Chapter 1517: Fried

The reason why Simon was able to quickly reply to Ren Jingxi's email was mainly because another person happened to be on the west coast in the past few days, and he cultivated himself again, so he had more time.

In late July, the most important film in North America's ongoing summer vacation is undoubtedly The Matrix.

Simon also came here for this.

Compared with the world-renowned Godzilla and Michael Bay's peerless catastrophe directed by the great director, Wachowski's reputation is much worse. Therefore, before it was released, this was considered the least noticed of Daenerys's three blockbusters this summer.

The result was naturally the most unexpected.

The premiere of the film was held at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on July 21. On the second day, the media word-of-mouth ban was lifted, and it was well received.

The Hollywood Reporter praised the film as "a film that is technically astonishing and creates a whole new genre of science fiction".

Variety Magazine directly stated: "A must-see for genre fans."

The Seattle Times is even more unreserved: "A grand and exciting science fiction masterpiece."

Although there will inevitably be some dissenting voices, most mainstream media cannot comment on the film without words such as "amazing", "exciting", and "groundbreaking", which shows the overall reputation of The Matrix. The comprehensive media score of the film also proved a point again, with a preliminary estimate of 9.2 points, an absolute classic level.

Compared with Warner's pessimism about the first part of The Matrix, Daenerys was well prepared from the beginning.

The production cost of the film was 80 million U.S. dollars, exceeding the 63 million U.S. dollars of the first film, and the announcement budget also reached 30 million U.S. dollars, which is comparable to Godzilla at the beginning of the summer file. As the word-of-mouth of the film exploded, Daenerys' publicity team quickly followed up to maximize the film's influence in time.

Immediately afterwards, on July 23, the film officially opened on a large scale on 3,103 screens in North America.

A very good weekend box office trend.

On the first day of July 23, The Matrix earned US$16.87 million in a single day, which is already a good start.

On July 24, with the rapid spread of word of mouth, the single-day box office exceeded 20 million, reaching 21.46 million US dollars in one fell swoop.

July 25th is the Sunday that can best reflect the film's box office potential. Usually, there are three days on weekends, and Sunday's box office is often the lowest. However, this time, The Matrix's first Sunday box office is still as high as $17.4 million.

So, within three days of painting, The Matrix earned a total of 55.73 million U.S. dollars.

Entering the working day, the popularity of The Matrix continued. When the full first week from July 23 to July 29 ended, the cumulative box office of this sci-fi action blockbuster, which won a lot of praise, had reached 83.19 million US dollars.

Daenerys Entertainment's three blockbusters in the summer, in terms of the first week, The Matrix is ​​undoubtedly the lowest, not to mention Godzilla's first week of 111 million, and the box office of the first week of Peerless Catastrophe in early July exceeded 87 million.

However, let’s first talk about the cost. The Matrix is ​​undoubtedly the lowest of the three blockbusters. The total production and publicity budget is only 110 million U.S. dollars, while Godzilla’s is 140 million U.S. dollars, and Peerless Catastrophe is as high as 180 million U.S. dollars. Besides word of mouth and follow-up, obviously, with such a dazzling start, no one would doubt that The Matrix will have a very brilliant box office curve.

The facts were quickly proven.

In the second week of its release, from July 30 to August 5, The Matrix's final second-week drop was only 26%, and it received another US$61.57 million. The cumulative box office quickly reached a high of US$144.76 million.

At the moment when saturated full-scale distribution has been basically popularized, the opening screen of more than 3,000 yuan can still be kept within 30% in the next week, which is definitely a small miracle like a dark horse.

In comparison, Peerless Catastrophe, which had a similar box office volume in the first week, fell by as much as 45% in the second week. Although it slightly surpassed The Matrix in the first week, the cumulative box office for the two weeks was only 135.35 million US dollars.

The difference in the trend naturally means the gap in the total box office volume.

Peerless Heavenly Tribulation has basically confirmed the local box office volume of over 200 million, and the Matrix, with such a brilliant trend, even if it is not as good as Peerless Heavenly Tribulation in the first week, it seems promising to hit the local box office of 300 million yuan.

After all three blockbusters are on the stage, Daenerys' performance in the 1999 summer vacation is basically clear.

Two 300 million-level movies, one 200-million-level one, a conservative sum of 800 million yuan, is only 200 million yuan away from Simon's 1 billion goal, and the other Ghost Story 2 is counted. In fact, all other projects only need to be completed Less than $100 million in box office share.

In fact, Daenerys has a total of 13 film release plans for the entire summer of 1999, and the remaining 9 films may not lack duds that failed badly at the box office, but it is impossible to add up to 100 million box office anyway.

Just like the new film, Fight Club, scheduled for August 6th.

Many directors have some films. Maybe the box office was not high when they were first released, or even ended in failure, but the subsequent word-of-mouth has become better and better, and even finally established the director's film and television status to a certain extent. Fight Club in the original time and space is such a movie for director David Fincher.

This movie, which once ranked in the top ten of imdb, was released in the first round, not only failed at the box office, but also had a bad reputation.

Then counterattack all the way.

In the end, the improvement of David Fincher's godhood far surpassed the other's famous work The Seven Deadly Sins.

Let's talk about the present.

Simon, the big butterfly, has been tossing all the way to the present. If he does nothing, the probability of Fight Club appearing again is very low.

However, because I happened to remember some of the creative background of this film, coupled with Simon's status in Hollywood at this time, he plucked the strings of time a little bit, and history returned to the track it once was.

Then again, Fincher's follow-up film, 1995's $50 million mind game, flopped after the original Seven Deadly Sins with Daenerys. Then there was another original film that had never been seen before, and it was still silent. This is the third film after the Seven Deadly Sins.

Here in Hollywood, there is also a rule of three things.

If it fails again, Finch may be silent.

However, due to the failure of the first two films, the cost of Fight Club was much lower than the previous budget of more than 60 million US dollars. Inevitably overspending, this time it only cost 46 million.

Of course, 46 million is actually not low, not to mention the 15 million US dollars announced after Simon personally intervened, with a total investment of 61 million US dollars, which is also a blockbuster level.

David Fincher obviously understands that he can't afford to fail again, so he has been working very hard to participate in various marketing activities since the establishment of the film project.

Besides, the reason why Simon intervened was because of the final finished film. New World Pictures was very unfavorable and even incomprehensible. This is exactly the same as the former original producer 20th Century Fox.

Therefore, after several consecutive internal test screenings, media test screenings, fan test screenings, and general audience test screenings, and after finding out the general attitudes of different movie-viewing groups, Fight Club finally decided on a small-scale opening, online marketing, and controversy. Marketing, distribution strategies for pursuing long-term screenings.

The film's opening schedule is August 6, but Fight Club held its premiere on July 31, a week in advance, and then on Sunday, August 1, a series of fan screenings were held in some major cities in North America. show.

Followed by a word, fried!

The battlefield is mainly on the emerging online media.

The first is the comprehensive premiere on July 31, and word of mouth began to lift the ban the next day. Traditional media actually gave it a fairly good evaluation. The comprehensive media score reached 7.9 points, which is obviously a relatively acceptable attitude. However, Fight Club is not a popcorn movie, which means that if the score does not exceed 8 points, it is actually difficult to win by word of mouth.

So, of course, to stir up controversy.

As a result, on the online platform, the word-of-mouth of Fight Club quickly became "polarized". Those who liked it very much, directly regarded the film as a masterpiece, and complained that the traditional media only gave the film an overall score of only 7.9 points, while those who hated it , is very annoying.

Among them, some media comments that did not like the film were used as targets. For example, a film critic in the San Francisco Chronicle strongly criticized Fight Club for catering to cynical teenage audiences through deceitful grandstanding. The so-called lack of satire on the real society Seriousness, purely a farce.

This made the fans of Fincher who had watched the movie and liked it very much, they posted a large number of posts complaining about Fight Club on major movie websites, message forums and other platforms, unknowingly gathered into a large wave of Western-style tap water.

Of course, there is no shortage of straightforward curses and abuse, but these extreme remarks were quickly deleted by various platforms, and related accounts were also banned.

This involves the issue of scale.

You can argue, you can argue, but you can't curse, otherwise it will affect the film itself.

In such a lively atmosphere, Fight Club was officially released on August 6, with only 1,263 opening screens.

Fans of course don’t know the specific distribution strategy of the New World Pictures team. Therefore, the apparently pitiful 1263 screens quickly became a hot topic of controversy under the leadership of caring people. Many fans felt that Daenerys was also planning to give up Fight Club. Not only launched a petition on the Internet, asking Daenerys to increase the scale of screenings, but also called on like-minded netizens and even relatives and friends in real life to support the film.

Just two weeks after the release of The Matrix, the legacy of The Matrix is ​​still there, and suddenly there is a fight club that seems to be a social topic.