"Ocean's Twelve" focuses on the premiere, continuing the publicity model of commercial films, as if the top clown generally plays with the juggling in his hands dazzling, exciting, and dizzying; "Murder with a Knife" focuses on the film itself, and on the contrary, it takes the way of reporting during the screening of art films, which is as secretive, plain and solid as the mysterious performance of a senior magician.

Whether it is online publicity or print media publicity, on December 3, "Ocean's Twelve" has achieved all-round crushing, thanks to the comprehensive tilt of Warner Bros. publicity resources, so that the topic of the work has spread overwhelmingly; The pattern presented by the print media and the Internet faintly follow a similar trajectory, and the dazzling information bombardment is aimed at the entertainment, commerciality, and star cast of the movie, and even does not hesitate to push it to a new height with the head-to-head confrontation of "borrowing a knife to kill", and the "box office attributes" of the movie have been infinitely amplified.

Comparatively speaking, "Murder with a Knife" has abandoned the hype and publicity from the premiere and honestly focused on the film itself. The subsequent discussion about the film also continued this trend, and the praise of Javier and Roger for the film sparked a heated discussion among fans, and the advantage of the rapid spread of the Internet allowed word of mouth to spread quickly. However, after putting aside the topic of lace, the chemistry triggered by the film is relatively limited - this kind of propaganda, the most important thing is the precipitation of time.

Despite this, there are still many people in the circle who think that "borrowing a knife to kill" is disarming and surrendering, and it seems that they have decided that there is no possibility of defeating the "Twelve Arhats" at the box office, so they have chosen a roundabout strategy and focus on the quality card, hoping to win more box office in the long-term staying power by relying on word-of-mouth.

After all, this is box office competition, short-term explosiveness will become the basis of long-term staying power, and word-of-mouth is just an uncertain unknown factor. For commercial films, topics and focus are key, and the explosiveness of the box office in the first weekend has a crucial strategic position. Of course, there are also many film works in history that were mediocre at the beginning of their release, but then relied on the precipitation of word-of-mouth to win an amazing box office, and there are quite a few of them, but on the whole, this is still a small probability event.

Therefore, in the box office showdown between "Ocean's Twelve" and "Murder with a Knife", in the premiere stage, the former not only achieved a big victory, but also rode the dust to expand the advantage, and it seems that just after the premiere, the box office trend of the opening weekend has set the tone.

Previously, before the release of the two films, the media's box office forecasts were generally optimistic about "Ocean's Twelve", and the star-studded and sequel advantages made the box office prospects of this work bright; But for "killing people with a knife", the media did not take it lightly, relying on the hype of the topic in the early stage, coupled with Tom Cruise's appeal, the movie also has strong competitiveness and cannot be underestimated.

Among the box office predictions, the highest number of "Ocean's Twelve" is 65 million from the "San Francisco Chronicle", which is based on history, one is the "Incredibles", which four weeks ago set a new November weekend box office record of 70 million, and the other is "The Lord of the Rings 3", which set the highest weekend box office record in December with 72 million last year, which shows their strong confidence in this work; The lowest estimate came from the Washington Post's 43 million, and a total of 17 media outlets predicted an average of 50 million at the premiere box office.

For reference, three years ago, "Ocean's Eleven" had an excellent opening weekend of $38 million, taking away the box office top spot from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"; Interestingly, though, the following week, "Ocean's Eleven" handed over the box office top spot, and was replaced by "Vanilla Sky" starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz.

The media's box office prediction for "Ocean's Twelve" has been fine-tuned based on the number of previous films, and on the whole, you can still feel the strong confidence in this work.

In comparison, the prediction number of "Killing with a Knife" is a little weaker, and the highest number is the 50 million boldly predicted by the New York Post, which can be among the top three on the current December film history list, only behind the two "Lord of the Rings" series of works; The lowest prediction was given by the Seattle Post, which was 19 million, and the average forecast of 14 media outlets was 28 million.

It can be seen that thanks to the topic detonated by the previous two works, coupled with the participation of a number of charismatic superstars, on the whole, the box office of the two films is optimistic, especially the "Twelve Arhats" to set a historical record.

However, after the premiere, although the media did not immediately update the box office prediction - because the real number jù will come out soon, there is no need to update the forecast, but rumors in the circle are generally down-looking about the line of "killing people with a knife", believing that Paramount's conservative strategy is likely to trigger a negative reaction.

On Friday, December 3, "Ocean's Twelve" and "Murder with a Knife" were officially released simultaneously in the United States, but the attention received by Cheng Dù was very different.

The former was released in 3,300 theaters, while the latter was only 2,800 theaters; The former's film scheduling rate is far ahead at 43 percent, while the latter's film scheduling rate is only 31 percent. It can be seen from this detail alone that the attitudes of major theaters towards the two movies are also completely different, everyone is generally optimistic about "Ocean's Twelve", of course, Warner Bros. is also behind the promotion, and the now declining Paramount is naturally not an opponent.

With Friday's publicity war raging on, everyone is focused on the box office battle, and the answer is about to be revealed.

As everyone expected, the box office competition between "Twelve Arhats" and "Killing with a Knife" has become the main theme, and it is "Twelve Arhats" who finally take the lead.

Under the watchful eye, "Ocean's Twelve" performed well, achieving a single-day box office of $15 million, easily winning the single-day box office championship on Friday; and "Killing with a Knife" received 12 million at the single-day box office, lagging behind its competitors who were released on the same day and ranking second; Surprisingly, "National Treasure", which entered its third week of release, still achieved 6 million in a single day, poaching a large piece of the box office market, ranking third.

This result made people in the circle show strange looks.

First of all, in anticipation, due to the battle between "Ocean's Twelve" and "Murder by the Sword", the box office market of other films will be squeezed violently, and it is not easy to cross three million at the box office in a single day, but the result is a big surprise, "National Treasure" still maintains its vigorous vitality two weeks after its release, and survives in the cracks but unyieldingly wins six million dollars, which is amazingly good.

It can be seen that the box office appeal of "Twelve Arhats" and "Killing with a Knife" seems to be far less powerful than imagined, and the noisy and prosperous scene is more like an impetuous illusion. This reminds people of the nature of the holiday season - unpredictable, almost no one can be sure that a particular type of work will make a profit during the holiday season, is this time the case?

Second, the box office of "Ocean's Twelve" is far lower than expected, not to mention the possibility of breaking records, if the box office of the movie wants to exceed 50 million on weekends, it is normal for the box office to fluctuate around 20 million on Fridays.

In the end, the box office surprise of "Murder with a Knife" was not an outstanding number, but at least it proved that the media forecast of 28 million would be easily reached - which means that the negative impact of Paramount's conservatism did not materialize, and the topic effect of the early hype and publicity still brought effective box office numbers to the film.

As a result, it cannot be said that the "Twelve Arhats" swept the Eight Wildernesses, nor can it be said that "borrowing a knife to kill people" lost their armor and abandoned their armor; It can't be said that the two benefit each other, nor can it be said that the two are suffering from each other, and perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the two are in a strange stalemate, which is really a bit strange.

It stands to reason that the two works have similar themes, star cards, the same release date, similar publicity methods, and similar audiences...... This means that the two films are bound to fight to the death - at least on the opening weekend, and the capacity of the genre film market is so large that there is no room for two tigers, and no matter how difficult the choice is, it will decide the winner, and it is likely that one side will win and the other will lose.

But now, the situation is ambiguous, and it is only the Friday box office, and it is impossible to analyze too many of them. The final outcome will depend on the box office on Saturday and Sunday, whether it is down or up – and more importantly, how high it is on Saturday and how low it is on Sunday. In other words, perhaps this red-hot box office showdown won't be decided until Sunday, which means ...... The competition has officially entered the white heat!

Although it exceeded expectations, it made the media more excited - no one fell into the dust, and no one rode the dust, such a hot grappling stage is exactly what the media likes to see the most: the breaking point, the breaking point, the breaking point! It is conceivable that in the next promotion period, the confrontation between the two films will only become more and more tense, and the sparks will become more and more intense, how can this not be exciting?

The trend of the box office on Friday was not able to distinguish between the high and low, which also made everyone's attention shift to the major media: because the statistical base of the theater score is not enough, the number is not convincing, so as the audience to measure the quality of the movie, the most direct number of jù is naturally the media comprehensive evaluation - the feedback of film critics from major authoritative media will become an important reference for the audience to make decisions.

A laughable situation has emerged: the box office competition between the two commercial films has entered a hand-to-hand / fight / battle with bayonets, and it is the evaluation of film critics that determines the outcome of the game! This makes people can't help but start complaining: sure enough, it's December awards season, and even the box office showdown of commercial films is so different.

Although the media comprehensive review is bad, it does not mean that the box office of the movie is bad; However, the excellent comprehensive evaluation of the media, in a certain way, does mean that the box office of the movie will have more room for development.

Under the watchful eye, the first batch of film reviews from 43 professional media was released! For a time, everyone's enthusiasm was detonated. (To be continued.) )