Now action movies are in decline, living in the shadow of magic blockbusters and superhero blockbusters, but although the heroes are old and can still get money, as long as the quality is good, the audience still buys it.

At the same time as "Ratatouille," 20th Century Fox's "Die Hard 4" grossed $33.15 million over the weekend (excluding Thursday premieres), surpassing the previous week's champion "Fake Gods 2" to take second place, which was Bruce Willis's highest-grossing film debut since 1998's "The Peerless Movement."

Bert Livingston, director of distribution at Fox Inc., said, "People love John McClan, he's the embodiment of everybody. He added: "Even though it's old-fashioned entertainment, people still like it." ”

Due to the distribution strategy of Wednesday's premiere, the harvest of about 32.2 million yuan over the weekend and the total of 14.5 million yuan grabbed in the previous two days have received nearly 46.7 million yuan so far, which is indeed worthy of a gorgeous budget of 110 million, which is believed to be enough to make the distributor 20th Century Fox temporarily forget the various unhappiness caused by the lack of vitality of "Fantastic Four 2: Silver Shadow Crisis".

The reason why "Die Hard 4" took the lead was that "unlike the sudden chain reaction of "Harry Potter 5: Order of the Phoenix" from July 13th to July 11th, and "Transformers" from July 4th to July 3rd", no one forced "Die Hard 4", and in the face of "Ratatouille", which debuted on Friday as usual on the 29th, the "Tiger 4" camp itself was not confident, so it announced the "good news" of meeting everyone on June 27 a few months ago.

At the moment, it seems like a big gamble – as a general rule, you have to wait at least four or five weeks between your company's summer successes, and at least make sure that your own big players don't have to steal the show and lose in the heat of competition where no one else can wait for your audience to return. The fan base of "Die Hard 4" and "Fantastic Four 2", which is not clear-cut, will inevitably decline due to the short-term overlap of realistic action and sci-fi action fans, and it will be delayed and unable to face the big "Transformers" and "Harry Potter 5", and in two weeks, it will be the turn of the "Simpsons" of its own "revival of 2D animation + classics on the screen", so the old fox who dares to take this risky move must have experienced an incomparable inner entanglement.

In addition to the desperation of the Fox camp caused by the fact that "Fantastic Four 2" is really not competitive, the unexpected popularity of the trailer of "Die Hard 4" is also one of the reasons why they are determined to throw advertising money, and the deepest reason is undoubtedly the "July 4" Independence Day schedule, "Spider-Man 2", "War of the Worlds", and "Superman Returns" that have dominated the prime time for three years are the most intuitive examples of local veterans of more than 200 million, and there is no shortage of "Independence Day", "Perfect Storm", "Men in Black 2" and other heroes in history.

Moreover, this year's unique feature is that "July 4th" is held on a Wednesday in the middle of the week, and the subsequent "Transformers" certainly wants to take advantage of the early arrival to burn the boom until the weekend, and the first harvest of "Ratatouille" and "Die Hard 4" undoubtedly have the ambition to extend the premiere glory period.

Therefore, it is necessary to praise "Die Hard 4", which further pushed forward the opening day by two days on this basis, Guy bears the huge risk of "once the reputation is not good, it will be removed from the shelves before the market is hot", it turns out that the quality of the film is really the eternal last word, and "Mission Impossible 3", "Casino Royale" brought about the resurgence of "tough style old-fashioned action movies", which really benefited Bruce Willis, an elderly muscular man who risked death and fought again,

Not only did the 33 million debut overshadow the 22 million peak of the first three episodes, but the final achievement of breaking through the $117 million series of "Die Hard 2" can also be put on the agenda, it is worth mentioning that I am worried that this will have a certain degree of negative impact on the North Korean box office of "Spy 3: Bonn Ultimatum", just as "Ratatouille" made the distribution department of "Delicious Relationship" sit on pins and needles.

Speaking of "Fantastic Four", we can't fail to mention Chris Evans, the star of "Captain America" in December this year, who plays Johnny in the movie, the younger brother of the hot beauty Susan, impulsive and arrogant, with a playboy riffraff personality, who has gained the ability to control fire, can wrap his body with fire and launch attacks, which is called Thunderbolt.

Because the global box office of "Fantastic Four" reached 330 million US dollars, 20th Century Fox invited director Tim Storey and screenwriter Mark Frost to return to shoot the sequel in December 2005, and the main creators all returned, and the production budget also reached 150 million, which is the main blockbuster of 20th Century Fox this year, with a box office of 57 million in the first release, but the beer is playing vertically, 65% The decline prevented him from winning the championship and declared that there was no hope of a return for North Miles, which was regarded as a crushing defeat by 20th Century Fox.

Chris Evans has doubts about MM's invitation, although he is asked to play the leading role, or the famous captain of the United States, Rogers, but he has reservations about signing six episodes, and he will be fixed in this role, but in the end he agreed, one sign for six episodes, which means that the Golden Job, Marvel said that it was not made to be less than 80 million.

Chris Evans made his debut in 2000 in the CBS series "The Outlaws," which was his first television series. In the same year, he also starred in the Fox TV series "The Opposite Sex" and participated in the movie "Freshman Registration", the following year Chris starred in the comedy film "Very Male and Female", in which he played the most popular football captain in the school Jack, in the same year he also participated in the American drama "Boston Public High School Season 2", and then Chris participated in the TV movie "The Witch of East Town", and played Brian in the series "Skin Season 1", and the school comedy film "Super Perfect Score", "The First Line of Sound" He played Ryan, a handsome guy who loves surfing, "Love Forever".

In 2005, Chris played the role of "Thunderbolt" Johnny in the sci-fi movie "Fantastic Four", and participated in the drama film "Poison Love", except for "Fantastic Four", they are all small and medium-cost works, but "Fantastic Four" is only a big supporting role, so the invitation to Marvel's big production is undoubtedly exciting to him, the huge success of "Iron Man" has made Marvel's Marvel universe a hot series, many people want to get a piece of the pie, Chris's decision is undoubtedly correct, he has two blockbusters staged this year.

This year's summer is the most tragic year, not in vain, not to mention these medium-cost blockbusters, or there is not much time for super blockbusters, if there is no first week of explosion, and based on beer, long-term screening, even the living space of super blockbusters is limited.

MM has three super blockbusters launched in the summer alone, "Spider-Man 3", "Ratatouille", and "Transformers" are the most ruthless bets among the six, "Spider-Man 3" is a hard money, and "Ratatouille" is to break even, and then watch "Transformers".

Because the film began to land on Monday night, and coincided with the hottest "July 4" Independence Day schedule of the year, the way of box office strategy is also slightly different from the usual weekend start, first of all, the $27.85 million recorded on Tuesday set a record of "the highest in the history of a single day on Tuesday", and then 29.07 million on Wednesday set a new "record for a single day on Independence Day" ("Wednesday single day" ranked third in the history, inferior to "Spider-Man" 2, " The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King"), and then harvested about 19.18 million on Thursday, ranking fifth in a single day on Thursday in all previous years, and then grabbed about 67.6 million in the large range of 4,011 theaters with an average of nearly 17,000 yuan per family in three days of the weekend.

Since its release, it has earned a huge income of about $152.5 million, which is a good start for a sci-fi masterpiece with an investment of up to $150 million, and I believe it will ease the nerves of the team led by producer Michael Bay, and at the same time, this data also rewrites the "pyrotechnic director" Michael Bay's personal highest premiere record - "Pearl Harbor" The beginning of $59.08 million, and according to this trend, it will eventually surpass the $201 million of his personal box office champion "The End of the World".

In addition, the $67.6 million earned in July ranks fifth in film history, second only to "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Soul Coffin", "Spider-Man 2", "Ace Spy 2", "Battle of the Planet of the Apes", and the box office of 152 million (seven days) so far is high in the list of "robot movies", and it is only a matter of time before it surpasses the 205 million of the same champion "Terminator 2: Judgment Day".

If the evening performances after 20 o'clock on Monday are incorporated into Tuesday, "Transformers" will break through the $100 million mark in 4 days, ranking 12th in history, and it is interesting to see that in the list of the fastest to break through the $100 million mark, the 20th place happens to be the watershed of "five days", so only refer to the data of 20 movies that completed hegemony in five days.

One: The local box office is more than 200 million US dollars ("Spider 3", "Pirate 3", and "Shrek 3" are still in theaters).

2: The average domestic box office is about 330 million US dollars.

3. "X-Men 3", "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", "War of the Worlds", "The Matrix 2: Reloaded", and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" with less than $300 million fell by about 57.8% on average in the second week;

4. Except for "Transformers", "The Crucifixion", "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "War of the Worlds", "Transformers" and "The Hangover", they are all sequels or prequels to the hit series, but even these four are remakes of classic stories or adaptations of best-selling works.

With such a good start, it can be regarded as making Michael Bay and David (Ellison) raise their eyebrows, the last "Escape from Clone Island" with an investment of 127 million is only 35 million, ranking among the top ten tragedies in history, David is also the same setback, and the two blockbusters he invested in are also miserable.