The cross-Easter box office week that kicked off on March 28, compared with the three new films last week, a total of five films have landed in North American theaters on a large scale this time, namely "Horror Ghost" and "Hurricane Rescue" produced by Daenerys Entertainment, "Walking with the Devil" produced by Sony Pictures, Disney's fantasy comedy "The Sixth Man" and "New Year's Friend" produced by Paramount's Orion Pictures.

Of the five films, the most expensive to produce is "Walking with the Devil", where Harrison Ford and Raven Phoenix team up again after "Raiders of the Lost Ark 3", which costs $90 million and tells the story of the love entanglement between Frankie, a young man in the Irish Republican Army, and a middle-aged British police officer.

The original version of "Walking with the Devil" is Harrison Ford's partner Brad Pitt, this time, Sony also first sent an invitation to Pete, but unfortunately Pete chose "Changing Face", and then, Sony approached Keanu Reeves, Keanu didn't like the story, so he recommended it to his friend Raven Phoenix.

Raven Phoenix did not die young due to drug overdose in this life, and he shined a few years ago with the role of the 'Joker' in "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises", winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and he can be regarded as a popular first-line student. In addition, he cooperated with Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark 3", which was also a gimmick, so he was successfully selected by Sony.

Unfortunately, the whole project was a disaster.

The encounter is very similar to "Future Water World", which made Kevin Costner a big problem, the director and the main actor disagreed during the filming process, the script was changed frequently, the cycle was seriously delayed, and so on. In the end, not only was the budget obviously overspent, but the media was also one-sided after the release, with a comprehensive media score of only 3.5 points, and the two male protagonists were obviously passive and slacking off in the publicity process because of the serious unhappiness in the production process, and there was also gossip that Harrison Ford refused to record "Saturday Night Live" to build momentum for the film.

The results can be imagined.

Coupled with the fact that Disney's "The Sixth Man" and Orion Pictures' "Friends of the Year" are both low-budget small productions without any big names involved, and at the same time lack topics, they will inevitably become foils like last week's "King Kong", so in Easter week, it is still Daenerys Entertainment that dominates.

It's an all-round kind.

Not only did they taste the sweetness of the packaging marketing of the three films on Valentine's Day, but also in order to save their marketing budget, Daenerys Entertainment launched two new films that week of Easter, "Horror Ghosts" directed by Peter Jackson and the new version of "Hurricane Rescue" starring Jett Lee, held a lively premiere in the in-house theater of Universal Studios Burbank on the same day on March 26.

Not only that, but in addition to the various regular advertising campaigns, there are also peripheral gimmicks about the two films.

"Horror Ghost" director Peter Jackson is about to direct the "Lord of the Rings" series;

Jett Lee showcasing Chinese kung fu on The Late Show with David Letterman;

Quentin Tarantino publicly told reporters after watching "Hurricane Rescue" that he was inspired;

John Wu praised Jet Lee for "Hurricane Rescue";

Wen Mingna, the actor of "Dr. Chen" in "The Story of the Emergency Room", was electrocuted on the big screen again to share the wonderful behind-the-scenes;

At the premiere on the same stage, two pseudo-'newcomer' directors met at the PK box office;

Balabala.

In the end, the two medium-budget films with a combined cost of only $55 million gave people a sense of déjà vu crushed by a bombshell.

On the second day of the premiere, the word-of-mouth ban was directly lifted, and the comprehensive media scores of "Horror Ghost" and "Hurricane Rescue" scored 7.7 and 8.1 points respectively, which made the audience's last concerns completely disappear.

Since the first day of March 28, the two films have occupied the top two positions in the box office list without any suspense, so that it will inevitably have an impact on old films such as "Cable TV Repairman" and "Xenomorph 2" last week.

After the Easter weekend, the reopening of the North American stock market is still gloomy, and the film market is still booming.

When the box office week from March 28 to April 3 ended, the total box office in North America also hit a new high since 1997, reaching $137 million, which is basically equivalent to the level of the popular summer season.

The first week of "Horror Ghost" and "Hurricane Rescue", the result was beyond most people's expectations, and it turned out to be the winner of "Hurricane Rescue".

Directed by Simon's newcomer director Doug Liman, starring Chinese kung fu superstar Jett Lee, and paired with Hollywood stars such as Wen Mingna, one of the heroines of "ER", and potential actor Sam Rockwell, this crime action movie cost $25 million, and finally reached $31.37 million at the box office in the first week.

At first glance, it may seem inferior to last week's $33.14 million for Xenomorph 2, however, Xenomorph 2 opened with 2,679 screens, and the first week was $12,300. Because of the inevitable caution about the Chinese-led films, "Hurricane Rescue" only had 2,203 screens, so the average museum was $14,200.

It is conceivable that if "Hurricane Rescue" can have a screen comparable to that of "Xenomorph 2", even if the average museum will drop slightly, the opening box office will definitely easily surpass the first week of surpassing "Xenomorph 2".

"Horror Ghost" regrets the second place in the list.

With 2,563 screens basically enough, the box office of "Horror Ghost" in the first week was only $28.37 million, and the average audience barely reached $11,100.

Of course, this is definitely not a failure.

As for the opening box office of the two new films, there is no significant distance between "Cable Repairman" and "Xenomorph 2" last week, mainly because the competition is too fierce this week.

The third-ranked "Xenomorph 2", also for similar reasons, fell by 49% in the second week, earning $16.9 million, and the cumulative box office reached $50.04 million.

The fourth-place "Cable TV Repairman" is still the same, with a decline of 53% in the second week, which is more ruthless than "Xenomorph 2", earning $12.72 million, and the cumulative box office reaching $39.79 million, and the local box office is expected to stay at around $50 million. The total budget for the production and promotion of the film also happens to be 50 million US dollars, even if overseas and local are equal, Daenerys Entertainment can only look forward to follow-up channels to recover all costs.

Fifth place went to Sony's "Walking with the Devil".

After all, it was a super bombshell costing $90 million, and even if everyone said it was bad, many people would inevitably want to see how rotten it would be, so the first week of revenue reached $11.49 million.

Of course, compared with the production cost of $90 million, the first week earned $11.49 million, the current head of Sony, Norio Ohga, probably has to cover his chest with both hands to be less uncomfortable.

Culver City.

In the VIP hall of an AMC chain cinema near Sony Studios.

When the lights came on, the two people in the screening room did not get up, but looked at each other a little speechless.

The two are John Kelly, the current chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, and Chris Lee, president of Columbia Studios, who have just watched a show of "Hurricane Rescue" starring Jett Lee.

It's Saturday, April 5th.

To put it simply, in recent days, both of them have had a hard time because of the box office fiasco of "Walking with the Devil". Even though today is Saturday, I was called to the studio office in the morning, and I was beaten by Norio Ohga, the head of Sony in Japan.

However, the two actually feel a little resentful.

Sony Pictures has seen frequent changes at the top in recent years, with John Kelly, who worked at Warner for many years and worked on blockbusters such as "The Exorcist," only signed with Sony last year, and recommended Chris Lee, who is also a Hollywood producer, to partner with him to run Columbia Studios.

And "Walking with the Devil" is a project that was finalized before they arrived.

Frankly, the chaos in the film's production was not unrelated to the turmoil in the transition of power at the top last year, but neither of them felt that they should take much responsibility.

Because from the beginning of the entry, due to the signing of Peter Cooper and the two, they have not been given much power, almost dancing in iron shoes.

Otherwise, Sony will not be able to recruit more outstanding professional managers in recent years, such as some high-level executives who have been contacted by headhunters for a long time on Daenerys Entertainment, and Sony has no results every time he tries to. And the two of them, although they will never admit it, can indeed only be regarded as second-rate executives in Hollywood.

He doesn't have enough financial and personnel power, and he just does things like a puppet of Sony's top management, and it's no wonder that he can take care of a big studio.

After a moment of silence, John Kelly, who still recalled the hearty and wonderful fight in the film just now, had to be shocked by Chinese kung fu and said, "Chris, what do you think we should do next?"

Chris Lee smiled helplessly, recalling the film just now.

In this "Hurricane Rescue", Daenerys Entertainment apparently very coincidentally adopted the model of last year's Jack Cheng's "Rush Hour", and it also managed to differentiate. Jett Lee's kung fu style is real and violent, far from being the kind of witty and funny that Jack Cheng plays, and the white male lead partner played by Sam Rockwell is significantly weaker than Chris Tucker's role in "Rush Hour", and it is no problem to say that it is a male supporting role.

However, the character still achieves the film's skin tone balance very well.

Speaking of other highlights, "Hurricane Rescue" can be called a one-stop, city-wide hunt, without any urine spots, which is undoubtedly another key to success.

With family affection as the core, desperate for the sake of relatives, the emotional resonance between different races is once again realized.

Then, Jett Lee transformed from a mediocre Chinese man of Vino to a bloodthirsty murderer who made the entire human trafficker gang in the film feel terrified, and fit the common Hollywood popcorn movie template that everyone has a superhero dream.

Finally, there is Chinese kung fu, which has become popular again in recent years.

All the elements are combined, and it is unreasonable for this film to be unsuccessful.

Chris Lee certainly understands the core of John Kelly's problem, can Sony follow suit?

Absolutely.

Chris Lee happens to have cooperated with the Hong Kong film industry, and there are many kung fu stars on the other side of the ocean, and the other party is also willing to cooperate with Hollywood, however, whether it can achieve the level of "Hurricane Rescue" is the key to the problem. As we all know, in addition to black and white, Hollywood has inherently increased the risk of other types of films. If you just follow the trend, it's hard to say whether it will fail more completely.