary together."

"I have something else to discuss with the company executives, so I won't keep you for lunch."

"See you next time!" (End of this chapter)