Chapter 908 water banshee

“Fury Road” is only the premiere weekend, but the discussion has already begun to break the table, and many actors have begun to express their hearts to Lance. It seems that this work is still in hot release, and people have already aimed Lance’s next work is now. It is so popular that no one in Hollywood can match it. An invisible undercurrent is surging.

However, “Fury Road” has obviously encountered a strong opponent, and “Water Banshee”, which will be released this week, has shown no less topical momentum.

Warner Bros. has a total of three giants in this summer, “Poseidon”, “Superman Returns” and “Water Banshee”, among which “Water Banshee” is the most special. Although the investment in this work is only 75 million, it cannot be compared with the other two works at all, but Warner Bros. has poured a lot of effort into the production stage, and obviously has strong confidence in it.

“Water Banshee” was actually a Disney project at first, but later M-Nate Shyamalan left Disney with the project due to creative differences and went to Warner Bros. Knight’s “The Sixth Sense” is still regarded as a classic after many years, and it still maintains a single-year videotape and DVD rental record-the number of rentals in 2000 reached 80 million, and there are only four in film history. Horror movies have been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and this is one of them, so Warner Bros. has given it a high priority.

The cost of “Water Banshee” has not broken through the 100 million threshold, but as a thriller and suspense work, it is definitely enough to rank among the most expensive in film history, and the production cast is even more huge. They invited Wang/Jia/Wei The royal photographer Du/Ke/Feng took the mirror, and the male and female protagonists respectively adopted Paul Giamatti and Bryce-Dallas-Howard (bryce–howard), striving to create a wonderful work with quality Winning, copying the success curve of “The Sixth Sense of Spirituality” again.

Needless to say, Paul has a strong network in the circle, and he is called a golden supporting role. Maybe the box office appeal is average, but the popularity of the audience is very good. This single-handedly leading role makes people a little bit worried, but more full of expectations, because this is the first time Paul has played the leading role in a commercial work, and it can be regarded as a major breakthrough in his career.

As a newcomer, Bryce’s official film debut is “Mysterious Village” with Knight, but she is more known for her background – she is the daughter of the great director Ron Howard, not only that, her mother , uncles, grandparents are all famous stars in the film industry, and their connections in the circle are so strong that it is eye-catching.

Although Bryce was unwilling to inherit her father’s shadow and changed her surname to “Dallas” when she was in college, the cooperation between her and Knight was entirely because the director took a fancy to her performance on the Broadway stage play , but “Water Banshee” is a commercial blockbuster, and Warner Bros. will naturally not let go of Bryce’s network role easily-not on the bright side.

As early as the “Da Vinci Code” publicity period, Tom Hanks mentioned “Water Banshee” in an interview, expressing his special expectation for this work, “Shyamalan is a very special director, he The control of horror movies is different, and compared to frightening, it can often touch the fragility of human nature.”

At the internal preview of “Water Banshee” in May, it was even more star-studded, Jim Carrey, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Keaton, Renee – Zellweger… Even Cate Blanchett was present, not to mention film critics and reporters, all of whom were top names in the industry. It was just an internal preview, and it was on the headlines of the entertainment edition. Even under the bombardment of a lot of works in the summer, “Water Banshee” has always maintained the hot topic and has not fallen behind.

After the preview, there were rumors in the circle that the quality of this work was very good, and Warner Bros. was full of confidence that Knight had once again shot an absolutely excellent work. It may not be at the Oscar level, but it is indeed a blockbuster at the summer box office; moreover, this year’s summer of horror films is almost extinct, and the market for this type of film is completely in a vacuum. A full blown outbreak is not impossible.

After entering June, Warner Bros. held an event, “Discover the Kraken around you”, calling on every audience to actively discover the mysterious events about water around them, take pictures or record them, upload them to the Internet, and finally click through. The creators of the top ten works will win the chance to attend the premiere of “Water Banshee” in Los Angeles.

The Propaganda Department of Warner Bros. sent a special team to shoot five “in-house made” videos, which were uploaded to attract new ideas and increase the sense of participation in the event. They even invited Steve Martin and Vince Vaughn to shoot two short videos and upload them, which created a lot of topics.

After the event was launched in full swing, it did attract a lot of topics, especially people’s expectations for m-Nate-Shyamalan, which gradually increased with the promotion of publicity, coupled with the excellent internal word-of-mouth so far, many reporters expressed They started to get excited, and they all focused their attention on the matchup in the third week of July.

“M-Nate Shyamalan vs. Lancelot Strelow, the genius of the past or the genius of the present, who will have the last laugh?” This article written by “Entertainment Weekly” represents the circle. It is a general statement to look at the good show from within.

In 1999, Knight was born with “The Sixth Sense of Spirituality”, which was only the second work of his directorial career, which won him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay in one fell swoop, and many people They all exclaimed that he will reproduce the glory of horror movies. But after that, Knight began to go downhill all the way. “Undead Tribulation”, “Sign of the Sky”, and “Mysterious Village”, the three works hit the street in succession, which pushed Knight to an extremely unfavorable position.

The “Mysterious Village” in 2004 can be said to be highly anticipated, gathering William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, and Sigourney Weaver The huge cast lineup, before it was released, was considered to be a box office bomb in the summer, but it turned out to be a box office dud. , with a North American box office of 114 million. Due to the acceptable overseas box office performance, Disney only lost less than 10 million in the end.

However, “Mysterious Village” has led to a frenzy of doubts throughout North America. The “Wall Street Journal” directly criticized, “The spiritual director in ‘The Sixth Sense of Spirituality’ disappeared. The shortcomings in the training are fully exposed. The most puzzling thing is why Shyamalan suppresses the climax/tide that should have erupted every time, and handles it like plain water. Let us start thinking, stripping’ After the excellent factor of the original script of “The Sixth Sense of Psychic”, how much of Shyamalan’s directorial talent is left?”

The “Los Angeles Times” even declared mercilessly, “The fall of a generation of geniuses.”

This also pushed Knight’s career to the edge of a cliff. It can be said that the “Water Banshee” project is Knight’s last chance, either to achieve self-salvation, or to slide into the abyss. This is also the reason for the dispute between him and Disney – after Disney experienced three consecutive failures, he refused to give the green light to Knight all the way, and Knight also knew that this was his life-saving straw, so he naturally refused to give up an inch. The conflict broke out, which directly led to Knight switching to Warner Bros. with the entire project.

Judging from the current internal feedback and publicity of Warner Bros., they are full of confidence, so “Entertainment Weekly” couldn’t help exclaiming that “Water Banshee” is very likely to become a stepping stone for Knight’s resurgence.

There has always been a saying in Hollywood that “there are only three things to do”. That is to say, a famous entertainer has three chances of serious failure. Only when three red lights are lit in a row, will it truly declare that there is no day to turn around. Before that, The recovery of a work can return to its peak. Having said that, the interests involved are not so easy to explain clearly, just like “vulgar” is to John Travolta, “Iron Man” is to Robert Downey Jr., a work is Sweep away the Shen Ke of the past ten years.

So, does “The Water Banshee” have any hope of becoming Knight’s “Pulp”? Or will it become Knight’s “Cut Throat Island”?

Obviously, the biggest competitor standing in front of Knight is undoubtedly Lance’s “Fury Road”. Not only because Lance has been the best director of the past few years, but also because “Fury Road” has had an astounding opening weekend, and whether “The Water Banshee” will be able to repeat “Fury Road” last week The feat of defeating “Pirates of the Caribbean 2” ~www.readmtl.com~ has also become the biggest highlight of this week.

“Water Banshee” is very important to Knight and Warner Bros. Warner Bros. did not dare to take it lightly, and the powerful publicity force almost attacked across the board. But even so, in the face of the overwhelming strength of “Fury Road”, “Water Banshee” is still difficult to gain too much advantage, which makes Warner Bros. tense up and down.

Barry Meyer couldn’t be more clear. The miracle of “Fury Road” relies on slanting the sword, and the publicity effect of the viral video is far beyond imagination. Now “Water Banshee” relies on the balance to start the competition, and it is bound to be difficult to do anything. They have to surprise and win.

The propaganda department once considered directly revealing Bryce’s family background, creating hot spots to attract attention, but Barry thought it was drinking poison to quench thirst. -Howard’s close friendship, three times before the platform of Tom Hanks and others will be in vain-people can tell at a glance that they are friendly canvassing. Only by hiding Bryce’s identity can the “good word of mouth” momentum created by Warner Bros. come into play.

Picking up the “New York Post” on the desktop, the content of the report was the focus of “The Tonight Show”, and Barry fell into deep thought. (To be continued.)