director of the millennium

June to August has always been a popular period for movie sales, especially overseas.

However, the hottest period in the Chinese market has always been the Lunar New Year period in December, and the National Day and Spring Festival periods are also relatively important periods.

However, last year, that is, the summer season of 2015, the performance was very impressive.

The total box office of domestic films in the summer of 2015 was 78.13 billion yuan. The top three films of last summer, "Monster Hunt", "The Pancake Man" and "The Monkey King: Hero is Back", took in more than 40 billion yuan in box office.

Among them, "Monster Hunt" had the highest box office (and the highest amount of water), while "The Monkey King: Hero is Back" had the best reputation, and even set off a wave of the rise of Chinese animation.

However, no matter how glorious it was, that was all last year.

Industry professionals are currently full of confidence as to whether this year's summer season will be good.

Because the movies that have been confirmed for this year's summer season include "Warcraft", which has a box office of at least 20 billion yuan, as well as "X-Men: Apocalypse" and "Jason Bourne", which are also Hollywood blockbusters.

In the field of domestic films, there are also movies such as "Big Fish and Begonia", "The Wasted Time", "Skiptrace", "Cold War 2", "Line Walker" and "Three's Journey".

However, Wu Yuan vaguely remembered that there seemed to be no memorable movie in this summer's movie season.

The only animated film that can be said to have left an impression on people is "Big Fish and Begonia".

As for live-action movies, whether they are Hollywood blockbusters or Chinese-language films, they have all failed.

Some investors wanted to make a fortune from a certain movie during the summer season, but ended up losing all their money and disappeared from the film industry.

At the end of the 2016 summer season, not a single movie made more than 10 billion yuan at the box office. The domestic movie box office shrank by 31.30 billion yuan compared to the same period last year.

"It's bleak. There are no movies to support it. Everyone is disappointed with the summer season."

“If I were asked to choose a bad movie, I really couldn’t choose one, because they are all bad.”

This is Wu Yuan’s impression of this summer’s movie season.

What he didn’t know was that, even more embarrassingly, this year’s bad domestic films almost took over the entire summer season.

Especially domestic horror films.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a bunch of horror movies have been scheduled for this summer’s season, including “The Sound of the Demon City” and “The Magic Wheel”, etc., all of which are domestic horror films, most of which have a score of less than 8 points.

Later, some netizens commented on these domestic horror movies: "I'm embarrassed to be discovered that I watched this movie."

Youth films used to be the main driver of the summer box office, but this year they have hardly performed well and have been collectively criticized.

The domestic youth films that occupied the majority of the summer season market in previous years have not performed well this year.

There was no blockbuster movie like the one that received word-of-mouth praise last year.

In today's mainland film industry, capital operations such as high-guaranteed distribution have become the mainstream, and it is precisely because of this "high guarantee" that many film and television companies will go bankrupt during this summer season.

No matter how big the guarantee is, if the movie is not good, the audience will not buy it.

There are many examples of this. For example, before the release of "One Step Away", everyone was very optimistic about it, and all theaters gave it a high screening schedule. But after the premiere night, theater managers across the country did one thing, which was to adjust the screening schedule.

The next day, many screenings of "One Step Away" were cancelled, and the screening schedule was cut by more than half.

It's been so long that Wu Yuan actually can't remember the exact situation of the 2016 summer season. He doesn't even know that 100 movies were released in the three months of this summer, but two-thirds of them had a Douban score of less than 5 points, making it the worst summer season in history.

But after he looked at the list of movies that Li Xiaoping handed over and that have been confirmed to be released in the summer, he immediately confirmed that "Ready Player One" will be released in the summer!
"The Warcraft movie is scheduled to be released on June 6th, but it will be released in China two days earlier than in North America?"

Wu Yuan pointed to the "Warcraft" movie that was first on the list and felt a little amused.

Li Xiaoping believes that this movie is the most threatening movie in the entire summer season, with a box office potential of at least RMB 20 billion, and it is a movie that must be avoided.

To be honest, before the "Warcraft" movie was released, all the publicity for the movie was perfect.

From online to offline, it seems that everyone is a former Alliance dog or Tribe dog, and wants to buy a movie ticket for their youth and go to the cinema to watch this movie.

All in all, the momentum is very huge, giving people a feeling that the box office performance will definitely break records.

In addition, the film company has been promoting the fact that A-Zu will join the cast, which has added fuel to the fire.

But Wu Yuan is very clear about the box office performance of "Warcraft". This movie is a typical example of the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.

"Warcraft" is far from being a perfect movie. Before its release, countless film critics and experts believed that the movie would gross at least 20 billion yuan. However, the box office in mainland China ultimately only earned 14.7 billion yuan, far below expectations.

The North American box office was even lower, with only 1000 million U.S. dollars on the first day, 2400 million U.S. dollars in the first three days of its release, and a final box office of 4708 million, less than 5000 million U.S. dollars, and less than a quarter of the box office in mainland China.

I can only say that domestic audiences are too considerate and are much easier to fool than North American audiences.

Of course, no one knew that the highly anticipated "World of Warcraft" would perform so poorly.

Wu Yuan didn't want to act like a prophet in front of Li Xiaoping and predict that the movie would not perform well at the box office.

Besides, the box office revenue of 14 billion RMB is not a small amount, so there is no need to compete head-on with this movie for the release date.

After thinking for a while, Wu Yuan nodded and said, "Then let's schedule it for July, the second week of July."

There were quite a few movies released in the first week of July, including "Big Fish and Begonia" and "Cold War 7", two relatively popular movies.

The schedule for the second week of July is currently relatively empty, with only one film, "Lu Yao Zhi Mali," spending money on promotion, while the rest of the low-budget films are not worth mentioning.

If Ready Player One is released in the second week of July, which is on the 7th, then there will be another movie called The Lost Tomb released in the next half month, until August 15th, which may pose a slight threat to Ready Player One.

However, Wu Yuan has always looked down on this kind of fan-oriented movies, not to mention that this "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" movie was starred by Xiao Lu, one of the Four Returnees, so there is no threat at all.

Moreover, by that time, Ready Player One would have been released for two weeks and had earned most of its box office revenue, so it didn’t matter whether it had any impact or not.

Li Xiaoping also thought this was a good choice. After receiving the schedule from Wu Yuan and confirming it again, she nodded and agreed, "July 7th is indeed a good date. The Legend of the Gods starring Jet Li, Fan Binbin, and Huang Xiaoming will be released on the 15th, so there will be a two-week window."

"Legend of the Gods?" Wu Yuan sneered and said indifferently: "Don't worry about this movie!" (End of this chapter)