Heads Up Hollywood

"Daredevil 2" has entered its fourth screening week, and it will be too difficult to continue to dominate the box office market.

Marvel Pictures is not afraid of the impact of DC Films' films, but the new film released this week... is in the same family as Marvel!

Twentieth Century Fox's X-Men: Last Stand!

This is the finale of the X-Men trilogy.

Because of the great success of Marvel Pictures, 20th Century Fox has also opened up. Recently, news has spread that after the "X-Men" trilogy is over, it will also launch a personal superhero movie. After laying the groundwork, we will gather heroes.

Affected by this, the expectation of "X-Men 3" is very high, second only to "Avengers" and "Pirate Alliance 3: At World's End" in this year's summer file.

Sure enough, the film officially opened on Friday, May 25.

In the three days of the weekend, they achieved box office of 45 million US dollars, 32 million US dollars and 25 million US dollars respectively. Counting the advance show, the box office reached 110 million US dollars in the first week!

It's a real summer blockbuster!

In contrast, the previous "Mission Impossible 3" and "Batman 2" were weak.

"X-Men 3" also successfully replaced "Daredevil 2" and topped the weekly box office list. Of course, "Daredevil 2" is not bad, with a weekly box office of 45 million US dollars, which is the runner-up on the list.

The North American box office also successfully exceeded 400 million US dollars!

And with the gradual spread and warming of overseas markets, the overseas box office has begun to exert its strength, making the global box office of "Daredevil 2" reach 650 million US dollars!

However, the mainland review has been delayed.

"Boss, unfortunately Daredevil 2 is dead unless we delete and edit 15 minutes of it."

Tang En received a call from Universal Publishing and received such a news.

Because the film involved the non-extradition policy and the arrest of people by the Hong Kong government, the film failed official censorship. In other words, the film cannot be released publicly in mainland China.

If it can't be screened, it can't be screened. Tang En replied: "Then forget it, give up."

Deletion?

It costs money!

The current mainland market is mainly in the era of domestically produced blockbusters. Even global blockbusters such as "Spiderman" and "Harry Potter" are not popular in the mainland, with box office of tens of millions.

With the addition of a 15% account sharing clause, China Film Group will keep some of it and convert it into US dollars... Well, the money earned in the Mainland may not necessarily be as much as the film's post-editing fees!

Because most of the theaters in the mainland are still traditional film theaters.

Developing film, the more extensive processing, the lower the cost. Therefore, films around the world are basically developed uniformly. If a single unit of the mainland market develops a version, this will greatly increase the cost of copying.

The loss outweighs the gain!

In the next few years, there will be a mainland version and a global version, because there are more cheap digital copies, and the mainland market is booming and profitable.

In this day and age, Hollywood movies would rather not be screened in the mainland, nor would they be deleted or edited. Therefore, in the current era, some unharmonious scenes often appear in mainland movie theaters.

Because the United States is strong and unwilling to modify it.

Local films have taken advantage of the trend, and they have repeatedly challenged the boundaries of censorship.

Later, the box office market in the mainland exploded, and Hollywood began to kneel and lick it, repeatedly revising it according to the requirements of the General Administration... Naturally, local films were also in turmoil, and the era of the strictest censorship came.

...

Entering June, the real summer season begins to explode, and a large number of new films are released one after another!

As for New Universal, it just launched the Pixar cartoon "Cars" on May 30, and the romance film "Broken Men and Women" on June 2.

It can be seen that the competition for this schedule is fierce.

Fortunately, "Cars" and "Broken Men and Women" are aimed at different audiences, so there is no need to grab them.

Wait until June 9th, it will be different!

"Pirates Alliance 3: At World's End" will be grandly launched!

This is a fantastic and magical family carnival movie!

It is a hit at the box office of 1 billion US dollars that has been booked for a long time!

But at this time, more of Hollywood's focus is not on the box office market, but on an emerging project - Hulu.

On June 1, Hulu's beta site launched.

The first real streaming media platform is officially launched!

"Wall Street Journal" listed six factors that Hulu must succeed.

First, cable TV in the United States is expensive, and you can only watch it on TV. You can’t choose programs by yourself, and you can’t skip advertisements. The user experience is not good.

Second, the genuine film and television works of Yahoo, MSN, YouTube, America Online and other video sites are sold by parts, which is not very cost-effective.

Three, Hulu is cheap, with a monthly subscription price of only $7.99. As long as you purchase a membership, you can watch all the works in its film and television library unlimitedly, and the content is relatively complete.

Fourth, most Americans do not know how to use The Pirate Bay and uTorrent. There is little room for pirated versions of the market, but there is a lot of space for genuine ones.

Fifth, the United States also does not allow P2P downloads, and the illegal distribution of film and television works is restricted.

Six, Dunn Walker.

In fact, over the past month or so, Hulu has become a hot topic on Wall Street.

When this concept was first proposed, Wall Street and many IT elites were not optimistic.

But after only a few months, everyone's views have changed a lot.

Hulu has sufficient independent operating rights, adopts the management method of Silicon Valley, has stock awards, and has option pools, which will greatly increase the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship.

The beta version has only been launched for three days, and the number of registered users has exceeded 3 million, and paid users have exceeded 800,000!

When the good news came out, Wall Street immediately shook.

They all realized that this is a huge potential business opportunity!

Then, Hulu received five financing offers from Wall Street, and two offers from Hollywood.

That's right!

Although it is only a beta version, Hulu has already succeeded!

Everyone saw it!

In particular, News Corporation and Comcast, which are particularly interested in the Internet industry, want to raise funds for Hulu in the names of 20th Century Fox and NBC Columbia Pictures respectively in order to hold more shares.

They all want to fight for the title of major shareholder.

Although Michael Eisner also has the heart to fight, but his strength does not allow it. Disney just bought back a massive $3.2 billion in stock from the Swift Foundation.

To this end, Michael Eisner had to cooperate with Goldman Sachs to issue 1.5 billion US dollars in bonds.

As for New Universal...of course it won't participate either.

Too lazy to participate!

Hulu gaining momentum?

This is a good thing!

With Hulu taking the lead, it's time to start Netflix's streaming plan!

Next year at the latest, Netflix's streaming video website will be launched!

In the previous life, Netflix only had 24 million paid subscribers in 2010. But now that Netflix is ​​in Tang En's hands, it has accumulated 25 million users in 2006, which is where its confidence lies.

Tang En handed over full authority to the Interactive Entertainment Department to take charge of Netflix's streaming media plan, and his focus was still movies.

He attended an inside screening of "Apocalypse," directed by Mel Gibson.

The shooting of the film was extremely difficult.

Because to show the primitive living condition of the Maya, it needs to use a lot of local rookie actors to challenge nature in the Mexican rainforest.

The film was originally scheduled for release in August.

But because of the rainy season, it rained heavily for three and a half months, so the film's schedule could only be postponed to December.

The humid and hot climate of the Mexican rainforest, as well as a large number of non-professional actors, made the shooting very difficult. If the digital camera was not used for shooting, the film alone would cost 1 million US dollars and buy 2 million feet of film.

The scale of the movie is very large, and it is completely violent aesthetics.

However, with the same violent aesthetics, Mel Gibson's shooting standards are much higher than those of directors such as John Wu and Michael Bay.

It's completely master-level Shun Zhun! A master's approach!

It's hard to imagine that he is an actor and directing is just his side job!

But then again, it's no surprise that Mel Gibson is a master director. As early as 1996, he won the Oscar for Best Director with "Braveheart". This is an achievement that John Wu, Michael Bay and others can't achieve in their lifetime.

"This kind of raw and authentic aesthetics of violence can be compared with masters like Fellini or David Lynch. Congratulations, you made a great movie."

At the end of the audition session, Tang En was the first to stand up and congratulated Mel Gibson.

He knew that this film was very controversial within Universal Pictures.

The point is that the scale is too large.

The film cost 40 million US dollars, and there was no star actor, and a group of dark-skinned indigenous Mexicans were found to star...the pressure to pay back the cost was too great.

Universal Pictures' idea is to make appropriate cuts, to a smaller scale, and to target a larger audience.

Tang En naturally wanted to show his support for Mel Gibson.

The relationship between the two is too deep.

"Is the movie okay?" Mel Gibson was a little curious.

Tang En said straightforwardly: "No problem, this is your movie, follow your way of thinking!"

The film is entirely directed by Mel Gibson, who is not only the director, but also the producer and screenwriter.

With Tang En's words, the tone of "Apocalypse" was set.

After the viewing session was over, Tang En invited Mel Gibson to his office, and asked with a smile, "Aren't you going to act?"

Mel Gibson's face froze slightly, his expression unnatural.

After entering the new millennium, the No. 1 Hollywood superstar in the 1990s, his career was not going well.

This is also a common problem of action stars. When they get older, there will be a lack of market. Unlike actors like Tom Hanks and George Clooney, even if they are in their sixties or seventies, they are still superstars.

Of course, Mel Gibson is still a member of the $20 million club, but in recent years, apart from the two films "Gone Girl" and "Hunting" with New Universal, the other scripts he received... are really amazing. It's so bad that he has no interest in participating in the show.

If there is no good script out there, then he simply does it himself.

"I have a script here, do you want to try it?"

"You wrote it?"

"No, it was sent by Luc Besson, a cooperation between Universal Pictures and Europa Pictures."

Mel Gibson figured it out, "Traditional action movie?"

Tang En said: "Yes."

Mel Gibson was a little embarrassed.

Action movies... are not easy to pick up.

He is an action superstar!

None of the action movies he made failed!

However, after the new century, the action movie market has been greatly impacted, and magic, fantasy, and science fiction movies have suddenly emerged. Movies of this type also have action elements and have gradually replaced the traditional action movie market.

Will Smith has started to switch to making feature films, and "Mission: Impossible 3" starring Tom Cruise didn't even make a splash in May.

Traditional action movies are at the end of the road!

Mel Gibson also wanted to act, but he couldn't act in a failed production.

Tang En said: "I know what you think, but this script... I read it, and it is worth participating in. There is a serious lack of excellent action movies in the current market, and you need to drive it."

"What subject?"

"The Story of a Retired Secret Service Agent Going to Save His Daughter."

Mel Gibson frowned, "It's old-fashioned."

Tang En smiled and said: "It's very old-fashioned, but... I suggest you read the script first. This is a traditional story, but it is not a traditional Hollywood story rhythm. Luc Besson retreated in France, and it seems to be very effective. .”

Mel Gibson laughed dumbfounded, and took the script from Tang En.

During this period, Tang En went to a joint marketing meeting about Prada and "The Devil Wears Prada". When he came back, he saw Mel Gibson holding the script in his arms, meditating with his eyes closed on the sofa.

Tang En smiled, "How is it?"

"no the same!"

Mel Gibson shook his head.

Tang En smiled and said, "What's the difference?"

Mel Gibson said: "I have participated in the shooting of dozens of action movies, and this story...is very different. No, it is a different narrative method. In the past, Hollywood action movies usually have a 'great three minutes' opening , use a wonderful action scene to get the audience excited first, then turn to the main storyline, and then push the film to a climax with a rhythm that adjusts the action scene and the emotional scene with each other. And this script... completely emotional The drama and the action scene are separated, the opening scene is a mess, and the rhythm design of the action scene is so tense that there is no room for rest, this is a great subversion of the traditional way."

He is a master in the field of action movies, so he can naturally hit the nail on the head.

Tang En said: "That's right, this kind of change... will definitely detonate the market. Movie fans are tired of watching the traditional Hollywood action movie routines. This new model may usher in the next era of action movies. Mel, I need you Come lead the team!"

Mel Gibson laughed and said: "Stop giving me a high hat, I know, you just want to help me, let me have a movie. As you, there is no need to pay attention to such small projects."

"Small projects are true, but they will make a lot of money!" Tang En said firmly.

"What's the name of this movie?"

""Taken"."