First week of 2014.

There are 155 theaters on demand, with a single box office of $50,000 and a weekend box office of $7.75 million, ranking ninth on the North American weekend box office chart, with a cumulative box office of $20 million in five weeks of release.

This is the transcript handed over by "Drunken Country Ballads"!

Even if all eyes are on it, even if the expectations are raised, even if there is a premonition, but after the actual results are released, it still caused an exclamation: Sony Classic planned the "Dream Back to the Kerosene Lamp Bar" concert, and it was really successful!

Entering the fifth week of screening, the single-hall box office data of "Drunken Country Folk Songs" still maintains amazing vitality, especially when miracles have been repeatedly created before, so the single-hall results are even more amazing, once again showing the continuous rise of this work in terms of topic popularity and eye-catching expectations. The combination of "Coen Brothers + Blue Gift" is undoubtedly the biggest contributor to the detonation of the film market, and at the same time, it also really allows people to see the market potential of art films

Because the movie is still in the stage of screening, this also means that the general public has not entered the theater for the first time, and the main force of the audience is still senior fans, or professional or fanatical or interested fans, who have the ability to appreciate art films and yearn for the charm of art films.

For a long time, the North American market has always recognized that this group of so-called "veteran fans" is a niche group. Not with the general public of commercial popcorn, but with the market box office data for art films, the box office figures have been so unsatisfactory that the entire independent film production market revolves around the awards season, and the development of other art film industries has become more and more sluggish.

Awards season works always bear the label of Oscar, and many works of art do not necessarily meet the aesthetics of the Oscars.

David Fincher is a typical victim of such a system, and when asked about the new film plan in an interview at the Telluride Film Festival, David expressed regret, "Hollywood is now surrounded by two kinds of tights, one is the superhero tights in the summer, and the other is the golden man tights in the winter, and other than that, there is almost no room for other films, and I am the other kind." ”

Throughout David's career as a director, he is good at medium-cost works, not small cost nor high cost, but a certain amount of investment required a certain amount of investment, just stuck in the position of not up or down, at the same time, the sword-like image composition and sharp and compact editing style can often give the film a wonderful authorial temperament, from "The Seven Deadly Sins" to "Fight Club" to "Zodiac", from "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" to "The Social Network" to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", all of them.

To put it simply, David is not the style that the Oscar department likes, but his work has an undoubted strong charm.

The 2010 "Social Network" was almost the pinnacle of his career, finding a delicate balance between personal style and college preferences, and showing domineering throughout the awards season, only to lose inexplicably to "The King's Speech" and even the mediocre Tom Hopper for Best Director.

The Hollywood industry has always believed that Tom Hopper is the most "watery" Oscar-winning director in the past two decades, and there is not much controversy about even extending the time period to the entire Oscar history.

On the one hand, it is true that Tom Hopper really has no style to speak of, in "The King's Speech", you can see the script, you can see the actors, but you can never see the director, and the traces of the director are almost completely submerged in the movie, which makes the film not much different from the TV movie.

On the other hand, they are also complaining about David Fincher. Even "Brokeback Mountain" lost to "Crash", at least Lee/Ann still won Best Director, while David Fincher lost to Tom Hubb in the Best Director award, which is really embarrassing. This also proves once again that David is out of place with the preppy style.

In 2014, after David filmed "Gone Girl", he almost distanced himself from the film industry, because he couldn't find investment for the projects he hoped to shoot. Yes, the famous David Fincher couldn't find the money for the film, and went around in 2018 but there was still no new movie project online, just filmed a TV series "Mind Hunter", which received rave reviews, but it was a TV series and not a movie after all.

Even David Fincher is facing such a dilemma, let alone other directors?

As David said, Hollywood movies are already surrounded by two kinds of tights, and there is not much room left for other films to survive.

It must be admitted that this is a problem for the entire industry, from the academy to the film company to the market feedback, all aspects have formed a vicious circle system, which has led to the final outcome step by step. But what if the potential of the art film market is far beyond imagination, but the distribution companies have not been able to tap into it?

The appearance of "Drunken Country Ballads" raises such questions.

Some people are bound to say that "Drunken Country Ballad" is the quintessential awards season work, and that it is still a change of soup, and its box office results are not of reference value to other works of art, and David Fincher's situation will not improve, but the truth is that it is not a work that the academy likes.

First of all, this is not a biography of a real person, but a story based on the experience of a real person.

Second, this is not an inspirational story or a social issue, and strictly speaking, the Coen brothers are just presenting a state that has no appeal to the college, and the difference between Los Angeles and New York is the best proof of this.

Again, this is a small-scale work, all the weight of the story falls on Levine-Davis, and even the ending of the story is not sublimated or refined, and the sharpness of the Coen brothers' consistent use of black humor to mock social reality has become mild and lacks a little weight.

In the end, it's a musical movie. The Golden Globes created the comedy and musical film category, but the era of cabaret movies is long gone, with the last Oscar-nominated musical films being "Chicago" in 2000 and "Moulin Rouge" in 2001, which were the last glory, and the next Oscar-nominated musical film to be "La La Land" in 2016, but this one tells Hollywood's own story

Everyone knows that the Academy is the most narcissistic group of old pedants, and they always can't get enough of the movies that reflect Hollywood, and this is true of "Artists", and the same is true of "La La Land".

All things considered, "Drunken Country Ballad" is simply the most overlooked category of works in the awards season, and even the Coen brothers will not be able to turn the situation around.

In the last life, "Drunken Country Folk" won nominations for Best Musical Comedy Film, Best Musical Comedy Actor and Best Original Song at the Golden Globe Awards, and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Sound at the British Academy Awards, while only received nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Sound at the Oscars

Step by step downhill.

In fact, "Drunken Country Ballads" is the top spot in the 2013 Top 10 Films of the Year by "Film Review", "Village Voice", "New York Times", "Empire" and other magazines, and it is also generally among the top 10 in major authoritative professional magazines in Europe, including the French "Film Manual" and so on, but its Oscar prospects are still embarrassing.

Essentially, it's not the genre of awards season, it's more of the genre that down-and-out artists who are immersed in their art and dreams, like the difference between Dave Van Lunk and Bob Dylan, New York, Paris, and London are crazy about it, and they can't put it down, and it's not Los Angeles.

The same is true in this life.

While "Drunken Country Ballad" won a round of applause at Cannes, the industry was generally unoptimistic about the film's awards season prospects, and the Coen brothers admitted that they were not filming for awards season, and that they had difficulties finding investment funds in the first place, just like David Fincher.

Sony Classics has always been cautious when arranging and planning the expansion of "Drunken Country Folk", and even a little too restrained, which also proves the point that if they want to push "Drunken Country Ballads" into the sight of the awards season, they need to plan more carefully and comprehensively.

Therefore, it is more accurate to say that it should be five weeks of screening, and the box office curve of "Drunken Country Folk Songs" has created such excellent results, which can cause so many discussions.

If the market potential of art films is far beyond imagination, and those veteran fans are still willing to go to the theaters to support these works of art, then the box office data and the subsequent video rental market are more worth looking forward to, which also means that it will be easier to recover costs and even achieve profits, and major film companies will be more willing to invest in those art works.

Even if not for the awards season, but also to be able to expand their market share.

Then, directors like David Fincher, David Lynch, and the Coen brothers, who hope to shoot something different, will be able to find more soil for survival.

By the way, this is the difference between European films and American films.

European films are still willing to set up a variety of sponsorship funds to support such art films, and art films can always find their own audience groups and realize profits after they land in theaters, so France, Italy, Germany and Northern Europe and other countries can see different styles and types of art films all year round.

American films are market-oriented, and the summer season and awards season have accounted for more than 90% of the market, or even more, which makes other films have little room to survive, and the development of the film industry has gradually fallen into a dead end.

Now, first "gravity" broke the shackles of the autumn file, and then "drunken folk songs" broke the shackles of the awards season, how can industry insiders not pay attention?