The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 188 Miraculous April

Thanks to its excellent reputation, it is closer to the attributes of a commercial blockbuster with "Source Code". In a sense, this is the first real sci-fi blockbuster in mainland China-whether it is a train explosion or a magic city. Facing the threat of explosion, KBZZ, the military's intervention, and the extremely futuristic sci-fi setting, these are all very fresh to the audience in Huaguo, and there is even a sense of excitement.

In short, "Source Code" actually supported the box office market driven by the Young Avengers!

There is a relatively common operation in the Huaguo film market, that is, to set the budget-sharing movies to the off-season, and Hollywood blockbusters will drive the sluggish market.

Generally speaking, once the blockbuster movie comes to an end, the market will fall back to the normal off-season level.

For example, when "Young Avengers" was first released, in addition to the 3 million box office on the premiere day, it even got 1.6 million box office on the first working day after the premiere. At least it has remained above 1.5 million, which is higher than the working day of last year's summer holiday.

It can be said that "Young Avengers" single-handedly raised the off-season of the film market in April to the level of summer vacation.

And as "Young Avengers" began to stall two weeks after its release, the daily box office market also dropped rapidly, and the release of "Source Code" actually raised the box office market again, which means that a domestic film can also be sold in the market. The off-season attracts a large number of audiences to the cinema.

In addition to the 24 million box office on the evening of the 2100th, the premiere day, 25 million on the 1.4th, 26 million on the 1.7th, and 27 million on the working day of the 1.3th, it seems that the national theaters have returned to "Young Avengers". In the first week of its release, the industry was surprised and even lost their voice for a while.

Could it be that domestic audiences were attracted by "Young Avengers" and fell in love with the cinema completely after setting a box office record of 1.9 million on weekdays?

In April, the off-season working day of the box office, the market can repeatedly reach more than 4 million yuan, which is extremely exaggerated.

Or is Chen Jingxing's appeal comparable to Chaoying IP? "Source Code" is a movie with an original script.

At this time, many people remembered what Chen Jingxing said in the media interview at the premiere of "Source Code". Originally, they didn't think that domestic films would break the box office record of 19 billion created by "Young Avengers" within one year. He disagrees, and thinks that Chen Jingxing's words are a bit sour, containing dissatisfaction.

Now it seems that it is not impossible to realize it. You don't have to wait until a year later, the box office trend of "Source Code" is enough to make people imagine.

However, the media has ignored this matter. Various marketing accounts and entertainment media are now starting to analyze why "Source Code" can create such a box office result after the fact, from word of mouth, from the subject matter, from the appeal of the director and actors—— Some people began to analyze Hu Ge's box office potential in a decent way, thinking that the national favorability he had accumulated before has been fulfilled in "Source Code", from different perspectives such as changes in audience tastes.

There are even people who think that Huaguo's movie box office will be out of control starting from this miraculous April, and shouted the slogan that the movie box office will break 4 billion for the whole year.

However, from Chen Jingxing's point of view, he believes that "Source Code" has indeed been inspired by "Young Avengers". This phenomenon also happened in the plane of his previous life. After a movie drives a wave of movie viewing, it will also cause an overflow of traffic for movies released in the same period or even later.

Of course, it is also because of the high quality of "Source Code" itself, the word-of-mouth rating of nearly 9 points allows it to successfully take over the excitement of the movie market created by "Young Avengers", creating a frenzy of movie viewing in April that seems to be a movie month .

Until April 4th, "Source Code" was released for 30 and a half days and received a cumulative box office of 6 million. Although this is still far from the 7.8 billion box office of "Young Avengers" in the first week of its release, it will be followed by May Day. It’s a holiday, and if the curve of "Source Code" can be a little bit flatter than that of "Young Avengers"-this is not impossible, after all, considering that its Douban score is still maintained at a high level of 12.5 points-then it really is not There's no hope of approaching or even challenging "Young Avengers" at the box office.

But before that, Chen Jingxing, the producer of "Source Code" Xu Wenshen, and the two leading actors have already arrived in Los Angeles on the other side of the ocean, because "Source Code" will officially premiere in North American theaters on May 5.

Dreamworks' films are already familiar with the release in North America, but the difference this time is that Chen Jingxing is no longer a bystander—a bystander at the box office.

After selling off the copyright, no matter what the box office performance is, he has no direct interest relationship with him. Although there is a lot less worry and fear, he does not like this method of profit distribution.

And this time DreamWorks will truly become a participant in the North American distribution-through Firefly Distribution Company, it will jointly distribute "Source Code" with Hollywood's local snake Universal.

As the spokesperson of DreamWorks in Hollywood - the first appearance of Firefly, coupled with the strong support and public relations of Universal, "Source Code" held its premiere ceremony in Los Angeles, except for some film company executives and celebrities in the film and television industry. , The major Hollywood media did not miss the premiere.

"The Hollywood Reporter", "Empire", "Variety" and others all excluded columnists, freelance film critics and film and television reporters.

Universal almost treats this movie with a quasi-A-level production attitude, not only because of the importance it attaches to Chen Jingxing, but also because of the extremely preferential joint distribution agreement given by Chen Jingxing. In the joint distribution agreement signed by Firefly and Universal, Universal will get 50 percent of the box office split.

Think about it, Universal does not need to bear production costs, nor does it need to bear any copyright fees, and it hardly needs to bear any risks. It only needs to promote the distribution of "Source Code" in North American theaters-the distribution costs and publicity costs are mainly paid by Firefly. DreamWorks is responsible for it, and what Universal has to pay more is to mobilize its distribution network and network-it can get half of the box office share. From a certain point of view, it is almost a no-cost business.

According to this joint distribution ratio, even if "Source Code" can get the box office of Chen Jingxing's previous work "Signal" of more than 5000 million or nearly 6000 million US dollars, Firefly can only get about 1300 million in revenue, and after deducting the normal revenue of Firefly The income of DreamWorks is after the operating expenses, which is much lower than the income of selling the North American copyright of "Signal".

Of course, Firefly can independently promote the DVD distribution, and DreamWorks can directly obtain revenues such as North American TV copyright peripheral authorization, but even if these are added, it may not be comparable to the income from directly selling out copyrights.

However, Chen Jingxing was already very satisfied, after all, he had to eat every bite, and in North America, a theater chain monopolized a market that far surpassed that of Huaguo, and it was a necessary process to hold the thighs of big studios to pay tuition fees in the early stage.

(End of this chapter)