In this week, "Scorching Sun" attracted a large number of audiences to the cinema with its super reputation and excellent audio-visual effects in the mainland. won 1.117 billion yuan in a single week, winning the championship for a second time, with a cumulative box office of 1.772 billion, becoming the fastest film in mainland film history to break the 1.5 billion yuan mark.

In South Korea, "The Scorching Sun" received 1.73 million moviegoers over the weekend with a total of 5 million viewers, while in Dongying, "The Scorching Sun" achieved a result of 1.63 billion yen and a total box office of 3.19 billion yen. In Singapore, Prime Minister *** posted on Fly, praising "Scorching Sun" as a remarkable film that captures the indomitable spirit of the Chinese. "Scorching Sun" also hit the box office this week, achieving a result of S$1.55 million......

In other Asian countries and regions, the box office of "Scorching Sun" has also exploded.

"Scorching Sun" is a Chinese story, but the indomitable and fighting spirit of the ancestors is shared by many countries and nations. For example, the Americans have "The Old Man and the Sea", South Korea has Yi Sunsin, and Greece has Prometheus, who steals fire...... Human nature is universal, and audiences in different countries and regions feel the same when they watch "The Scorching Sun", and they are deeply shocked and moved by the movie.

During the week, "The Scorching Sun" earned $275 million at the box office thanks to its outstanding performance in Asia, especially in the mainland market. This result easily defeated "Hercules" starring Dwayne Johnson and won the global box office weekly championship.

The domestic media naturally hyped it up again, and at this time, Zhang Ran was in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, meeting Spielberg. The two sat opposite each other, smiling and chatting about the movie.

After Spielberg touted "Scorching Sun", he looked at Zhang Ran and said seriously: "Recently, I am preparing the movie "Ready Player One", the story takes place in 2045, when almost everyone in the world is equipped with a VR glasses, and most people play a virtual game called Oasis except for eating and sleeping. ”

Hearing this, Zhang Ran understood why Spielberg came to him, and said: "You want to implant our company's VR equipment." You can just go to Hastings, he's in charge. ”

Spielberg shook his head and said, "I talked to Hastings, and he promised to implant Motorola VR in the movie, and he also promised to provide a prototype of the VR all-in-one machine to help us shoot." ”

The VR all-in-one machine is a little different from the VR headset released in June, and can be used independently, while the all-in-one machine uses the CPU of the mobile phone, and the performance is relatively weak. Now the resolution can only reach 2K. Coupled with wireless transmission, network speed is a big problem. Therefore, the peak of the century did not publicly sell the all-in-one machine, and planned to wait a year or two for the resolution to reach 4K before it was launched. Spielberg was able to name the all-in-one machine, which means that he did look for Hastings.

Zhang Ran didn't speak, looked at Spielberg, and waited for him to continue.

Spielberg said slowly: "The game oasis in Ready Player One is a huge platform, and many famous games and famous movies have been accurately reproduced in the oasis. There's Jurassic Park, there's World of Warcraft's Azeroth, there's the Star Wars universe, and there's Marvel World. In movies, a lot of classic games, movies, and anime characters appear, which requires authorization. You also know that Warner's DC Comics and Marvel are mortal enemies, and Warner's legal department specifically approached Marvel to get authorization, but was ruthlessly refused. You're the boss of Marvel, and I can only ask you!"

Hearing this, Zhang Ran was slightly stunned, the online world that Spielberg talked about is very similar to what he wants to make "No Way Home", the two movies will not collide, he looked at Spielberg and said: "What you are talking about now is very similar to the cyberpunk movie "No Way Home" that I am preparing, can I read the script of "Ready Player One"?"

Spielberg was also stunned, and then nodded and said, "Of course you can." I wanted you to read the script and give me some advice by the way. As he spoke, he beckoned to his assistant to bring her bag. He opened the bag, took out the movie script and put it in front of Zhang Ran: "This is the script, you see!"

Zhang Ran opened his laptop, clicked on the script of "No Way to Return", and pushed it in front of Spielberg: "This is the script of "No Way to Return", you can also help take a look, and make suggestions by the way." ”

The two smiled at each other, then buried their heads in the script.

Ready Player One takes place in the year 2045, and virtual reality technology has penetrated into every corner of human life. James Halliday, who single-handedly built the virtual reality game world called "Oasis", announced on his deathbed that he had set up an easter egg in the game, and whoever finds this egg will become the heir to the oasis. To find this egg, you must first obtain three keys, and the clues to find the keys are hidden in James's past.

Wade, Edge, Daito, and Xiu are friends in the game, and with Artemis they meet later, the five embark on a journey to find Easter eggs. And what they are fighting against is a big capitalist named Nolan Sorrento.

In the process of reading the script of "Ready Player One", Zhang Ran felt that Nolan in the story was particularly like Ma Huateng. Nolan once worked as an intern for Halliday, and once suggested that Nolan start a variety of fee-based businesses, create a membership system, and implement a kryptonite policy in the game. Tencent's game is famous for its krypton gold, and the most widely circulated emoji on the Internet is: "Before asking a question, think about how much money you have rushed", "Think about it, can you become stronger without recharging?"

After reading the script, Zhang Ran breathed a sigh of relief, "No Way Home" and "Ready Player One" have similarities, they are both cyberpunk, the story takes place at about the same time, it is about the contradiction between the Internet and reality, and there will be many scenes and characters from classic anime, movies and games that will appear in the movie.

However, the difference between the two is also very big, "No Way Home" tells the story of Xia Xuejiao and a black cat tracking a girl who was abducted to the online world, only to find out that it was a big conspiracy in the end, while "Ready Player One" is about a five-person group led by Wade who compete for three keys and get the ownership of the oasis. The scenes and characters of classic anime, movies and games are completely different: in Homecoming, these characters and scenes are hidden in the deep web, some are abandoned online games, some are private worlds secretly built by some geeks, while in Ready Player One, all of this is in an online game oasis.

Zhang Ran exhaled softly and found that Spielberg was still concentrating on reading the script. He didn't interrupt, took a sip of his coffee, and thought to himself that Spielberg was indeed old, and if it had been twenty years ago, his script would definitely not have been to this extent.

The Ready Player One story is quite exciting, but the story and theme are a bit torn. The theme of the movie is that although the online world is exciting, real life is more important. The whole story portrays the online world very brilliantly and beautifully, while the portrayal of the real world is quite weak. This brings up a problem, the online world is so good, the real world is so bad, but you tell everyone to pay more attention to the real world, it is particularly unconvincing, giving people the feeling of forcibly speaking the truth.

In particular, the male protagonist of the story is not literate in reality, and he relied on the Internet to obtain thousands of family properties and a wife, but he told everyone that he should not be addicted to games and should pay more attention to reality. This is the same as Ma Yun saying "I don't like money, I'm not interested in money", which is particularly false.

After more than ten minutes, Spielberg finally raised his head, stared at Zhang Ran, who was drinking coffee slowly, and said with a serious expression: "When are you going to shoot this story?"

Zhang Ran knew what Spielberg was worried about, so he said: "I'm going to make a VR movie, you also know that VR doesn't have its own film language yet, so you can only experiment while shooting, and the whole shooting will definitely be like Wong Kar-wai's movie, which will drag on for a long time, maybe three or four years, or even longer." ”

Hearing this, Spielberg's hanging heart fell to the ground. If he was twenty years younger, he would definitely not be afraid of Zhang Ran, but now his creative ability is indeed not as good as before. If the subject matter collides with Zhang Ran, the box office and reputation of "Ready Player One" may be greatly reduced.

However, since Zhang Ran is shooting while experimenting, it is not a big problem. "Ready Player One" has been released, and "No Way Home" may not have been filmed yet, so it will naturally not pose a threat to "Ready Player One".

Spielberg took a sip of coffee and smiled: "The stories in our hands are all cyberpunk, and the themes and story structures are also somewhat similar, if they are released at the same time, they may lose both." Since you're slower, I don't have to worry about crashes. You also use a lot of memes in this story, and I can see a lot of them. But in the final battle, the heroine transforms into Athena, what kind of holy clothes do you wear, what kind of stalk is this?"

Zhang Ran heard Spielberg ask about the final battle, and explained with a smile: "This is the content of the manga "Saint Seiya", among the post-80s and post-90s in China, the two most influential anime works should be "Dragon Ball" and "Saint Seiya", which can be said to be the memories of a generation. Our company recently acquired the rights to Saint Seiya and is ready to make it into a game. The final battle of the movie is placed in the game of "Saint Seiya", which is actually to help the company advertise the game, and now the main force of Chinese movies is the post-80s and post-90s, I believe that when Xia Xuejiao transforms into Athena and puts on the holy clothes to fight with the opponent, the audience will definitely go crazy for it. ”

"I know about Dragon Ball, but I haven't heard of Saint Seiya. Spielberg looked at Zhang Ran and smiled, "Your "No Way Home" is the same as "Ready Player One", there are many games, movies and anime memes, you let me read the script, in fact, you want to exchange the copyright of characters and scenes with me and Warner, right?"

Zhang Ran nodded slightly and said: "Yes, there will be Gordon City in "No Way Home", Batman and the Joker will appear, and your "Jurassic Park", although you have not been showing your face for a long time, it will definitely not work without authorization!"

Spielberg smiled: "The copyright of "Jurassic Park" is fine, Batman and the Joker are not a big problem, even if Warner disagrees, I can convince them!"

Zhang Ran said with a smile: "Then the matter of Marvel's copyright will be handed over to me, there must be no problem!"

After the copyright matter was finalized, Zhang Ran and Spielberg chatted for a while. The main thing is to talk about the script. Zhang Ran said his opinion on "Ready Player One", and Spielberg also expressed his opinion on "No Way Home".

Both of them are master directors, their vision is much higher than that of ordinary people, and they both look at problems from the perspective of bystanders and see a lot of problems. After some conversation, both of them felt that they had gained a lot.

After having dinner with Spielberg, Zhang Ran had just returned to his room when his mobile phone suddenly rang. It's Cheng Long's number. Zhang Ran estimated that it was a matter of "full-band blocking interference". After all, in mid-September, the movie will be launched.

Unexpectedly, as soon as the phone was connected, Zhang Ran listened to Cheng Long on the other end of the phone and said with a crying voice: "Teacher Zhang, you must help me!"