director of the millennium

"Wow, cool!"

“Is this a big stew?”

At that time, there was no Internet term like "stitched monster", but there were still similar adjectives.

In the eyes of most netizens who watched the trailer of "Ready Player One", this trailer, which is less than two minutes long, is a big hodgepodge.

The overwhelming virtual reality world, all kinds of familiar two-dimensional characters, and real-life gunfights and chase scenes interspersed in between make it impossible to understand what story this movie will tell.

But the visuals are truly amazing.

"Warcraft", which was just released a while ago, is a movie with great visual effects. There are a lot of special effects scenes produced by capturing facial expressions in the movie. It can be said that the production difficulty of the protagonists in this movie is comparable to the image of the protagonists in the virtual world of "Ready Player One".

Industrial Light & Magic delivered a perfect answer in "Warcraft". "Ready Player One" brought together four of Hollywood's top special effects companies including Industrial Light & Magic, so its special effects will naturally be even better!

At least judging from the trailer, "Ready Player One" has definitely prepared a fantastic virtual second universe for the audience, which is completely different from weird CG movies like "Jade Dynasty".

Just looking at the level of special effects shown in the trailer, if this is not a "trailer scam" and the special effects shots shown in the trailer are just the tip of the iceberg of the feature film, then this movie is definitely one that will make everyone buy tickets without a second thought.

On the Internet, some impatient Wu Yuan fans have already shouted the slogan "The best movie of the summer season"!

Especially now that "Warcraft" has received poor reviews after its release, looking at the remaining movies to be released in the summer season, there is no rival for it!
what?
Are you talking about "Legend of the Gods"?
Mainland movie fans, who have been deceived many times by these so-called Hong Kong blockbusters, are no longer so easily fooled.

This year's summer season clearly lacks any "blockbuster" phenomenal movies.

Since the quality of domestic films this summer is generally not very high, some imported films are also placed high hopes by theaters.

For example, the screening share of "World of Warcraft" was as high as 65.1%, setting a new record.

In the view of many industry insiders, the quality of this year's summer films is worrying, and their reputation has obviously declined.

As in the past, those films that received high praise in the circle of friends and on film review websites had dismal box office this summer, or were far from expectations.

"Doraemon: Nobita's Birth of Japan" has been the box office champion in Japan for three consecutive weeks, but its box office in mainland China has just exceeded 1 million yuan.

The highly acclaimed "Song of the Sea" only earned 1536 million yuan.

India's top-grossing blockbuster "Baahubali" only earned 749 million yuan in the mainland.

"Inferno" grossed about 2 million yuan in Russia, but its box office in mainland China was only 3050 million yuan.

The box office of "Finding Dory" in mainland China was 2 million yuan, which is far behind that in North America.

The situation of art films is not optimistic either. Roadside Picnic earned 643 million yuan at the box office, basically recovering its cost. In the whole month of June, apart from the outstanding performance of Warcraft, which broke the 6 billion yuan box office, there was not a single movie that could be considered of high quality.

The reputations of movies such as "So Young 2", "Summer Is Coming", "So I Married an Anti-Fan", "Love in the Center of the World", and "Summer's Desire" have fallen to the bottom and they were criticized as soon as they were released.

From 2010 to 2015, the Chinese film market's summer box office in these six years was 6 billion yuan, 23.3 billion yuan, 42 billion yuan, 42 billion yuan, 60 billion yuan and 92 billion yuan respectively, achieving a step-by-step growth year by year. However, judging from the situation in the first month, this year's summer box office seems unable to continue the step-by-step growth.

Of course, people in the industry are generally optimistic.

After all, the successful business models of several phenomenal films last year cannot be replicated. Last year was a big explosion, but this year is considered normal.

The success of last year's summer movies such as "Monster Hunt", "Jurassic World", "The Pancake Man" and "The Monkey King: Hero is Back" were all "unexpected situations" except for "Jurassic Park".

Coupled with the tightening of the capital market this year, which has affected the film industry, the most obvious result is that ticket subsidies have been reduced a lot this year.

Last year was the most enthusiastic year for ticket subsidies on major online ticket purchasing platforms. Maoyan, Meituan, Taopiaopiao and other online movie ticket purchasing platforms were just like the taxi-hailing software war that year, with ticket subsidies and free tickets being thrown out everywhere. For a movie with a ticket price of 60 yuan, the ticket price could be subsidized to the point where you only need to spend 19.9 yuan.

As for the box office, it is still calculated at 60 yuan per ticket.

As for the price difference, it will naturally be subsidized by the platform.

In other words, if a movie has a box office of 10 billion yuan, it is estimated that only one-third of the money is actually paid by the audience, and the remaining two-thirds is the difference made up by the ticket purchasing platform.

Of course, there are also a small number of moviegoers who buy full tickets for 60 yuan at the cinema, but given the frugal nature of the Chinese people, such audiences who buy full tickets can be counted on one hand.

This year, the market share of major ticket purchasing platforms has begun to stabilize. Coupled with the tightening of the capital market, the ticket subsidy situation this year is not so exaggerated. The price of a movie ticket has generally risen back to around 30-40 yuan.

In this case, the price of movie tickets has doubled. Although it is not to the point of being looked down upon, movie fans will definitely be more serious when choosing movies. Some movies that they might have bought tickets for and supported in the cinema last year will be given up by movie fans this year.

In the first month of this year's summer vacation, the average number of people attending cinemas across the country was very low, and the average occupancy rate of cinemas was less than 13%, which directly affected the income of cinemas and increased revenue pressure for many cinemas.

The reduction in ticket subsidies has also made many cinemas realize that they need to pick up things that they ignored in the past when they relied on ticket subsidies, and cannot blindly rely on the Internet war to "throw money" at each other.

Therefore, due to the lack of blockbuster movies, weak ticket subsidies and other reasons, the market is indeed eager for a "blockbuster movie" to save this bleak market.

Looking at the movies that have been confirmed to be released in July and August, there is no doubt that "Ready Player One" is the movie most qualified to save the theater market, and "Grave Robbers' Chronicles" barely ranks second.

In this situation, when some netizens on the Internet were eager to watch the fun and shouted that "Ready Player One" was the best movie of the summer, some theater chain managers also started to join in the fun and shouted this slogan.

Well, the scene has a feeling of being highly anticipated and long awaited.

It was also under this long-awaited situation that "Ready Player One" held its grand premiere in Beijing on July 7!
Five days later, Ready Player One was officially released in nearly 20,000 cinemas across the country! (End of this chapter)