In the second week of March, Paramount Pictures, driven by the Internet boom and the "Tonight Show", showed the atmosphere and determination of the old film company, and raised the expansion of "City of God" from 182 to 868 in one go, directly from the limited screening stage to the small-scale public screening stage, which reminds people of the development curve of the two works "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Angel Amelie".

Many people in the industry think that Paramount Pictures is in a hurry.

As a low-budget independent film, Paramount had already seen the film's potential during awards season — otherwise they wouldn't have bought the South American distribution rights along with it. Now that the cost of "City of God" has been recovered, and no matter how much money is earned at the box office, Paramount only needs to focus on promoting the word-of-mouth momentum of the movie, and by the end of the year, it will be invincible, and at the same time it will be able to win the box office, so why not?

However, the "Tonight Show" effect still needs time to settle and ferment, and the power of the Internet has not been proven to promote the audience, and in addition to this, the "City of God" has put a lot of energy into publicity - Paramount's choice is clearly to want a white wolf with empty gloves.

This made people in the industry shake their heads, but when it really got them to build a pì for Paramount, everyone didn't have an idea. "City of God" is a non-English language work that has reached its current position through the power of the Internet, which is the first of its kind for the entire North American market, and no one knows what to do next, so they can only wait and see.

The "City of God", which has gathered countless curious eyes, withstood the huge pressure and lived up to expectations with a single score of $8,977, and won $7.8 million in just three days over the weekend, which made the "City of God" rush to the fifth place in this week's weekend box office rankings!

As the only film in the top 10 to screen fewer than 1,000 theaters, "City of God" was so stunning that "Teenage Agent Cody" and "The Hunting Game," which premiered this week, were embarrassed. The "New York Times," "Los Angeles Times," and "Chicago Tribune," all major newspapers in the United States, led by the "Dark Horse Stunning North American Box Office," for the first time truly pushed the "City of God" to all audiences in the United States -- no longer the Internet, no longer the "Tonight Show," but the extensive publicity of authoritative media.

At this time, the cumulative box office of "City of God" has reached 17.6 million US dollars, and it is certain that it will become the seventh non-English work in film history to exceed 20 million at the box office......

Just imagining it is enough to make the major media boil.

However, the excellent performance of the "City of God" was only lively in the media for two days, and it quickly cooled down as the war began.

On 20 March, the joint forces, mainly British and American troops, bypassed the UN Security Council and unilaterally launched a military attack on Iraq, and the second Gulf War officially broke out.

Not to mention the "City of God", even the entire entertainment industry, including Hollywood, has fallen silent, all aspects of society have shifted their attention to war, the confrontation between the main war faction and the anti-war faction has been pushed to the extreme, and the life of the peaceful era has officially come to an end, and at the moment of the 21st century, the cruelty and bloodiness of war are coming.

This is just the beginning.

Four days later, the 75th Academy Awards ceremony was officially held at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, and it was not only the excitement, but also the excitement. On the night of the awards ceremony, only three actors who did not win the nomination refused the Oscar invitation and were absent from the awards ceremony, not to mention Bruce Willis (Bruce-Willis) who supported the war.

So, the award ceremony was held. No one was surprised.

Even so, opposition to war and peace became the sole core theme of the evening's awards ceremony, and almost everyone in attendance could not do without it.

In the end, this year's Oscars came to an end in controversy and confusion with the victory of "Chicago" and "The Pianist". Almost all of the media attention was focused on the war, and even Oscar was stealing the limelight - Oscar, who was 75 years old, ended the year in a hurry amid media cynicism.

The academy insisted on holding an award ceremony, and no one can say whether this was a victory or a disgrace.

In this context, the "City of God" is naturally nothing, "Chicago" and "The Pianist" have stolen almost all the limelight, the former is considered a paradise in the midst of disaster, warming the panic and anxiety of society, and the Academy awarded it the best picture in the hope of injecting a shot in the arm for the people; The latter is the most direct indictment of the war, and truly demonstrates the college's unwavering anti-war stance. As a result, these two works also exhausted the gimmick of "City of God".

However, after four weeks of screenings, the word of mouth of "City of God" has completely spread, especially the excellent performance Xiàn, which was released on a small scale last week. Therefore, in the third week of March, Paramount further mentioned the theater line of "City of God" to 981, showing its strong confidence in the movie.

"City of God" delivered $3.9 million at the weekend box office with a single $4,000 receipt, which was also the first time in the five weeks since the film's release that the box office fell, and the upward momentum slowed down. However, the cumulative box office of "City of God" still came to 23 million US dollars, and the box office number of "Angel Amelie" has been included in the schedule.

After that, the disadvantages of the "City of God" were finally manifested, an independent film with a sword, an art film with a heavy idea, a non-English film in Portuguese, and a drama film without a big name.

Subsequently, Paramount Pictures maintained its 980-theater theater chain for another two weeks, but the single-theater box office has slipped to about $2,500, and there is a further downward trend, which makes Paramount Pictures have to start shrinking the scale of screenings. However, thanks to the excellent reputation of the movie, Paramount's pace of contraction has always been unhurried and methodical, which made the movie successfully released in major theaters in North America for fifteen weeks, and it was not offline until the last week of May.

It is worth mentioning that the activity of Javier's blog lasted for three weeks, filtered out 63 posts, and attracted more than 140,000 reply comments, not to mention an average of 120,000 hits per day, which seems to have become one of the most sensational events since the beginning of the Internet era.

Relying on the solid reputation of "City of God", the freshness of Rotten Tomatoes has dropped to 96%, and the score on IMDB has also slipped to 8.7 points, ranking firmly in the top 20 and occupying the 15th place in the list of 250 best films, which is not only the best work of non-English works on IMDB, but also the only non-English work in the top 30.

Without any further ado, the excellence of the "City of God" is clear at a glance.

With the concerted efforts of the audience, "City of God" finally came to 45 million US dollars, easily surpassing "Angel Amelie" and occupying the third place in the current North American all-time box office list for non-English titles, only behind "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Beautiful Life" by Xiàn. These three works are also the only three non-English works in film history that have exceeded 40 million at the North American box office so far!

What's even more rare is that the distribution rights of the "City of God" were sold to 25 countries and regions around the world, including Brazil, and achieved results beyond imagination, with an overseas box office of up to 83 million US dollars, which caused everyone to be in an uproar, of which Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain were among the top four at the overseas box office, and the box office all crossed the 8 million threshold, and Brazil became the world's largest box office after North America, winning 15 million US dollars at the box office, with remarkable results.

Against everyone's behalf, "City of God" earned $128 million at the global box office, whether it was the film's $3 million cost, the Portuguese setting, or the director's, screenwriter's and actor's debut. This achievement not only surprised the media, but even Paramount Pictures. Even Brad Gray was stunned, wondering "What the hell is going on at the box office?" ”

As a dark horse, "City of God" has achieved double success in terms of word-of-mouth and box office, not to mention what will be the year-end awards season, but it is certain that the excellent performance at the box office has made Paramount almost smile from ear to ear, which also made Lance and Chaos Pictures break into the sight of major Hollywood studios overnight.

In Hollywood, people jokingly refer to the Sundance Film Festival as a "blockbuster springboard", and then the Toronto Film Festival as the "Oscar backyard", which means that independent directors who want to enter the mainstream of Hollywood go to Sundance; If an independent director wants to make an impact on the Oscars, then go to Toronto.

Now Lance has taken advantage of the platform of Sundance to emerge, and the speed of this rise has really caught Ryan Kavalaugh, George Clooney and others off guard. Congratulations to Peyton Manning's Denver Broncos for winning the Super Bowl, scattering flowers to celebrate, howling to celebrate, and add more to celebrate! I couldn't calm down with my excitement! Congratulations to Daman, congratulations to Daman!