America achieves both fame and fortune

Chapter 658 Box Office Disaster

With the premiere of "Pharaohs and Gods," the film's reputation could no longer be suppressed, and various media columns and film critic reviews flooded the internet.

That evening, many film critics published their reviews immediately.

Warner Bros. has done a lot of work. Film criticism is a business, and there are quite a few critics who praise the film.

"A spectacular epic film, with Bale's humanistic portrayal of the historical figure Moses, Ridley Scott has created yet another new historical masterpiece."

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

"The creative team, led by Ridley Scott and Christian Bale, has shown admirable courage in creating a blockbuster that will truly be a hit this summer!"

Rotten Tomatoes, which uses professional film reviews as its scoring standard, gave the first batch of Rotten Tomatoes a fresh score of 77%.

The MTC also received an overall score of 66.

On IMDb, which gathers more ordinary movie fans, no rating was generated due to insufficient audience numbers at the premiere.

For a summer blockbuster, the reviews seem to be pretty good.

However, with the rise of social media, the way movie ratings are controlled has gradually changed.

Many ordinary viewers who attended the premiere posted numerous related tweets on social media platforms, primarily Twitter.

"The film's story is just like the Bible, everything is formulaic, it's not bad, but it's not great either, the best parts are in the trailer."

"It's clichéd and long-winded, consistent with Ridley's epic films over the years."

"The plot is dragging and disorganized, the narrative is chaotic and disjointed—a poor review!"

However, the number of viewers who saw the premiere is ultimately limited, and Warner Bros. can still generally control the comments and guide word-of-mouth marketing.

The pre-sales for "Pharaohs and Gods" in North America during its opening weekend easily exceeded $1000 million.

Then, it stopped rising much.

However, there aren't many films these days that can get 20 to 30 million US dollars in pre-sale box office.

Warner Bros. is still proceeding with its marketing and distribution in a methodical manner. For a film of this scale, it is standard practice to allocate half of the production cost to marketing and distribution, and it is normal for the cost to exceed 1 million US dollars.

On the first weekend of May, "Exodus" opened in more than 3800 theaters in North America, grossing $1215 million on its opening day.

This number isn't great, but it's not too bad either; it's much better than Ridley's previous film, "Robinson."

But with the surge in viewership for the film, it has become too difficult for Warner Bros. to control its reputation.

The audience's opinion of "Pharaohs and Gods" collapsed.

The number of users rating on IMDB has reached the rating threshold of 6.2!

However, the cinemascore rating, which best reflects audience feedback, only received a B-.

This often means a box office disaster is about to occur.

The overwhelming negative reviews almost drowned out the previous positive ones.

"Long, ugly, and the plot is disjointed!"

"Besides special effects, there's nothing else to it; you might as well read the stories in the Bible."

"Are Warner Bros., Ridley Scott, and Christian Bale trying to blaspheme God?"

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

Social media spreads information too quickly, and along with the plummeting word-of-mouth, the film's attendance also dropped drastically.

On Saturday, "Odyssey" saw a significant drop in box office revenue, taking in only $755 million.

The film didn't start strong, but instead declined in quality.

According to market trends, due to the work week on Monday, the attendance rate on Sunday evening will drop significantly, and Sunday's box office will inevitably decline again.

Early Monday morning, Martin fed Elizabeth Olsen and then fell asleep quickly due to exhaustion from several days of work.

After Elizabeth took a shower and brushed her teeth again, she returned to her bedroom, where Martin's phone kept vibrating on the sofa.

She picked up her phone but didn't answer. Instead, she woke Martin up: "You have a phone call."

Martin wiped his face and answered the phone.

The call was from Thomas; the latest box office statistics were in.

Elizabeth put on her pajamas, went to the wine cabinet in the outer room, and took back a bottle of champagne and two glasses.

These past few days, she's also been keeping an eye on the box office performance of the movie where Martin was robbed, and now the results are in.

When she returned and saw that Martin had hung up the phone, Elizabeth asked, "Are the box office results for Pharaoh and the Gods out?"

"$2311 million in its opening weekend." Martin took the champagne and glass from her and poured a glass for each of them. "The most optimistic estimate is that the North American box office will be between $5000 million and $6000 million."

Elizabeth clinked glasses with him: "Isn't this the result we wanted?"

Martin finished his drink, put down his glass, and hugged Elizabeth: "I can finally get a good night's sleep tonight."

Elizabeth buried her face in Martin's chest: "I hope those bastards who plotted against us won't be able to sleep tonight."

…………

Monday morning, Warner Bros. president's office.

Jon Berger's eyes were bloodshot; he hadn't slept well for several nights, and his eye circles had turned almost black.

Sitting behind his desk, he saw the latest statistics.

The film grossed $2311 million in its opening weekend in North America!

If it receives good reviews, a comeback is not impossible. Back then, "Titanic" only grossed $2800 million in its opening weekend in North America.

But its reputation collapsed, with IMDb dropping to 6.0 and Rotten Tomatoes plummeting from 77% to 43%.

The situation has completely collapsed.

This was Jon Berger's first major project worth over $100 million since taking office, but he messed it up.

The phone on my desk rang.

It was Kevin Tsujihara, who had just assumed the roles of CEO and Chairman of the Group, who called.

Kevin Tsujihara asked directly, "What's going on with 'Pharaohs and Gods'? Wasn't this a project Martin Davis was interested in, which you went to great lengths to intercept?"

Jon's first thought was to deflect blame: "That's right, Daniel intercepted the project and then pushed it onto me. He thought the project Martin Davis favored had a very high feasibility..."

"Let's not talk about that now," Kevin Tsujihara said. "Failure isn't terrible, but you need to learn from your mistakes and avoid similar failures in the future."

Jon said, "It won't happen again."

Kevin Tsujihara asked, "Is there any problem with your collaboration with DC Films on 'Green Lantern'?"

"The film is progressing smoothly, the production is excellent, and it will create a great start for the DC superhero cinematic universe." Mentioning another project, Jon's confidence returned: "Hamada and I both believe this will be a masterpiece that surpasses Iron Man!"

Kevin Tsujihara said, "We'll submit a report this week regarding the Pharaohs and the gods."

Jon agreed, and the other end of the line hung up quickly.

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

The Pharaohs and Gods project had a reliable production team and cast, and the story itself had a very wide audience. The final cut of the film was completed by him and the editor. So why did it fail so miserably?

Jon picked up the phone and called Daniel, lost in thought.

Not long after, Daniel arrived at his office.

Jon asked, "Are you sure these projects you're pushing were assigned to you by Martin?"

What do you mean I had to push it forward? Daniel, being a seasoned veteran, immediately understood that Jon Berg was shirking responsibility. He said, "I took the project from Martin Davis and handed it over to the company. Warner Bros. is handling the actual production!"

Jon knew this wasn't the time for infighting, so he asked, "Are these really projects that Martin Davis is optimistic about?"

"It's definitely someone he's optimistic about." Daniel is confident about this: "I've known Martin Davis since he was a small-time actor. I know him very well. He was initially interested in working with Warner on these projects. You know what happened after that."

Jon considered one possibility: "Could Martin be deliberately setting us up?"

Daniel shook his head immediately: "Impossible. Before a movie is made, who can guarantee 100% success or failure? Don't forget, Martin also hired Ridley Scott to direct his new film. What does that mean? It means he believes in Ridley Scott's directing abilities and has great confidence in him."

Remembering that the other person had just tried to shift the blame onto him, he deliberately added, "Perhaps there was a problem with the final editing of the film."

"You..." Jon's dark circles under his eyes became even darker: "We are summarizing our experiences and lessons learned, and finding shortcomings in our work, not shifting responsibility between us."

Daniel has been thinking about this for the past few days: "We invested a lot of money, a lot of resources, and one of the best production teams in this project, but we still failed. I think the key to the problem is obvious."

Jon also thought of it: "Martin Davis?"

“Yes, Martin Davis!” Daniel said. “I’ve known Martin and his producer Louise Meyer for years. Even if the project were handed to them, there couldn’t be a better production team than Ridley. Besides what we just talked about, the key is the male lead.”

Jon understood what he meant: "Christian Bale's character portrayals and commercial appeal are not as good as Martin Davis's."

Daniel said, "It turns out that the difference is too great. The Dark Knight wasn't the most obvious example. Terminator Salvation and Ogre & Gods proved one thing: Christian Bale doesn't have the ability to carry a film at the box office."

Jon agreed: "The success of the two new Batman movies actually has little to do with Bale's personal appeal. After all, he is one of the two most popular superheroes in North America."

He made a decision: "From now on, Warner Bros. will not use Christian Bale as the male lead in any medium- or large-scale productions. I will submit a proposal to the head office, and it would be best if other Warner Bros. production companies also did not use him."

Daniel said, "He botched two big-budget productions in a row, and no one in Hollywood will ever cast him as the lead in a top-tier commercial production again."

The two quickly reached an agreement: the blame for the film's failure would be placed entirely on the creative team, including Bale and Ridley. They would then have someone release information saying that Ridley and Bale were difficult to work with on set and that the post-production was haphazard.

Jon also connected the failure of this project to another big production.

(End of this chapter)