Millennium director

General Manager's Office, Light and Shadow Times Headquarters Building.

"Korea and Japan will both be released on July 22."

"Singapore and Malaysia will be released on July 19."

"Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Indonesia and other countries will also release in August."

"The most important thing is that this time, "Ready Player One" has attracted distributors from many countries around the world, especially in South America, because the countries in South America are an important radiation circle of Japanese comics."

"In countries like Brazil and Argentina, "Dragon Ball", "Naruto" and "One Piece" and other hot-blooded comics are well-known at the national level there."

"There are a lot of Japanese comic character elements in "Ready Player One", and the film distributors in South America are very active in introducing this movie."

"On the contrary, the response in Europe is mediocre. Science fiction movies have always performed very mediocrely at the box office in Europe. Old Europe only likes art and cultural movies, and has never been interested in themes such as science fiction and games."

Li Xiaoping was holding a document and excitedly reporting to Wu Yuan.

Having worked as a general manager for more than a decade and handled the release of dozens of films, Li Xiaoping rarely gets excited about the release of any film.

But "Ready Player One" is the exception.

Since its release a week ago, the box office of this movie in the mainland has exceeded 1.6 billion. Although it is not as good as "The Mermaid"'s 1.9 billion in 8 days, the box office performance of 1.6 billion in 7 days is enough to laugh at the crowd.

More importantly, the box office potential of "Ready Player One" is very high. The phenomenal viewing of this movie, although it is also unrepeatable, is not like "The Mermaid", which is a miracle created by overdrawing the reputation accumulated by Stephen Chow for decades and using the marketing of "I owe Stephen Chow a ticket".

The phenomenal box office of "Ready Player One" is mainly due to the large number of Easter eggs in the movie that attract people to discover, watch it twice, three times, and four times, and also relies on the hard power of this movie, that is, the special effects level that surpasses the entire mainland movie market!

The special effects level of "Ready Player One" is even better than "Warcraft", and it is not inferior to Marvel's "Avengers" series. It is also the top special effects blockbuster in Hollywood.

The cost of the movie alone cost 150 million US dollars!

You know, this is a Chinese movie, not a Hollywood movie, and the costs in all aspects are different.

Even if the price of movie special effects production is the same, from preparation to shooting, a Chinese movie with an investment of 150 million US dollars will cost at least 200 million US dollars to produce in Hollywood!

If you don't know what level of special effects this price brings, you will know it by making a horizontal comparison.

The cost of "The Wandering Earth 1" is about 350 million yuan, of which the shooting cost accounts for most of it, including scene construction, special effects production, actor pay and other aspects.

And this 350 million also includes 100 million publicity costs, which means that the actual cost of shooting is about 250 million.

By the time of "The Wandering Earth 2", its shooting cost was about 400-500 million RMB (excluding publicity), with a duration of nearly 3 hours, many stars, dazzling props, and several times more big scenes than the first one. The space elevator and the moon bombing directly stretched the film level to the cosmic level.

The space elevator crisis, the moon fall crisis, and the solar helium flash crisis, a total of 6,000 special effects shots, but it only cost 500 million RMB.

Of course, the efforts of director Guo Fan cannot be ignored.

For example, under Guo Fan's lobbying, Xugong Group not only sponsored the equipment for free, but also sent more than 300 employees to guide for half a year for fear that the crew would not be able to operate it.

If the director was not Guo Fan, if he had not "borrowed" everywhere and begged for alms everywhere, the shooting cost of this movie would actually be around 700 million RMB, or more than 100 million US dollars, which is the basic cost for the mainland to make a top-level Hollywood special effects blockbuster.

Considering that Hollywood's first-line actors are often paid 20 to 30 million US dollars, plus the labor costs, a movie shot by China with 100 million US dollars is almost equivalent to the level of Hollywood's 200 million US dollars.

Don't underestimate the small indicator of "labor costs". A sci-fi film crew has nearly 1,000 employees.

Wu Yuan's "Ready Player One" was shot in the studio because most of the plots did not need to blow up the moon or go to space, so the crew staff used was not large, only about 500 permanent staff, and a total of more than 2,000 extras.

"The Wandering Earth 2" had 1,189 permanent staff during the filming, 5,000+ Chinese extras, 17,000+ foreign extras, and 22,000+ extras...

With the average salary in China, hiring so many people, even if many of the extras only worked for three or five days, it would cost tens of millions a month.

If it were Hollywood, the same number of people would cost the same, but the unit behind would change from RMB to US dollars, and it would cost tens of millions of dollars.

Therefore, although the cost of "Ready Player One" is only $150 million, in fact, the level of this movie can be compared with the top Hollywood blockbusters with an investment of $200 million.

(If "The Wandering Earth 2" was filmed in Hollywood, it might not be able to make $250-300 million, because it uses too many people.)

Such a top special effects blockbuster, its hard power, its gorgeous and exquisite, and the virtual world "Oasis" full of future technology and imagination created by the overwhelming special effects pictures are enough to make any fan who enters the cinema to watch this movie admire it.

Coupled with its enduring and still classic "Dragon Quest" plot, as a commercial blockbuster, this movie is undoubtedly very excellent.

Compared with Stephen Chow's "The Mermaid", the box office performance of "Ready Player One" is a little worse, but the box office it has obtained is all based on strength. It has not overdrawn Wu Yuan's reputation, and even continues to accumulate reputation for him, making his status and influence as an international top science fiction director even deeper.

This is what Wu Yuan is most satisfied with.

He is only in his thirties this year, and he doesn't want to overdraw his popularity and reputation for the box office of a movie like Stephen Chow.

Now this result has made him extremely satisfied.

At present, the mainland box office of "Ready Player One" is very likely to break 3 billion, mainly because a large number of viewers have watched the film repeatedly, and there are many viewers who have watched it twice or three times. Although the viewing base is smaller than that of "The Mermaid", a family-friendly movie for all ages, the box office created is not much different from that of "The Mermaid".

This is something that Wu Yuan did not predict before the film was released, and it also surprised him. With this group of fans who watched the film repeatedly, the box office performance of "Ready Player One" originally predicted by Wu Yuan to be around 2.5 billion can be increased by another 500 million!

In fact, when "Ready Player One" set off the trend of "everyone looking for Easter eggs" in China and became a phenomenon, it was a foregone conclusion that the box office of this movie would break 3 billion.

On the 11th day of the film's release, the total box office of "Ready Player One" in the mainland successfully broke 2 billion. When the film was released for half a month and 15 days, the box office of this movie in the mainland had broken 2.3 billion.

By this time, the two overseas ticket markets of "Ready Player One" in Japan and South Korea have also released the film on a large scale for a week. With a large number of Easter eggs and Japanese comic elements that Asians can get in the film, the film is also very successful in the Japanese and Korean markets, attracting a large number of Japanese and Korean movie fans to watch the film.

On the last day of July, the total box office of "Ready Player One" in Asia successfully exceeded 3 billion! (End of this chapter)