director of the millennium

The success of the "Ready Player One" movie in Asia has not only attracted the attention of Marvel.

With a total box office of US$7 million in Asia, this would surely rank among the top ten in the global annual movie box office rankings if nothing unexpected happens!
It is not surprising that this kind of movie appears in Hollywood. After all, Hollywood can now produce two or three movies with box office revenue of over $10 billion a year, and the top ten movies in the global box office are all contracted by Hollywood every year.

But such an achievement appeared in China, and it was a Chinese-language film, which was enough to attract a lot of international attention.

Let’s just say this is probably the first time that a non-Hollywood movie has made it into the top ten at the global box office!

Yes, ever since the global box office statistics were collected, the top ten global box office hits every year have been Hollywood movies.

Even though the Harry Potter series uses an all-British cast, it is also a Hollywood movie (produced by Warner Bros.)!
In the field of film, Hollywood has dominated the global market for decades!
And "Ready Player One" is the first movie to break this curse!

It is the first non-Hollywood film to rank among the top ten in the global box office!
In a sense, the record created by Wu Yuan and "Ready Player One" is far more important than a mainland movie ranking first at the box office!

"The Mermaid", which currently ranks first in the mainland movie box office, did not even make it into the top ten in this year's global movie box office rankings, hovering around 12-15th place.

Just like in most competitions, everyone only pays attention to the champion and the winner, and does not pay attention to the runner-up, third place, or loser.

Movies that do not make it into the top ten of the annual box office will not attract any attention from mainstream Hollywood, let alone be studied or imitated.

"Ready Player One" did it, becoming the first Chinese-language commercial film that was specifically sought out, understood, and analyzed by a group of Hollywood managers, practitioners, and upper-middle class people!
Various Hollywood commercial film directors and film companies have used their own methods to obtain the film resources of "Ready Player One", watched and studied it repeatedly, and some even watched the IMAX 3D version.

Don’t ask how they found the source of the film. With "Ready Player One" now released in nearly 30 countries, Hollywood has plenty of ways to do it, and South America has always been Hollywood's backyard.

Apart from anything else, Spielberg was also very concerned about the box office performance of "Ready Player One". He even called Wu Yuan and talked with him for a full hour.

On the phone, Spielberg praised the film's structure, adaptation direction, and final product highly, and even regarded Wu Yuan as a close friend!

Because Spielberg is also making a movie adaptation of Ready Player One!

In order to watch this movie, Spielberg flew to Brazil specifically. He watched the movie seven or eight times in Brazil and took up half a notebook with notes before he was satisfied.

He was really surprised, surprised that Wu Yuan's ideas were so similar to his!
The two people's adaptation direction of the original novel and the elements they wanted to add were surprisingly consistent!
The only difference is that Wu Yuan is a Chinese, so he added more elements of Asian pop culture, animation, and games to the virtual game world in the movie, while Spielberg wanted to make a "Ready Player One" that restored the American pop culture elements of the 1980s and 1990s.

In this regard, the two people's ideas coincided, which made Spielberg applaud and sigh in his heart. As expected, as top commercial film directors, it is easy for them to think alike. Well, Spielberg said this on the phone, which made Wu Yuan embarrassed. He couldn't say that he was "borrowing" from Spielberg's original "Ready Player One", but just reversed it.
Wu Yuan was having a hard time holding back his words, but precisely because he fully understood Spielberg's creative ideas and thoughts, the communication between them on the phone was incredibly smooth, which made Spielberg feel like he was in a different world.

Spielberg, who originally had only a nodding acquaintance with Wu Yuan and had exchanged contact information with him, wanted to make Wu Yuan his close friend, even though the age gap between them was a bit too big.

"Daniel, when my movie Ready Player One is finished and released, you must come and see it. I promise you will like it!"

At the end of the call, Spielberg repeatedly invited Wu Yuan to attend the future premiere of his "Ready Player One", and Wu Yuan was too embarrassed to refuse.

After hanging up the phone, Wu Yuan couldn't help but have an idea.

Can his and Spielberg's "Ready Player One" be considered two takes on the same book?
To be honest, this should be the most standard case of two adaptations of one book. With the same script, the cultural differences between Asia and North America were fully taken into consideration and then localized adaptations were made into two movies with the same origin.

Fundamentally speaking, it is no different from "20 Again"!
Moreover, both of them did buy the film and television adaptation rights of the novel "Ready Player One".

Of course, it is very regrettable that Wu Yuan's version of "Ready Player One" cannot be released in Europe and the United States, because when negotiating the purchase of the adaptation rights, it only obtained the adaptation and screening rights in Asia.

Even the release in South America was a supplementary clause negotiated later with the copyright holder, and South America was considered a "public market."

Moreover, Spielberg's version of "Ready Player One" can be released worldwide, which can be regarded as part of Hollywood's cultural hegemony. After all, it was Warner Bros. who competed with Wu Yuan for the film adaptation rights at the time, and it is impossible for the original author Ernest Cline not to favor his own family.

Wu Yuan was able to share the copyright with Warner Bros., which showed that he had a lot of face. Otherwise, Warner would have snatched the adaptation rights and Wu Yuan would have gotten nothing.

Therefore, the global box office performance of "Ready Player One" has basically reached its peak, and the final box office can only be fixed at around 7.5 million US dollars.

This is a very good result. It is an unprecedented epic achievement for a Chinese-language film and is also extremely outstanding for a Hollywood film.

After all, the global box office of "Inception" was only 8.3 million US dollars. It is impeccable that "Ready Player One" earned 7.5 million US dollars just by relying on the Asian market.

Just as the large-scale release of Ready Player One came to an end, the Light and Shadow Times Company held a grand celebration banquet. The film’s good performance overseas was even featured in a special report by CCTV, with the title: [Chinese-language films have achieved great success overseas, and Ready Player One has grossed over $7.5 million worldwide!]

Although it is not as shocking as the transition from 2D world to 3D world brought by the release of Gravity, the achievement is definitely much higher! (End of this chapter)