Entertainment: I just want to be the boss behind the scenes

Chapter 252: Word of Mouth Explodes, Target Billion

Friday, July 29th.

Today is the first day of the official release of "Detective Chinatown".

Because it happened to be at the end of the first half of the summer season and the second half had not yet begun, the film's screening ratio was quite good, reaching 30%.

As one of the producers and distributors, Wanda has arranged up to 45% of the screenings in its own theaters.

Of course, such a high first-day screening schedule is not entirely due to background resources. Another important reason is the benefit conversion brought about by the excellent performance of the film’s midnight show.

The custom of midnight screenings in the domestic film market mainly started with Transformers 3. Before that, there were basically only previews.

From 13 to now, nearly a thousand movies have been screened at midnight, but they are mainly imported films.

There are relatively few domestic films, one reason being that there is no IP effect and not many viewers will stay up late to watch them.

Another reason is that many producers don’t have enough confidence in the reputation of their own films, so they dare not do it.

In the Internet age, all information spreads quickly.

As soon as the midnight show is released, you don’t have to wait until 8 o’clock the next day to go online, basically everyone on the Internet will know the reviews of the movie.

So unless you are very confident in your own work, it is better to wait for the official release.

Some projects will even be dragged on until ten or eleven o'clock, and they will deceive as many audience members as possible.

But "Detective Chinatown" is naturally not included here.

You should know that before this, Meng Bai and his team had even rejected Weying's 5 million box office guarantee, which clearly showed that they were quite confident in the quality of the film.

What's more, there is the sign of "Green Ivy Criminal Investigation Universe".

Although this is the first film in the entire series, the trust in the name "Meng Bai" on the screenwriter column still attracted many viewers to go to the cinema in the middle of the night.

"Boss, Ruyi sent over the data from last night's midnight show, as well as some comments from the audience."

"Okay, send it to me."

Meng Bai opened the file Hua Yan passed to him, which recorded the data of each cinema that opened midnight shows.

After a quick look, he pulled it straight to the bottom.

"The total box office of the midnight screening of Detective Chinatown is 672 million."

Ever since the project of "Detective Chinatown" was launched, Meng Bai has learned about the film market and can now be considered a half-person in the film industry.

So when he saw the box office figures for the midnight show, he immediately reacted -

This is at least in the "top 10" level in the midnight box office rankings of domestic films.

In his impression, the only ones that can be ranked at the top are "The Mermaid", "Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons", "Lost in Hong Kong", "Mojin: The Legend", "Personal Tailor" and a few others.

This result is quite good for a medium-budget movie with a smaller cast.

However, the box office figures of the midnight show can only be considered as a bonus, the key still lies in the audience's evaluation and reputation.

Although there are some interviews with live audiences at the end of the document, they are not really necessary to read.

Because since midnight, many reviews about "Detective Chinatown" have appeared on the Internet.

"Great! I spent the whole night waiting for nothing. I haven't seen such a neat and reasonable domestic mystery movie in years."

"Sure enough, when it comes to suspense themes, Meng Bai is the best! He's not afraid of switching from a web series to a movie!"

"I want to know who played that little girl. I couldn't sleep the whole night after watching that smile."

"..."

Those who can stay up late to watch the midnight show are generally fans of Arc Light or enthusiasts of similar themes, so the reviews are basically concentrated on the "reasoning" part.

But even so, it can still be seen that the audience is very satisfied with the movie.

The biggest function of these reviews is to provide a reference for viewing for the audience in the official theaters, so that they can buy tickets with confidence.

Friday is a weekday, so there weren’t many people watching the movie during the day, but word of mouth has been growing.

Until the evening, as the work week is over, everyone goes home from get off work. Young people meet up with a few friends to have dinner together, and then go to see the latest movie together.

The middle-aged people go home to eat, and then at the request of their children who are on summer vacation, they go out to watch a movie to relax.

What they have in common is that they check out the reviews online before choosing which movie to watch.

After all, as Internet capital has gradually become more stable in the film and television industry, the large ticket subsidies of previous years have begun to be slowly reduced, and a ticket of more than 30 yuan is still quite expensive.

Besides, even if we don’t consider the ticket price, everyone’s time is valuable, and no one wants to waste three or four hours going out and end up watching a bad movie.

At this time, "Detective Chinatown", which had been brewing on the Internet for a whole day, suddenly burst out with powerful box office ability.

On the 29th, the first day of release, the movie's official box office was 8620 million. Including the midnight show data, the total was 9290 million.

On the 30th, the second day of its release, the box office rose to 1.15 million.

On the 31st, the third day of its release, the box office continued to rise and reached 1.38 million.

So far, the total box office for the movie’s first weekend has been released, totaling 3.4 million.

According to the usual rules of commercial films, the box office revenue in the first weekend usually accounts for 25%-30% of the total box office revenue, provided that the word of mouth of the film is good.

"I thought it was a cheesy comedy based on the cast, but I didn't expect to see such a logically clear mystery."

"Finally, there is a screenwriter for domestic mystery works who is not trying to take advantage of Sherlock Holmes. Do you know how excited I was when I heard the names of Ellery Queen, Utano Akira, Jack Futrille, and Aosaki Yugo in the cinema?"

"The plot is good and the actors perform well. Wang Baoqiang is really awesome and his performance is seamless. Xu Zheng shouldn't have used that idiotic Bao Beier in Lost in Hong Kong. It's too far behind."

"Xiao Yang's 'Return of Sister Wang' and Pan Yueming's perverted stepfather both performed well. Liu Haoran was a little immature but OK. However, the thing that impressed me the most was the little girl's smile at the end. It was really creepy."

"And Xiao Shenyang's 'That. One. Box. of. Gold. Purple', fuck, that's so funny!"

"..."

In addition to the plot, the main and supporting actors also received rave reviews.

Of course, there are definitely bugs, but basically not many viewers are so picky as to care about them.

The ratings for "Detective Chinatown" have also come out. More than 8.2 people on Douban gave it a high score of 97, which is better than % of suspense and mystery works.

"Based on this reputation and the box office performance of the first weekend, the total box office is likely to exceed 1 billion."

When Meng Bai and Chen Zhixi were on the phone, the sister spoke with a tone full of surprise and hope.

Although the box office records of domestic films have been raised again and again in recent years since "Lost in Thailand" broke the domestic film box office record to 1 billion for the first time.

"The Mermaid" released at the beginning of this year reached a terrifying figure of 33.8 billion.

But for the domestic film market, it is still extremely rare for a movie to break 1 billion.

At least so far, there are only 13 domestic films with box office revenue of over billion yuan.

And except for last year's "Charlotte's Troubles", the rest are all big-name productions with big casts.

Chen Zhixi had previously produced a movie with a box office of 1 billion yuan, which was Dapeng's "The Pancake Man".

Unfortunately, the film’s reputation was terrible, and it completely destroyed Dapeng’s reputation as a director.

The consensus in the industry is that it would be difficult for him to achieve such success again without three or four years or two or three high-quality films to make up for it.

Therefore, Chen Zhixi seems particularly excited about the high reputation of "Detective Chinatown 3".

Because this means that the subsequent series of movies have a foundation.

But no matter how much I think about it now, it’s just a prediction.

Whether the final result can be achieved depends on the quality of the competitors behind.

If a big hit comes out, "Detective Chinatown 3" will most likely be eliminated.

As the first weekend comes to an end, we enter August.

On the first day of August, Jackie Chan’s “Skiptrace” was released.

(End of this chapter)