Millennium director

After confirming Zhang Guorong's starring role and changing his life trajectory for the next two years, Wu Yuan's mission to come to Hong Kong Island this time has been completed.

As long as Zhang Guorong is not kept busy in the next year to the point where he suffers from repeated stomach problems, which affects the brain's endocrine disorders and induces depression, and he also suffers a mental blow from the failure of preparations for his first directed film, then there is a high probability that his depression will not occur. will appear.

Wu Yuan can only do this. He is not a god, so he cannot use any magic to make Zhang Guorong never suffer from depression.

Taking a step back, even if Zhang Guorong really cannot escape the fate of depression, at least this "The Embalmer" will bring Zhang Guorong's acting career to a happy ending!

Wu Yuan's "The Embalmer" is really aimed at Europe's top three movies. As long as Zhang Guorong works hard, he has a good chance of winning an actor!

Moreover, his dream of directing has come true, and he will have no regrets in this life.

Without accepting Zhang Guorong's mahjong game invitation, Wu Yuan got on the flight back to Los Angeles.

Well, Zhang Guorong loves playing mahjong very much, and he also has a mahjong circle. Lin Qingxia, Wang Jingwen, Liu Jialing and others are all his playing friends.

He even organized the Leslie Cup Mahjong Competition himself. For this competition, he specially spent money to make medals and trophies, and invited many of his good friends to participate in the competition.

Wu Yuan didn't know if he was destined to play mahjong. A group of his friends in Beijing loved playing mahjong. Zhang Guorong, whom he met in Hong Kong, was also a long-time mahjong fan.

I heard that when Zhang Guorong came to Beijing to film "Farewell My Concubine", he loved to play mahjong with Zhang Fengyi and Gong Huang after the filming.

This time he is coming to the capital to film "The Embalmer" again, and I'm afraid he will have to play with Wu Yuan's friends.

fair enough.

It is not a bad thing for Zhang Guorong to stay away from the paparazzi in Hong Kong who write viciously every day and enjoy life in the mainland.

On the plane, holding the Sony Walkman he bought on Hong Kong Island and playing Leslie Cheung's album tape, Wu Yuan gradually fell asleep while enjoying the last glory of the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

When he woke up again, he had arrived in Los Angeles on the other side of the ocean.

Outside the airport, it was still John who came to pick up Wu Yuan and gave him a warm hug.

"Daniel, I thought you would go back for a long time, but I didn't expect you to come back so soon."

"Well, everything went well, so I came back early."

Sitting in John's Ford, Wu Yuan rubbed his still heavy temples and asked casually: "How is our movie going? What are the release arrangements?"

"Of course everything went well." John was equally enthusiastic. "The final cut has been completed. Everyone in the company is very satisfied. Small-scale screenings in North America are scheduled to begin on July 2."

"You know, our movie is a low-budget movie and we don't have much money for promotion."

In North America, when small-budget movies are released, there is usually no grand premiere, no press release, and it is impossible to promote them both online and offline.

In most cases, there is only one way to release low-budget films in North America, which is to release them on a small scale first, and then gradually expand the scale of the release based on word-of-mouth feedback.

There is no set release period for North American movies and they can be shown for a long time.

Unlike high-cost blockbusters, Hollywood blockbusters often invest tens of millions of dollars in publicity and distribution costs, and are screened in one or two thousand cinemas at the same time, making everyone in North America aware of the film.

But this cannot be done for low-cost movies. Small-cost movies do not have any publicity funds and little capital for distribution.

If a small-budget movie wants to be popular and become a dark horse, it must rely on extending its release time, relying on the audience reputation accumulated in the early small-scale release, and relying on the audience's spontaneous recommendations and publicity to gradually become popular.

This method of operation later evolved into the "screening" system. In the early stage, small-scale screenings were held in several or more than a dozen cinemas, and well-known film critics were invited to watch.

Then use the influence of film critics and a small number of first-time viewers to spontaneously recommend and promote the movie on the Internet or offline to attract more viewers to watch the movie in the cinema, and then gradually expand the scale of the screening bit by bit. .

The release of "Juno" also follows this process.

It will first be released on a very small scale in 16 theaters in North America on July 2. If the reputation is good, the scale of the screening will be gradually expanded to one or two thousand theaters in about a month.

If this can be achieved, "Juno" will earn at least 40 to 50 million U.S. dollars at the North American box office.

If it can't be done, then it will obviously have insufficient stamina when it is released in dozens or hundreds of cinemas, and no one will care about it, and then it will be released.

Hollywood's capital is very realistic. If you don't spend tens of millions of dollars to get publicity and distribution, and make it known to everyone and attract the public to watch your movie, then the theater chain will not come up and give you a schedule of one or two thousand theaters. .

Only if you slowly rely on small-scale screenings to prove the value of the movie itself, prove that people are willing to go to the cinema to watch this movie, and can bring huge benefits to the cinema, will the cinema gradually increase the scale of screenings!

I can’t say whether this system is good or bad, but for most small-budget movies that don’t have money for promotion, it’s fairly fair.

If you are strong and you can attract audiences to watch, you will naturally get more film placement rates.

Wu Yuan had no objection to this.

He has great confidence in the quality of "Juno".

Although after the adaptation, this version of "Juno" has added Asian thinking and a growth line for the male protagonist, the core selling point of this movie is still the quirky Juno!

Wu Yuan's version of Juno has almost no difference in personality from the original version. She is still the girl with a personality that will be loved and sought after by countless girls in North America!

In this way, Wu Yuan waited idlely in Los Angeles for another month.

Until July 2nd, it was an ordinary day.

Wu Yuan led all the creative members of the "Juno" crew to a cinema in Los Angeles.

At 7:30 p.m., dozens of invited film critics, as well as a few viewers who saw the "Juno" poster in the theater that day and were curious to buy movie tickets, walked into the theater's No. 2 screening room with Wu Yuan and others. .

There was no opening speech, no touching speech.

When everyone was seated, the lights in the screening room were dimmed, and with the classic opening animation from 20th Century Fox, "Juno" was officially released in North America.

Starting from a high school sports meeting, two teenagers and girls, a campus love, an unexpected child, and a youth growth story slowly unfolded in front of all the audience.

The 102-minute film brought a special viewing experience to all the film critics and audiences present.

Before I knew it, the movie came to an end.

Whether it was the film's main creative staff who had personally experienced the entire filming process, or other audiences at the scene, they all gave warm applause at the moment the lights came on in the screening room.

The professional film critics sitting in the back row all picked up the notebooks they carried with them and left their final comments for the film.

"The content is substantial, the plot is smooth, and the narration is quite exciting. The romantic parts are sweet and beautiful, and the humorous parts are full of fun. While making the audience laugh, it also brings out thoughts about growth and maturity."

"Using a seemingly atypical approach, he successfully created a typical low-cost masterpiece."

"Cool and gentle youth."

"The topics discussed in the funny story are not light, but the title and soundtrack still bring a breath of fresh air."

That night, these film reviews appeared one after another in major film review forums in Los Angeles and in many film review magazines.

Within a very small circle of film critics, a wind called "Juno" is blowing.

I’ll write about the specific content of the movie tomorrow. It’s a pretty interesting story~