The hustle and bustle of the awards season has returned to the audience's sight, and "Killing with a Knife" has joined the competition of the awards season as a dark horse, which reminds people of the "Lord of the Rings 3" that swept thousands of troops last year.

In fact, the nature of the two works is different, "Lord of the Rings 3" dominates the screen more with majestic visual effects and heart-wrenching epics, and it also swept the technical awards at the Oscars, but it did not win anything in the acting awards, and even the Best Adapted Screenplay Award was lost to "City of God"; "Murder with a Knife" is a social fable of technological innovation and far-reaching reflection, although the lighting and camera technology is brilliant, it is still difficult to compete with those visual effects blockbusters, on the contrary, the actors' performances are the core pillar of the film, and the original script is even more amazing.

But on the whole, both works are commercial films, finding a certain balance between business and art, and hopefully achieving success in the awards season. This makes people's expectations of "borrowing a knife to kill" can't help but rise further, but "borrowing a knife to kill" wants to reach the height of "Lord of the Rings 3", there is still a way to go. Not to mention the high level of achievement of the awards season, at least in the box office table, there is a huge gap between the two.

It's almost an impossible task to catch up with the 377 million North American box office of "Lord of the Rings 3", but the 170 million for Best Picture "Chicago" in 2002 and the 170 million for Best Picture 2001 "A Beautiful Mind" don't seem so far away.

In the third week of December, Paramount's "The Unfortunate Adventures of Raymond Snich" was released in 3,600 theaters, and it was also the strongest contender for the box office title this week.

Before the release of the movie, the media dug up the behind-the-scenes anecdotes, when Lance had contacted Paramount many times in order to fight for the opportunity to direct "The Unfortunate Adventures of Raymond Snick", but in the end Paramount chose Brad-Silberling, the director who had directed "Ghost Pony Pixies" and "City of Angels". By accident, Lance first collaborated with Twentieth Century Fox in "The Day After Tomorrow", and then with Paramount in "Murder with a Knife".

Unexpectedly, "The Misadventures of Raymond Snich" is now a rival to "Murder with a Knife" - of course, this is not entirely accurate, because one work is a premiere and the other is in its third week of screening, which is not at the same starting line in itself, but the topic still sparks some discussion.

In the end, "The Unfortunate Adventures of Raymond Sniche" was a big disappointment, with only 62 points in the media roundup, and the strong cast of Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep was not able to generate more chemistry. Originally, Paramount was hoping that the film would be a "Harry Potter" success and become an important deployment for their next plan, but now it seems that it is obviously very difficult - but the media has proposed Paramount, and Lance will direct the second part of the series, what is the idea?

After the mediocre media reviews, the box office of "The Unfortunate Adventures of Raymond Snich" did not improve much, and the $30 million opening weekend box office was far from satisfactory compared to the investment cost of $140 million.

This week there is another new film, "The Spanish Maid", directed by the acclaimed director James L-Brooks, who has won three Oscars in his career, and has released "Perfect", "Mr. Sweetheart", "Mother-Daughter Love" and other masterpieces; And starring Adam-Sandler, who has reached the peak of his career in recent years, with an investment of 80 million, it is widely seen as one of the important candidates for the awards season and box office success.

But the fluctuating trend of the holiday stalls once again skewed the experts' predictions, with a 48-point media review that was terrible, and the opening weekend box office of only 8 million was even more miserable, which directly made the producer Sony Columbia Pictures completely dumbfounded.

The new work is not powerful, which makes people's attention fall on the old work again, and the box office decline in the third week of "Killing with a Knife" and "Ocean's Twelve" is even more interesting.

"Murder with a Knife" continued to work hard in Tom's call for the best performance of his career, handing over a 30 percent box office decline, and ending the second consecutive week with an astonishing performance of 25 million weekend box office jù, which was so amazing that it fell through a bunch of glasses - when the media predicted the premiere box office, 28 million was the average of their predictions for "Killing with a Knife", and now the film has entered its third week of release, and still achieved an excellent figure of 25 million. Many news media can't help but bow their arrogant heads.

As predicted after last week's weekend box office lists, "Kill with a Knife" easily crossed the 100 million threshold on Tuesday to enter the 100 million club, and continued to work hard in the following days, bringing the cumulative box office of three weeks of release to 131 million, which is more than double the cost. Due to Paramount's very economical spending during the promotional period, this also made "Kill with a Knife" officially enter the profit stage after this week; What's even more gratifying is that due to the wonderful table of the third week's decline, this also retains a glimmer of hope for "borrowing a knife to kill" to hit 200 million.

200 million box office, in the current North American box office market 100 million is gradually becoming the norm and 200 million is becoming the mainstream, is still the standard to measure whether a work has achieved great success. By the end of 2004, a total of 58 films in North American film history had grossed more than 200 million, including the "day after tomorrow" released this summer. With such a simple set of numbers, you can see the difficulty of breaking through 200 million, not to mention, for only 60 million yuan of "borrowing a knife to kill", the current results are already a huge victory, if it can break through 200 million, it will be an incredible miracle, even more sensational than the "day after tomorrow" to break through 300 million.

Regardless of whether "killing with a knife" can achieve this goal, there is still hope, and this is a great victory. Originally, people thought that it was the "Twelve Arhats" who were expected to hit 200 million, but now the shape has been reversed.

This week, "Twelve Arhats" still did not improve, the box office fell by more than 55% again, and only 7.5 million was harvested in three days over the weekend, and the cumulative box office in three weeks will reach 80 million, not to mention that compared with "Killing with a Knife", this achievement is compared with the same period of its predecessor, and it is already behind 15 million at this time, which also officially declares the possibility of "Twelve Oceans" surpassing the previous work bankruptcy; To make matters worse, although "Ocean's Twelve" still maintains the hope of breaking through 100 million, it has become extremely difficult to exceed the cost line of 110 million, especially considering the diving decline in the past two weeks, which also means ...... If you want to recover the cost, you can only rely on the overseas box office.

Does this scene sound familiar?

Following the summer "Troy", Warner Bros. once again faced such a dilemma, Diorama Pictures once again faced such a dilemma, and Brad Pitt once again faced such a miserable situation. Some people may say that at least compared to "Alexander the Great", "Ocean's Twelve" still retains the hope of recovering costs and even making a profit, but this has no comforting effect on Warner Bros.

The crew of "Ocean's Twelve" left the United States in a mighty and vigorous manner, opening the pace of publicity in overseas markets. Even Brad, who was previously "seriously ill", supported his sick body, joined the crew, and went to Europe for propaganda - Brad's appeal on the European continent even surpassed George's.

Finally, in the third week of December, "The Unfortunate Adventures of Raymond Snicch" won the championship by a narrow margin, but Paramount was not happy with this result; After ending two consecutive championships, "Killing with a Knife" once again handed over a perfect answer, ranking second this week, and two Paramount's works occupy the top of the list, which is also a relief; "Spanish Maid" and "Ocean's Twelve" are just under $500,000 apart, occupying the third and fourth positions of the week, respectively.

As for "Blade Warrior 3", which premiered last week, after being squeezed by Yanzhòng, the box office plummeted by 58% this week, falling directly to the sixth place, even if the cost is only 65 million, but recovering the cost is already an impossible task.

There are only two weeks left in 2004, and the hustle and bustle of the awards season has gradually reached its peak, with works such as "The Aviator", "Soul Singer" and "Million Dollar Baby" landing in major theaters one after another, once again firmly locking the attention of the news media on the awards season; The battle in the box office market seems to have subsided, the defeat of "Ocean's Twelve" is a foregone conclusion, the publicity has also withdrawn from the North American market, and the noise is no longer there, even the faint hope of "killing people with a knife" hitting 200 million cannot attract more attention, which more and more people's attention is focused on the awards season.

But this year's holiday stalls once again gave unexpected surprises.

The fourth week of December, which is also the annual Christmas holiday, this year's Christmas just stuck on the weekend, Christmas Eve is Friday, and Christmas Day is Saturday, which also creates more conditions for the outbreak of the box office.

This time, it was "Meet My Father-in-law 2" that set off a box office frenzy, four years ago, this low-budget comedy film was a box office dark horse, but the investment of 55 million won 160 million North American box office and 330 million global box office, although the sequel came Although it was not able to steal the style of the awards season, it was also pinned on high hopes, and finally Ben-Stiller (Ben-Stiller) teamed up with Robert De Niro to create a zào miracle again, even if it was released on Wednesday in advance, The three-day opening weekend still swept 46 million at the box office, surpassing the results achieved four weeks before "Killing with a Knife", and once again rearranging the film history list.

Under the backdrop of "Meet My Father-in-law 2" and the holiday atmosphere, the pace of "borrowing a knife to kill" to hit 200 million has also begun to become compact. (To be continued.) )