The end of the main film is, as usual, the easter egg that everyone is looking forward to.
The Easter egg of "Suicide Squad", which will be released at the end of the year, has already appeared in the first "Batman Begins". This time, "The Dark Knight Rises" has only one Easter egg, but it made the Chinese Theater screening hall All DC fans inside are greatly excited.
In a corner of the city street where a car chase had obviously taken place, a burly figure wearing a cape and a suit stretched out his hand to pull open the burning roof of the Batmobile, which was almost scrapped. Batman in the car slowly stood up, and the two DCs The strongest superheroes face off against each other on the big screen for the first time.
There are no lines, but this is enough.
The screen went completely dark, and for a brief moment, thunderous applause erupted in the screening hall. The applause lasted for more than a minute and then slowly stopped when the host took the film's creators to the stage and sat down.
During the media interaction session, the first "Variety" reporter whose name was called did not rush to mention River Phoenix's superb performance of the Joker, nor did he lament Nicole Kidman's charming performance as Poison Ivy. He was the first to ask about how the shocking vine-circling city special effects scene in the film was produced.
Generally speaking, the more panoramic CG special effects are, the easier it is to create, but in the film just now, Poison Ivy gave birth to the scene where ancient vines entwine the entire Gotham, whether it is the vine sprouts emerging from the asphalt road, or the thick vines hugged by two people. The whole building is entangled, or many buildings cannot withstand the vines that grow wildly and collapse. Every shot and every detail gives people an immersive and delicate feeling that is difficult to distinguish between real and fake, as if there is really a modern metropolis. In a short period of time, it was wrapped by wildly growing green vines.
The most important point is that these special effects scenes still take place during the day. Anyone who knows a little bit about it will understand that compared with the same type of night CG scenes, daytime special effects will greatly increase the difficulty of CG picture production and rendering workload, which naturally means that With a bigger budget.
In fact, the more than three-minute special effects scene of vines surrounding the city burned through the production budget of US$12 million, and the production cost of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" reached US$135 million, and this was still in Australia The government has given a huge tax rebate of 15%. Otherwise, the production budget of this Batman movie will exceed $150 million.
Huge movie production budgets often don't equate to film quality, as many of Hollywood's box-office flops prove.
However, Daenerys Entertainment is continuously producing six DC movie universe films: "Batman Begins," "Batman: The Dark Knight," "Wonder Woman," "The Flash," "Superman" and "Cyborg." After the blockbusters, coupled with the accumulation of blockbuster films such as "Terminator 2" and "Jurassic Park" over the years, the development and application of the Hollywood film industry has reached the ultimate level in this era.
Therefore, the dazzling special effects scenes that "The Dark Knight Rises" can still shock the audience after many consecutive DC blockbusters are actually just a matter of course.
Hollywood colleagues who have been chasing Daenerys Entertainment over the years are actually being pulled further and further away.
Not to mention other things, Daenerys Special Effects owns two large-scale rendering farms with more computing power than most supercomputers in the world. This is something that other Hollywood film companies and independent special effects studios cannot own.
Not only in terms of technology, Daenerys Entertainment has formed a complete set of film industry processes through the experience and running of many super blockbusters in the entire process of film projects, including pre-planning, formal production, and post-publicity. operation system.
The public's first impression of the assembly line is often mediocre, but the reality is anything but that.
Daenerys Entertainment's streamlined operation system, which requires the highest standards, strives for excellence in every step of its blockbuster production. Even if the movie itself is not too outstanding, it can maximize its commercial benefits through strong post-production promotion.
This inevitably leads to a problem.
Can't other Hollywood studios imitate this
No problem at all.
However, whether it can be successfully imitated is the biggest question.
After the great success of Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe in Time and Space, various Hollywood movie universes came one after another, such as the DC Movie Universe, the Monsters Movie Universe, the Transformers Universe, etc. As a result, even the most promising DC movie to copy the Marvel model The universe fails.
The problem with DC is obvious.
The excessive interference of Warner's senior management, the lack of sound production ideas, the lack of trust in the main creators, etc.
Looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the success of "Iron Man" in 2008 was actually just an accident. Neither Marvel itself nor Paramount, which was originally responsible for distribution, had much confidence in this project. When "Iron Man" became a hit at the box office, Paramount, which initially had the chance to win over Marvel, was still hesitant, but was picked up by Disney.
Disney, with its acquisition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has truly maximized this good hand.
No matter how many people publicly criticize Disney for being an assembly line operation, they cannot erase the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is destined to leave a glorious mark in the history of world cinema.
The same is true for Daenerys Entertainment now.
Simon has absolute control over Daenerys Entertainment and has a clear and firm production plan for the new DC movie universe. Time Warner and Daenerys can jointly provide the highest quality production and publicity resources for all projects. All of these talents It is the foundation of the success of the DC movie universe.
Not only that, the production and promotion experience accumulated by a series of DC movie universe blockbusters has also been successfully applied by Simon in Daenerys Entertainment's "Jurassic Park" series, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" series, and "Mission: Impossible" series and many other projects, these hugely successful super blockbusters eventually created Daenerys Entertainment Group, which was extremely powerful in Hollywood at this time.
After the premiere, the word-of-mouth ban on "The Dark Knight Rises" was officially lifted the next day.
"Hollywood Reporter" commented that "Hollywood still only has two kinds of movies, one is the DC movie universe and the other is other movies", which very classically summarizes the praise of "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" by most media .
"Variety", "Los Angeles Times", "New York Times", "Boston Globe", "Chicago Tribune" and other mainstream newspapers have all given high praise to this final work of the Batman solo trilogy.
What's amazing about the film is definitely not just the outstanding special effects that are still more outstanding after the previous six DC blockbusters, the wonderful plot that is interlocking and coherent, the demanding pursuit of details under the atmosphere, the clown portrayed by River Phoenix, Nick Kidman's Poison Ivy, etc., have become the focus of many film critics.
In the end, the comprehensive media score of "The Dark Knight Rises" reached an astonishing 9.7 points, which was 0.1 points higher than the 9.6 comprehensive media score of "Batman Begins", the first movie that stunned movie fans that year. Considering the common phenomenon that Hollywood sequels often fail to break through their predecessors, the media reputation of "The Dark Knight Rises" is even more rare.
On Thursday night, "The Dark Knight Rises" was officially launched on 3,515 screens in North America, and the number of opening screens also reached a new high.
Friday, June 3rd.
On the first day of the large-scale release of "The Dark Knight Rises", the North American film market's box office data for the previous week was also released smoothly.
Last Friday's two new movies, "Cowgirl Blues" and "The Princess and the Goblin," failed to make any splash. Therefore, from May 27 to June 2, North American theaters basically still had a few old movies. The film is fully utilized.
"Speed" starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock undoubtedly topped the single-week box office list. Due to the lack of competition from new films, the film's weekly box office dropped only 21%, taking in another 25.39 million. US dollars, with a cumulative box office of US$57.56 million in two weeks.
Simon originally expected that the box office decline of "Speed" this week could be controlled within 20%, and the 21% weekly decline was slightly lower than expected. Obviously, although there were no other strong competitors entering the market at the same time, the film was still affected by "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises". The audience's expectations for this DC movie universe super blockbuster largely led to a week before the film was released. The market went into cooling mode.
"Stargate" directed by Michael Bay continued to occupy the second place on the list. In its third week of release, the film's decline also narrowed to 23%, earning 19.45 million U.S. dollars. The cumulative box office in three weeks reached 81.32 million U.S. dollars, 100 million yuan away. The threshold is no longer far away.
The Western movie "Marvel" starring Mel Gibson ranked third, with a drop of only a very good 22% this week. However, the opening box office of "Marvel" was too low. The box office in the second week was only US$16.15 million. The cumulative box office result of US$36.87 million in two weeks was only as good as the US$36.61 million first-week box office of "Stargate". quite.
Taking into account the strong impact of "The Dark Knight Rises" on June 3, the total North American box office of "The Dark Knight Rises" is likely to stop at less than 60 million US dollars. Relying on local box office, Warner can barely recover the US$30 million investment in promoting the film, and huge losses are inevitable.
When a new box office week begins, almost all the attention of the North American media and public is attracted by "The Dark Knight Rises."
After an overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth start on Thursday, on Friday, the first day of its large-scale release, "The Dark Knight Rises" relied on 3,515 opening screens to gain another record-breaking first-day box office of $26.13 million.
The box office result of US$26.13 million on the first day of filming almost made most Hollywood filmmakers burst into tears. Many Hollywood movies may not necessarily have that much box office in their opening week, but "The Dark Knight Rises" only took one day.
The media spared no effort to follow the trend and hype, and the public's viewing habits for the DC movie universe have further boosted the film's phenomenal viewing craze.
During its three-day opening weekend from June 3 to June 5, "The Dark Knight Rises" grossed US$78.37 million, which was also another record-breaking opening weekend box office result.
From June 3rd to June 9th, the box office of the first week was released. The box office revenue of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the first seven days of its opening was as high as 127.63 million US dollars.
It is as powerful as broken bamboo.
Faced with the strong competition from "The Dark Knight Rises", "Speed" and "Stargate", which originally had very good box office momentum, were directly cut in half in the new week, with declines of 49% and 53% respectively. In a single week, The box office dropped directly to US$12.93 million and US$9.21 million.
However, Mel Gibson's "Marvel" is even more miserable.
The box office started off at a low level. Faced with the impact of "The Dark Knight Rises", the box office dropped as much as 57% in the third week of release. The single-week box office plummeted from US$16.15 million last week to US$6.93 million, not to mention the previous week's box office. Zhou originally expected a box office of US$60 million, but now it is difficult to even cross the threshold of US$50 million.
As for other films such as "When a Man Loves a Woman" starring Meg Ryan and Spike Lee's "The End of the Race," they were pushed to the edge of the bottom line all at once.
The same goes for Daenerys Entertainment’s “Planet.”
"Planet" originally passed the 90 million box office threshold with a box office revenue of 3.17 million US dollars in the week from May 27 to June 2. In the new week, the box office also fell by 53% due to the impact of "The Dark Knight Rises" , the single-week box office left only US$1.49 million, with a cumulative box office of US$92.39 million.
Although Daenerys Entertainment still reserves 325 screening screens for this film, it is expected that it will only be able to get a box office of about US$5 million at most. The final box office of "The Detective" will be 97 million. Around US$100 million, only one step away from the 100 million yuan box office club.
Speaking of which, as long as Simon is willing, Daenerys Entertainment can cross this threshold. However, to suppress Jim Carrey, Simon did not approve some of the plans proposed by the "Phantom Detective" promotion team.
Regardless of the situation of other films, "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises" was a huge success at the box office in its first week. Daenerys Entertainment and Time Warner Group jointly held a grand celebration party for the first time, and the location was still Daenerys in Malibu. The employee activity center of the studio will be on Saturday, June 11th.
Although he no longer directly oversees Time Warner's film business, Terry Semel still came to Los Angeles from New York specifically on the day of the celebration party.
Simon had dinner with his family at Dume Point Manor, and didn't arrive at Daenerys Studios until around 9:30, but he didn't plan to stay at the party longer.
Meeting up with Terry Semel who was still at the party, the two quickly talked about DreamWorks matters that have been very hot in Hollywood recently.
DreamWorks, planned by Steven Spielberg and three others, has begun looking for a cooperative publisher at this time.
In the original time and space, DreamWorks' early partner was Paramount Pictures. This time, in addition to Daenerys, MGM and Disney, the other four of the seven major Hollywood companies, Columbia, Paramount, Warner and Fox, all Extended an olive branch to DreamWorks.
Terry Semel even called Simon specifically to test his attitude towards the cooperation between Warner and DreamWorks. After all, the three giants of DreamWorks announced the establishment of this company on the day of the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" The news from the major studios clearly has some intentions for Daenerys’ entertainment.
Simon was noncommittal.
If Warner Bros. wins the agency distribution rights for films produced by DreamWorks, it may be able to see a wave of prosperity in the short term and continue to support the momentum of the coexistence of Hollywood Warner and Daenerys. This still does not deviate from Simon's plan. As for the long-term impact, the worst case scenario is that some plans will be adjusted in the future based on specific circumstances.
Although the two parties are relatively close partners, Simon has no intention of giving any advice to Warner. You choose your own path, and you have to bear the consequences yourself.