With the premiere of "Pharaoh and the Gods", the film's word-of-mouth can no longer be banned, and various media columns and critics' comments are overwhelming.

That night, many film critics published their reviews for the first time.

Warner Pictures has done a lot of work, and film critics are a business, and there are not many film critics who applaud the film.

"A spectacular epic film, Bell's humane interpretation of Moses as a historical figure, and Ridley Scott has created another new historical masterpiece."

"The film retells a well-known biblical story in an amazing way!"

"The creative team, led by Ridley Scott and Christian Bale, has shown amazing courage to create a blockbuster that will really hit this summer!"

Rotten Tomatoes, which collects professional film reviews as the scoring standard, has a freshness rate of 77% in the first wave of Rotten Tomatoes.

The MTC overall score is also 66.

On IMDB, which gathers more ordinary fans, there is no score because of the insufficient number of audiences for the premiere.

For a summer commercial blockbuster, word-of-mouth seems to be okay.

However, with the rise of social media, the way movies control scores have gradually changed.

Many ordinary viewers who participated in the premiere on social media, led by Twitter, posted a lot of related tweets.

"The story of the film is what it looks like in the Bible, everything is procedural, not bad, but not very good, the most exciting is in the trailer."

"Cliché and verbose, in line with Ridley's usual level of epic films over the years."

"The plot drags and messes, the narrative is chaotic and jumpy, and the reviews are bad!"

But the audience that has seen the premiere is limited after all, and Warner Bros. can still control the reviews and guide word-of-mouth marketing in general.

The pre-sale of "Pharaohs and the Gods" in North America in the first weekend smoothly exceeded $10 million.

Then, it doesn't go up much.

However, there are not many films that can sell two or three million dollars at the advance box office in this era.

Warner Bros. is still engaged in publicity and distribution step by step, and for a film of this scale, half of the production cost invested in publicity and distribution is a basic operation, and $100 million is called a normal situation.

On the first weekend of May, "Pharaohs and the Gods" opened on time in more than 3,800 theaters in North America, grossing $12.15 million on its first day.

It's not a great number, it's not too bad, and it's much better than Ridley's last Robinson.

But as the audience for seeing the film skyrocketed, it was too difficult for Warner Pictures to control word of mouth.

The audience reputation of "Pharaoh and the Gods" collapsed directly.

The number of IMDB rating users has reached the rating ban - 6.2 points!

The cinemascore that can most directly reflect the audience's reputation is only B-.

This often means that a box office tragedy is about to happen.

The overwhelming number of bad reviews almost drowned out the previous good reviews.

"Long, ugly, incoherent plot!"

"Except for special effects, there is nothing left, it is better to read the stories in the Bible."

"Do Warner Bros., Ridley Scott, and Christian Bale want to blaspheme God?"

"Some of Ridley's films are heavenly, some are hellish, and unfortunately, this one belongs to the latter."

The spread of social media is too fast, and the plummeting word-of-mouth has coincided with the film's declining attendance.

On Saturday, "Pharaohs and the Gods" fell sharply at the box office, closing in $7.55 million.

The film did not open high, but it went low.

The law of the market, because of the relationship between working on Monday, the attendance rate on Sunday night will drop significantly, and the box office on Sunday will inevitably decline again.

In the early hours of Monday morning, after Martin had fed Elizabeth Olsen, he soon fell asleep after days of hard work.

Elizabeth took a shower, brushed her teeth again, and when she returned to her bedroom, Martin's cell phone vibrated on the couch.

She picked up her phone, but instead of answering, she woke Martin up: "You have a phone. ”

Martin wiped his face and answered the phone.

The call was made by Thomas, and the latest box office statistics were out.

Elizabeth put on her pajamas and went to the wine cellar outside to get a bottle of champagne and two glasses back.

In the past two days, she has also been paying attention to the box office trend of the movie where Martin was robbed, and knows that the results are now out.

When she returned, seeing Martin hanging up, Elizabeth asked, "Pharaoh and the Gods' box office statistics are out?" ”

"$23.11 million for the opening weekend." Martin took the champagne and glass in her hand and poured a glass for each of them: "The most optimistic estimate is that the North American box office will fall between $50 million and $60 million." ”

Elizabeth clinked a glass with him: "Isn't that what we want to see?" ”

Martin drank the wine from the glass, put it down and hugged Elizabeth: "I can sleep well tonight." ”

Elizabeth buried herself in Martin's arms: "I hope those bastards who calculated us won't be able to sleep tonight." ”

…………

Monday morning, Warner Pictures President's Office.

Jon Berg's eyes were red, he hadn't slept well for several nights, and his eye circles had almost turned blue-black.

Sitting behind his desk, he saw the latest statistics.

The first week box office in North America was $23.11 million!

If the reputation is good, it is not impossible to counterattack, and the "Titanic" of that year was only $28 million in the first weekend in North America.

But word of mouth collapsed, IMDB dropped to 6.0, and Rotten Tomatoes plummeted from 77% to 43%.

The situation completely collapsed.

It was Jon Berg's first multi-billion-dollar project since he took office, but it screwed up.

The phone on my desk rang.

But it was Kevin Tsujihara, who had just served as CEO and chairman of the group, who called.

Kevin Tsujiwara asked directly, "What's going on with Pharaohs and the Gods?" Isn't this a project that Martin Davis is optimistic about, and you did everything you could to keep it? ”

Jon's first thought was to shirk the blame: "It's true, Daniel intercepted the project and pushed it to my side, and he thinks that the project that Martin Davis is optimistic about is extremely operable......"

"Don't talk about that yet." Kevin Tsujihara said, "Failure is not terrible, but you have to learn from the lessons to avoid similar failures again." ”

Jon said, "Not again." ”

Kevin Tsujihara asked, "Is it okay with DC Pictures to work on Green Lantern?" ”

"The film is going well, is well-made, and will give the DC Super Heroes Cinematic Universe a head start." Speaking of other projects, Jon's confidence returned: "Hamada and I agreed that this would be a masterpiece that surpassed Iron Man!" ”

Kevin Tsujihara said: "Regarding the pharaohs and the gods, a report will be submitted this week. ”

Jon answered, and quickly hung up.

He breathed a sigh of relief, with Kevin's support, there would be less pressure on the group company's side.

The project "Pharaohs and the Gods", from the production team to the actor team, is very reliable, the story itself has an extremely wide audience, and the film is finally the final cut that he took the editor to complete, why did it fail so miserably?

Jon picked up the phone and called Daniel in thought.

It didn't take long for Daniel to arrive at his office.

Jon asked, "Are you sure that these projects you promoted were given to you by Martin?" ”

What do you mean by me pushing? Daniel is also an old fritter, and when he heard it, he understood that Jon Berg was shirking his responsibilities and said: "I took the project from Martin Davis and handed it over to the company, and the specific production was handled by Warner Pictures!" ”

Knowing that now was not the time for infighting, Jon asked, "Are these really the projects that Martin Davis is optimistic about?" ”

"Definitely he's optimistic." Daniel is confident in this: "I knew Martin Davis when he was a young actor, I knew him very well, he was initially interested in working with Warner on these projects, and you know what happened later. ”

Jon thought of a possibility: "Will Martin deliberately trick us." ”

Daniel shook his head directly: "Impossible, before a movie is made, who can guarantee 100% success and failure?" Don't forget, Martin also hired Ridley Scott as the director of his new film, what does that mean? He believes in Ridley Scott's directing ability and has great confidence in him. ”

Thinking that the other party just wanted to put the responsibility on his head, he deliberately added: "Maybe there was a problem with the final editing of the film." ”

"You ......" Jon's dark circles darkened even more: "We are summing up lessons and learning from them, finding out the shortcomings of our work, not passing the buck to each other." ”

Daniel has been thinking about it for the past few days: "On this project, we invested a lot of money, a lot of resources, one of the best production teams, and we still suffered failures, and I think the crux of the problem is obvious. ”

Jon also thought of it: "Martin Davis? ”

"Yes, Martin Davis!" "I've been dealing with Martin and Louise Mayer, the producer who supported him, for many years, and even if the project gets into their hands, there's no better production team than Ridley, and apart from what the two of us just talked about, it's all about the male lead," Daniel said. ”

Jon understood what he meant: "The character created by Christian Bale is not as commercial appealing as Martin Davis. ”

Daniel said: "As it turns out, the difference is too much, the Dark Knight is not obvious, and Terminator 2018 and Pharaoh and the Gods fully prove one thing, Christian Bale does not have the ability to carry the box office. ”

Jon agrees: "The success of the two new Batman movies has little to do with Bale's personal appeal, which is one of the two most popular superheroes in North America. ”

He made a decision: "In the future, none of Warner Pictures' medium- and large-scale investment productions will use Christian Bale as the leading actor, and I will submit a proposal to the head office, and it is better not to use other production companies under Warner." ”

Daniel said: "He screwed up two super big productions in a row, and no one in Hollywood will use him as the leading actor in a first-line commercial production in the future." ”

The two quickly reached a tacit understanding, and the responsibility for the failure of the film was all pushed to the main creative team, including Bell and Ridley, and then they would let people release the news, saying that Ridley and Bell were difficult to do on the set, and the post-production was Hu Lai and the like.

Jon also reminisced about another big production because of the failure of this project.

(End of chapter)