Conquer America, Start with a Boxing Champion

"Okay, you get busy with your work first, and I'll wait for you to come back and have dinner together."

After hanging up the phone, Link flipped through the online news on his tablet. A large number of negative comments appeared on professional film websites such as "Entertainment Online", and more than a dozen well-known film critics publicly disparaged "Bridesmaids".

Some complain that the plot is awkward and not suitable for normal people to watch, some complain that the heroine's character is not likable, and some complain that Link is not suitable for comedy and is a bit of a drama.

Originally, "Bridesmaids" had very good ratings on professional websites, with a comprehensive media score of B, an A- on the Yahoo audience website, and a Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating of 72%, which was no worse than "Thor" of the same period.

Only one day later, the comprehensive media score dropped to B-, Yahoo audience B, the Rotten Tomatoes freshness dropped to 63%, and several movie rating websites received many negative reviews.

Nowadays, many movie fans will read relevant reviews before watching a movie. Worsening reputation will directly affect the box office of the movie.

In this case, it is obvious that someone is deliberately trying to hack the movie. It is not difficult to guess who the person is.

Link opened Twitter and took a look. Many film critics also posted negative reviews of "Bridesmaids" through Twitter.

One of them, Oscar Holbrooke, had the most popular tweet, with more than 4,000 comments.

This person is a special film critic for "Entertainment Weekly". He is known for his sharp review style and has no mercy on bad movies. He has 1.02 million fans on his account.

He posted three consecutive tweets from yesterday afternoon to this morning, starting with "What a terrible comedy movie. There is not a single funny plot in the whole movie, only embarrassment!" Awkward! Awkward! Watching this movie is a waste of life and not recommended at all! ’

These three tweets complained about everything from the plot design of the movie to the cast and the acting skills of the leading actors.

Finally, I wrote a comment specifically to complain about him and @him.

First they praised his outstanding performance in "The Expendables", but then changed their tone and criticized his performance as the biggest flaw of the film. He said that his performance was not funny at all, but rather embarrassing. It was in this movie with an embarrassing plot. The biggest embarrassment.

He also said that he is expected to win the Golden Raspberry Award for Best Supporting Actor next year.

Link shook his head. Although he had a little problem with his performance, it wasn't that bad.

In addition, this is a female-led drama. For the sake of the overall plot, the director cut his role from the first five minutes to less than 100 seconds of footage. How could it be any worse?

He looked through this person's past movie reviews and found that he only reviewed the most popular and controversial movies every month.

As long as he catches the slightest flaw in the movie, he will spray the movie into a pile of shit. His comments on the movie are also very unprofessional and the words he uses are very emotional.

He doesn't look like a serious film critic, but an Internet celebrity who is trying to attract traffic.

Link thought for a moment and posted, 'Interesting! In 2008, he criticized "The Twilight Saga" as a bad movie, in 2009 he criticized "The Hangover", in 2010 he criticized "Sherlock Holmes" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1", and in 2011 he first criticized "The Speed ​​and Era" "Passion 5", and then criticized "Bridesmaids", predicting that "Bridesmaids" will be a hit.

Although he sold his Twitter shares and is not a Twitter shareholder, he is still the user with the most followers on the Twitter platform. The current number of followers is 92.15 million, just shy of breaking 100 million.

After he replied to the film critic named Oscar Holbrook, it quickly attracted a lot of attention. The likes of this comment quickly exceeded 50,000, and the number of comments quickly reached 1,000.

Many people couldn't believe that a top star would be interested in replying to a film critic's comment.

Some netizens also explained for Link that since yesterday, a lot of negative comments about "Bridesmaids" suddenly appeared in the media.

Those comments are all just like the comments posted by this film critic, which are baseless and mindless.

This situation is very abnormal.

Apparently someone was deliberately trying to disfavor this movie. Link probably couldn't stand it, so he replied to this comment.

Then many netizens who had watched the movie said that they had just watched "Bridesmaids" and they thought it was very good. It was much better than other movies on this subject during the same period.

Netizens discussed it for a few minutes, and film critic Oscar Holbrook came online. He first thanked Link for his reply and said that he was reviewing "Bridesmaids" from an objective, fair and professional perspective, and was not making random comments.

Link thought for a moment and didn't reply, because after he replied to this comment, the number of fans of the other party quickly soared from 1.02 million to 1.83 million.

This situation reminded him of 2008, when he was still a young boxer and gained a lot of attention by pulling on celebrities.

Now that he has become a top player, many people have followed his example and gained attention by pulling him out. This can be regarded as tit-for-tat.

When he returned to the villa, he turned on his phone to read the news again, and found that his reply to the film critic's news had become a trending headline on Twitter.

The title is 'Link publicly refutes critics' criticism of "Bridesmaids"', and the popularity reached 4.87 million, 800,000 more than the news that the "Fast 5" crew participated in a racing event in Tokyo, Japan.

In related news, the film critic named Oscar Holbrook was interviewed by a reporter from "Entertainment Online".

He said that every movie review he published in the past was his true feelings after watching the movie, and the same is true for this "Bridesmaids". His purpose of doing this is to help movie fans de mine.

The reporter mentioned the "Twilight Saga" hit in 2008. He commented that the movie was an epic bad movie. In 2009, he criticized the director of "The Hangover" as if it was shot while drunk and it was a mess. He continued to criticize it in 2010. "Sherlock Holmes" and "Harry Potter".

The reporter asked him if he criticizes any movie that becomes popular?

Film critic Oscar said no, "Bridesmaids" was not a hit, and he criticized the movie solely because of the poor viewing experience.

The reporter asked him how he felt being called out by Link.

Film critic Oscar said it was his honor and said he hoped Link could accept criticism with an open mind, seriously hone his acting skills, and strive to produce better works next time.

In addition to the film critic's interview video, many news websites forwarded the news, and the attention of "Bridesmaids" on the Internet has increased significantly.

Link looked at it for a while, closed the computer, and went to the kitchen to cook a few dishes.

"Link, you better leave this matter alone. You are a top star now, and it is not worthwhile to end up for such a trivial matter."

Before the last dish was finished, Ivaca walked into the kitchen on high heels.

Wearing a white women's suit and pencil trousers, which matched her cold face and rosy red lips, she was carrying a small square satchel in her hand. It was obvious that she had just returned home and had not had time to put down the bag.

"I know, how was your work meeting? How are you going to deal with these negative news?"

Link asked as he took off his apron and handed the kitchen to the servant.

"According to the conventional method, if someone spends money to criticize "Bridesmaids", we will spend money to find more people to praise the movie. If the reputation is polarized and even controversial, the exposure of "Bridesmaids" in the media will also increase significantly. If done properly , it can also drive box office growth, but the cost of promotion will increase by two to three million. "

Ivaca explained.

Link nodded, adding two to three million in publicity costs is not much.

The only thing that made him unhappy was that he knew that the Weinstein brothers were most likely responsible for the incident, but he couldn't take revenge.

In fact, he can also find someone to brush up the bad reviews of "Revenge of the Father", but the male and female protagonists of this movie, Sean Penn and Frances McDormand, are very good actors, and they are not Harvey fans. People accuse Weinstein Films of hurting them by mistake.

This is the rat trap.

In addition, it would be too stingy to attack his opponent in this way, and he would not do it.

"Let's eat. Don't talk about work after get off work."

Link said as he took her satchel.

"What delicious food did you cook today?"

"Kung pao chicken, twice-cooked pork, vegetable soup, do you like it?"

"Yes, I used to think it was convenient and delicious to have a chef come to my home to cook. But after eating your food, I realized that the food cooked at home is the most delicious."

Ivaca held his hand and smiled.

Link smiled softly. Since Ivaca moved here, she has made some adjustments in her living habits and is gradually getting closer to him. This is a good sign.

In its second week of release, "Bridesmaids" saw a 3.5% increase in film schedules and a box office of US$19.58 million in North America, a decrease of less than 10% from last week.

This result looks good, but according to data investigated by the distribution department, if it had not received those negative reviews, this week's box office may be higher than last week, and it is expected to be around 25 million.

The difference is more than five million.

Thinking of this number, Link wanted to pull Harvey into the boxing ring and KO him with heavy punches a hundred times.

This week's box office champion is "Pirates of the Caribbean 4", which was released in 4,155 theaters in North America, with a box office of US$90.1 million in its first weekend, setting a record for the highest first week box office in North America this year.

The runner-up was "Thor" in its second week of release, with a box office of US$48.5 million this week and a cumulative box office of over 100 million.

"Fast 5" fell to fourth place with US$16.05 million, with a cumulative box office of nearly US$160 million in North America and a global box office of nearly US$400 million.

"Revenge of My Father" dropped to ninth place with $3.8 million, only $200,000 more than Lionsgate's "The Big Brother".

"Bridesmaids" has accumulated a total box office of nearly 40 million in North America during its two weeks of release.

At the same time, overseas box office data was also fed back to the distribution department. The film was simultaneously released in 35 countries and regions in Europe, America, Asia and Oceania, with a cumulative box office of US$56.33 million in ten days, and the global box office is about to exceed 100 million.

The box office of a comedy movie exceeded 100 million in ten days after its release, which also shows that the quality of the movie is indeed good.

After the overseas first-week box office results were released, Warner and Lionsgate, the distribution companies of "Bridesmaids", took the opportunity to hype it up and used overseas box office data to refute the many negative reviews in newspapers.

In the third week of the release of "Bridesmaids", according to media expectations, the box office performance this week should have dropped to around 10 million.

Because according to the law of movie box office rise and fall, except for phenomenal movies like "Titanic", the normal box office drop of other movies in the first week is between 20% and 50% compared with the second week. A drop of more than 50% is considered a big drop, and a drop of less than 50% is considered a big drop. 20% are movies of better quality, which can increase the film scheduling rate.

This situation is similar to the album release, the later the decline becomes, the greater it becomes.

But this week, the box office of "Bridesmaids" still reached an astonishing US$16.81 million, a drop of less than 15%.

Many media outlets later attributed the box office figures to Link, who released a video this week.

This video is a live video of Fat James getting married. Link suddenly appeared at the wedding party with his band and the stars of "Bridesmaids" and sang a new song "Sugar".

This is a very sweet wedding song.

After the video was posted to YouTube, it received over one million views within six hours and 5.5 million views in one day.

The live recording of this song was also uploaded to the Spotify platform at the same time. It was played 10.2 million times in 28 hours, becoming the song that broke 10 million plays in North America the fastest, setting a new record for Spotify music website in North America.

"Bridesmaids" has accumulated a total box office of 56.76 million US dollars in North America and 148 million US dollars worldwide in three weeks. It is expected that the global box office will exceed 200 million, and the film has successfully entered the ranks of summer hits.

Harvey was so angry when he saw this data that he cursed in the office, not only scolding Link, but also scolding Bob for incompetence.

Bob was also helpless. At first, he arranged for many media to publish negative reviews of "Bridesmaids", but Lionsgate and Warner Distribution Company were not to be outdone and invested millions of funds to restore its reputation.

If you want to continue to suppress "Bridesmaids", you have to pay real money.

Bob was reluctant to spend money and stopped after only a wave of public opinion attacks.

I thought that after this wave of negative public opinion propaganda, the North American box office of "Bridesmaids" could be controlled below 50 million.

But no one expected that Link would use the new song to promote the movie, which quickly broke through 50 million and reached 56 million in North American box office.

Bob also had to admire Link's luck and hype.

He even wanted to persuade Harvey to reconcile with Link. Anyway, the two of them didn't have any big hatred. If they continued to fight, they would lose more money.

But seeing Harvey's dark face, he wisely swallowed his words and thought of other ways to deal with Link and Evaka.