The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 482 "The Walking Dead: Resident Evil"

"If the name is not "The Walking Dead", how can the audience know that this is a movie based on the worldview of "The Walking Dead"?"

Jeff Miller was a little surprised and dissatisfied with Chen Jingxing's proposal.

Chen Jingxing snapped his fingers: "How about "The Prequel of The Walking Dead" or "The Story of The Walking Dead"? "The Prequel of The Walking Dead: Resident Evil", how about it?"

"...The name is a bit long."

"Star Wars: Revenge of the Phantom has a longer title."

Jeff Miller rolled his eyes, then fell into thought, and seemed to be a little moved.

Chen Jingxing's last stop in North America with the main creator of the "Inception" movie is New York on the east coast, where Luo Chen needs to appear on two TV shows, and Chen Jingxing will meet his old friend, Jeff Miller, the senior vice president of Universal .

Universal's studios are on the West Coast, but its offices are in New York.

The two first clinked glasses for the gratifying box office of "Inception". Although "Inception" ran into the comic film "Wrath of Titans", which has just been released for a week and has not lost its strength, but with its debut in 3092 theaters, It still produced a box office of 1678 million US dollars.

Surprisingly, Saturday and Sunday maintained a steady growth rate, earning $1779 and $1821 million in box office respectively.

The word-of-mouth effect spread quickly, and it got 5278 million in the first weekend.

Even though the competition in the North American market is quite fierce, according to Universal's forecast, the final box office may reach 1.6-1.7 million.

For a non-sequel, non-space-related sci-fi film, such box office results have slightly exceeded the expectations of Universal and DreamWorks.

Compared with the rapid growth of the Huaguo film market, the North American market is relatively stable. Although the box office champion has repeatedly broken through, it is not uncommon to win the annual crown from 3 million to 5 billion now, but the overall market is still relatively stable. It's just oligarchy.

For a foreign movie, no matter how famous Chen Jingxing is and how good the movie is, the box office volume of 1.5-2 million is close to the ceiling.

Just as many audiences in China do not actually watch foreign movies, a large part of North American audiences do not watch foreign movies.

If you want to make a bigger breakthrough on the order of 2 million, I'm afraid you have to count on the series of movies, such as "Matrix III".

But no matter how excited, Universal is not the producer of "Inception", and the share it can get in the North American box office is also limited. Jeff Miller naturally still cares more about the films that he participated in the production of.

That is the zombie movie that DreamWorks and Universal Pictures have long been targeting in their cooperation agreement.

Last summer, "The Walking Dead" set off a wave of zombies and became the most played drama on Netflix so far. It became popular all over the world, and it achieved this achievement as a non-English drama.

Even many European and American stars have posted news related to "The Walking Dead" on social platforms, and it has become a popular topic that everyone participates in.

In the past, it was only a small matter. The theme of zombies, which was limited to B-grade plasma films, was assembled into a huge and fashionable world view for the first time, and even became a special theme of disasters, showing the evolution from birth to evolution to waste. Soil, the reaction and response of all living beings in human society.

Just as young people love a dystopian worldview, the zombie wasteland worldview of "The Walking Dead" also has great appeal to the younger generation who are active on the Internet.

Not only is DreamWorks already producing the second season of "The Walking Dead", which will meet with global audiences early next year, the production of the movie version has also been put on the agenda.

Universal Pictures is particularly anxious. Following the trend is not a phenomenon unique to Huaguo. In Hollywood, where the R-rated film industry is well developed, Universal Pictures may be outdone by others if they wait any longer.

However, the script is not in a hurry. Universal Pictures wants to use the IP of "The Walking Dead" to create a continuous film series. It cannot kill the chicken and take the eggs. Hollywood, with a mature film industry, knows better than Huaguo filmmakers what it means to maximize profits. , how to maximize the benefits.

Compared with a single movie, the income of a successful series of movies is not an order of magnitude at all. With Hollywood's development capabilities, the peripheral income that a series of movies can develop far exceeds the box office income.

According to the cooperation agreement between the two, Universal Pictures will use its distribution network in Europe and the United States to serve DreamWorks films "as if it were its own", and DreamWorks will also open its own projects to cooperate with Universal Pictures, such as Films like "The Ninth District", as well as the second and third "Matrix", the "Skyhawk Warrior" mech movie, and "The Walking Dead".

"The Walking Dead" will be divided into two lines, one is the story line of Huaguo, and the other is the story line of North America.

The story line of Huaguo is mainly handled by DreamWorks, whether it is TV series or film production.

The North American side is mainly dominated by Universal Pictures, and according to the plan, it will focus on movies.

Together they form a huge, complete, and consistent world view covering the entire chronicle of origin, outbreak, evolution, and wasteland, including movies, TV dramas, animations, and games.

This will allow Dreamworks and Universal to take as much of the zombie-themed commercial revenue as possible.

Because a successful world view or movie universe is a firewall, if the audience can accept such a world view, then even if there are follow-up manufacturers producing similar zombie-themed movies, at most they can drink a little soup.

And Universal Pictures will produce the first "The Walking Dead" movie, the script has been formed, the main plot is:
A mountain range on the outskirts of Raccoon City is often killed by unknown creatures. Umbrella Corporation has a research institute here. The company headquarters suspects that it may be related to the research institute here. The mayor of Raccoon City and the police chief are both bribed by Umbrella Corporation. Has been helping to hide it.

There are more and more missing cases, and there must be an explanation. Under the pressure of the Raccoon City executives, the headquarters of the Umbrella Company sent two teams to investigate.

A team of people came to the research institute, ready to investigate whether there is any abnormality in the research institute.

Another team took a train to go deep into the mountains to investigate the so-called "unknown creatures".

However, the team that went to the research institute to investigate directly lost contact, and the research institute also cut off contact with the company headquarters.

Another team of people on the train also lost contact halfway after entering the mountains.

The pressure of public opinion is increasing.

As a last resort, the Federation sent a team from the Raccoon City Branch of the special search force to investigate.

The special search team went to investigate the anomalies that occurred in the mountains. The original intention was to use a helicopter for long-distance reconnaissance. Unexpectedly, the helicopter malfunctioned and crashed into the mountains.

Only two survived, including the clerical staff who had just graduated from university, that is, the heroine.

Then in the night, the hostess and her teammates found a train suspended on the rails while escaping from the forest—it was the train that the missing umbrella investigation team was on.

Then encountered the attack of mutated leeches and other insects here, the teammates sacrificed, and the heroine was rescued by a mysterious man, that is, the hero.

Then the male and female protagonists teamed up to restart the train and experienced adventures in the process of escaping from the mountains, and investigated the truth about the loss of contact with the research institute where the umbrella was located in the mountains.

In the process, I encountered ordinary zombies, zombie hellhounds and the first generation of zombie tyrants-the latter two will be the latest expansion of the world view of "The Walking Dead", which will first appear in the second season of "The Walking Dead" and will appear in "The Walking Dead" as planned The movie won't be released until after the second season.

Of course, in the process, the heroine will gradually reveal the identity of the hero with a mysterious background, who turned out to be a fugitive who committed a war crime.

Naturally, this script also had the participation of DreamWorks, and Universal Pictures also trusted DreamWorks' creativity, or if it wasn't for Chen Jingxing's participation in the script creation, Universal itself might not feel at ease.

The source of the story is a partial adaptation of a plot of the "Resident Evil" game in Chen Jingxing's previous life.

Jeff Miller is quite satisfied with the plot. According to the budget, the production cost of this film will exceed 1 million US dollars. Although it is not enough to be an A-level blockbuster, as the first film of this IP, it is natural to be cautious. Well, it's a test of the waters.

When discussing the name of the movie, Chen Jingxing suggested that it is better not to directly call it "The Walking Dead" with the same name as the TV series.

After all, DreamWorks is also going to make—in the name of a joint venture—a movie version of the Huaguo storyline of The Walking Dead.

It will continue the plot of the second season of "The Walking Dead". The end of the TV series will give a huge suspense, and then continue the plot with the movie.

This is what Chen Jingxing did in the first phase of the plan for "Once Upon a Time on Earth". At the end of the drama "Once Upon a Time on Earth", there is a suspense, and then the movie continues the plot of the TV series, the whole big scene.

你叫《行尸走肉》，我也叫《行尸走肉》，难道1、3、5是你，2、4、6是我吗？
Viewers can also be confused.

Therefore, Chen Jingxing's idea is that Universal Pictures can promote it in the name of prequel or rumor, and the chronological order is also established. Under the world view of "The Walking Dead", the origin of the zombie virus is still arranged in North America, the umbrella of the big boss The company's headquarters is also in North America, so the timeline is earlier than Huaguo's storyline.

After all, there are some plots he likes, such as the nuclear bombing of the city. If you arrange to go to Huaguo, DreamWorks will not be able to mix in China. Fortunately, the umbrella, the origin of the virus, and some larger-scale things are distributed to North America. This side of the story line.

Chen Jingxing's solution is that the movie series of Universal Pictures can be called "Resident Evil", Biohazard.

DreamWorks' zombie movie series is the true story of "The Walking Dead".

"The Walking Dead Prequel: Resident Evil"

English is "The Walking Dead: Biohazard", referred to as TWDB.

The domestic movie version is "The Walking Dead", "The Walking Dead", or TWD for short.

In fact, there is no need to worry about the name being too long. Foreign audiences like to call the series of movies short.

Then the domestic movie version is TWD, and the version of Universal Pictures is TWDB. Everyone is the IP of "The Walking Dead".

This also solves the problem that the version of the movie led by Universal Pictures should be linked to the IP of "The Walking Dead", or let the audience know concisely that this is a movie based on the IP of "The Walking Dead".

(End of this chapter)