If you use one sentence to summarize the performance of the 2011 summer file so far, then more than 80% of people will choose this sentence: strange things happen every year, and this year is especially many.

The summer file is the first to blame, and the blockbuster is weak across the board.

As the largest box office concentration of the year, the competition is fierce beyond imagination, and every work that chooses to be released in the summer is bound to face the challenge of ups and downs, either a big victory or a complete rout. It's not uncommon to see a few big commercial productions hit Waterloo every year, but this year seems to be a lot of them.

"Thor", a complete fiasco, "Pirates of the Caribbean 4", lower than expected, "Kung Fu Panda 2", a complete defeat, and then ...... "X-Men: First Battle", eeriely silent.

Failure is contagious, the first week of June shining debut, "X-Men: The First Battle", won the hearts of media people, media comprehensive evaluation, Rotten Tomatoes index, popcorn index and other indicators ushered in the best of the series, among which the Rotten Tomatoes index and popcorn index even surpassed the biggest winner so far in this summer file "Speed and Excitement/Emotion 5", but lost the audience's love, the theater score was only "B+", creating a new low in the series, which led to the big disappointment of the premiere box office.

With an investment of 160 million, only 55 million of the opening weekend data was harvested, which is even slightly inferior to "Thor".

Ironically, two years ago, the word-of-mouth collapse of "Wolverine" — which also had a "B+" theater score — achieved an excellent opening weekend of $85 million. The box office trend of the summer file is really confusing.

First "Thor", and then "X-Men: First Battle", is this year's comic book adaptation superhero movie really not adaptable? The major Hollywood studios suddenly became vigilant, and the players who were preparing to go into battle one after another were also worried. This has a non-negligible impact on the future trend of the entire industry.

The second strange summer file, comedy has risen strongly.

The small-budget comedy "Bridesmaids" has become the biggest dark horse in this year's summer file, with a cumulative box office of more than $100 million in four weeks of release, and still maintains an astonishing decline - this week, under the pressure of "X-Men: First Fight", the decline is still controlled below 30%, which is so amazing that people scream, according to this momentum, this work with an investment of only 32 million will definitely not be a problem to break through 150 million at the box office.

The big-budget comedy "The Hangover 2" swept out a perverted debut box office of 85 million last week, and although the box office fell by as much as 61% the next week, the midweek box office from Monday to Thursday exploded with unimaginable energy, and finally the cumulative box office in two weeks sprinted to 185 million in one go, and the entire Hollywood was silent, almost stupid.

In horizontal comparison, the cumulative box office of "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" in three weeks of release is 190 million.

One doesn't even know if one should be surprised by the poor performance of "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" or the crazy performance of "The Hangover 2".

The third monster in the summer file, the dark horse was born.

"Bridesmaids" and "The Hangover 2" can be considered dark horses, but the real focus is still "Fast and Thrill/Love 5", after another 43% box office drop this week, the cumulative box office has risen to 290 million, becoming the first work to break 300 million at the box office this year.

This year's summer file is really unusual.

However, the box office pursuit of "Fast and Excitement/Love 5" has gradually slowed down, and the box office still maintains a slight lead over "Iron Man" in the same period, but the advantage has shrunk from nearly 30 million to 2 million now, and the strong upward momentum can be seen to drop significantly.

Although there are too many factors influencing the box office in the summer season, and the market preemption rate of other competing works is still more or less affected, it is undeniable that the audience limitations of the "Fast and Thrill/Emotional" series are gradually reflected, and the fan base is still not comparable to the superhero theme after all.

Despite this, the performance of "Fast & Furious 5" deservedly amazed the entire North American market and made Universal Pictures raise its eyebrows fiercely. In the third week of June, the North American box office of "Fast & Thrill 5" officially crossed the 300 million threshold, becoming not only the first work to reach such heights in 2011, but also the 37th work in film history to achieve such an achievement.

In the end, the North American box office of "Fast and Furious 5" reached 315 million, behind the 318 million of "Iron Man", ahead of the 312 million of "Iron Man 2", and also surpassed "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" and "Star Wars Prequel 2: Attack of the Clones", temporarily ranking 30th in film history, creating the highest number in the series, doubling the previous fourth, and the series has the potential to become a new money-making series.

In an instant, the whole of North America rejoiced, and the success of this production undoubtedly created the best results of the starring lineup - Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Gal Gadot, etc., not only is this their first career work to break $300 million, interestingly, it is even their first work to break $200 million.

With this work, the two actors Fan and Paul immediately completed the further increase in their value and truly became one of the top lines. But both of them are special, because their masterpieces are the same series, and the other works are not satisfactory, in other words, they are not comprehensive.

If they continue to shoot the series "Fast and Thrilling", then the increase in remuneration is inevitable, but it is difficult to shoot other commercial blockbusters like Arnold Schwarzenegger to get a maximum salary of 20 million, and the specific number depends on the ability of their agent.

In addition to this, there is also a high-profile actor: Lan Li Hall.

"Fast and Thrill/Emotion 5" is also the first work of Lanli to break 200 million and 300 million, but people will not forget that this is Lanli's first commercial film. As the third protagonist, Lan Li's courage and charm in this movie are definitely the biggest highlight of the movie, and it can even be said that he is the first hero.

After the two works of "Buried Alive" and "Love Crazy" witnessed Lan Li's solid acting skills, people got a glimpse of Lan Li's commercial potential, and it was infinite commercial potential - twenty-one years old, handsome, humorous, talented, and charismatic, I couldn't ask for more.

It is rumored that Lan Li's worth has jumped to 10 million US dollars in one go, and there is more than one film project under consideration. You must know that before the summer file, Lan Li's salary was only between one million and three million, and he jumped five million and eight million in an instant, directly among the 10 million, which is incredible.

Of course, this is just a rumor, and no film company has released any definite news yet. To be more precise, everyone is actually waiting for Universal Pictures - everyone knows that Universal Pictures is bound to make a sequel, and Lan Li is definitely one of the first renewal lists, so how much price is Universal willing to offer?

Hollywood's remuneration system is very complex, not only a game between agents and producers, but also a contest between actors and the market.

Take the "Little Golden Man Curse" that has always existed in the industry as an example, which means that the actors who have won the Oscar Golden Man will fall into a downturn in the next three years.

After many female actors won the title of actress, their careers plummeted. Liza-Minnelli in the 1972 "Cabaret", Louise-Fletcher in 1975 and Geraldine-Page in the 1985 "Bontival Trip" all but disappeared after winning the award.

The most recent case is Halle Berry in 2001's "Dance of Death Row Inmates", who was mired in a bad movie after winning the award, and he was not able to recover until 2017.

The reason is very simple, after winning the award, the actor's value has risen, and his salary has even tripled. However, the Oscar only recognizes the actor's performance achievements in a certain movie, but it does not mean that the actor's general acting skills are recognized, let alone the actor's box office appeal. In particular, many actors have always been active in art films, and their commercial value is not high, which also makes them easy to fall into the fault line between their superficial status and actual value.

In the same way, Robert Downey Jr. proved his appeal in the "Iron Man" series, but after taking off the armor of Iron Man, the box office performance of his other works was unsatisfactory, even the "Great Detective Holmes", who performed well, was also a strong outsider, and the actual benefits were far lower than expected.

Therefore, when Robert starred in "Iron Man", he could get a box office of 50 million, including dividends, but in other works, this is not necessarily the case.

The same goes for Lan Li.

At the beginning of the year, "Love Crazy" won the Sundance award, and "Buried Alive" successfully won the Oscar nomination, but even the "Little Golden Man Winner" was deeply trapped, not to mention just the nominee?

Now, "Fast & Excitement 5" has won a big victory, and Lanli has taken the first place, showing strong box office potential. But is this just a flash of inspiration? Is this limited to the "Fast & Thrill" series? Or does it have more potential? It will take time to prove, and it will take time to make trade-offs between agents and producers.

Ten million dollars? It's incredible, but it's not impossible, and it's still a game between the agent and the producer. However, before Universal Pictures made a decision, the overseas box office of "Fast and/Furious 5" once again added an important bargaining chip!

Prior to this, just relying on the excellent performance of the North American box office, Universal Pictures had basically recovered 125 million US dollars in production costs, so what about the overseas box office? This is pure profit, Universal Pictures, which has always been cautious in terms of investment costs, has finally opened another wave of film series since "Jurassic Park" to make money. Overjoyed.