"You'll never understand why we do magic. The audience knows the truth. This world is actually very simple and pathetic, and it is real from beginning to end. But if you can fool them, even if it's just for a second, then, you can amaze them. And then you'll be able to ...... You'll be able to see something very special. Don't you really know? That's the look on their faces. ”

"Never expose the mystery, they will beg you, flatter you, and once you say it, you will have no use value. You know? It's not worth a penny. The secret of magic is not a big deal, but the skill of magic is important. ”

The movie theater was brightly lit at night, and the audience in the "Deadly Magic" screening hall was full, everyone was watching the story on the big screen, most of them were engrossed, and many people yawned.

As time passed, the film was shown one after another, and if you look at it with ultra-fast lenses, the seats in the screening hall will be empty for a while, and the audience will sit sporadically, and then it will be relatively full...... "How? What do those critics say?", "How much? Is it good at the box office?!" ...... Warner Bros. cares more about the review and box office of "Deadly Magic" than the fire movie, Alan F. Horn and others have good reasons to do so, maybe the flame can withstand the first failure, end the unprecedented miracle, and fall to the dust, but Warner Bros. can't bear it! That damn Darren Aronofsky left behind a big mess, is "The Dark Knight" going to expand the mess?

Without Wang Yang's involvement, Warner Bros.' follow-up strategy for "Time to Go to War" would be like this: there will be no sequel. After a few years, find a new team to make a new series, just like "Superman Returns". Now it has become difficult to ride a tiger, although they have determined to believe in Wang Yang and Nolan, but the report card of "Deadly Magic" is very crucial, it is like Midway.

Looking at its freshly released record data, Horn's face was uncertain, and no one in the other Warner executives smiled, on the contrary, most of them frowned slightly, why do you have to choose Nolan, Miraculous Young is really not reassuring!

Rotten Tomatoes has a 76% freshness rating for popular critics, which seems good, but the freshness of well-known critics is only 59%, and this puddle of rotten stuff has become a lingering concern in their minds. Although the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Albert gave it a 3/4 and praised it: "It's a rather atmospheric, mesmerizing, almost demonic film." The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan also gave a 4/5 rating of "atmospheric entertainment." ”

But what Warner wants most is the mainstream, not unique, the more viewers the better!

However, many mainstream media outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Observer, and the Associated Press, criticized it, with Rex Reed saying: "The suspense and cleverness of the film are just more infuriating and contrived." Stephen Qu said: "Unfortunately, the script was too much to my liking. Stephen Wiah said, "The Nolan brothers' posturing creates an infuriating mess. Mick Russell said: "Director Nolan has no problem achieving mass success with his magic, gimmicks charm, but when he takes on a mainstream genre, it gets scary." ”…… Infuriating、Contrived、Exasperating…… These comments undoubtedly indicate that they are dismissive of "Deadly Magic", and if the so-called suspense is deliberately messed up with timing, deliberately confusing to make the whole movie chaotic, what is the great deal about this magic trick? For them, the Nolan brothers turned into a lame magic.

This is what the Warner Bros. executives are afraid of, if the brothers use the structure of "Fragments of Memory" and "Deadly Magic", and then match the literature and art of "Mr. Hughes" to shoot "The Dark Knight", the consequences are unimaginable!

Perhaps it is worth a little relief that at least the fans of the movie were "deceived", they were very satisfied with the performance of the Nolan brothers, with a liking rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and an IMDb score of 8.4!

"It's a masterpiece, full of emotion, twists and turns, and intrigue. "RipV gave it five stars;" just a little bit better than "The Magician", I didn't understand it, I had to ask people. "Caitlin G has four and a half stars, and while it's a bit of a little unnecessarily confusing, it's probably Christopher Nolan's most amazing movie to date, and that doesn't stop it from having exciting greatness." Ethan K gave it four stars, and Andrew R gave it five stars: "Flawless! It's like a detective book though, and you have to pay attention to all the clues, maybe need to watch it twice like I did. ”…… From the first day of the film's release, the Nolan brothers have been in a very high and nervous mood, each film is carefully crafted, and "Deadly Magic" is their all-out narrative skill operation, and the operation of the flame movie is also impeccable, so there is no excuse for the film's performance.

The praise of the audience and film critics made them happy, and those criticisms hurt them, especially in today's Rotten Tomatoes index has become an important indicator, well-known film reviews are unexpectedly unqualified! No one does not like to be recognized, the authority of the mainstream media makes it carry a lot of weight, and the evaluation balance quietly tilts to the side of "somewhat bad", anyway, it is not ideal, after all, it is difficult to completely achieve "there are so many audiences who like it, who cares about those hundreds of film critics", after all, the Nolan brothers are arrogant.

In this regard, Wang Yang and the Nolan brothers had a video conference conversation, if there were no magic tricks and tricks, it would not be "Deadly Magic", this cannot be regarded as a failure, it can only be said that you can never satisfy everyone.

"You don't have to worry about anything, make The Dark Knight well! There's no pressure on Warner Bros., you know? Of course, the messy narrative structure is going to stop, don't you want to turn into a magic trick that drives audiences all over the world crazy?"

Wang Yang encouraged and soothed the injured hearts of the two, but he did not blindly hold the fight, compared to "Memory Fragments", "Deadly Magic" does seem contrived and chaotic, and there are signs of going crazy, just as the magician of the film will do anything to pursue the magic effect, he told them that the pursuit of mystery, suspense and uniqueness can start from other aspects, such as the structure of the story itself, not just the chronological structure of the story, too many stories themselves are very fascinating, just like "The Science of Sleep".

After listening to Wang Yang's words and the insights brought by "Deadly Magic", Da Nolan fell into another deep thought, the balance between art and business is not enough, self-hobbies and public hobbies, the story itself and the narrative chronology ...... "By the way, Yang, I know that Flame recently bought the adaptation rights of a Japanese animated film "Red Hot Chili Peppers". During the conversation, Big Nolan opened up the subject.

"Red Hot Chili Peppers" (Paprika) is a 2D science fiction suspense animated film, based on the famous Japanese science fiction artist Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 adaptation of the same name, tells the story of the spiritual therapist Atsuko Chiba and the genius scientist Tokita Kosaku jointly developed a device called "INI", INI can allow the psychotherapist to enter the patient's dream world, and change the patient's dream by constructing it, thereby changing his subconscious thoughts, which is quite effective in spiritual therapy.

Unexpectedly, one day, INI was suddenly stolen, and Atsuko Chiba was afraid that the criminals would use INI to commit crimes, so they launched an investigation, but the people involved in this research began to be crazy because of the dream interference with real behavior, and Atsuko was also plotted, but she was not an ordinary person, so "Dream Detective Red Hot Chili Pepper" and the Dream Thief terrorists who used "INI" to destroy launched a fierce struggle...... "Dream Detective" Directed by the great animation director Satoshi Kon and funded by the madhouse company, it was painted in Japan just last month, but it has already participated in numerous film festivals around the world and has been critically acclaimed, and is one of the best film nominees at this year's Venice Film Festival.

Flame Movies has always expressed a lot of interest in Japanese anime, and when Wang Yang went to Japan to do publicity last year, he also made it clear that he had the opportunity to adapt excellent anime on the big screen, since the opening of the Venice Film Festival, "Dream Detective" was noticed by Flame, Wang Yang clearly ordered to buy its adaptation, SSS! If it weren't for Sony, which has a share of investment, holding the North American distribution rights, Flame would naturally not let it go, but Sony also caused some difficulties in the process of buying the adaptation rights.

Thankfully, the copyright belongs to the madhouse, and Wonder Jan didn't show up in Watertown, and it's rare for 2D animation to be adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster, and even Dragon Ball, an epoch-making manga project in its own right, is unclear. Despite this, it took a lot of effort and some publishing cooperation agreements with Sony to finalize the contract to be signed.

Recently, media fans have known the news that has been circulating, because Magic Young has not made a statement, so this matter is quite low-key in North America, but some hardcore flame fans are looking forward to and excited, and this theme is very interesting.

"Yes, are you interested in directing it?" Wang Yang asked, at the beginning of the year at Sundance watched "The Science of Sleep", he recommended it to the Nolan brothers, at that time the big Nolan said that he was very interested in dreams, and also wanted to make a dream-themed movie, but some ideas were always hazy. Big Nolan said: "I like mysterious and suspenseful things like dreams, it doesn't seem to be your plan?" Wang Yang shrugged and said, "I have other plans." ”

He has too many plans for the subject matter he intends to shoot, and the next 3D film is related to "mysterious things", but not dreams.

In fact, this kind of dream theme is not new in places such as comics, such as "Total Recall", "Invasion of Brain Cells" (female pediatricians heal the psychological trauma of young patients by manipulating dreams and assist the police in solving cases), "Sleep Science", etc., and the relationship between "Invasion of Brain Cells", "Inception" and "Dream Detective" is like "The Matrix" and "Ghost in the Shell".

Now that Flame Films has purchased the adaptation rights of "Dream Detective", it can be made into a detective crime-solving action/thriller/suspense/sci-fi series step by step, and it is not limited to when Nolan is inspired and then talks about cooperation, etc., but Nolan is the most suitable person to make it live-action.

But it's too early to talk about this, Wang Yang revealed to the Nolan brothers that the flames will not start this project soon, because first, the time has not come, and second, FF's production schedule for the next few years is very full, so they are currently making "The Dark Knight", and the dream or something should be brewed first, maybe there will be other ideas.

"'Fame' topped, 'Nativity' was gentle" - BOM.com, when December 1-7 passed, Warner Bros. executives breathed a sigh of relief, although "Deadly Magic" was smashed by the mainstream media A lot of Rotten Tomatoes, but in terms of box office, the flame movie still stubbornly did not end the miracle!

"Deadly Magic" received 35.76 million box office in 2,879 North American theaters, with an average single theater of $12,422, and its first-week performance was almost the same as "The Magician" with 32.36 million, and successfully won the North American weekly box office championship. It seems that it naturally can't become a box office bomb film, but it is not too difficult to collect 80 million in North America/about 150 million in the world, plus considerable post-production revenue, look at its production fee of 40 million, and calculate that the flame movie only makes no loss, no wonder Brandon Gray of BOM describes it as "the perfect magic of flames".

The new line movie is not so lucky, and it is messed up again! It is useless to move out of the Virgin Mary, the long-publicized "Nativity of Christ" only collected 10.19 million first-week box office in 3083 theaters, and the Rotten Tomatoes index is 38%/53%/74%, don't say anything stupid to become "The Passion of the Christ", it is a foregone conclusion to lose a lot of money!

However, because of the presence of the Virgin Mary, Brandon Gray was more careful in his reporting, especially using Meek to describe its performance as averaging $3,306 per library (docile and modest), not even using eak (weak), and "Nightmare in the Jungle" and "The King of Repetition 2" with an average of $2,892 and $1,497 per library were called Negiligible.

It is getting closer and closer to the 14th of the 64th Golden Globe Awards this year and the 22nd of the main battlefield of the Christmas file, under the busy and tense footsteps, "The Dead" has been completed as scheduled in early December, and the production cost is fixed at 70 million, a large part of which is due to the increase in personnel and salary increase caused by rush work.

(To be continued)