In the cross-Easter box office week that kicked off on March 28, compared to last week’s three new films, a total of five films have landed in North American theaters on a large scale this time, namely "The Ghost" and "The Ghost" produced by Daenerys Entertainment. "Taken," Sony Pictures' "Ride with the Devil," Disney's fantasy comedy "The Sixth Man" and Paramount's Orion Pictures' "The Last Day."
Of the five films, the most expensive one was "Walking with the Devil," in which Harrison Ford and River Phoenix collaborated again after "Raiders of the Lost Ark." It cost $90 million to tell the story of Frankie, a young man from the Irish Republican Army, and The emotional entanglement between a middle-aged British policeman.
The original "Walking with the Devil" had Harrison Ford partnering with Brad Pitt. This time, Sony also first sent an invitation to Pitt, but unfortunately Pitt chose "Face/Off". Then, Sony approached Keanu Reeves. Keanu didn't like the story and recommended it to his friend River Phoenix.
River Phoenix has never died young due to drug overdose in this life. He also shined a few years ago with the role of the Joker in "The Dark Knight Rises" and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He is also considered a popular A-list actor. . In addition, he had previously collaborated with Ford on "Raiders of the Lost Ark", which was considered a gimmick and was eventually selected by Sony.
Unfortunately, the entire project was a disaster.
The experience of "Walking with the Devil" was very similar to that of "Waterworld," which caused a big stumble for Kevin Costner. During the filming process, the director and the starring actors had many disagreements and conflicts, the script was frequently changed, and the cycle was severely delayed. In the end, not only did the budget significantly exceed the budget, but the media received overwhelmingly negative reviews after the release. The comprehensive media score was only 3.5. The two leading actors were passive in publicity due to serious unpleasantness during the filming process. It was also reported that Harrison Ford refused to record "The Weeknd". Six Night Live" to build momentum for the film.
The results are predictable.
In addition, Disney's "The Sixth Man" and Orion Pictures' "Forgot" are both low-cost small productions without the participation of any big names, and their reputations are also very mediocre. They will inevitably fall into the same category as last week's "Power Rangers". As a foil, during Easter week, Daenerys Entertainment was still the dominant one.
Still the all-round kind.
Not only to enjoy the benefits of package marketing of three films during the Valentine's Day period, but also to save marketing budget, Daenerys Entertainment launched two new films during Easter week, "The Ghost" directed by Peter Jackson and starring Jett Lee. The new version of "Taken" held a lively premiere at the internal theater of Universal Studios in Burbank on the same day, March 26.
Not only that, in addition to various conventional advertising campaigns, there are also peripheral gimmicks about the two films one after another, flying on various platforms such as print media, TV and the Internet.
Peter Jackson, the director of "The Phantom of the Ring", is about to direct the "Lord of the Rings" series;
Jet Lee demonstrated Chinese Kung Fu on "The Late Show with David Letterman";
Quentin Tarantino publicly expressed his inspiration to reporters after watching "Taken";
John Wu praises Jet Lee for Taken;
Ming-Na Wen, who plays 'Dr. Chen' in "Emergency Room Story", once again shocked the big screen and shared her wonderful behind-the-scenes moments;
Two 'pseudo-newcomer' directors met for a box office PK at the same premiere;
All kinds of things.
Amid the hype, the two mid-budget films, with a total cost of only US$55 million, gave people the feeling of being crushed by a blockbuster.
On the second day of the premiere, the word-of-mouth ban was immediately lifted. The comprehensive media ratings of "Scary" and "The Rescue" were 7.7 and 8.1 respectively, which completely made the audience's last concerns disappear.
Starting from the first day on March 28, the two films have undoubtedly occupied the top two positions in the box office list, so that they will inevitably form a negative impact on old films such as "Cable TV Repairman" and "Alien 2" last week. Due to the impact, during the Easter weekend, two new films with good reputation and high popularity became the first choice for most viewers.
After the Easter weekend, entering a new week, the North American stock market is still gloomy when it reopens, while the movie market is still booming.
When the box office week from March 28 to April 3 ended, the total box office in North America for a single week also hit a new high since 1997, reaching 137 million U.S. dollars, which is basically equivalent to the level of popular summer movies.
In the first week of the PK between Enter the Dragon and Tiger, "Scary Ghost" and "Hurricane Rescue", the result was beyond most people's expectations. "Hurricane Rescue" turned out to be the winner.
This film is directed by Doug Liman, a new director that Simon has just discovered in the past two years. It stars Chinese kung fu superstar Jet Lee, and is paired with Ming-Na Wen, one of the heroines of "ER", and potential actor Sam Rockwell. The Hollywood star's crime action movie cost US$25 million and ultimately reached a box office of US$31.37 million in its first week.
At first glance, it seems that it is not as good as the US$33.14 million of "Alien 2" last week. However, "Alien 2" opened on 2,679 screens, with an average of US$12,300 in the first week. Because it is inevitable to be cautious about films with Chinese protagonists, "Taken" opened on only 2,203 screens. Calculated, the average theater average is as high as 14,200 US dollars.
It is conceivable that if "Taken" can have a similar opening screen size to "Alien 2", even if the box office will drop slightly, the box office in the first week will definitely surpass "Alien 2" easily.
"Horror Ghost" unfortunately ranked second on the list.
With 2,563 screens basically provided, the box office revenue of "Spooky" in its first week was only 28.37 million U.S. dollars, and the theater average barely reached 11,100 U.S. dollars.
Of course, this is definitely not a failure.
As for the opening box office of the two new films compared to last week's "Cable TV Repairman" and "Alien 2", there is no obvious gap. This is mainly because the competition this week is too fierce.
The third-placed "Alien 2" fell 49% in the next week due to similar reasons, earning US$16.9 million, and the cumulative box office reached US$50.04 million. It is expected that the total domestic box office will easily surpass the previous film, but the box office for the next week was almost halved. This means that there is definitely no hope for this movie to exceed 100 million US dollars, and the subsequent total box office will probably stay between 70 million and 80 million US dollars.
The fourth-placed "Cable TV Repairman" is still the same, with a drop of 53% in the next week. The decline is even more severe than "Alien 2", with a revenue of 12.72 million US dollars, a cumulative box office of 39.79 million US dollars, and the local box office is expected to be about 50 million US dollars. The total budget for production and promotion of the film also happens to be 50 million US dollars. Even if the overseas and domestic budgets are the same, Daenerys Entertainment can only look forward to follow-up channels to recover the cost.
Fifth place goes to Sony's "Walking with the Devil."
After all, it is a super blockbuster that cost 90 million U.S. dollars. Even if everyone says it is terrible, many viewers will inevitably want to see how bad it is, so the revenue in the first week also reached 11.49 million U.S. dollars.
Of course, compared with the production cost of 90 million U.S. dollars, the first week revenue was 11.49 million U.S. dollars. Norio Ohga, the current head of Sony, probably had to cover his chest with both hands to not feel so uncomfortable.
Further back.
"BJ's Diary", which ranks sixth on the list, took in US$6.14 million with a 27% drop in one week, obviously starting to lag behind, and the box office data of other new and old films are even less worth mentioning.
Culver City.
In the VIP hall of an AMC chain theater near Sony Studios.
When the lights came on, neither of the two people in the screening room got up, but looked at each other in silence.
The two are John Kelly, the current chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, and Chris Lee, the president of Columbia Studios. They have just watched "Taken" starring Jett Lee.
The time is already Saturday, April 5th.
To put it simply, in recent days, due to the box office failure of "Walking with the Devil", both of them have not been having a good time. Even though today is Saturday, I was called into the studio office in the morning and was beaten repeatedly by Norio Ohga, the head of Sony in Japan.
However, the two actually felt a little unfair.
Sony Pictures has experienced frequent high-level changes in recent years. John Kelly, who has worked at Warner Bros. for many years and participated in the production of blockbuster films such as "The Exorcist", only signed a contract with Sony last year. He also recommended Chris Kelly, who is also a Hollywood producer. Lee partnered with him to run operations for Columbia Studios.
"Walking with the Devil" was a project that was finalized before they arrived.
Frankly speaking, the chaos in the production of this film is not unrelated to the turmoil in the transfer of high-level power last year, but neither of them believes that they should bear too much responsibility.
Because from the beginning of their employment, due to the lessons learned by Peter Cooper and the others, they were not granted much power and were almost dancing in iron shoes.
This is also the main reason for the frequent management changes at Sony Pictures in recent years.
No one wants to be a marionette.
And the two of them, although they would never admit it, can only be regarded as second-rate executives in Hollywood.
He doesn't have enough financial and personnel power and just acts like a marionette. It's strange that he can manage a big studio well.
After a moment of silence, his mind was still recalling the hearty and exciting fight in the movie. John Kelly, who had to be a little shocked by the Chinese Kung Fu, finally spoke first and asked the people around him: "Chris, what do you think we should do next?" Do?"
Chris Lee smiled helplessly and recalled the video just now.
In "Taken", Daenerys Entertainment obviously adopted the model of last year's "Rush Hour" by Jack Cheng very cleverly, and successfully achieved differentiation. Jet Lee's kung fu style is real and violent, far from the witty and funny style of Jack Cheng. The white male protagonist's partner played by Sam Rockwell is obviously weakened compared to Chris Tucker's role in "Rush Hour". It’s okay to say it’s a male supporting role. However, this role perfectly achieves the film's skin tone balance.
After all, if a movie does not have a familiar skin color as the protagonist, it will inevitably cause the audience to lack a sense of empathy.
Speaking of other aspects, there are also many highlights.
First of all, the high-concept plot is completed in one go, with a global pursuit and no fuss. This is undoubtedly another key to success.
Secondly, with family love as the core, risking everything for your loved ones once again achieves the emotional resonance between different races.
Thirdly, Jet Lee's transformation from a simple and honest Chinese man to a bloodthirsty murderer who makes the entire human trafficking gang in the film burst with fear, fits the best-selling popcorn in Hollywood that everyone has a superhero dream. Movie template.
Finally, there is Chinese Kung Fu, which has become popular again in recent years.
All the elements come together perfectly. It would be unreasonable for this film not to succeed.
Chris Lee certainly understands the core of John Kelly's problem, can Sony follow suit
Of course.
Chris Lee happens to have cooperated with the Hong Kong film industry. On the other side of the ocean, Kung Fu stars are grabbing a handful, and they will definitely be happy to cooperate with Hollywood.
However, the crux of the matter is whether it can achieve the level of "Taken".
After all, as we all know, in Hollywood, the risks of other types of films besides black and white are inherently increased by several levels.
If you just follow the trend, lack innovation that can catch the audience's attention, and have inherent genre disadvantages, success will be accidental, and failure will be inevitable.
In the long history of Hollywood, looking back at the data of previous years, it is not difficult to find that the films at the top of the box office list, even if not talking about the phenomenal films that created new genres, are just conventional films. There are very few films that are big sellers. Success comes from following the trend.