1990: Starting from Baojia Street

In fact, it seems that it is not difficult to surpass "The Piano Boy Who Wants to Fly" and "The Sixth Sense" in box office. "The Piano Boy Who Wants to Fly" was released in Neon that year and ranked in the top ten, with a distribution income of 1.41 billion Neon coins.

"The Sixth Sense" became the most popular spoken language film in Japan, but its allotment revenue was only about 1.7 billion Japanese coins.

Now, "Time Traveler" has earned 1 billion in allocation revenue in just seven days, and it will be easy for it to surpass those two movies in the future.

Before "Time Traveler" was released in Japan, major domestic media were already guessing what kind of results the movie would achieve in Japan.

Because "Time Traveler" performed very well in China, the media was also optimistic about the film's box office performance in Japan, and their guesses were relatively high.

However, they did not dare to guess too high. Most of the guessed distribution revenues were between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion. After all, the Japanese market is so small, and it is not easy to get a higher box office.

Not to mention Chinese-language films, even Japanese films have found it difficult to get high box office in the past two years.

More than six years have passed since 1991.

In the past six years, the highest-earning Japanese film was the miracle-working "Porco Rosso," which earned more than 2.8 billion. It was also the first Japanese animated film to win the annual championship.

Following closely behind is "Pom Poko" released in 1994, which earned 26.3 billion Neon coins.

In the past six years, there have been only six domestic films in Japan whose revenue has reached 2 billion Neon coins, which means an average of only one film per year.

These six films were distributed over four years, which means that there were two years in which Japan's domestic film revenue did not exceed 2 billion.

Last year, the highest-grossing film in Neon was "Godzilla: Resurrection", with revenue just reaching 2 billion Neon coins.

In second place is "Talk About Love and Dance", with an allocated income of 16 billion Neon coins.

The first few are all Hollywood movies.

The box office rankings are dominated by Hollywood movies, which has been the norm in Japan in recent years. The most exaggerated thing was the year before last, when out of the ten movies on the list, only two were from Japan, and the other eight were Hollywood movies.

Anyone who knows something about the Japanese film market generally doesn't dare to guess too high the distribution income of "Time Traveler".

However, after the box office results for the first seven days came out, everyone's opinions became different, and everyone raised their predicted box office figures significantly.

Now everyone's guess about the rationed income has become 2.5 billion to 3 billion Neon coins. Many people believe that "Time Traveler" may become the highest-grossing movie in Neon this year except for Hollywood blockbusters, surpassing all Neon domestic movies.

At the same time, many people believe that the appearance of "Time Traveler" has an impact on the box office of movies in the same year, especially those with overlapping release times.

The market is so small, and even if it can be expanded, it will be limited. So if there is a movie that explodes at the box office at the same time, other movies will definitely be affected.

The movie "Sleeper", which was released on the same day as "Time Traveler", was the first to be affected.

"Sleeper" is a Hollywood movie with a high production cost and a very strong cast. Director Barry Levinson won the 61st Academy Award for Best Director and the Golden Bear Award at the rd Berlin International Film Festival for the biopic "Rain Man", and has also been nominated for various major awards.

In addition to the director, the actors are also very famous.

Brad Pitt just won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in American Film and Television last year and was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

There are also Kevin Bacon, who has starred in films such as "Murder in the First Degree", "Apollo 13", "JFK", and veteran actors Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.

"Sleeper" has been highly anticipated since its preparation, but the film's box office performance in North America was mediocre, with only more than 53 million US dollars.

The production cost of this film is 50 million US dollars. If it only had box office in North America, it would definitely be a loss, so the production company now pays great attention to the overseas market.

Moreover, the overseas market performance is quite good. It has been released in several countries before Japan. So far, the overseas box office of "Sleeper" has reached 50 million US dollars, which is about to exceed the North American box office. If it continues like this, they will be able to make back their investment in no time.

This time, "Sleeper" is released in Neon, and it is also highly anticipated. They hope that this movie can get more than 1.5 billion Neon coins in allocation income in Neon.

The goal of 1.5 billion Neon Coins was not calculated casually. They conducted multiple rounds of social surveys before finally arriving at this figure.

However, what they didn't expect was that the release date would conflict with "Time Traveler".

"Sleeper" was scheduled first, and "Time Traveler" was scheduled later.

After the release date of "Time Traveler" was announced, "Sleeper" considered whether to postpone the release date to avoid a head-on collision with "Time Traveler".

But after considering it for a long time, they decided not to change the schedule.

Because the schedule is not easy to change.

If it is moved back to May, it might clash with the "Star Wars Special Edition". At the same time, there is also a "Paradise Lost" in May.

If it is pushed to June or July, it is possible that it will encounter "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion: 3.0 You Are the Apple of My Eye".

In August, there’s “Speed ​​2: Deadly Attack on Titan”, and in September, October and later, there might also be movies like “Independence Day” and “Princess Mononoke”.

In comparison, the "Sleeper" side feels that the impact of "Time Traveler" is still good.

They also evaluated "Time Traveler" and the result was that the box office of this movie will be very good, but the allocated income should not exceed 2 billion Neon coins.

Moreover, "Time Traveler" and "Sleeper" are completely two different styles of movies. The former is a warm romance film, and the latter is a thriller, so the conflict will not be too big.

But what they never expected was that after the release of "Time Traveler", the box office was so hot that it had a huge impact on "Sleeper".

The box office of "Sleeper" in its first weekend was actually pretty good, with the two-day allotment revenue adding up to nearly 300 million Neon coins.

Although it is not as good as the more than 400 million of "Time Traveler", they are also satisfied because this result has the hope of reaching their target of 1.5 billion allocated revenue.

However, two days later, the box office of "Sleeper" dropped rapidly.

On Monday, the ration income of "Sleeper" was only a pitiful 20 million neon coins.

Tuesday, 15 million.

Wednesday, 9.2 million.

On Thursday, 8.3 million.

On Friday, six and a half million.

……

The total revenue from the first seven days was only over 220 million, which was only 20% of that from Time Traveler. Now, let alone the 1.5 billion yuan in rationed income, if things continue like this, I'm afraid we may not even get the 300 million yuan in rationed income.

The target is 1.5 billion, but now even 300 million may not be achieved. The gap is too big, and both the production company and the distribution company in Japan cannot accept it for the time being.

This time, the head-on collision between "Time Traveler" and the Hollywood movie "Sleeper" ended just as it began.

Although the two movies have nothing to do with each other, they were released in Japan on the same day, so they are inevitably compared.

Before the two movies were released, some people had already compared their data.

First of all, of course, the comparison is about the production costs of the two films.

In terms of cost, there is a huge gap between the two films. The cost of "Sleeper" was 50 million US dollars, while the production cost of "Time Traveler" was only more than 3,000 RMB. If converted according to last year's exchange rate, the production cost of "Sleeper" is nearly fourteen times that of "Time Traveler".

So in terms of production cost, "Sleeper" wins.

Of course, those who know the business know that there is a huge gap between the film markets of China and the United States. Although there is a difference in the production costs of the two films, the difference is definitely not as big as it appears on paper.

"Sleeper" features a large number of well-known actors, and the actors' salaries alone amount to more than 20 million US dollars. After deducting the publicity and promotion costs, the funds actually spent on filming are not particularly large.

"Time Traveler" is a little different. It cost more than 30 million RMB, and most of the money was spent on the right things.

After comparing the production costs of the films, the next step is to compare the directors.

It goes without saying that Levinson, the director of Sleeper, has won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, the Special Jury Award, and the Academy Award for Best Director...

As for Zhou Yan, the only award he has won so far is the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, which Levinson also won.

In addition to the Berlin Film Festival award, Zhou Yan also won an Oscar for Best Original Score, but this award does not seem to be particularly convincing for his identity as a director.

It is worth mentioning that "Sleeper" was also nominated for the Best Original Score Award at the Academy Awards some time ago.

On paper, the comparison between the two directors is definitely Levinson's win.

But the thing is, this is in Neon, not some other country.

In Neon, no matter how many awards Levinson has won, he can never compare with Zhou Yan.

Therefore, in this director comparison, Zhou Yan narrowly won in a special way.

After that, it’s a competition of actors.

The comparison of the actors is the same as that of the directors. Although there are many well-known Hollywood actors in "Sleeper", it is still carried by Zhou Yan and Joey Wong.

After all, Zhou Yan and Joey Wong, one is ranked first on Japan's annual most popular foreign male star list, and the other is ranked first on Japan's annual most popular foreign female star list.

After a long comparison, the conclusion was that the two movies were equally good and there was no clear winner.

But now it seems that the comparison at that time was completely meaningless.

The current situation has arisen because, on the one hand, the Japanese really like Zhou Yan and are willing to go to the cinema for him.

On the other hand, the movie "Time Traveler" is indeed in line with the taste of Japanese movie fans. At least compared with "Sleeper", Japanese movie fans prefer to watch it.

What’s interesting is that after watching “Time Traveler” and “Sleeper” in the cinema, many viewers thought that the production level of the former was better than the latter.

Although "Time Traveler" didn't cost much, it was well-made.

What is well-made? First of all, it’s the pictures. There is no need to compare it with other Chinese films. The pictures of Time Traveler are better than many Hollywood dramas, at least it can reach the average level.

In addition to the pictures, there is the sound. The sound production of "Time Traveler" is much better than that of "Sleeper".

"Time Traveler" has the advantage in both of these aspects, not to mention the use of a large amount of original music.

The day after the premiere of "The Time Traveler", the well-known Japanese film critic Ken Kobayashi published a film review, praising the movie highly, almost praising "The Time Traveler" from beginning to end.

On the second day after "Sleeper" was released, Ken Kobayashi also published a film review.

He did not give "Sleeper" a low score. On the contrary, he thought "Sleeper" was a pretty good movie and could be given a score of seven.

But as a Hollywood movie directed by a Golden Bear Award-winning director himself, not to mention the genre, it was crushed by "Time Traveler" in all aspects, which is a bit disappointing.

Of course, Ken Kobayashi also added a few lines to make up for "The Sleeper".

He believes that the reason why "Time Traveler" can achieve such quality at such a low cost is mainly because of Zhou Yan.

Let’s not talk about anything else, just talk about the soundtrack of this movie.

If "Sleeper" wants to have the same level of soundtrack as "Time Traveler", the production cost will probably have to increase by at least 10%.

In fact, these amazing soundtracks cannot be bought with money.

At the same time, Zhou Yan not only solved the problem of music, but also the problem of screenwriting.

Let’s not talk about whether the script of “Time Traveler” can be bought or not. Even if it is available on the market, the miscellaneous expenses to obtain such a script will cost several million US dollars.

Screenwriter fees, director's salary, most of this money is not included in the production cost.

In other words, the 30 million RMB production cost of "Time Traveler" is actually fake.

If these expenses were converted into production costs in the United States, most films would not be able to afford it.

……

After the failure of "Sleeper", there was no rival to "Time Traveler" in the market at the same time.

In the second weekend after the movie was released, the box office of "Time Traveler" reversed its decline, and the allotment revenue for the two days of the weekend reached 320 million Neon coins, which exceeded the data of "The Sixth Sense" in the first three days of its release in Neon.

So far, "Time Traveler" has been released in Neon for nine days, and the distribution income has exceeded 1.3 billion Neon coins.

As for Sleeper, we had hoped that the box office would pick up in the second weekend, but the combined revenue for the two days was less than 10 million. (End of this chapter)