Chapter 165: Box Office Record

She wasn't the only one who wanted to know this question.

Because ten minutes later, there were many posts on the Film Academy's BBS discussing why Jiang Wen's sudden trip to the Beijing Film Academy, and his grand arrival to personally welcome Chen Nuo, was for what?

Could it be that after they met in Shanghai not long ago, they hit it off immediately, and thus had some follow-up cooperation?

It wasn't just online; Jiang Wen's arrival this time truly alarmed quite a few people.

Almost as soon as they left the campus, the leaders of the Acting Academy who had just received various notifications were all inquiring about this matter.

For a time, it was even more noisy in the Beijing Film Academy.

But the disturbances outside seemed to be in two worlds from the two people in Jiang Wen's Alphard.

Ever since Chen Nuo got into Jiang Wen's car, the two of them never mentioned a single word about the Film Academy again.

Chen Nuo was thinking about his Wang Tianxiang, and Jiang Wen was also thinking about the promotion of his *The Sun Also Rises*.

On the way to meet Wang Jiawei, the two of them talked through these two things.

Jiang Wen's meaning was, trouble Chen Nuo's company people to mobilize the "water army" team they had cultivated and assembled through *Crazy Stone* to help him promote his new movie. As for the expenses, he wouldn't be short of a single cent on his side.

And the matter of *The Message*'s Wang Tianxiang, Chen Nuo's request had already been remembered by him, and he would go and ask about it next.

In short, you help me handle this matter, and your matter will also be wrapped up by me, just wait. My Jiang Wen's face is definitely more useful than yours, Chen Nuo, Huayi and the like, are not worth mentioning.

If it were someone else making such a big promise, Chen Nuo might not necessarily believe it.

Jiang Wen said it, and he truly believed it.

At that moment, the two made a decision.

Chen Nuo was also swift and decisive; before the car arrived at the meeting place where Wang Jiawei was, he had already called Qi Yuntian, told him the contact person on Jiang Wen's side, and let the company's marketing department handle this matter for Brother Jiang.

Seeing this, Jiang Wen was also beaming with joy, patting Chen Nuo on the shoulder and saying: "Brother, you are righteous, and brother will definitely not drop the chain."

Chen Nuo sighed: "Brother is righteous, I believe in brother."

Originally because of the Takeshi Kitano matter, they felt like old friends at first sight, and now in the face of their respective interests, Jiang "Big" and Chen "Second" looked at each other quite favorably.

Fortunately, the car arrived at the place, otherwise the two of them would have estimated they were about to cut a chicken head and burn yellow paper, and go to Liangshan together.

Arriving at the destination, Chen Nuo discovered that Wang Jiawei was indeed truly angry this time.

It was truly a grand mobilization, not only calling all the relevant departments of Jet Tone Films, but also gathering the mainland distribution party of *My Blueberry Nights*, the Shanghai Film Group, including all the dubbing companies in Beijing.

Plus Chen Nuo, the actor representative, Jiang Wen, and Dong Jie, the two dubbing actor representatives, it could be said that all four parties were gathered.

Men and women, sitting in a huge conference room full of twenty or so people. It looked like they were determined to find the reason for the box office failure of *My Blueberry Nights* during the May Day holiday.

What reason could there be?

What else could be the reason?

If it weren't for Director Wang's friendly support for *The Message*, and not asking for anything in return, Chen Nuo would have wanted to leave after filming his butt.

It was truly a waste of time.

As the distribution party, Shanghai Film Group distributed half of the movie copies to cinemas nationwide as original sound and half as dubbed, and the dubbed version was made into that kind of appearance.

He went to watch it himself last night and almost couldn't persist, and Wen Yongshan was saying "Mehh mehh" for more than an hour in the cinema.

Not to mention the evaluations on the internet.

The three words Wang Jiawei were almost synonymous with "heartless."

In this way, if the box office for these few days could be good, that would be seeing a ghost.

Chen Nuo could be so understanding, only because the work content of the public opinion monitoring team in the water army department assembled by Qi Yuntian included this.

In the briefing he saw, during the three days of the May Day holiday, the controversy caused by the movie *My Blueberry Nights* was unprecedented in its severity and polarization.

In fact, during the May Day three-day slot, *My Blueberry Nights* had no decent competitors.

Compared to *The Mute*, which was also an art film but was targeted head-on by *The Promise*, it could be said that they were the same people with different fates.

Wang Jiawei thought that by relying on his face and means, plus the quality of the film, the awards won, and the popularity of the male lead in mainland China, he could create a box office record for art films in the mainland.

Therefore, he didn't hesitate to lower his old face, inviting superstars to dub, providing a way for those middle-aged and elderly audiences who didn't like watching subtitles to watch the movie.

All these kinds of things could be called painstaking and deeply moving.

But unfortunately, as of today, almost as many people cursed it as praised it.

In the conference room of Jet Tone Films' Beijing office, Chen Nuo looked at Wang "Sunglasses"'s pitch-black face, and only wanted to say, if he had known this, why bother in the first place.

Wang "Sunglasses" had also made full preparations for this meeting, and it wasn't just listening to the summaries of his subordinates like Chen Nuo.

He actually found someone to collect almost all the mainstream comments on the internet at present.

Including major blogs, including Sina, Sohu, NetEase, Yahoo.

Also Tianya Forum, Mop, and Douban, which already had initial influence.

Finally, it was printed out, ordered into a stack of A4 paper, and a front desk beauty with very standard Mandarin was asked to sit in front of more than twenty people in black and read it one by one.

Cruel!

Before the third page was finished, Chen Nuo saw Dong Jie's eyes were tearful.

"Who is Dong Jie? Who sent her out to pollute the earth?"

"I'll just ask one sentence, is Dong Jie a human or a machine, why did she make such a dull sound?"

"As soon as Dong Jie spoke, my ears and brain were destroyed by her together."

"Wang Jiawei truly treated mainland audiences as his sons; he thought that by holding a royal flush in his hand, he could make us all bow down and obey him."

When the little beauty finished reading this, Wang Jiawei interjected: "I'll add a sentence, the comment being read now is posted by a very famous film critic blogger on Sina Blog. The click-through rate has exceeded 400,000 in these three days. The comments are almost one-sidedly in agreement. Alright, continue."

The front desk sister continued to read: "I know Wang Jiawei is awesome, and I also know that he won the Golden Palm Award at Cannes, and is exactly when he is full of ambition. I also know that a Hong Kong big director like him has omnipotent energy in the mainland, but can he bully people like this?"

"Our mainland audiences can indeed work for you for the sake of seeing the exquisite performances of Chen Nuo and the Cannes Best Actress. But, Director Wang, please give us a space to appreciate the movie, okay?"

"Let Dong Jie shut her mouth and get out of this movie, this is what you can do for us."

A public execution that could be called cruel made Dong Jie finally unable to bear it, crying and running out of the conference room.

The little beauty reading the words was a bit at a loss, but Wang Jiawei beside her said three words expressionlessly and lightly: "Continue reading."

Chen Nuo looked at Jiang Wen beside him, only to see that he also had an expressionless appearance, and could only sigh that there is no poison like a husband.

Afterwards, he put away the smile on the corner of his mouth.

A long string was read next, which was another round of criticism of the dubbed version. The few people from the dubbing company were already sitting uneasily, and the faces of the other parties weren't very good either.

Chen Nuo was listening with relish, when the little beauty reading the lines suddenly looked at him.

Chen Nuo was puzzled by this shy and timid look of hers, only to hear the little beauty say: "At present, our score on Douban is 5.5 points. The top five short reviews with the most likes are as follows."

"An Ran: Watching Chen Nuo and Emma, in a trance, I feel like I'm watching the New York version of *Chungking Express*. Especially the sentence Chen Nuo said at the end, actually crossing the road isn't difficult, the most important thing is who is waiting for you on the opposite side. I really can't find a man more suitable to say this than Chen Nuo. His melancholic and simple eyes have murdered how many girls' hearts. PS: I know many people ate shit on the dubbed version, but the movie itself is innocent. Can you stop giving 1 star?"

After reading, the little beauty looked at Chen Nuo again and said: "This review has the most likes, totaling 2611." At the same time, she added in her heart, one of them is mine.

"Fang Qiangqiang: It can be considered the best film by Wang Jiawei after *In the Mood for Love*, finally understanding why we saw so much Cannes news last year. At that time, I thought it was the exaggerated technique of domestic media. But after watching it, I knew that what Li Yang said in the interview should be true; Chen Nuo's level of performance, anyone who knows a little about movies should be clear, is almost unrepeatable. I even doubt if Chen Nuo himself can act it again. It is worthy of being liked by the vast number of film people in Cannes. From today on, those who still question Chen Nuo's acting skills, please just block me directly."

The words read were a bit long. She drank some water and continued to read: "Cha Wu Ci Ren: Compared to Emma Stone's slightly green performance, what I like is Natalie Portman's ease and sexiness. At 20-something, she performed the maturity of a 30-something woman. I think this is the breakthrough performance. Emma Stone is really a bit too tender. Finally, I still have to say one sentence, Cannes does owe Chen Nuo a Best Actor award."

"Floria: Chen Nuo selling blueberry pie in New York is just like He Zhiwu eating expired honey cans and massaging pigs in the middle of the night in Hong Kong. Oh, New York New York, you gave all the mystery and tenderness contained in the night to him, letting him come out to overturn all living things?"

Holy shit. What kind of thing is this.

Who is this "he"?

Chen Nuo had goosebumps all over. When he finished filming *My Blueberry Nights*, he gave himself a 9.

But after finishing *The Dark Knight*, he changed the 9 of *Blueberry* to 7.

Just a little more than passing.

Therefore, hearing these people's fierce praise after watching *Blueberry*, he really felt a bit uncomfortable.

But Jiang Wen patted him on the shoulder at this time, lowered his voice a bit, and said: "My wife and I also went to watch it the day before yesterday, you kid, not bad."

Hearing this "not bad" from Jiang Wen, Chen Nuo's uneasy heart settled down all of a sudden.

It seemed his 7-point performance was still passable.

"Numb: The dubbed version go to hell, don't let me see Dong Jie's name anywhere in the future."

When this last sentence was said, Chen Nuo felt that Dong Jie, who had just returned, was about to cry again.

Chen Nuo actually felt that she was a bit wronged.

When dubbing that day, Chen Nuo felt that this woman had neither received professional dubbing training, nor was her acting skills likely to be anything special, Wang Jiawei was simply pushing a duck onto a shelf.

It's like you know someone can't swim, but you still want him to be a lifeguard. As a result, someone drowned, can you blame him?

However, at this time, Wang Jiawei said: "Miss Dong, you finished crying? Is this the result of the practice you mentioned? I gave you two months of practice time. You finally dubbed it like this? I only gave Nuozi half a month at the beginning, he was able to memorize the script before entering the crew, what about you?"

Dong Jie hung her head, and tears were falling down again.

Alright, Chen Nuo understood. Both stupid and lazy, then no one could be blamed.

The rest of the meeting time was garbage time in Chen Nuo's view.

Several parties shirked responsibility to each other, and after talking for a long time, except for letting the dubbing company bear the corresponding responsibility, they didn't find out who the culprit behind the scenes was.

Later, Wang Jiawei also called him and Jiang Wen to express some views separately.

Um, Chen Nuo also just perfunctorily said a few words. Same as Jiang Wen.

Wang Jiawei finally self-praisingly affirmed the quality of the film and the performance of the actors in it, pushed all the responsibility to the dubbing, and let the Shanghai Film Group people notify the cinema to stop the playback of the dubbed version, and urgently work overtime to copy the original sound and send it to the hands of cinemas everywhere.

Chen Nuo felt that it could be considered mending the fold after the sheep was lost.

At least it wouldn't let the reputation continue to slide. As for the specific impact on the final box office, that could only be left to fate.

May 4th was the beginning of the showdown between *My Blueberry Nights* and *Spider-Man 3*.

But after the meeting, Chen Nuo almost threw *My Blueberry Nights* to the back of his mind.

Because Ning Hao, Gao Qunshu, and Qi Yuntian and several others went to survey the scene and determine the filming location for *The Message*.

In addition to attending classes, he had the process of going to the company to sit in the office, which made him miserable.

Wang Jiawei seemed to be equally miserable.

The ambitious plan was hit by the dubbed version, although after all being changed to original sound, the reputation stopped falling and rose, but, art film is art film.

It was still an art film with English subtitles.

Such a low-budget romance movie, how could it compare to *Spider-Man 3*, which was suitable for all ages, hot and explosive, and popular all over the world?

As soon as it opened on May 4th, *Spider-Man 3* unceremoniously took the daily box office champion from *My Blueberry Nights*, directly bombing more than 10 million box office.

In the first weekend, it didn't fall but rose, directly taking nearly 30 million. After one week of release, the box office of *Spider-Man 3* had reached 70 million. Breaking the box office record of *Spider-Man 2* in the mainland had become a foregone conclusion.

And at this time, *My Blueberry Nights*, which was released three days earlier than it, had only reached 15 million in box office with great difficulty.

So much so that when Chen Nuo saw those media headlines in the newspaper, he truly sneered.

"Released for 13 days, *My Blueberry Nights* breaks the mainland box office record for art films — *Beijing Daily*."

"Conquering the audience with performance, *My Blueberry Nights* proves the mainland art film market with box office — *China Film News*"

"Chen Nuo and Wang Jiawei use strength to fight back against internet black fans, who said 1 plus 1 is less than 2? — *Huaxi City Daily*"

"Chen Nuo's face is too high-end, Wang Jiawei knows how to create dreams and alienation for him, this is the key to the success of *My Blueberry Nights* — *Southern Weekly*"

"Wong Kar-wai's worst film, old chicken soup mixed with 'little fresh meat' aesthetics, a big, capital-letter repressed pervert. Yet, the male and female leads saved this old wine in a new bottle. The final kiss is a shot that will go down in history — *Ta Kung Pao*."

It might also be the role of these print media pushing the waves, *My Blueberry Nights* had been rising all the way in the score on Douban since there was only the original sound version.

The first weekend, it went from 5.5 points to 6.7.

The second weekend, it went from 6.7 to 7.4.

Clearly, the vast number of literary and artistic youths in China seemed to love this movie filmed by a Hong Kong director in the United States with mainland actors and white girls falling in love.

At first, they were just praising the acting, later, someone actually started to analyze the metaphors in the movie, and even reviewed the history of Chinese in the United States.

Alright, the over-interpretation that made people dumbfounded in later generations on Douban had sprouted under the guidance of *My Blueberry Nights*.

However, the power of the literary and artistic youths at the beginning of the 21st century was still powerful, after all, the romantic 80s and the struggling 90s hadn't passed for too long, and those authors of scar literature hadn't been lying in the paper pile waiting to die.

In the last bit of time before the traffic era arrived, *My Blueberry Nights* actually supported a hint of unyielding meaning under the pressure of the powerful *Spider-Man 3*.

When it entered the end of the broadcast on May 30th, *Spider-Man 3* sold nearly 150 million box office in the mainland, setting a record for superhero films, while *My Blueberry Nights* actually reached more than 25 million, livingly increasing the mainland art film record created by *Peacock* of 13 million by 12 million.

At the same time, the Douban score reached 7.9.

It could be considered not bad.

This seemed to have laid more confidence for the release of *My Blueberry Nights* in North America.

Before Wang "Sunglasses" went to North America, he hugged Chen Nuo well.

Sure enough, no matter how art-film-oriented the director is, they don't want their movie to lose money.

The United States is Emma Stone's territory, her yellow-skinned boyfriend in the movie going over to join in the fun might not necessarily be a good thing, so Chen Nuo stayed in the country with peace of mind, preparing for the big and small things of *The Message*.

The address of Qiu Zhuang was selected in the middle of May 10th, and under the enthusiastic invitation of the Chedun Film and Television Base, Ning Hao and the others still chose Hengdian.

No way, in terms of cost-effectiveness and crew costs, as well as the discounts given, Hengdian was still the best choice. Shanghai was really expensive for everything, let's talk about it when there is money next time.

The one-to-one restored Qiu Zhuang was built in Hengdian like this, and the adapted script was also completed on schedule and handed to Chen Nuo.

Even Liu Yifei returned from the North Pole and began to invest in acting special training.

The acting teacher Chen Nuo arranged for Liu Yifei was the famous failed actor redemption place of later generations, the owner of the small courtyard in Shunyi District, Teacher Zhang Songwen.

Everything looked so orderly.

Then, Chen Nuo got up one morning, looked at the white ceiling, and suddenly remembered, a month ago, the big brother he almost swore brotherhood with, why hadn't he returned a message yet.

Didn't they agree that it was wrapped up on him?

Recalling the mutual affection between the two in the Alphard, Chen Nuo couldn't help but feel a strange feeling.

No, impossible, how could brother lie to himself?

He grabbed his phone and called that person.

Jiang Wen's voice was still thick and full of energy: "Nuozi, calling me so early, what's the matter, you say."

Chen Nuo was silent for three seconds and said: "Jiang... where is the Wang Tianxiang you promised me?"

"Wang Tianxiang? What Wang Tianxiang?" Jiang Wen's voice sounded extremely surprised, "Nuozi, which woman are you talking about? I don't know her."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 166 =====