Until the end credits ended and the lights came on, the auditorium was still filled with surprised and enlightened discussions.
I didn't expect it to end like this.
However, everything seems so natural. If you think about it a little, you can see that the film has given too many hints.
but.
Anyway, what a surprise!
Feeling the buzz around her, Lisa Collins stood up and left the screening room with her boyfriend with a smile on her face. Because of her involvement with a certain guy, she couldn't help but feel a touch of pride at this moment, and decided to take the time to watch it again. Many details in this movie were still worth recalling.
For the 9 o'clock show, the movie viewing ended and it was already 11 o'clock.
However, when passing by the ticket hall when leaving, Lisa found that some spectators who had just left were walking towards the ticket window again.
At this time, those people are obviously not rushing to watch another movie. It is probably that they can't wait to review the many foreshadowing details in the previous movie.
Most plot-reversal films lack sufficient foreshadowing, and the plot turns are somewhat abrupt. However, "The Sixth Sense" does not have this problem at all. Too many details in the film clearly hint at the final ending. However, it is difficult for people who do not know the ending to understand those details. After knowing the ending, everything suddenly becomes clear. .
The most important thing is that all the foreshadowing and all the foreshadowing are completely integrated with the film's story, without being deliberate and inseparable.
So, this is a stroke of genius.
Lisa couldn't help but think of some media that have been badmouthing this movie recently. Now, Daenerys Entertainment has undoubtedly produced another classic. As for the box office, considering the audiences who just wanted to watch the film again late at night, this will obviously not be a problem.
It should still be nine o'clock at night on the West Coast.
It's not too late.
So I decided to call Jenny when I got back and congratulate her. It would be better if she could meet him and be with her, maybe they could have a few words.
When Lisa Collins ended her viewing of the movie, countless professional and amateur film critics from various states and counties in North America had basically completed their own reviews of "The Sixth Sense."
Compared with other movies, "The Sixth Sense" undoubtedly has a natural advantage in this regard. Because this is the only new film to be released this week, and it stars the much-anticipated Simon Westeros and Robert De Niro, it is impossible for most newspapers and media to ignore Westeros and De Niro. In fact, There is no other choice.
If everyone is talking about "The Sixth Sense" on the entertainment page tomorrow, but there is no similar news in their own newspaper, then readers are likely to think that this newspaper is out of touch with society.
This is not what newspaper operators want to see.
As a result, early on Saturday morning, the key film review news in the entertainment sections of countless newspapers in North America were almost all related to "The Sixth Sense".
Just this point is equivalent to an all-round carpet marketing with huge investment.
A large part of the reason why many big directors and stars are always more successful is that they naturally attract a large amount of media and public attention. Even if the quality of these people's works is not high, because of the wide attention and popularity, they generally will not fail at the box office. If the quality is good enough, it will be easy to sell.
This is actually what people often call 'box office appeal'.
North America has a very complete film review system for a long time. Film critics in newspapers usually do not need to use spoilers to gain attention. Daenerys Entertainment's distribution department has stepped up its public relations offensive in this regard under Amy's special instructions. Finally, in Saturday's film reviews of "The Sixth Sense," almost all critics carefully guarded one of the film's most critical secrets while praising the film.
Of course, although there are no spoilers, compared to Daenerys Entertainment's complete confidentiality during the announcement stage, film critics do not need to be so conservative.
Stephen Hunter, a well-known film critic of the "Washington Post", wrote in an obviously very scratching way: "If you pay a little attention, "The Sixth Sense" will make you want to stop. This gloomy and cold movie will eventually point to you. Absolutely unpredictable ending. I really, really want to tell you what happened, but I can't because you'll hate me. All I can say is that this is a movie you absolutely cannot miss this year."
The Los Angeles Times was not as hesitant as Stephen Hunter, but it also praised implicitly: "Simon Westeros has another meticulous and exquisite script. "The Sixth Sense" is definitely the best movie I have ever seen. It’s like the one with the best ending in the movie.”
Other influential newspaper platforms such as "The Hollywood Reporter", "Variety", "Chicago Sun-Times", "San Francisco Chronicle" and other influential newspaper platforms have all reviewed the "The Sixth Sense" film in large-scale reviews. The ending provides explicit or implicit hints.
In addition to comments on the film's ending, without spoiling any spoilers, a large number of film reviews also focused on analyzing the connotation of the redemption story in "The Sixth Sense", and the performances of De Niro and Cole were also unanimously recognized.
The actor who plays Cole is just a newcomer selected from many child actors, and comments about his acting skills are more inclined to the veteran star Robert De Niro.
Compared with Bruce Willis, Robert De Niro, like many of the films he has participated in in the past, invested a lot of energy in the role of Dr. Crowe. He not only studied a large amount of information on child psychology, but also Spent a month experiencing the profession first-hand at a psychology clinic.
Therefore, many of De Niro's words and deeds in the film are no different from those of a professional psychiatrist.
The film critic of the New York Post unabashedly praised De Niro for once again successfully creating a new screen character in a new field after "Dead Poets Society". The film critic also suggested in the article that De Niro should give up participating in the upcoming "Goodfellas" to avoid returning to the shackles of the image of a gangster character.
Based on various media data, the score of "The Sixth Sense" reached the best score of 8.5 points since the summer season started.
Prior to this, only Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" received a good score of 8 points this summer.
For other films, "The Bodyguard" was almost criticized by the media, "Ghostbusters 2" also failed, and Paramount's "Star Trek 5" had an even worse reputation than "The Bodyguard". Last week's three new films, "Dear, I Shrunk the Children", which has a good reputation, only received a media score of 7.5, "The Dragon King 3" was directly labeled as a money trap, and "Big Fire Balls" passed the test , but the box office was the bleakest.
Countless cases have proven that there is no direct correlation between a movie's box office and word-of-mouth. It also involves too many other factors such as release schedule, screen size, media popularity, etc. However, "The Sixth Sense" not only received the highest ratings from the media since the start of the summer season, but the film's influence among the audience also spread very quickly.
When the media hinted at the wonderful plot of the film, "The Sixth Sense" also experienced a rare word-of-mouth effect among the public. After watching the movie, many viewers recommended the film to their relatives and friends with mysterious expressions. A film with a surprising ending.
Coupled with Daenerys Entertainment's previous sparing no effort in promoting all-ages, and the film's exclusive high-quality schedule in the most popular week of the summer season, all these positive factors are combined, and within three days of filming, "The Sixth Sense" only has 1,673 Not only did the movie easily win the weekend box office championship, but the cumulative box office in the three days was as high as 23.15 million US dollars.
You know, the original box office of "Bodyguard" in the first seven days was only 23.63 million US dollars.
During the popular summer season in North America, due to the increase in the number of moviegoers on weekdays, a movie's weekend box office is usually 60% to 70% of the entire week's box office.
According to this box office ratio, whether it is box office statistics agencies, public media or Daenerys Entertainment, it is generally believed that the box office of "The Sixth Sense" will be between 33 million and 38 million in the first week. This is already the summer vacation. This is second only to the opening box office data of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Ghostbusters 2".
Just with this kind of first-week box office, according to Daenerys Entertainment's tiered share contract with theaters, "The Sixth Sense" can recover all the film's production and promotion costs in just seven days.
However, everyone still underestimated the actual box office potential of this film that had the right time, place and people.
Due to the film's continued reputation and popularity, compared to the expected 33 million to 38 million, the first seven-day box office figure of "The Sixth Sense" ended up far exceeding everyone's expectations at 41.35 million US dollars.
Compared with all other summer movies that failed to break away from the 60% to 70% box office ratio between weekend and full week, "The Sixth Sense" only accounted for 56% of the box office in the first three days of the weekend. Driven by the continued spread of word-of-mouth, a large number of audiences continued to watch the movie after the weekend, and the film's box office share on weekdays significantly exceeded the average.
In addition, "The Sixth Sense" also became the first summer movie to have a box office gross of over $20,000 in its first week. There are a total of 1,673 screens, and the average box office revenue of a single theater is 24,716 US dollars.
In comparison, the box office of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in its first full week was only US$19,773 per theater. "Ghostbusters 2", which opened on a larger screen, had a box office of US$44.91 million in its first week. The number is only a lower $18,635.
Moreover, the number of opening screens for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Ghostbusters 2" has once again stimulated the film's box office potential. Neither film has expanded its release in recent weeks.
Looking at "The Sixth Sense" again, the number of opening screens for this film is only 1,673, which is very different from the 2,327 screens of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the 2,410 screens of "Ghostbusters 2". The average ticket price in the first week was close to US$25,000, and a phenomenal movie-going trend has taken shape. Daenerys Entertainment has no reason not to increase its film schedule.
Based on box office data in recent weeks, the industry's prediction for the total North American box office of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is approximately US$200 million.
Many people originally thought that this movie was expected to break the 'monopoly' of Daenerys Entertainment, which had won an annual box office championship after "Run Lola Run" in 1987 and "Rain Man" in 1988. Nowadays, few people would mention such a statement. Everyone is just watching with envy and curiosity how far the box office potential of "The Sixth Sense" will go.
On July 7, the release of "The Sixth Sense" entered its second week.
Due to tight screen resources during the summer season, Daenerys Entertainment barely managed to secure an additional 256 screens for "The Sixth Sense" in the new week after urgent negotiations with theaters, bringing the total number of screens to 1,929.
At the same time, three new films have started filming this week, namely Warner Bros.'s "Lethal Weapon 2", Fox Pictures' "The Boss Gets Vacation" and Columbia Pictures' "Sex, Lies and Videotape."
The first part of "Lethal Weapon" was an unexpected success during its unpopular schedule in March two years ago. Although the box office did not exceed 100 million, it became Warner's highest-grossing film that year. However, because the success of the first film was unexpected, Warner did not have 100% confidence in this sequel, and only gave 1803 opening screens.
Fox Pictures' "The Boss Gets Vacation" is a comedy. Simon has never heard of this movie, and it only has 1,134 screens.
In the last "Sex, Lies and Videotape", Columbia Pictures obviously knew that this low-cost independent film would not have a wide audience. Although the film was likely to be favored by Westeros, Columbia did not have over-confidence. Only 517 opening screens were scheduled for the first week.
However, for a literary film, this kind of release scale is already very impressive.
With three new movies coming, Daenerys Entertainment did not dare to take it lightly. It launched a new marketing campaign for "The Sixth Sense" and also coordinated with the crew of "Goodfellas" to postpone Robert De Niro's role. filming so that he could continue to participate in the promotion of "The Sixth Sense", and the other main creators of the film were traveling non-stop around North America.
Perhaps in anticipation of a dark horse intercepting the success of "The Sixth Sense," the North American media's attention to the three new films has also increased significantly.
After the painting opened on Friday, media reviews came out quickly.
"Lethal Weapon 2" successfully continued the excellent reputation of the first part, with a comprehensive score of 8.3 points, surpassing "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in May and only 0.2 points lower than "The Sixth Sense".
Perhaps it’s the film’s discussion about a family of degenerate slackers that resonates emotionally, or perhaps it’s the nature of a literary film that tends to please critics. “Sex, Lies and Videotape” has been unanimously praised by the media, with an overall score of 9.6. point.
In comparison, Fox Pictures' "The Boss Goes on Vacation" seems silent, with only a low score of 5.3, looking like it's giving up on itself. However, as a buddy comedy with gags and some criminal elements, "The Boss Goes on Vacation" also has its own fixed audience.
With three new films released, plus a number of old films that have great potential in May and June, the seven days from July 7 to July 13 can be said to be the most intense week for summer movies.