Hollywood Director 1992.

Chapter 21 First Week Box Office
On Thursday, "Buried" sold 802 tickets at the United Theater, with sales reaching $6416, a little less than Wednesday but still above $6000.

William Mason saw good box office numbers.

The box office data of "Buried" in the first six days was sent to the headquarters of Consolidated Theatres via fax.

Apply to extend the release time of "Buried".

The United Theater headquarters saw that the box office of "Buried Alive" had a good increase and approved William Mason's application.

Link re-signed a distribution contract with the Union Theatre.

This time he didn't need to pay a deposit.

Instead, according to the theater's contract, the two parties split the profits 60:40.

The cinema chain takes 60% and Link takes 40%.

It lasts for one week.

Whether they will continue to cooperate next week depends on the box office performance of "Buried" in the next few days.

As of Friday, "Buried Alive" was able to continue playing at the Union Theatre.

It was just the beginning of the new week when the renovation of the Burbank-Union Theater was completed and normal screenings began.

In addition to "Buried", theaters also began showing "Chaplin" starring Robert Downey Jr., the popular thriller "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", "My Cousin Vinny" directed by Jonathan Lynn, and the action crime film "Harley Brothers" starring famous rapper Tupac.

Due to the increase in the number of movies released during the same period, the screening volume of "Buried" was reduced accordingly. Last week, as long as there were people coming to see "Buried", the ten theaters were showing it at any time.

Now the screenings are scheduled based on the movie attendance rate. For movies with high attendance rates, the number of screenings will increase.

This is very unfavorable for "Buried". Other movies are promoted and distributed by regular film distribution companies, and they are popular and have news.

In comparison, "Buried" seems like a three-no movie.

However, with the release of films such as "Chaplin" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" here, the flow of visitors to the United Theater has increased, which can also boost the box office of "Buried Alive" accordingly.

Whether it is an advantage or a disadvantage depends on whether "Buried Alive" is competitive enough.

Link also knew that "Buried Alive" had reached a critical juncture of life and death.

In addition to hiring people to distribute flyers in shopping malls to help attract traffic to "Buried Alive".

After returning to the apartment in the evening, I took the time to write a lot of movie reviews and send them to newspapers.

Including an interpretation of the movie "Buried", a review of the movie "Buried", and reviews of several movies released at the same time. When writing reviews for other popular movies, the recently released "Buried" will be briefly mentioned.

Due to his good level of writing film reviews, three of his film reviews were accepted by American Forum, Hollywood Reporter and Film Variety.

-

"Vain!"

Seeing Link arranging people to distribute flyers in the shopping mall, William Mason shook his head and was not optimistic about Link's approach.

Several films released at the same time as "Buried" were operated by film distribution companies.

After a movie is released, the film distribution company will invest a lot of money in publicity.

Not only is it reported by the media, but it has also been recommended by many celebrities, so it has extremely high exposure.

Link's leaflets competed with the movies of the same period, like a war in which rifles were used against enemy tanks and missiles, but it was of little use.

The three-day weekend passed quickly.

William Mason predicts that with competition from many films released at the same time, the box office data of "Buried" will fall below $3000, or even less.

However, when he got the box office data for the three days of the weekend, he was shocked.

Over the three days of the weekend, "Buried" sold a total of 3107 tickets, with box office revenue reaching $2.48, and the average daily box office reaching $8285.

Among the 10 movies released during the same period, it ranked fourth, only behind the three popular movies "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", "My Cousin Honey" and "Chaplin".

Without much promotion, Buried relied on word of mouth to earn an average of more than $8,000 a day, which is a rare figure and is considered to be in the upper middle level among niche films.

After William Mason got the data, he contacted the United Theater headquarters and asked whether they should pay attention to this film and expand the scale of screening.

"Buried" has good box office potential. If it can do well in Burbank, it will probably do well if it is released in theaters in other cities.

Cinemas are profit-making organizations, and when they come across a potential movie like this, they will not let the money go unrealized.

The headquarters of Consolidated Theatres responded on the same day that if the average daily box office revenue of "Buried" in a single theater is still above US$6000 before Thursday, the scale of screening can be expanded, and a few theaters can be added. The decision will be made after the box office data of "Buried" comes out in the next few days.

After receiving the reply from headquarters, William Mason did not immediately tell Link the news.

"Buried" has no distribution company and no promotion, so its box office performance is currently unstable.

He was worried that the box office of "Buried" would drop in the new week and fail to reach the passing line of $6000, and his celebration would be in vain.

However, unexpectedly, in the new week, although the box office of "Buried" was slightly lower than that of the three-day weekend, it still remained between US$6500 and US$8200.

As of Thursday, the average daily box office revenue was $7135, $327 more than the average daily box office of "Chaplin" released during the same period.

William Mason once again transmitted this data to the United Cinemas headquarters.

The headquarters approved his application and agreed to expand the number of theaters showing "Buried" to 5 theaters: 2 in Los Angeles, 2 in New York, and 1 in San Francisco.

After receiving the reply, William Mason called Link to tell him the good news and asked Link to bring his lawyer to sign the distribution contract.

"That's great news, William, thank you."

"No, you deserve all of this. If you hadn't insisted on showing Buried Alive, and if Buried Alive itself wasn't attractive enough, I wouldn't be able to help you."

"Well, thank myself too."

After hanging up his newly bought mobile phone, Link put down his pen and rubbed his wrist.

In addition to writing film reviews these days, he is also preparing a new script.

According to the system prompts, the higher the personal participation, the better the quality of the film, and the more box office subsidies, so the second film cannot be a big project.

The bigger the project, the more manpower is needed, and my personal involvement will decrease.

In addition, low-cost film projects have a short shooting cycle, and some films only take a few days to shoot and edit.

After careful selection, Link chose "Paranormal Activity" as his second movie.

This movie was released in 09 and cost $1.5 to produce. It took only 7 days from start to finish, and the only shooting tool was a handheld camera.

There are only two main actors in the film.

After the film was released, it earned more than 2 million US dollars worldwide.

If the box office data can double with the help of the system, Link can also become a billionaire with this movie.

However, up to now, Link still has not figured out whether the "4 times box office subsidy" prompted by the system is based on the original movie box office in the previous life x4, or in this time and space, based on the original box office x4, or based on the production cost x4.
I hope it’s the first, or the second, but definitely not the third.

If it was the third one, the total box office performance of "Buried" would most likely be just a few hundred thousand dollars, which is too bad.

So he wanted to use "Buried" as an experiment to first figure out how to use the system before starting to shoot the second film.

Bang bang bang!
"Link, shall we go to the bar?"

Chris Bauer yelled from outside the door.

"No, I'm busy."

"Well, you don't have to be too sad if Buried didn't do well at the box office. This is just your first movie. No one succeeds the first time. If you fail a few more times in the future, you will definitely become a real director."

"Thank you! You are so comforting."

After seeing Chris Bauer off, Link stood at the window and looked at the scenery downstairs for a while, then returned to his desk to write the director's script.

(End of this chapter)