Chapter 73: "Departures" Released
[A Beautiful Mind is not affected by the unfavorable rumors at all and becomes the biggest winner of this year's Oscars! ]
[Winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay, this year's Oscars "A Beautiful Mind" won a big victory! ]
[Denzel Washington wiped out the shame of the 73rd "Hurricane" and won the Best Actor Award in one fell swoop! ]
[The first black Best Actress in Oscar history was born, and Halle Berry was crowned the Oscar Queen! ]
["Juno" won the Best Original Screenplay Award out of four nominations! ]
"..."
"..."
From the results alone, the audience was still a little surprised by the awarding of the 74th Academy Awards.
In the past, although the Academy Awards was one of the most authoritative film awards in the world, it was actually like the Golden Rooster Awards, and it was difficult to escape the habit of dividing the cake.
But this year, the Academy actually awarded the two most important awards, Best Film and Best Director, to "A Beautiful Mind", which was indeed quite surprising.
Just like the Berlin Best Film Golden Bear and Best Director awards were both given to "Departures", this is simply a miracle.
After the awards ceremony, a professional film critic said on the Internet: "The Oscars are no longer the same Oscars. Maybe the audience is growing up, maybe the movies are degenerating, or maybe there are other reasons. People who know the rules of the game will make their own choices..."
Some people also commented dissatisfiedly: "Two black people won the Best Actor and Best Actress awards. This is too coincidental."
But all this has nothing to do with Wu Yuan.
Fox Searchlight is quite powerful. It really gave the Best Original Screenplay Award to the public relations.
Although Wu Yuan knew that "Juno" would win this award on the original trajectory, it was not the same year after all, and the opponents faced were different, and the form and situation were also different.
In the end, "Juno" still won this award, which made Wu Yuan feel a little lucky.
But this movie was produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight after all. The mainstream media in Hollywood, in celebrating the award of "Juno", mainly praised Fox Searchlight and praised Fox Searchlight for its insight...
Don't ask, the answer is that Fox Searchlight spent a lot of money to bribe the reporters, while Wu Yuan didn't spend a penny.
So this Oscar honor, at least in North America, should mostly go to Fox Searchlight.
In China, the news that Wu Yuan won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay spread all over the country overnight.
Just after the Spring Festival holiday, Wu Yuan once again occupied the front page headlines of newspapers of all sizes across the country.
Wu Yuan, who was only a little famous in China, has really become a man that everyone in the world knows. From grandpas and aunts in their fifties and sixties to teenagers, everyone knows that China has produced a very awesome director who has won many awards abroad.
The photo of Wu Yuan holding the little golden man once again dominated the domestic newspapers of all sizes.
If there were Weibo in this era, he would definitely dominate the Weibo popularity list for a week!
Unfortunately, Internet entertainment in this era was relatively poor, and people mainly obtained information through television and newspapers.
But thanks to the continuous fermentation of news about Wu Yuan winning the Oscar on TV and newspapers, "Departures", which was released in China for half a month, has once again ushered in a wave of movie-watching craze!
When Wu Yuan was still in the United States, "Departures" was officially released in China.
With the title of Berlin's best director's work, "Departures" earned 7.5 million in the box office in its first week.
In the art film market, this result is already very impressive.
"Happy Times", which director Yimou brought to Berlin for screening, had a total box office of less than 7 million in the mainland, and this was a movie directed by Yimou.
That is, with the news popularity of the Berlin International Film Festival, it attracted enough attention and curiosity, and "Departures" achieved a box office of 7.5 million in the first week.
Of course, this movie is better than "Happy Times". Director Yimou's first commercial attempt was a failure.
Moreover, the box office of a general movie is definitely the highest in the first week, and then the box office data begins to decrease. By the fourth week, there is basically no box office to be taken off the screen.
But "Departures" is different!
After the movie earned 7.5 million in the first week, the audience who watched the movie praised the movie for being well-made in their friends and relatives and on the Internet!
"Although this is an art film, the director did not make any pretentious or stream-of-consciousness plots in the film, but just told a simple but touching good story!"
"After watching this movie, I learned that there has always been a profession and group called "undertaker" who quietly does the finishing work for people at the last stop of their lives."
"The son who wanted to be a woman was accepted by his father, the old grandmother who wanted to wear stockings wore them at the funeral, and the woman who had been a poor wife all her life let her husband know her beauty after her death. Thinking that all these dreams came true after death, I suddenly felt more like crying!"
"The most touching part of this movie is not about death and separation, but about reconciliation, reconciliation with the past, reconciliation with family, and reconciliation with oneself."
"It was very humorous in the early stage and very warm in the later stage. I cried like a tearful person in the cinema."
Perhaps 20 years later, Chinese audiences have seen too many such tear-jerking movies, and have become immune to them, or even resisted them.
But in 2002, the last movie that made Chinese audiences cry was "Titanic", which grossed 360 million yuan in the mainland.
Chinese audiences today really like touching movies with tears!
The tear-jerking story in "Departures" is not just about love, but also about family, father-son, and mother-daughter, which is healing and heartwarming!
After the first week of word-of-mouth fermentation, "Departures" ushered in a box office explosion in the second week of its release, earning a full 18 million yuan in box office, more than double the first week!
In the third week, the news that Wu Yuan won the Best Original Screenplay Award at the Academy Awards spread back to China.
Chinese audiences can't see the movie "Juno"!
If Chinese audiences want to understand Wu Yuan, why he can win the Best Screenwriter Award, and why he can make movies with hundreds of millions of dollars in box office abroad, they can only go to the cinema to watch "Departures"!
All of this will be answered in "Departures"!
Therefore, when Wu Yuan took a plane back to China and stepped on the ground of Beijing again, the box office of "Departures" in the mainland had exceeded 40 million RMB!
This box office result is only 8 million away from breaking the box office record of mainland art films held by "Farewell My Concubine" for 10 years!
And the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies is still in the process of exploding, and the box office can increase by 2 to 3 million every day!
It can almost be said that this record that has been maintained for 10 years will definitely be broken by "Departures"!
Director Han, who came to pick up Wu Yuan at the airport, said excitedly after meeting Wu Yuan: "Director Wu, you are really the most popular director in China now. Director Kai Ge asked me to tell you a message to praise you!"
"Farewell My Concubine has maintained the record for so many years, and finally someone can break it!"
"No way." Wu Yuan pursed his lips reservedly: "It's still not comparable to Director Kai Ge."
"Back then, a movie ticket for Farewell My Concubine was only 4 yuan, and the box office in mainland China was 48 million, which is equivalent to mobilizing 12 million people to go to the cinema to watch this movie!"
"The current ticket price for Departures is 15 yuan, which is nearly four times the price of Farewell My Concubine at that time."
Although Departures will definitely surpass Farewell My Concubine in terms of box office performance, the gap between the two in terms of the number of viewers is still very large.
Wu Yuan knew what was going on, but he didn't think that the fact that the box office of "Departures" exceeded that of "Farewell My Concubine" meant that "Departures" was better than "Farewell My Concubine" and had more artistic value.
Although the few movies that Director Kaige made in the future were not very good, "Farewell My Concubine" was one of the top 100 movies in the world's film history, and it was still worth Director Kaige's bragging for a lifetime.
Director Han smiled and looked at Wu Yuan, his eyes full of appreciation and recognition.
This young man is good. He was not dazzled by the hot results, and he still maintained his usual humble and calm character. He is really a beautiful jade treasure given by God to the Chinese film industry!
"By the way." Director Han remembered something and said with a smile: "Zhang Guorong's "Stealing Hearts" has started filming. As a producer, don't you go to help out?"