The duration of "The Horse Whisperer" is 2 hours and 50 minutes. Considering the duration factor, the premiere started very early.
At around nine o'clock, when the end credits of the movie were played, the lights came on, and there was a burst of polite applause in the theater at the right time. Eric felt a little stiff, but he patiently didn't get up immediately.
For "The Horse Whisperer", Eric's overall personal evaluation is positive.
The overall story of the film is very smooth, with inspiration and a touch of sadness in the warmth, and the prairie scenery in Montana is also beautiful. However, Robert Redford has a common problem with veteran Hollywood filmmakers, that is, the slow pace of movies. Nearly three hours is a long time, which is a test of the patience of the audience. The slow pace of the film also causes it to be loose in emotional expression, and it always lacks a strong power that can directly hit the soul of the audience.
Amidst the applause, the main creators began to speak on stage, and Elizabeth, who was beside Eric, came over and whispered, "What do you think?"
Eric thought for a while and replied, "The key is to see how Harvey works."
If you want to score, Eric can give this movie 7.5 points. It is not considered excellent with a score of 8 or above, but it is far beyond the passing line. However, this score does not make the audience have the desire to actively enter the movie theater. To achieve this, the Weinstein brothers must use their own marketing and public relations methods to raise the film's reputation to more than 8 points.
Elizabeth actually had a similar judgment. Although she was a little disappointed when she heard Eric's words did not exceed her expectations, she could accept it.
The movie was followed by a side-party hosted by Miramax at a nearby hotel.
It was still early, and Eric and Elizabeth didn't rush back to rest, so they came to the party together.
"Probably because he directed and acted himself, I feel that Redford didn't put enough enthusiasm into this story at all. He, like Scott Thomas, even let me play a little bit, which is really too bad." In the party hall, Lute Stein, a film critic from the "San Francisco Chronicle", faced Eric, Elizabeth and Harvey without hesitation, expressing his evaluation of the film.
What Rut Stein said made Elizabeth frowned slightly, but Eric stood beside him calmly, and Harvey listened with a smile on his face. When the other party finished speaking, Harvey stepped forward and hugged the other party's shoulder affectionately , said: "Root, I have to admit that you are right. These are indeed some minor flaws in the movie, but there are no perfect movies in this world. We should allow the existence of shortcomings. Moreover, between the performances In addition, there are still many advantages of this film, um, how about we go over there and have a good chat?"
"Of course," Root Stein nodded slightly, looked at Eric and Elizabeth again, and explained tactfully: "Mr. Williams, Miss Murdoch, I have absolutely nothing against this movie." Meaning, I'm just being factual."
Harvey didn't let go of the other's shoulders, but used a little more strength, and said, "Of course Eric and Liz don't care, hehe, let's go, oh, Eric, and Liz, you can do whatever you want." , have fun."
When Harvey left with the film critic, Eric held Elizabeth's waist and said with a smile: "Okay, what's the matter, you are used to being a lady. Think back then, Michael Ove Facing the cynicism of the client, in order to win the trust of the other party, instead of getting angry, he stood on the table and tap danced, and he later became the most powerful man in Hollywood."
"I don't mind, it's just that that guy said that on purpose to show his presence when he saw us approaching," Elizabeth retorted dissatisfiedly as she saw Harvey leaving, and grabbed Eric's words: "Now you are the most powerful person in Hollywood, are you willing to tap dance for your clients?"
"Well, if necessary," Eric said, "I will let Jeffrey and the others dance."
"You guy," Elizabeth laughed, but followed closely: "But what if the client insists on letting you dance yourself?"
Eric shook his head confidently: "Your assumption is not valid. No one in this world is qualified to ask me to tap dance for him."
"Hmph," Elizabeth suddenly snorted twice, "What if I let you dance?"
Eric seemed to have immediately forgotten what he said just now, and nodded readily: "No problem, I'll dance for you when I get back."
The corners of Elizabeth's mouth were curved, but her tone was very contemptuous: "You're really spineless, I don't mind watching you tap dance."
Eric immediately insisted: "This is not okay, I will not go back on what I promised, you have to watch it tonight, and I will tie you to a chair when you go back, and watch me dance for half an hour before talking about it."
After joking around, the two came to an empty seat in the banquet hall and sat down. Noticing that Harvey had been replaced by another film critic not far away, the two were chatting enthusiastically. Elizabeth raised her chin and gave Eric gestured and said, "Judging from the current situation, the word-of-mouth of the film should be fine, right?"
Eric can also see that Harvey is not generally interested in "The Horse Whisperer".
This is actually easy to understand. "The Horse Whisperer" is the largest literary film invested by Weinstein Films so far. The Harvey brothers have already expressed their interest in Fox's $50 million film investment in Miramax. I am dissatisfied with the decision of the upper limit. The box office situation of "The Horse Whisperer" is directly related to whether Miramax is likely to break through this limit.
If the box office of "The Horse Whisperer" can reach the scale of conventional commercial films, Fox will likely open up this restriction as long as it encounters enough outstanding projects in the future. But if "The Horse Whisperer" fails at the box office, it will be impossible for Miramax to invest in high-cost literary films.
"Word-of-mouth is definitely no problem," Eric nodded, and said: "However, the key is to see if the audience buys it. The film is nearly 3 hours long, and after all, it will still discourage many impatient audiences."
Elizabeth disagreed a little, and said, "Remember the "Dances with Wolves" that you tricked me into buying a few years ago? It was only four hours long, and the North American box office alone exceeded 180 million U.S. dollars, and the global box office was 420 million U.S. dollars. , but the cost is only more than 20 million US dollars. I think these two films obviously have many similarities. They are both adaptations of novels, they are both directed and acted by the main creators, and they all have very spectacular natural and cultural backgrounds."
"But you have to admit," Eric said, ""The Horse Whisperer" is not as strong and hot as "Dances with Wolves" in terms of political connotation or human emotion. Relatively speaking, "The Horse Whisperer" is the biggest The advantage is that the popularity of its original novels far exceeds that of "Dances with Wolves", which was relatively unpopular back then. However, after what you said, I think I can remind Harvey later, if he can publish "Dances with Wolves" in the media The combination of "The Horse Whisperer" and "Dances with Wolves" may yield unexpected results."
…
To put it bluntly, the Weinstein Brothers’ Oscar operation secret has always been very simple, that is, to create undisputed reputation and a large number of award votes for Miramax’s shortlisted films through a powerful media and judges’ public relations offensive.
Of course, the specific operation method is very cumbersome and complicated.
Due to the return pressure brought by the US$50 million investment in "The Horse Whisperer", although the Weinstein brothers did not use the long-term operation method of gradually accumulating word-of-mouth and box office through small-scale releases this time, the media marketing methods accumulated over the years are still in the works. It still plays a very important role in this movie.
Immediately after the premiere, Miramax launched a powerful public relations offensive. On the second day, almost all North American mainstream print media made positive comments on "The Horse Whisperer", even a small number of them obviously didn't like the film. The film critics of the film were obviously not so fierce in their criticism of "The Horse Whisperer".
According to preliminary statistics, "The Horse Whisperer" has successfully broken through the excellent 8-point cut-off line in the early film critics' evaluation, and the average media score has reached 8.2 points, which is much higher than Eric's personal score of 7.5 points.
"The Horse Whisperer" was published in 1995, and it has only been three years since then. However, although this novel has won the popularity of readers all over the world, and many viewers also quite recognize the excellent adaptation of the novel by the film version of "The Horse Whisperer", "The Horse Whisperer" also has a very obvious The disadvantage is that it lacks topics that can arouse public discussion.
In many cases, the topicality of a movie is even more important than its own movie score.
In this regard, Eric and Elizabeth's flash of inspiration at the party after the premiere played a very important role. Reminded by Eric and Elizabeth, the Weinstein brothers very decisively linked "The Horse Whisperer" with "Dances with Wolves".
Although it has been seven years since "Dances with Wolves", it is also this long time that made this film that successfully won a series of heavyweight awards such as Oscar's best picture and best director that year gradually become An unshakable classic in many people's minds.
Seeing that some media associate "The Horse Whisperer" with the classics in their hearts, fans of "Dances with Wolves" suddenly became reluctant. As a result, in just a few days, discussions on the merits of "The Horse Whisperer" and "Dances with Wolves" appeared in major North American media. "Dances with Wolves" has many supporters, but "The Horse Whisperer" has sold 10 million copies of the original novel worldwide, and the number of book fans and movie fans should not be underestimated.
Therefore, the debate between the two sides can be said to be full of gunpowder, and it is difficult to distinguish the winner for a while.
While this kind of controversy greatly stimulated the attention and box office of "The Horse Whisperer", it even led to a wave of sales of videotapes and DVDs of "Dances with Wolves", a detail that many people are not aware of. Yes, the copyright of "Dances with Wolves" is also in the hands of the firefly system.
Stimulated by such high topicality, "Dances with Wolves" finally won a box office of 32.15 million US dollars in the first three days of the weekend. Although this result cannot be compared with those blockbusters, it has already made many people very excited satisfy.
The box office in the first weekend was 32.15 million US dollars, which means that the box office of the film can reach about 45 million US dollars in the first week.
With the word-of-mouth performance of "The Horse Whisperer", although it will face competition from several new films next week, it is still very easy to maintain the expected box office drop of 30%.
As long as the box office trend of low decline can be achieved, the North American box office of "The Horse Whisperer" will exceed 100 million yuan.
With a cost of US$50 million, the North American box office exceeded 100 million. Taking into account the expected overseas box office, this basically means that it is only released in theaters. This project can bring huge profits to Miramax and even the parent company Fox Group.
Moreover, with the Oscar PR capabilities of the Weinstein brothers, as long as "The Horse Whisperer" can win this year's Oscars, the film's later peripheral distribution revenue will be even more lucrative.
…
Ventura, north of Los Angeles, this is the first time Eric has been here since the official opening of the private airport.
Compared with the large farmland at the time, at this time, the area covering an area of 600 hectares has been surrounded by high barbed wire. Inside the airport are two intersecting long and short runways, a monitoring and navigation center and six other large hangars . However, there are currently only two Gulfstream V jets in the hangar at this time.
This year is already November 10th, and Eric arrived here in the morning, planning to fly directly to London on the Gulfstream V he just got some time ago.
The Gulfstream V can be said to be Gulfstream Aerospace’s first ultra-long-range business jet, with an endurance of 12,000 kilometers, which can even satisfy trans-Pacific flights. It is not a problem at all to travel directly from Los Angeles on the west coast of the United States to London across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean.
However, after visiting the Gulfstream V cabin, Eric immediately dismissed the idea of flying to London on this plane.
The reason is also very simple and crude.
too small.
Compared with the Boeing 767, which has a fuselage width of nearly five meters and has luxurious suites and spacious event space, which Eric often sat on in the past two years, the interior width of the Gulfstream V cabin is only a little over two meters, with sofas and seats on both sides. Basically, there is no free space for activities. It is really hard for Eric to imagine the situation of sitting in such a small plane from Los Angeles to London. It is more than 8,000 kilometers and a ten-hour flight. Eric feels that he Likely to go crazy, he always thought that he might have some mental disorder like claustrophobia.
"In the future, this small plane will be used for short-distance flights." In the lounge of the airport, Eric said to the girl who rushed over to see him off: "Also, how is the construction progress of the two 747s?"
"It will take about half a year," the girl said, "However, I can urge Boeing."
Eric shook his head with a smile, and said, "It's better not to rush this kind of thing, safety first."
"Hehe, forget it," the girl said, raised her wrist to look at her watch, and said, "That Boeing 767 will take another hour to arrive, or, Eric, let's go for a walk first."
Giving up his plan to take the Gulfstream V for a transoceanic flight, Eric had to ask someone to transfer the original Boeing 767 over again.