At the 2010 Telluride Film Festival, Drake Doremus persuaded Ranley Hall to join "Love Crazy" with a salary of only $20,000; at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, "Love Crazy" won the Grand Jury Prize and the Special Jury Prize, and Focus Pictures stood out from the crowd of competitors and won the distribution rights of the film; in the second week of October 2011, "Love Crazy" was screened in a low-key manner.

"Love Crazy" is an ordinary independent film from any point of view, and the best destination for such a work is "Blue Valentine's Day" or "Winter's Bones", using Sundance as a platform to gain attention and then win a spot in the awards season, and the Oscar is clearly the ultimate goal.

But the reality has written a different development curve!

Even if the competition is getting more and more fierce, even if the confrontation is getting hotter and hotter, even if the works released every week are menacing, "Love Crazy" has always been motionless, showing the strong commercial potential of an art film that is abnormal and irregular, not only the box office decline every week is extremely gratifying, but also the cumulative box office growth rate of each week is also rapid, only six weeks after its release, the cumulative box office of "Love Crazy" in North America has exceeded 80 million!

In horizontal comparison, the cumulative box office of "Iron Fist" in six weeks is 81 million. If nothing else, "Love Crazy" can complete the overtake of "Iron Fist" next week.

Aside from the huge disparity in production costs, when the two works debuted, one work was released in 3,400 theaters on a large scale, and the other work was screened in four theaters, the distribution strategy can be described as completely different, but now, the latter is about to complete the overtaking of the former, which is really amazing. It's not that the performance of "Iron Armor and Steel Fist" is too embarrassing, but the box office trend of "Love is Crazy" is too amazing.

Although "Iron Fist" and "Love is Crazy" both accumulated about 80 million in six weeks, the situation of the two works is completely different, the former has always fallen by more than 40 percent in a single week, and the weekend box office has also slipped below 2 million, and the hope of 100 million in North America has been completely shattered; the latter box office decline is still controlled at about 30 percent, and the weekend box office is still higher than 5 million, and 100 million in North America can be said to be a certainty.

The prediction of "American Weekly" two weeks ago is becoming a reality.

Although 200 million in North America is now the measure of success, and the threshold of 100 million has become approachable, such a low posture is only for commercial films, and it is still an extremely difficult problem for the North American box office of art films to reach such a height.

In the past three years, among the art films nominated for the Oscars, there are only a handful of works that have grossed more than 100 million in North America, such as "Thunder on Earth", "Weakness", "Inglourious Basterds", "District 9", "Slumdog Millionaire", "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", and among these works, only one "Weakness" has grossed more than 200 million in North America.

It is worth mentioning that among the above-mentioned works, there is only one truly independent film, "District 9".

Not only that, "Love Crazy" is also a love drama movie, a romantic drama movie with an extremely sluggish overall performance since the millennium, not to mention that this is still an art film of the awards season series, and the box office results of the same type of films in North America are sluggish, "Blue Valentine" is 9 million, "500 Days with Shamo" is 32 million, and "Growth Education" is 12 million.

In other words, it is definitely not an easy task to break 100 million in North America, and it is even more difficult to repeat the miracle of "Juno" in 2007.

Now, "Love is Crazy" has been pinned on high hopes, replicating the miracle curve again, breaking 100 million in North America, college nominations, and unlimited awards season, and the weight of hope is extremely heavy on this literary love movie.

In the third week of November, "Twilight 4: New Moon (Part I)" won the championship with a weekend score of 100 million without suspense, and the cumulative box office of "Love Crazy" officially surpassed "Iron Fist".

In the third week of December, the North American box office of "Love Crazy" officially crossed the 100 million threshold, temporarily landing at 100.23 million US dollars.

In the second week of January, "Love Crazy" launched its second round of expansion, and the weekend box office showed a green growth effect, and in the third week of April, "Love Crazy" officially went offline, ending the long 21-week screening, drawing a perfect end to the mighty journey of this independent work that cost only $250,000 to break 100 million!

In the end, 21 weeks after the release of "Love Crazy", the North American box office finally settled at 125 million!

This is not only the second romantic drama film to break 100 million at the North American box office since the turn of the millennium, second only to "Pearl Harbor", replacing "The Notebook" and "Brokeback Mountain" as the best-grossing romantic drama movie in the 21st century - pure love classification, excluding other genres.

And it is also the sixth highest-grossing romantic drama movie in film history, and the top five works are "Titanic", "Ghost Love", "Pearl Harbor", "Mr. Sweetheart" and "Officer and Gentleman". Interestingly, four of these five films were nominated for major Oscars, with the only exception being Pearl Harbor, which received four technical nominations.

In other words, after the 21st century, there is not a single romantic drama movie that is popular and popular, and the box office and awards are grabbed together. The best performers in the awards season are "Cold Mountain" and "Brokeback Mountain".

What does this mean? It means that romantic drama films are declining in the mainstream market, and it also means that major film companies are shifting their focus from the romance drama genre to romantic comedies, and it also means that romantic drama films are developing in the direction of becoming more and more artistic, more and more independent, and more and more unpopular.

In the past few years, there have only been a handful of romantic drama movies that have won in the awards season, not to mention last year's "Blue Valentine's Day", which was applauded, but in the end it only received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The marginalization of the market, the snubbing of the academy, the genre films that once shone are now dying. Of course, this is also the inevitability of the process of the times, just like the almost disappeared western movies and song and dance movies.

So, what about "love is crazy"?

The first romantic drama film to break 100 million at the North American box office in a decade, and still ranks sixth in the box office list of the genre in film history, and no one should forget the praise of the film in the mouth of film critics.

So, will it be able to continue the Sundance Film Festival's three-year Oscar nomination for Best Picture? Will it be able to reverse the disadvantage of romantic drama films? Will it be able to replicate the feat of "growing up" and be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture again? Will it be able to fight its way through the fierce competition of the awards season? Will it be able to write a record again with its excellent North American box office?

No one expected "Love Crazy" to achieve such a stellar box office result, even if the label of love drama aside, a feat to be celebrated, and no one expected "Love Crazy" to spark such a lot of discussion and excitement, even if it couldn't get a place in the awards season, which is a welcome achievement.

That's not all, though.

After the North American market, "Love Crazy" landed in 45 countries and regions around the world, although it can't match the scale of "Harry Potter" in 60 or 70 countries, but Focus Pictures' distribution strategy is completely based on commercial films, of course, Golden Globe and Oscar-winning art films can also be released in this strategy - Focus Pictures' goal is like Sima Zhao's heart.

The success of "Love Crazy" at the box office in North America, with Sundance, Toronto, "The Tonight Show", "Fast & Thrill 5", "Convinced", Lan Li and Jennifer all played an important role, which is a chain effect, and all of them are indispensable, but in overseas markets, the influence of these factors has been more or less weakened, and only the influence of the awards season is still impressive.

In the end, the overseas performance of "Love Crazy" cannot be said to be amazing, but it is also satisfying.

As the hometown of Lan Li and Felicity, and one of the main filming locations of "Love Crazy", not to mention the highly sought-after area for love art films, the UK has once again shown strong market potential, and this region alone has contributed 19 million US dollars in box office figures!

This result not only easily crowned the box office champion in overseas markets, but also rode the dust, and the box office data of other countries and regions cannot be compared at all.

Outside of the UK, Germany and Australia have grossed more than 10 million, which is the only overseas box office of 30 million, but Spain, France and Mexico have also performed well, all exceeding 8 million.

In the entire "Love Crazy" crew, only Lan Li can barely be called to have "box office appeal", after all, the craze of "Speed and Excitement/Love 5" has not yet dissipated. According to statistics, as many as 27 percent of the audience in the overseas market entered the cinema because of the blue gift, which is even higher than that in North America, which is only 13 percent. What's more, the satisfaction of this part of the audience has reached more than 95%.

Quietly, and even suddenly, Lan Li has begun to have a group of loyal fans.

In the end, "Love Crazy" is such a movie with no big names, no stars, no publicity, no special effects, and it is also an art film, and the cumulative total box office in eight regions in the overseas market has exceeded 5 million, which also makes the total overseas box office of the film reach 100 million US dollars in one go.

In fact, the exact figure is more than 100,02.3 million, but the follow-up fraction is really too small, so it is equivalent to 100 million US dollars.

This is also the first overseas box office to break 100 million since "Pearl Harbor", and the closest "Brokeback Mountain" stopped at 95 million, and once again, "Love is Crazy" wrote its own history.

A film with an investment cost of only 250,000 yuan ended up grossing $227 million worldwide. This is a miracle.