No one expected that "Drunken Country Ballad" would become a work that broke the shackles of the situation, just as no one expected "Gravity" to become a phenomenal work.

This year's "Drunken Country Ballads" is reminiscent of "Little Sunshine Beauty" and "Juno" in every way, but compared to these two works, "Drunken Country Ballads" is creating more magical and crazy records, and it really takes a different path, which is impressive.

In the fifth week of screening, the box office of a single theater was still maintained above the ultra-high level of $50,000, and the cumulative box office in the first five weeks of release has strongly exceeded $20 million.

From the first week to the fifth week of screening, the pace of expansion of "Drunken Country Ballads" was steady, powerful, solid and steady, and some people even complained that it was too conservative, but Sony classics still went their own way, and it is undeniable that the fermentation and brewing of movie word-of-mouth showed a wonderful curve that was rising.

In fact, the influence of folk songs is mainly concentrated on the east and west coastlines of the North American continent, and even in the sixties, the popularity of folk songs in the central region has never been regarded as the top, and it is more spread among the young people of the "Beat Generation", and the countryside and soul are the hearts and minds of the people in the central region.

Those histories can be glimpsed in movies such as "Crazy Heart" and "Walking with Songs".

But the madness of the '60s and '70s, from folk to rock, did sweep across the continent and left an indelible mark, and now the "Beat Generation" is getting old, and future generations can only capture those distant memories from libraries, documentaries, or TV series.

When the "Drunken Country Folk Song" appeared, the young generation in the central region was not interested at all, not interested in folk songs, not interested in Lan Li, and not interested in movies.

With the spread of word-of-mouth, the influence began to penetrate layer by layer, especially when the work was still not visible in the middle region, and curiosity spread further.

Everything is quietly paving the way for the next comprehensive expansion plan of Sony classics.

In the second week of January 2014, "Drunken Country Folk" officially entered the public screening stage from the point screening, but for the time being, it is not a full public screening in the continental United States, and the screening theater line is determined at 350 rooms, which also means that the mainstream cities have been fully covered, basically ensuring that every city has at least one theater for screening.

In other words, this is the last test before the full release.

After the screening, Sony Classics is bound to collect the box office data of a single theater and the word-of-mouth data of the central region as soon as possible, to further understand the market prospects of this work in the central region, and prepare for the full release next week

How should the number of theaters in cities on both sides of the strait be arranged? What are the key theater cities in the central region? How many theaters should be arranged in the central region? What adjustments should be made to the propaganda strategy? Should they further expand propaganda or reduce costs and shrink the propaganda front?

And so on and so forth.

The expansion of 350 theaters can be said to be the last step in setting the goals of Sony Classics for the awards season, and it is also the last observation of the entire film industry on the potential of the box office market of independent art films. Faintly, the level of attention even exceeds that of the commercial blockbuster that will premiere this week.

It is worth mentioning that there is a major work released this week, Lionsgate invested 70 million to create the production of "Hercules", and the actor chose Kenan Lutz (Kellan-Lutz) who came into people's field of vision with "Twilight", but Lionsgate is obviously a little lacking in confidence, otherwise the movie would not have been released in the cold January.

It has also been proven that foreboding is always correct.

The reputation of "Hercules" completely collapsed, and the box office of the opening weekend was only $8.8 million, and now it is basically certain that the film will lose more than $50 million.

It's really hard for people to tell whether the box office fiasco of "Hercules" is more worth discussing, or the success of the screening of "Drunken Country Ballad" is more worthy of attention?

After all, the latter seems to have been expected.

After choosing 350 theaters to expand the theaters, in the second week of January, the box office of "Drunken Country Ballads" directly collapsed by more than half, and handed over $22,000 in data, which looks shocking, but is this really the case?

"Drunken Country Folk Songs" is still in the stage of screening in major cities on both sides of the strait, and there is no full release, which also means that the market for senior fans has reached a bottleneck, and now waiting for the full release, the general public has also entered the theaters;

In other words, the number of theaters has increased, the number of theaters has increased, and the number of cities screened has increased, but in essence, the screening scope of the film has remained among veteran fans and professional fans for the sixth consecutive week, and it is against this background that "Drunken Country Ballads" has achieved a single theater data of 22,000 US dollars, which is not only amazing, it is simply terrifying!

It worked!

The screening stage of "Drunken Country Ballads" was an incredible success!

In the second week of January, "Drunken Country Ballad" grossed $7.7 million at the weekend box office and pushed its cumulative box office to $29 million!

Sony Classic has released an official announcement internally, and then the movie will enter the profit stage!

It cannot be said that it is unheard of to recover the production cost just by relying on the screening stage, but the production cost is as high as 11 million, which seems incredible! It is even more powerful than the box office miracle of "gravity"! After all, the box office curve of "gravity" is still traceable, and the follow-up curves of "Avatar" and "Titanic" are even more rebellious; but "Drunken Country Ballad" can be said to be the first in the North American market at present.

All of North America is boiling!

Sony Classics officially announced at the first time:

In the third week of January, "Drunken Country Ballads" will enter the full release stage, with screenings in 3,100 theaters in North America.

There was an uproar!

For art films, 2,000 theaters are already a super-large-scale screening, and the "Wolf of Wall Street" and "American Hustle" are 2,600, but "Drunken Country Ballad" has directly entered the 3,000 level, and it is even more heroic than many commercial films.

This......

But industry insiders can only keep their mouths shut, because the screening curve of "Drunken Country Ballads" is already full of eccentricities, and because all the signs so far are indeed supporting Sony's classic approach, those empiricism is no longer working, and they can only choose to wait and see.

Objectively speaking, this is Sony's classic style!

The previous six weeks of screenings were too cautious and too careful, and it looked more like a Fox searchlight, but now people can finally confirm that it is indeed Sony's classic style of opening and closing, which makes people suffer from heart attacks, either in one fell swoop, or in a thousand miles.

From 350 theaters to 3,100 theaters, this step of Sony Classic is indeed shocking.

Everyone is curious about what kind of performance the box office data of "Drunken Country Folk" can give, whether it is good or bad, this is a case worth studying carefully, and it may be able to bring more inspiration to other art films, anyway, Sony Classics is the first to eat crabs, and other studios can summarize more things based on their lessons.

That's what the real crowd is looking forward to.

It's a little ridiculous and a little funny, in the cold winter of January, everyone's attention is temporarily focused on the box office figures of an art film, there is no problem with art films, and the problem is the box office figures, such a spectacle seems unprecedented, but it really happened.

The most amazing thing is that the third week of January ushered in a small frenzy of new movie premieres.

The comedy film "Joshu Self-Help Brothers", the animated film "Robbing a Nut Shop", and the action movie "The Verge" will all have new premieres.

Among them, "The Verge", which has an investment cost of up to 60 million, is a special series, the male protagonist "Jack-Ryan" is called the American 007, from the series created by the thriller Tom Clancy (Tom-Clancy), which has been brought to the big screen since the late eighties.

Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck have all played this role, with Harrison's two Jack Lane films shot in the nineties being "Patriot Games" and "Burning Pursuit" respectively, both of which were incredibly huge box office successes.

This time, the male lead was played by Chris Pine, and the female lead was chosen Keira Knightley, which was definitely the highlight, but the production company Paramount always lacked confidence and adjusted the schedule several times, and finally chose January, and now I am not sure if this is the right choice.

The situation suddenly became a little strange, art films and commercial films face off against the weekend box office, such a scene is really rare, although no one expects the "drunken country ballads" to write miracles and achieve counterattack artistic attributes or seriously lag behind, but ...... What if? What if it does happen?

Then, in the third week of January, the North American weekend box office charts were released! Boom! Boom!

Champion, "Drunken Country Ballad".

Runner-up, "Jozhou Self-Help Brother".

Third runner-up, "Lone Survivor".

The palace army, "robbing the nut shop".

Wait, so where did the "Touch-and-Go" go? This ...... Something doesn't seem right, right?