The Best Entertainment Era

March belongs to the off-season of the North American film market, and there will be almost no heavyweight movies released in this period. For a medium-budget manga adaptation film like Hellboy, Embassy Pictures specially selected March.

Compared with the real adaptation of superhero comics, Hellboy is more like an anti-hero cult film, and its production cost is only 45 million US dollars.

Therefore, the special effects of the film are a bit rough, and it is quite difficult to use such a production investment to create a film with more than 900 special effects shots.

Guillermo del Toro has a strong knowledge in the use of special effects. In order to save the budget, after filming several films in cooperation with Relativity Entertainment in the first two years, most of the props and some sets were collected. During the period, I used it a lot.

Unlike other crews who sell scraps such as props and sets after shooting, Guillermo del Toro has a habit of collecting these things.

I hope to open a film museum in the future.

Guillermo del Toro told Ronan at the Hellboy premiere: It could all be part of the exhibit.

Ronan said: I support your film museum plan. You cooperate with Relativity Entertainment. The props used by the crew can be collected.

A lot of things can only be sold as scraps if they are left behind, so it is better to give them away as favors.

Guillermo del Toro was fat and short, and he could barely see his eyes when he laughed.

Ronan took the lead on the red carpet, came to the media area in front of the Emirates Stone Theater, and briefly accepted interviews from media reporters.

I've always wanted to make a monster movie, Ronan said to media reporters, saying all kinds of nonsense: The work of Hellboy has peculiar characters and fantastic monsters and settings. All my imaginations of monster movies.

Seeing the leading actor Ron Perlman walk into the media area, Ronan gave up the stage at the right time.

Ron Perlman is an actor with very distinctive characteristics. In order to compete for the leading actor, Uwe Ball and Guillermo Del Toro once had a quarrel.

In the end, Ron Perlman chose Guillermo del Toro.

Having said that, when faced with these two, it is estimated that most actors will make the same choice as Ron Perlman.

According to the nonsense that Guillermo del Toro made to attract media reporters during his promotion, he got in touch with Ron Perlman as early as the stage of writing the script, saying that he was writing a movie for Pullman, and Pullman naturally Excited, he likes the comic character Hellboy very much. In order to play this strong character, he prepared for a whole year and trained five or six days a week.

During the publicity, the embassy film industry even played a banner, saying that Hellman is the first comic book character with an anti-hero image to be put on the screen!

This kind of propaganda rhetoric, just listen to it, and don't take it seriously.

For example, Guillermo del Toro also said that filming Hellboy has always been his dream. After getting the copyright, he couldn't find an investor, and finally moved Ronan Yunyun.

Entering the theater, Guillermo del Toro sat with Ronan and said, I still have some thoughts about Hellboy.

Ronan glanced at him: Gillmore,

Just say it.

Guillermo del Toro murmured, After the film, you can make an animated feature.

It can be considered. Of course Ronan would not agree immediately: I will let Shahai Entertainment discuss your proposal.

Specifically, it depends on how the film is received.

Guillermo del Toro actually still has plans for a new film project. Considering the occasion and Hellboy is just about to be released, he decided to have time to discuss this matter with Ronan in the future.

Plus, post-production on Hellboy wasn't very pleasant.

What is Hollywood like? Guillermo del Toro has experienced it personally in the past two years. The power of the director is too small. The two edited versions he submitted in a row were rejected by the producer Ronan. This released version has nothing to do with him. There is a big change from the original idea.

Even so, if Hellboy doesn't do well commercially, the rest of it won't matter.

Glancing at Ronan, his eyes fell on the special effects designer in the same row. During the filming of Hellboy, he saw many gunpla from the island country at the designer's place.

These mechs, like the first love at first sight, deeply penetrated into the heart of Guillermo del Toro.

What did the special effects designer say? Mechs are a man's romance!

Also from an island country, the mecha is like a monster like Godzilla in the same movie, what effect will it have?

Guillermo del Toro was fascinated for a while, as if he saw the mecha and Godzilla falling in love and killing each other.

However, before Mechs and Monsters, I had to fulfill my wish to shoot a Spanish language movie.

The movie started, and Guillermo del Toro came to his senses and stopped thinking about mech-man romances and Spanish-language movies.

The roaring thunder sounded, and in the heavy dark tones, the Gothic picture style was abnormal. The son of Satan from hell was summoned to the world by the German government.

Satan appears frequently in American comics, whether it is Marvel comics or DC comics next door, there are figures of hell and Satan.

Hellboy comes from Dark Horse Comics, the third largest comic book dealer in the United States. It has a short history of publication, and was first published in 1993.

The original comics are in a typical steampunk style, with very interesting ideas. They use the power of black magic and technology to summon demons. The Allied Forces discovered and destroyed this evil plan, and a son of demons who had been summoned to the human world was cultivated into A superhero who slays demons and defends mankind.

The post-production of this film dragged on for a long time. After Guillermo del Toro completed all the productions, he submitted two edited versions to Ronan in a row, but Ronan rejected them.

The reasons for both are the same, the pace of the film is too slow, the length of more than 120 minutes is too long, and the scale of the action scenes is too small.

At the beginning, Guillermo del Toro submitted the pg-13 version, which was revised several times at Ronan's request, and the film was completely turned into a dark, gloomy, brutal and bloody R-rated film.

Without affecting the narrative, the length of the film was also compressed to 102 minutes.

This makes the rhythm of the film more compact.

The main thing that was cut was the love scene of Momojiji.

This seriously weakens the thematic depth of the film, but what does this type of film do with thematic depth.

However, Guillermo del Toro has also done a lot of things well.

For example, he emphasized the cuteness of Hellboy.

As a male protagonist without a handsome face, Hellboy is a pure monster, rough and reckless, but in stark contrast to these, the film can clearly make people feel the contrast of Hellboy.

In particular, Hellboy's various lines of complaints, paired with Ron Perlman's very recognizable voice, are quite powerful.

This film creates another kind of heroic image. No matter how weird the protagonists in Hollywood hero films are, they undoubtedly revolve around the theme of being handsome and mighty. However, Hellboy breaks this rule. Looking at it, it is a monster, which almost combines the necessary appearance elements of all villains in the movie.

But after watching the movie, you will find that the monster Hellboy, except for his red skin and distinctive appearance, is actually an ordinary person.

Unlike the previous movie that was heavily biased towards children, this version of Hellboy is more violent and bloody, and the R-level rating also explains his audience.

In short, he is a typical American brainless hero. You don't need to use your brain too much when you encounter any problems, just go through the fast-paced reckless way.

In fact, most of the superhero movies adapted from comics follow this routine.

Correspondingly, the market acceptance of this routine is also extremely wide, with a large audience.

On the first weekend after its release, Hellboy appeared in 3,602 theaters in North America. With a score of 29.87 million US dollars, it surpassed Boys and Girls Black and White, which opened at the box office of 20.67 million US dollars on the same weekend, and won the North American box office. The champion of the list.

However, the word-of-mouth of the film is very average. imdb users scored 6.9 points, and theater audiences rated it as b. It is predicted that the North American box office will be around 80 million US dollars.

By its second weekend, Hellboy had lost its box-office title.

The achievement of 15.62 million US dollars can only ensure that Hellboy sits at the second place in the box office chart, and the North American box office chart champion is snatched by DreamWorks' American version of Midnight Ring 2.

This remake film got a good score of 35.06 million US dollars in North America during the opening weekend.

After DreamWorks has its own distribution channels, one after another films have sold well at the box office. Even if the films fail at the box office, due to their independent distribution channels, the losses can be minimized.

Today's DreamWorks has embarked on a completely different path from the past.

The most obvious is that DreamWorks' ability to resist risks has become stronger.

Movies that fail at the box office can make as much money as possible through online and offline distribution channels, while successful movies can maximize their profits with the support of their own independent distribution system.

In addition to distributing films produced by itself, DreamWorks has begun to undertake external distribution business, which has lower risks and more stable income.

After a painful lesson, DreamWorks seems to be on the rise again.

With the current situation of DreamWorks, they will not sell their lives just because a movie fails.

Hellboy was released for two weeks, and the North American box office revenue was 51.2 million US dollars.

Compared with last month's The Devil Wears Prada, the market response of Hellboy is much worse, but considering the future overseas and offline income, this project can still make a certain profit, but The profit margin will not be very high.

It is also impossible for every movie, like The Devil Wears Prada, to earn several times the investment with a relatively low investment.

The profit margin of Relativity Entertainment's investment in movies is already the highest in the Hollywood industry.