Hollywood Director 1992

On Thursday, "Buried" sold 802 movie tickets at United Theatre, with sales reaching $6,416. Although slightly less than Wednesday, it still remained above $6,000.

William Mason was pleased with the box office data.

He faxed the box office data for the first six days of "Buried" to the headquarters of Consolidated Theatres.

He applied for an extension of the screening time for "Buried."

The headquarters of United Theatre saw the good increase in the box office of "Buried" and approved William Mason's application.

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Link re-signed a distribution contract with United Theatre.

This time, he no longer needed to pay a deposit.

Instead, according to the theater chain's contract, the two parties split the revenue six-four.

The theater chain took 60%, and Link took 40%.

The term was one week.

Whether to continue cooperation next week would depend on the box office performance of "Buried" in the next few days.

By Friday, "Buried" was able to continue screening at United Theatre.

However, in the new week, the renovation of the Burbank City - United Theatre was completed, and normal screenings began.

In addition to "Buried", the theater also began showing "Chaplin" starring Robert Downey Jr., the popular thriller "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", "My Cousin Vinny" directed by Jonathan Lynn, and the action crime film "Juice" starring the famous rapper Tupac.

Due to the increase in the number of movies released during the same period, the number of screenings for "Buried" was correspondingly reduced. Last week, as long as someone came to see "Buried", all ten theaters would screen it at any time.

Now, screenings are scheduled based on the occupancy rate of the movies. Movies with high occupancy rates will have more screenings.

This was unfavorable for "Buried". Other movies were promoted and distributed by regular film distribution companies, with hype and news.

In comparison, "Buried" was like a movie with no name, no producer, and no distributor.

However, with the release of "Chaplin", "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and other movies, the traffic at United Theatre increased, which could also drive the box office of "Buried".

Whether it was a benefit or a disadvantage depended on whether the competitiveness of "Buried" was strong enough.

Link also knew that "Buried" had reached a critical moment of survival.

In addition to hiring people to distribute flyers in the shopping center to attract audiences for "Buried\

,"he also took the time to write a large number of movie reviews and send them to newspapers after returning to his apartment in the evening.

These included movie interpretations of "Buried", movie reviews of "Buried", and reviews of several movies released during the same period. When writing movie reviews for other popular movies, he would slightly mention the recently released "Buried".

Because of his good level of writing movie reviews, three of his movie reviews were successively adopted by "USA Today", "The Hollywood Reporter", and "Variety".

— —

"A waste of effort!"

Seeing Link arranging people to distribute flyers in the shopping center, William Mason shook his head and was not optimistic about Link's approach.

The several movies released during the same period as "Buried" were all operated by film distribution companies behind them.

After the movie was released, the film distribution company would invest a lot of money in publicity.

Not only were there media reports, but also recommendations from many stars, with extremely high exposure.

Link's distribution of flyers to compete with movies released during the same period was like using rifles to fight against enemy tanks and missiles in war, which was of little use.

The three days of the weekend passed quickly.

William Mason expected that under the competition of many movies released during the same period, the box office data of "Buried" would fall below $3,000, or even less.

However, when he got the box office data for the three days of the weekend, he was greatly surprised.

Over the three days of the weekend, "Buried" sold a total of 3,107 tickets, with a box office revenue of up to $24,800, and an average daily box office of $8,285.

It ranked 4th among the 10 movies released during the same period, second only to the three popular movies "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", "My Cousin Vinny", and "Chaplin".

Without much promotion and publicity, "Buried" relied solely on word-of-mouth to generate an average daily box office of more than $8,000.

This data was too rare and belonged to the upper-middle level among niche movies.

After William Mason got the data, he contacted the headquarters of United Theatre to ask whether they should pay attention to this movie and expand the scale of screenings.

The box office potential of "Buried" was good. If it could be a hit in Burbank, it was estimated that it would also be good to put it in theaters in other cities.

The theater chain was a profit-making institution, and when it encountered such a potential movie, it would not let go of the opportunity to make money.

The headquarters of Consolidated Theatres responded on the same day that if the average daily box office revenue of "Buried" was still above $6,000 before Thursday, the scale of screenings could be expanded. The specific number of theaters to be added would be decided after the box office data of "Buried" came out in the next few days.

William Mason did not immediately tell Link the news after receiving the reply from the headquarters.

"Buried" had no distribution company and no promotion or publicity. Currently, the box office was still unstable.

He was worried that the box office of "Buried" would fall in the new week and would not reach the $6,000 passing line, and then there would be a joy in vain.

However, unexpectedly, in the new week, although the box office of "Buried" was slightly less than the three days of the weekend, it still remained between $6,500 and $8,200.

As of Thursday, the average daily box office revenue was $7,135, which was $327 more than the average daily box office performance of "Chaplin" released during the same period.

William Mason once again transmitted this data to the headquarters of the United Theater Chain.

The headquarters approved his application and agreed to expand the number of theaters screening "Buried" to 5 theaters, 2 in Los Angeles, 2 in New York, and 1 in San Francisco.

After William Mason received the reply, he called Link to tell him the good news, and at the same time asked Link to bring a lawyer to sign a supplementary distribution contract.

"That's really good news, William, thank you."

"No, you deserve all of this. If you hadn't insisted on screening "Buried", and if "Buried" itself wasn't attractive enough, I wouldn't have been able to help you."

"Okay, thank you myself too."

Hanging up the newly bought phone, Link put down his pen and rubbed his wrist.

In addition to writing movie reviews these days, he was also preparing a new script.

According to the system prompt, the higher the personal participation, the better the movie quality and the more box office subsidies, then the second movie cannot be a big project either.

The larger the project, the more people are needed, and the personal participation will be reduced.

In addition, low-budget movie projects have short shooting cycles, and some movies only take a few days to shoot and edit.

After layers of screening, Link chose "Paranormal Activity" as his second movie.

This movie was released in 2009, with a production cost of 15,000 US dollars. It only took 7 days from the start of shooting to the end of shooting. The shooting tool was only a handheld camera.

There were only two main actors in the film.

After the movie was released, it grossed more than 200 million US dollars worldwide.

If, with the blessing of the system, the box office data can be doubled, Link can also become a billionaire with this movie.

However, so far Link has not figured out the system's prompt of '4 times box office subsidy', whether it is x4 based on the original movie box office in the previous life, or x4 based on the original box office in this time and space, or x4 based on the production cost.

Hopefully it is the first, and it can also be the second, but never the third.

If it is the third, the total box office performance of "Buried" may only be hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is too bad.

So he wants to use "Buried" as an experiment, first figure out how to use the system, and then start shooting the second movie.

Knock knock knock!

"Link, are you going to the bar?"

Chris Bauer shouted outside the door.

"I'm not going, I'm busy."

"Okay, don't be too sad if the box office performance of "Buried" is not good. This is only your first movie. No one can succeed the first time. In the future, if you fail a few more times, you will definitely become a real director."

"Thank you! You are really good at comforting people."

After sending Chris Bauer away, Link stood in front of the window and looked at the scenery downstairs for a while, then returned to his desk to write the director's script.