director of the millennium

"Director Wu, our movie's total box office revenue exceeded 4 million on the day of its release!"

“This result is already very good!”

"Of the 4 million, 2 million were pre-sale box office, and more than 2 million were generated on the day of release!"

Wu Yuan's assistant, Xiao Zhang, who also works as the executive director at Guangying Times and earns two salaries, excitedly reported to Wu Yuan about the performance of "The Monkey King".

A box office of 4 million on the first day is already a very good result, especially outside of the Spring Festival period, there are very few movies that can achieve such a result.

Even Wu Yuan was very satisfied with this result.

In his impression, the box office result that can be better than this one must be "Detective Chinatown 2021" released in 3. The pre-sale box office of this movie exceeded 7 million yuan before its official release, and the box office on the first day of its release exceeded 10 billion yuan.

But the situation is different.

"Detective Chinatown 3" not only has the influence of two highly acclaimed and high-grossing predecessors, but this movie is also the first attractive movie after the epidemic, which directly ignited the general public who had not gone to the cinema to watch movies for two years due to the epidemic.

The good results achieved by "Detective Chinatown 3" on the first day were the result of the right time, right place and right people. It is a miracle that is almost impossible to replicate.

Apart from this movie, the box office of "The Mermaid" on the first day only exceeded 15 million yuan after 2 hours of release, including pre-sale box office.

For example, the first phenomenal hit movie in 2018, "Ex-Files 3", only grossed 6000 million on its first day.

The first-day box office of "The Monkey King", including pre-sales, reached 4 million, which is an excellent result and worthy of Wu Yuan's fame and status.

However, a good box office on the first day does not necessarily mean that the final box office will be good. There are countless movies whose box office on the first day accounts for half of the total box office. Most of them are scam movies whose reputation collapses immediately after the first day of release. They are known as "trailer scams."

A movie with mediocre box office on the first day does not necessarily mean that its final box office will be bad, just like the mediocre first-day box office of "Ex-Files 3" did not affect its final box office of over 20 billion.

The first-day box office of "The Wandering Earth" was only 1.87 million, which was not as good as "The Mermaid", but the final box office performance was nearly double that of "The Mermaid".
The successful start of "The Monkey King" is worth celebrating, but it is not time to open the champagne to celebrate yet.

Wu Yuan slapped his thighs with both hands and said with a smile: "This is a very good result, but I am more concerned about the current online audience's evaluation of this movie!"

It is already 12 p.m. on December 25th. The first wave of viewers who watched the midnight and afternoon shows and who wanted to share have basically already expressed their opinions on the movie "The Monkey King" on the Internet.

Douban also released a score for "The Monkey King" at noon today. The current score is 7.2, which is neither good nor bad.

To be honest, Wu Yuan thinks that this score is too high. After all, "The Monkey King" is really just a typical commercial popcorn movie. On a "strict" movie review website like Douban, it should usually only get a score of around 6.0.

The fact that the film now has a score of 7.2 is mainly due to Wu Yuan's status and influence. After all, he is a director who has won international film awards. The group of picky and demanding critics on Douban neither dare nor have the reason to find fault with Wu Yuan. Instead, they look up to him.

Just like foreign films automatically get +1 point on Douban, Wu Yuan’s films basically get the same treatment on Douban.

However, he pays more attention to film reviews than simple and crude ratings.

"When the monkey keeper played by Liu Xiao Ling Tong turned into Sun Wukong, I almost cried in the cinema. Just for this scene, the movie ticket was worth it!"

"There's nothing much to say about the plot. It's a very exciting commercial blockbuster. Zhang Yishan is indeed an actor with a very "monkey-like" look. It's really the best choice to let him inherit the role of Sun Wukong. I can't think of anyone more suitable in the domestic entertainment industry. This casting is half successful. At least it's much better than the new version by Lin Geng next door." "The battle between the Great Peng Demon King and Sun Wukong, the picture effects and special effects level are not inferior to Hollywood superhero movies at all. This is the first time I've seen such a cool Chinese fairy battle. Domestic fairy TV dramas should really learn from this and stop standing there and casting spells."

"The stick techniques of Sun Wukong and Sun Wu as well as the claw techniques of the Great Peng Demon King are all very cool, and the fighting is very exciting. It feels like watching martial arts movies in the past, and it is a martial arts movie with full special effects, which is very rare in this era."

“Wonderful! Great!”

Wu Yuan took a quick look at the comments on Douban and Weibo and found that most netizens focused their attention and praise on the several intense fighting scenes in the movie.

Whether it was the battle between Sun Wukong and the Dapeng Demon King, or the final battle between Sun Wukong and the Dapeng Demon King, as well as Sun Wukong's battles with various monsters when he was learning stick techniques in the trial, they all received a lot of praise.

This made Wu Yuan very happy, and he felt that the audience really understood him.

During the filming of "The Monkey King", the greatest effort was indeed put into the action scenes, and more than a dozen action directors from Hong Kong Island were invited.

Although this is a fantasy blockbuster, this movie is not like a fantasy idol drama, where the battle depends entirely on the protagonist flying in the air and making hand seals, and then all kinds of red and blue special effects spells fly around, even in a fierce battle.

This kind of picture is really boring and very lazy.

Look at Hollywood next door. Even superhero movies will eventually return to real-life fighting scenes.

Whether it is "Iron Man", "Captain America" ​​or the "Avengers" series, except for the wizard Doctor Strange, other superheroes have various abilities, but most of the fights are still bare-handed combat with punches and kicks.

Including the mysterious Wakanda, no matter how great its technology is hyped up, their warriors still fight hand-to-hand with spears.

Even when fighting Thanos in the end, it was a just hand-to-hand fight.

Hollywood is the country with the best special effects technology in the world, and they have no shortage of money to make special effects for their movies, but they still chose to go for fist-and-flesh fighting scenes!

why?
It is because only by returning to the original action scenes in this way can the visual effects be the best and can make the audience's adrenaline soar.

What’s the point of watching a group of people standing far away and smashing each other’s special effects?
Men, you have to watch the fights!
"Journey to the West" became a classic back then because in every episode of the film, Sun Wukong was waving his golden cudgel to fight monsters!

On the other hand, in China, there are fewer and fewer movies with intense action scenes, and the martial arts films that were once popular have long since fallen from grace.

Now the combination of action and special effects in "The Monkey King" has finally achieved the effect of visual enjoyment for the audience!

Seeing all the positive reviews made Wu Yuan feel relieved.

After all, this movie is an original fantasy universe film created by Light and Shadow Times, not an excellent later work copied by Wu Yuan, so there is no reference answer.

"It looks like everyone is quite satisfied." Wu Yuan breathed a sigh of relief.

As expected, the market gave him very positive feedback.

At 8pm on the third day of the release of "The Monkey King", according to the Maoyan Movie Data website, the mainland box office of "The Monkey King" successfully broke 10 billion RMB, not only breaking the record for the highest single-day box office of a Chinese-language film, but also setting a new record for the fastest Chinese-language film to break 10 billion RMB box office! (End of this chapter)