Stills from "Three Shots to Astonishment", with Zhao Benshan. Stills from "Three Shots to Astonishment", featuring Mao Mao, Xiao Shenyang, Yan Ni, and Cheng Ye (bottom). Last week, the domestic box office was uneventful. This week, three New Year films will be released in succession. With the release of the films "Storm Riders 2", "The Island", and "Three Shots to Astonishment", the New Year season for mainland China will enter a period of fierce competition. In contrast, the past week saw a rather calm domestic box office. The Hollywood disaster blockbuster "2012" continued to dominate the box office, with global box office earnings surpassing $600 million. As of Sunday, the film's box office revenue on the Shanghai United Cinema Line reached 45.72 million yuan. Based on the proportion of the United Cinema Line's box office nationwide, the total domestic box office for "2012" should have exceeded 400 million yuan. The film "Mulan" (Zhaowei version, animation version), one of the five most anticipated New Year films at the end of the year, which premiered on November 27, continued to "pull teeth from the tiger's mouth". Its cumulative box office revenue on the United Cinema Line reached 6 million yuan, estimating its national box office to be between 50 to 60 million yuan.
Poster for "The Island"
Poster for "Storm Riders II"
Last Week Review: Small Films Weak, Making Way for "2012"
"The top few on the box office chart last week basically didn't change," introduced Wu Heshu, vice president of the Shanghai United Cinema Line. "2012", "Mulan", "G-Force", "District 9", only the fifth place changed from last week's "Kung Fu Panda" to "Twilight."
No new films were released, which Wu Heshu summarized as the reason for the calmness in the domestic film market last week. However, on December 3rd, Feng Derun directed, Zhang Yuqi and Li William starred in "Jump Out" as one of the New Year films, which had landed in theaters nationwide. Only this film was too "low-key" from promotion to distribution, so much so that it was only screened for four days in cinemas under the United Cinema Line. "An average of 16 sessions per day, less than 10,000 RMB in box office." The data provided by Wu Heshu proved that the "New Year season" is not a "universal remedy" for ensuring box office success. But whether it's "Jump Out" or the films "Kung Fu Panda", "My Tang Dynasty Brothers", and "Mars Nothing" released on November 20th, none of them seriously calculated the possible market space they could obtain. They just blindly targeted the "New Year season" and rushed to premiere. Thus, these films aiming for the "New Year season" title were completely unable to pose any threat to "2012" from Hollywood's entertainment industrial system. Due to the lack of comparable blockbusters during the same period, despite mixed reviews, "2012", using the end-of-the-world prophecy as a gimmick, garnered popularity and topics, dominating the top of the domestic box office chart for a month.
This Week Outlook: Two Days, Three Films - "Three Shots" Most Eye-catching
To avoid clashing with James Cameron's latest sci-fi epic "Avatar", which will be strongly released on the mainland on January 2nd next year, December's domestic New Year films have all chosen to stay away from Christmas and New Year's Day. This directly caused "Storm Riders 2", "The Island", and "Three Shots to Astonishment" to be consecutively released on December 9th and 10th within just two days. "These three films that are almost simultaneously released, I think will start in a pin-shaped formation," said Wu Heshu. "Three Shots" is the larger opening at the top because this film has plenty of social topics. Zhang Yimou hasn't made a film for three years, and when he does, it's "Three Shots". Promoted as Northeastern Er Ren Zhuan plus "A Love of Swordsmen", actually after seeing the film, I feel it's more like Zhang Yimou packaging "Er Gu Tou" into "Wuliangye", making it presentable. So it will definitely attract many viewers. "Storm Riders 2" and "The Island" are the two smaller openings below, starting neck and neck. After a few days, cinemas will make appropriate adjustments based on the number of viewers and seat occupancy rates."
Wu Heshu believes that next week's box office data will be very interesting and valuable for research. "The gap between 'Storm Riders 2' and 'The Island' won't be too large, 'Three Shots' should perform the best. It might also join the competition with 'City of Ten Thousand Walls', which premieres on December 18th."
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"Three Shots to Astonishment" - 100 Advance Screenings on the 10th
Early Edition News: Zhang Yimou's latest-directed suspense comedy "Three Shots to Astonishment" will be officially released at 18:00 on December 10th. However, the advanced screening event hosted by Baidu Movie Community will start half an hour earlier, at 17:30 on the same day, allowing audiences to get a sneak preview. It is reported that the event will cover a total of 100 screenings across 19 cities nationwide including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, etc.
In order to coordinate with the 100 nationwide advanced screenings, Baidu has initiated a ticket-grabbing activity through its entertainment channel and Tieba. So far, the reserved movie tickets for the 19 cities are almost sold out. Zhang Yimou, Xiao Shenyang, and other main creators of the film have respectively joined the "Baidu i Tieba" under their personal names and as part of the "Three Shots" crew.
In recent years, "advanced screenings" have become a regular promotional tactic in movie publicity. However, such a large-scale advanced screening event like "Three Shots" is quite rare. This is another benchmark move by Baidu Movie Community following the synchronized advanced screenings in 10 cities nationwide for "The Founding of a Republic". According to the person in charge of Baidu Movie Community, since its establishment, Baidu Movie Community has successfully hosted advanced screenings for over ten films, including "Painted Skin", "Very Perfect", and "East Evil West Poison Ultimate Version". It now has over a hundred celebrity members and nearly 100,000 viewing members. Famous stars such as Zhang Ziyi, Zhou Xun, Liang Chaowei, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhao Wei, and Wong Kar-wai are all celebrity members of the Movie Community.
Li Yunling