Movie Master

First, there was an internal screening organized by Vanity Fair. After the screening, many media outlets on the west coast reported it one after another. Professionals' swearing was like a bomb, which aroused countless discussions; It deeply analyzed the work Hard Candy from multiple angles and the controversy it caused, attracting countless attention.

Prior to this, although Lance's crime trilogy has sparked a lot of discussion, especially Sin City has caused feedback from both ice and fire; but this time Hard Candy is different, whether it is that The torment of the ten-minute long shot, or the in-depth discussion of the injustice of the three views, all further challenged the sensitive nerves of the academy judges. Coupled with the arrogance and aloofness of Chaos Pictures and Lance, they naturally became the targets of the academy's fierce criticism .

Since the preparation of Hard Candy, he has no intention to please the judges of the academy, nor does he intend to make a difference in the awards season. As Lance said, this is a discussion and an experiment of his own artistic style, so this work Being able to be recognized by film critics, especially the use of the lens, the use of space and the use of psychology, has an important effect on Lance's creative style.

As for the academy judges, what do they think? It's not Fruit Candy to worry about. If he wants to please the academy judges, Crash and Little Miss Sunshine don't have any technical difficulties. The work completed by the shooting method is not only more feasible, but also the shooting process is not so hard.

But now, Hard Candy has unexpectedly entered the sights of awards season! And there seems to be a leading momentum, which is really dumbfounding.

As Michael of Variety magazine said, Hard Candy angered many old pedants, but this does not mean that this is not a good work, on the contrary, the courage, innovation and wisdom displayed in this work, Everything is reminiscent of 1971's A Clockwork Orange.

Of course, A Clockwork Orange's refutation of the government and hypocritical justice is deeper and more direct than Fruit Candy. But the latter pays homage to the former in a certain sense, and it is a step closer to the discussion of the means of implementing justice. The meaningful ending sublimates the whole story, which is worthy of recognition. Moreover, the latter's penetrating and soul-shocking performance is a highlight,

Back then, A Clockwork Orange won four Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing, but unfortunately all of them fell through. French drug trafficking network, it is embarrassing. Now that the Hard Candy is making a comeback, what's next for awards season?

In addition to Variety magazine, The New Yorker also expressed a similar view. They believe that this work is expected to win the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor. , Best Editing and other awards, among which the most commendable is definitely Lance's performance, He made the performance so easy, and more importantly, so wonderful, The New Yorker believes that this is definitely a small Another representative work of pattern literary works.

The decline of Good Night, Good Luck and the rise of Hard Candy seem to have completed the handover, and the pattern of the awards season has undergone earth-shaking changes unconsciously. Although at present, it is unknown whether Hard Candy can win in the award season, and whether Good Night, Good Luck can make a comeback, but judging from the current situation, it is clear that Hard Candy Fame is pushing beyond the limits of an experimental film, leaping in an unknown direction.

Controversy and praise fly together, focus and heated discussions accompany, the box office market is booming, Hard Fruit Candy has embarked on a completely different new path!

In the third week of screening, Hard Fruit Candy finally ushered in a small explosion, expanded from seven theaters to 152 theaters, and continued its own screening pace, and finally expanded its screening The scope of screenings has expanded to the entire North American region, and this work can be watched in major cities-even if it is only screened in a single theater, at least the pain of lovesickness of senior movie fans can finally be alleviated.

Hard Fruit Candy also delivered a perfect answer. The weekend box office of 5.9 million caused a lot of exclamation in the market. The frenzy of screening data in two weeks, with such a large expansion in the third week, still created such excellent data, which completely broke everyone's guess.

What is even more commendable is that under the background of three consecutive weeks of screenings, the cumulative box office of the film actually broke through the threshold of 10 million, and temporarily settled at 11 million. Such an achievement is difficult to express even in any language. Just need to think about it, three consecutive weeks of screenings, currently only 152 theaters have screened this work, but it has achieved a box office of 10 million, which really makes people feel the tireless efforts of the audience. Wild enthusiasm.

Considering that the production cost of Hard Candy is only 900,000 yuan, this profit recovery ratio is enough to make every independent film company greedy.

With the box office performance of 5.9 million in the three days of the weekend, Hard Fruit Candy ranked fifth in this week's North American weekend box office rankings. It not only broke through countless glasses, but also raised doubts and discussions reached a new high. As the only work in the top ten list with less than 1,000 theaters, the weekend income of Hard Fruit is even better than that of Spring/Heart/Rangling/Yang in the second week of its release— — the latter starring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep, even compared to Saw 2 and The Legend of Zorro, which premiered last week.

Such a box office performance fueled the upsurge of Hard Candy in the award season. More and more audiences watched the film, and the discussion on the Internet became more and more heated. However, the controversy not only did not disappear, but became more intense After getting up, people began to analyze this work in many aspects, from shots to lines, from characters to composition, from technical level to performance level and then to connotation level.

In a trance, Hard Candy is even more popular than Sin City and Murder with a Borrower when it was released. This is definitely an illusion.

It is worth mentioning that Good Night and Good Luck has entered its fifth week of release, and Warner Bros. is still expanding its screening in an orderly manner, but the effect is very poor. It was released in 600 theaters this week, but the box office did not exceed Two million, the current cumulative box office is only seven million, which has just passed the production cost line.

Because this work is also a small budget, with a budget of only seven million dollars, the loss is not a problem that Warner Bros. needs to worry about-if they get the Oscar statuette, the loss is worth it, but now it seems... the bamboo basket is nothing. The panic is gradually becoming reality.

Still, no one other than Warner Bros. and George Clooney seems to be paying attention to the fate of Good Night and Good Luck.

The entire film market can clearly feel the popularity of Hard Candy. Finally, other major theaters couldn't bear it anymore. AMC took the lead and talked with Chaos Pictures about expanding the screening of Hard Candy. , and then the distribution department of Chaos Films reached an agreement with the major theaters to gradually release the film.

Hard Fruit persisted in being screened in 217 theaters for another week, and after reaping a box office of 6.2 million at the weekend, in the third week of November, it finally took the step of expanding its screening, with Six hundred and eighty-three theaters announced that the film had entered the stage of public release. In the end, Fruit Candy handed over a brilliant score of 11,000 US dollars for a single theater and 7.5 million US dollars for the weekend, which is proved by iron-like facts. In addition to the fact that it is still very popular after entering the stage of public release, the cumulative box office has reached an astonishing figure of 28 million in five weeks of release!

During the production of Hard Candy, countless people believed that this work would become the lowest-grossing work of all Lance's works, even Lance himself thought so. But now it seems that the 60 million data of the City of God in North America is no longer out of reach. Could it be that a miracle is about to be born again?

Whether a miracle can be born, no one can say for sure, but what is certain is that the major theaters have great confidence in Chaos Pictures, not only works with different styles like Sin City can win a box office of 200 million in North America According to the data, even a slanted work like Hard Candy has easily achieved a big box office victory, which can definitely be called a cash cow.

With reference to a set of data, Landmark Cinemas was the only cooperative cinema chain during the first three weeks of screening of Hard Candy. Not only did they achieve a profit of more than 7 million with this work - except for movie tickets , as well as peripheral products such as popcorn, cola, cigarettes, etc. This data is equivalent to the sum of Landmark Cinemas in the first quarter of this year. They have also become popular on the Internet, and the discussion has reached unprecedented heights, becoming a free publicity channel. After Hard Fruit Candy entered the public release stage, Landmark Cinema still attracted a large number of movie lovers. The response was immeasurable.

Therefore, the major theater chains led by AMC and Royal Entertainment have accelerated the progress of negotiations with the distribution department of Chaos Pictures. This is really what James Corden did not expect.

After Lance decided to fall out with Warner Bros., the breakthrough of the distribution department of Chaos Films was closed. They could only step by step with the major theaters. It seems that the I am Legend and 007 series are so big All the convenience that the project brought was lost overnight. But who would have thought that the hard fruit candy that no one had expected would reopen a breakthrough and become the key to the further development of Chaos Film Industry?

Is it the hard candy that works the miracle...or Lance? James thinks this question needs to be thought about carefully.