In convincing Hopkins, Jude played a little trick.

Promising not to use Hopkins' name for publicity seems to be a bit of a loss, but in fact, the crew already has Denzel Washington as a box office and popularity guarantee, and the promotion of the entire film will be mainly carried out by Denzel, plus a Hopkins may not add much popularity to the film, and concealing the news of Hopkins' joining can create a huge suspense, everyone can't guess who the villain of this movie is, and naturally there is no way to reverse the plot, which invisibly increases the suspense of this movie.

In the original "Seven Deadly Sins", the serial killer was played by Kevin Spacey, and the producers originally wanted to put his name at the beginning of the credits, but he insisted on not letting his name appear in order to surprise the audience at the identity of the killer, and as compensation, his name appeared first in the subtitles at the end.

Jude was ready to play the trick too, but the target changed from Kevin Spacey to Anthony Hopkins, and he did so for good reason.

Now everyone doesn't immediately associate Kevin Spacey with the villain, but as soon as Anthony Hopkins is mentioned, everyone's knee-jerk reaction is that the man-eating maniac Professor Hannibal is subconscious.

As soon as Anthony Hopkins' name appears in a certain movie, everyone will definitely think that he is going to play some terrifying role this time.

Therefore, even if Hopkins does not take the initiative to mention this matter, Jude will later persuade him to accept such an arrangement on the grounds of maintaining suspense. And now, this arrangement is the best proof that Jude values Hopkins' acting skills rather than fame.

It's a pity that Hopkins wasn't so easily fooled.

"The script can promise not to use my name for propaganda on the surface, but secretly leak this matter to the media in private, and you can completely shift the responsibility to the media after the matter is exposed."

In order to show his "sincerity", Jude said ruthlessly: "Everyone in the crew, including me, will sign a strict confidentiality agreement, and if the news leaks due to a mistake on the part of the crew during filming, Mr. Hopkins can immediately announce his withdrawal without any liability for breach of contract." ”

As soon as such conditions came out, Hopkins finally had nothing to say.

When the news reached Shay-White, he was both happy and depressed.

Hopkins' influence is undoubted, after "The Silence of the Lambs" there are few Hollywood stars who dare to say that the villain role can be more successful than Hannibal, and his acting skills have been recognized by an Oscar statuete - Hopkins appeared in "The Silence of the Lambs" for less than 16 minutes in total, the shortest performance time of the Oscar winner for Best Actor, but also the most impressive.

With Hopkins joining, and the plot triangle composed of Denzel Washington and Jude, it is impossible for an average A-level production to have such a luxurious lineup.

But Hopkins' agreement to star in the film gave Shay White a headache, and the other party actually asked to hide the information about his participation until the film was released, and the overall performance level of the film was guaranteed, but the crew could not get much benefit from this incident.

There is an Oscar-winning actor in his hand but he can't tell others, this kind of entanglement is enough to drive Shay crazy.

The point is that the new line company also has to pay more than $5 million for the "incognito" actor, although the other party only has a total of less than 10 minutes in the film.

In order to persuade Shay, Jude had to take the initiative to reduce his original salary of 5 million by 1 million, and Kate also symbolically reduced his salary by 100,000 in order to show her support for Jude's decision.

Jude explained to Shay the reason for this, of course, the real reason, and Shay accepted it.

The plot triangle of "The Seven Deadly Sins" is now only Denzel Washington is not in place, and Shay's idea is to hope that Jude will start contact with the other party as soon as possible, because New Line has been preparing for this film for too long, and they don't want to drag it out any longer.

Jude insisted on waiting until "Two Smoking Guns" was released in North America to go to Denzel Washington, and the reasons given made Shay unable to refuse, so the matter could only be delayed for the time being.

"Two Smoking Guns" was released in the UK for a month and a half, and by the time it was finally released in theaters, the film had already grossed £17 million, which was £2 million higher than CinemaScore's initial prediction.

Because the overall forecast direction is not wrong, this part of the error is still within an acceptable range, especially if the actual box office exceeds the forecast.

The British media has been covering this for several days, but unfortunately the news of the upcoming release of the movie has not attracted too many people's attention, especially in the United States, where all the media and the public's attention is attracted to the upcoming Oscars.

The Oscars have always had the saying of big and small years, and every big year, there will be several recognized films competing for various awards at the same time, and when encountering a small year, the final award-winning works may not even be on the shortlist when they are put into the big year, and the big gap between the big and small years can be seen.

But in the past 1994, it is no longer enough to describe it as a big year in the Oscars, because there are too many excellent movies released this year, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as a blowout.

In addition to "Forrest Gump", "The Shawshank Redemption", and "Pulp Fiction", you can also see "Four Funerals and a Wedding", "Burning Years", "Night Interview with the Vampire", "The Lion King" and other films in the shortlist of various awards, plus the technical awards shortlisted for the two commercial blockbusters "Life and Death" and "True Lies", the competition of the 67th Oscars has exceeded any previous edition.

From a week before the awards ceremony, all newspapers in the United States began to warm up for this upcoming film event, the US presidential election that has begun, and the major news events at home and abroad have all been taken off the front page, and all TV news and talk shows are most discussed topics are the Oscars, and film companies, directors, and actors take turns to appear on the stage, as long as the people and things that are related to the Oscars can easily attract the attention of all parties.

The new line company has sensibly given up its plans to promote "Two Smoking Guns" during this time, but Jude, who is also an outsider to this Oscar, has not been idle, and he has been starting acting training with Kate's help these days in preparation for the filming of "The Seven Deadly Sins".