Chapter 176 North America Unrivaled
Chapter 176 North America Unrivaled
When Wang Hao arrived in Jinling, he was greeted by Liu Meng, the director of I Am a Special Forces Soldier.
The man driving the military jeep picked up Wang Hao and drove at lightning speed all the way, which made Wang Hao look very impressive.
However, just when Wang Hao was enjoying the prestige of the military vehicles in Jinling, on the other side of the earth in North America, Wang Hao's "Wushuang" finally burst out with powerful power after a period of accumulation.
When "Wushuang" was in its third week of release, it finally welcomed a large-scale screening. A total of 1700 theaters across North America began showing this movie with two male protagonists, one Chinese and one American.
Because of the precedent of Jack Cheng's "Rush Hour", this kind of movie model with a male lead was easily accepted by the majority of North American audiences.
And when the sufficiently detailed process of counterfeit money production appeared on the big screen, the audience in the cinema exclaimed in unison.
Yes, compared to the brain-burning plot twists, for these North American audiences, it is the money-making plot in the first half of the movie that is more interesting to the audience.
After all, who doesn’t love the green dollar?
So when the third week ended, the movie "Wushuang" had ranked fourth in the North American box office rankings this week with a box office of 1627 million US dollars.
Seeing that the film has shown signs of taking off, theaters have quickly increased their screenings.
So on the first day of the fourth week, the box office of "Wushuang" did not decrease but increased, and the single-day box office directly broke through 500 million.
Then it was 600 million, 700 million, and 800 million. On the th day of its release in North America, the cumulative box office of "Wushuang" had reached more than million US dollars.
According to this trend, it may not be possible for "The Invincible" to break the 100 million box office, but Columbia Pictures can definitely recover its investment costs through the North American box office alone, and they can even make a fortune.
After all, the total investment in the movie "Wushuang" is only more than 10 million US dollars.
However, the development of worldly affairs is always unexpected. Soon, with the emergence of a piece of news, "Wushuang" was pushed to the forefront.
The content of the news was simple, nothing more than the FBI cracked a counterfeit money case.
This was originally just a small case, and the gang that made the counterfeit money was very inexperienced, but one detail in the case caught the attention of news media reporters.
That is, according to the leader of the counterfeit money gang, the reason he had the idea of making counterfeit money was because he watched the movie "Wushuang" and felt that he had the same superb painting skills as Li Wen in the movie, so he carried out this illegal criminal activity on impulse.
Such an extremely dramatic case naturally attracted the attention of a large number of North American netizens.
Everyone was discussing enthusiastically what kind of movie could lead people astray and commit crimes.
Those netizens who have already watched "Wushuang" naturally began to promote the movie spontaneously on the Internet.
In this process, Columbia's publicity department naturally made an indelible contribution.
Even the Los Angeles Times commented on it. Although it was just a very brief review, it was enough to show that "Dynasty Warriors" successfully broke the circle in North America.
Soon, influenced by this hot news, "Wushuang" expanded its theaters in North America again, reaching 2417 theaters, successfully breaking the record of "Hero" being released in 2301 theaters in North America. Of course, as the number of theaters increases, the attendance rate of the movie has also decreased.
But in the end, "Wushuang" ended its fifth week of release with a box office of 1946 million US dollars, and won the second place in the North American market that week.
As for the weekly box office champion, it was "Casino Royale" which took in 4100 million US dollars. The huge advantage of its series of films could not be shaken by "Warriors".
And this achievement may be the peak of the movie "The Man from Nowhere", because with Christmas approaching, another Hollywood blockbuster, "Night at the Museum" produced by Fox, is about to be released.
However, even if the performance began to decline gradually, the fact that a medium-budget crime film from Asia could achieve such results was enough to attract the attention of relevant practitioners in Hollywood.
Especially when they learned that the director of this movie was only 26 years old, the Hollywood news media were stunned.
You know, there are young directors in Hollywood. Many directors of independent films and art films are very young, but few people have seen such a young director of commercial films.
The famous Los Angeles Times once commented on Hollywood:
"This is just a film club made up of old people and conservatives. It is lifeless, gloomy, and full of rigidity and prejudice."
Just from this comment, we can see how discriminatory Hollywood is against young people.
Just as Wang Hao said when he discussed acting with Wang Zhi and others, the industrialization of film may have provided a strong boost for Hollywood to sweep the world, but this mature creative model has also formed equally solid shackles.
It is not easy for young people to stand out here, so Wang Hao, a young director from a foreign country, stands out.
Even though "Wushuang" did not win the weekly box office championship, in the eyes of the media, it has already become a phenomenal dark horse with great topicality.
The last director to achieve this kind of success in Hollywood was John Woo, who made "Face/Off".
However, Wang Hao had already returned to China at this time, and many media found it difficult to interview him.
Taking advantage of the popularity of "The Invincible", Columbia Pictures also put the release of the movie "Fatal Call" on the schedule and started the early publicity work.
Yes, although "The Call" was filmed earlier and Columbia had already purchased the overseas screening rights for the film, the film has been kept in Columbia's film library since it was bought.
After all, this is just an Asian movie shot by an Asian director, and even the leading actors are unknown Asians. In the eyes of the top executives at Columbia Pictures, there is no need to release it at all.
In other words, the plot of the movie is relatively novel, and perhaps it can be localized and remade like "Infernal Affairs".
It was not until the explosive popularity of "Wushuang" that they saw the opportunity, and "Fatal Call" appeared in the eyes of North American audiences as the prequel of "Wushuang".
It's not just "Fatal Call". When Columbia Pictures learned that Wang Hao's "Labyrinth of the Heart" series consists of three films in total, they even set their sights on his previous two films "Buried" and "The Shallows".
(End of this chapter)