The duration of "The Horse Whisperer" is 2 hours and 50 minutes, and given the length factor, this premiere started very early. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

At about nine o'clock, when the end credits of the movie were finished, the lights came on, and there was a polite applause in the theater, Eric felt a little stiff, but patiently did not get up immediately.

For The Horse Whisperer, Eric's overall personal assessment is positive.

The overall story of the film is very smooth, with inspirational and a touch of pathos in the warmth, and the grassland scenery of Montana is equally beautiful. However, Robert Redford has a common problem with established Hollywood filmmakers, which is the slow pace of movies. Nearly three hours is the duration, which is a great test of the audience's patience. The slow pace of the film also leads to its loose emotional expression, and it always lacks a strong power that can directly hit the soul of the audience.

In the applause, the creators began to speak on stage, and Elizabeth, who was next to Eric, leaned over and whispered, "What do you think?"

Eric thought for a moment and replied, "It's all about how Harvey works. ”

If you want to give it a score, Eric can give this movie a score of 7.5. It's not an excellent score of 8 or more, but it's far above the passing mark. However, this score does not make the audience want to enter the cinema on their own initiative, and to achieve this, the Weinstein brothers must use their own marketing and public relations tools to raise the film's reputation to more than 8 points.

Elizabeth actually had a similar judgment, and although she was a little disappointed to hear that Eric was not unexpected, she was able to accept it.

The movie was followed by an after-party hosted by Miramax at a nearby hotel.

It was still early, and Eric and Elizabeth didn't rush back to rest, so they came to the party together.

"Maybe it's because of the self-directing and acting, I don't think Redford is passionate enough about the story, and he, like Scott Thomas, even made me a little bit of a play, which is really bad," said Rutt Stein, a film critic from the San Francisco Chronicle, who was not shy about expressing his evaluation of the film in front of Eric, Elizabeth and Harvey in the party hall.

Root Stein's words made Elizabeth frown slightly, but Eric stood by quietly, Harvey listened with a smile, and when the other party finished speaking, Harvey stepped forward and hugged the other party's shoulders affectionately, and said: "Root, I have to admit that you are right, this is indeed some small flaws in the movie, but there is no perfect movie in this world, and we should allow the existence of shortcomings." And, outside of acting, there are still a lot of advantages to this film, well, how about we go over there and have a good chat?"

"Of course," Rutt Stein nodded slightly, looked at Eric and Elizabeth, and explained tactfully, "Mr. Williams, Miss Murdoch, I have absolutely no intention of this movie, I am just seeking truth from facts." ”

Harvey didn't let go of the other's shoulders, but used a little force, and said, "Of course Eric and Liz won't care, hehe, let's go over, oh, Eric, and Liz, you can do your own and have some fun." ”

When Harvey left with the film critic, Eric grabbed Elizabeth's waist and smiled, "Okay, what's the matter, you're the eldest lady." Think back then, Michael Ovitz faced the cynicism of his clients, in order to win the trust of the other party, not only did not get angry, but stood on the table and danced, he did not become the most powerful person in Hollywood. ”

"I didn't mind, it's just that guy deliberately said this to show his presence when he saw us coming," Elizabeth looked at the figure of Harvey and the two leaving, retorted dissatisfiedly, and grabbed Eric's words: "The most powerful person in Hollywood is you now, are you willing to tap dance for clients?"

"Well, if necessary," Eric said, "I'll let Jeffrey and them jump." ”

"You guy," Elizabeth laughed, but chased after her, "but what if the client insists on letting you jump yourself?"

Eric shook his head confidently, "Your assumption is not true, no one in this world is qualified to ask me to tap dance for him right now." ”

"Hmph," Elizabeth snorted suddenly, "what if I let you jump?"

Eric seemed to immediately forget what he had just said, and nodded cheerfully: "No problem, I'll give you a jump when I get back." ”

The corners of Elizabeth's mouth curled, but her tone was very contemptuous: "It's really spineless, it's not uncommon to see what kind of tap dance you guys do." ”

Eric immediately insisted: "This is not good, I will not regret what I promised, you have to watch it if you don't watch it tonight, I will tie you to the chair when I go back, and watch me dance for half an hour first."

After a few jokes, the two came to sit down next to an empty seat in the banquet hall, and noticed that there was another film critic next to Harvey not far away, and the two were chatting enthusiastically, Elizabeth raised her chin and gestured to Eric, and said, "Judging from the current situation, the reputation of the film should be fine, right?"

Eric could also see that Harvey was not ordinarily interested in "The Horse Whisperer".

This is actually very understandable, "The Horse Whisperer" is the largest investment of Weinstein Pictures so far, and the Harvey brothers were originally dissatisfied with Fox's decision to cap the $50 million film investment in Miramax, and the box office situation of "The Horse Whisperer" is directly related to whether Miramax is likely to break through this limit.

If "The Horse Whisperer" can reach the scale of a regular commercial film at the box office, as long as it encounters a good enough project in the future, Fox is likely to open this limit. But if "The Horse Whisperer" fails at the box office, Miramax will not be able to invest in high-cost literary films.

"Word-of-mouth is definitely no problem," Eric nodded, and said: "However, the key is to see if the audience buys it, the film is nearly 3 hours long, and after all, it will still discourage many impatient audiences." ”

Elizabeth was a little disapproving, and said: "Do you remember the "Dances with Wolves" you tricked me into buying a few years ago, it was four hours, but the box office in North America exceeded 180 million US dollars, 420 million worldwide, but the cost was only more than 20 million US dollars. I think there are a lot of similarities between the two films. They are all adaptations of novels, all directed and acted by the main creators, and they all have very spectacular natural and cultural backgrounds. ”

"But you have to admit it," Eric said, "that 'The Horse Whisperer' is not as strong and hot as 'Dances with Wolves' in terms of political connotation and humanistic feelings." Relatively speaking, the biggest advantage of "The Horse Whisperer" is that its original novel is far more well-known than the less popular "Dances with Wolves" back then. However, after you say that, I think I can remind Harvey that if he can link "The Horse Whisperer" and "Dances with Wolves" in the media, he may get something unexpected. ”

……

The secret of the Weinstein brothers' Oscar operation has always been very simple, that is, through a strong media and jury PR campaign, to create an indisputable reputation and a large number of award votes for Miramax's shortlisted films.

Of course, the specific operation method is very cumbersome and complicated.

Due to the pressure of recovering the investment of $50 million in "The Horse Whisperer", although the Weinstein brothers did not use the long-term operation method of small-scale releases to gradually accumulate word-of-mouth and box office this time, the media marketing methods accumulated over the years still played a very important role in this film.

Immediately after the premiere, Miramax launched a powerful PR offensive, and the next day, almost all of the mainstream print media in North America gave positive reviews of "The Horse Whisperer", and even a small number of critics who clearly did not like the film were obviously less intense in their criticism of "The Horse Whisperer".

After preliminary statistics, the initial critics' evaluation of "The Horse Whisperer" successfully broke through the excellent deuce line of 8 points, and the average media score reached 8.2 points, which is much higher than Eric's personal score of 7.5 points.

The Horse Whisperer was published in 1995, and it has only been three years since then. However, while the novel has won the popularity of readers around the world, and many viewers have recognized the excellent adaptation of the novel in the film version of "The Horse Whisperer", "The Horse Whisperer" also has a very obvious disadvantage, which is the lack of topics that can be discussed by the public.

Many times, the topicality of a movie is even more important than its own rating.

In this regard, Eric and Elizabeth's flash of inspiration at the party after the premiere played a very big role. At the reminder of Eric and Elizabeth, the Weinstein brothers were very decisive in linking "The Horse Whisperer" to "Dances with Wolves".

Although seven years have passed since "Dances with Wolves", it is also this long time that has made this film, which successfully won a series of heavyweight awards such as Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, gradually become an unshakable classic in the minds of many people.

Seeing that some media associate "The Horse Whisperer" with the classics in their hearts, fans of "Dances with Wolves" are immediately reluctant. As a result, in just a few days, there was a discussion in the major media in North America about the superiority of "The Horse Whisperer" and "Dances with Wolves". "Dances with Wolves" has many supporters, but "The Horse Whisperer", which has sold 10 million copies of the original novel worldwide, has also a large number of fans and movie fans.

Therefore, the controversy between the two sides can be described as full of gunpowder, and it is difficult to distinguish between them for a while.

While this controversy greatly stimulated the attention and box office of "Horse Whisperer", it even brought an additional wave of videotape and DVD sales of "Dances with Wolves", and a detail that many people did not realize is that the copyright of "Dances with Wolves" is also in the hands of the Firefly system.

Stimulated by this high topic, "Dances with Wolves" finally won $32.15 million at the box office in the first three days of the first weekend, although this result is not comparable to those blockbusters, but it has already made many people very satisfied.

The opening weekend box office was $32.15 million, which means that the film was able to grossed about $45 million in the first week.

With the word-of-mouth performance of "The Horse Whisperer", although it will face competition from several new films in a row next week, it is still very easy to maintain the expected box office decline of 30%.

As long as it can achieve a low box office trend, the North American box office of "The Horse Whisperer" is just around the corner.

With a cost of $50 million, the North American box office exceeded 100 million, counting the expected overseas box office, which basically means that just for theatrical distribution, this project can bring huge profits to Miramax and even the parent company Fox Group.

Moreover, with the Weinstein brothers' Oscar public relations capabilities, as long as "The Horse Whisperer" can win at this year's Oscars, the film's later peripheral distribution will be more lucrative.

……

Ventura, north of Los Angeles, is Eric's first visit since the official opening of the private airport.

The 600-hectare area is now surrounded by high barbed wire, with two intersecting runways, a surveillance and navigation center, and six other large hangars. However, at this time, there are only two Gulfstream V jets in the hangar for the time being.

This year it was November 10th, and Eric arrived here in the morning, intending to fly directly to London on the Gulfstream V that he had just picked up some time ago.

The Gulfstream V is arguably Gulfstream Aerospace's first ultra-long-range business jet, with a range of 12,000 kilometers, and can even fly across the Pacific Ocean, from Los Angeles on the west coast of the United States across the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean to London directly.

However, after taking a tour of the cabin of the Gulfstream V, Eric immediately dismissed the idea of flying to London on this plane.

The reason is also very simple and crude.

It's too small.

Compared with the Boeing 767 with a fuselage width of nearly five meters and a luxury suite and spacious activity space in the previous two years, the interior width of the Gulfstream V cabin is only more than two meters, with sofas and seats on both sides, and there is basically no spare space for activities。

"In the future, this small plane will be used for short-haul flights," Eric said to the girl who rushed over to see him off in the airport lounge, "Besides, how is the construction progress of the two 747s?"

"It's going to take about half a year," the girl said, "but I can push Boeing there." ”

Eric shook his head with a smile and said, "This kind of thing, it's better not to rush it, safety first." ”

"Hehe, forget it then," said the girl, raising her wrist and looking at her watch, "That Boeing 767 will be another hour away, or else, Eric, let's go out for a walk first." “

Giving up the plan to fly across the ocean in a Gulfstream V, Eric had to ask people to transfer the original Boeing 767 again.