269 An Unstoppable Force at The Box Office (1/2)
The most eye-catching incident throughout the holiday was Huo Yuanjia's performance box office.
Huo Yuanjia's popularity led to an outright explosion in the box office. Cinemas were packed like sardines, regardless of the cinema company and its location!
During the seven days of National Day holidays, Huo Yuanjia's box office performance exceeded 500 million. It should be pointed out that Huo Yuanjia's prospects were not originally that optimistic, or else the figure would only be even higher!
As for I am Hero, its initial popularity soared two days before the holiday but did badly at the box office several days later. Its reputation was also getting worse, and the total figure it managed to get in the box office was just over 90 million.
The two films fired shots at each other before their release. Shi Lei mocked Y's Kungfu, while Wu Han clashed with Y. Chen Feng was also not on good terms with Li Tai. Those incidents ensured that both movies could not coexist!
However, no one thought that Huo Yuanjia could destroy I am Hero so brutally.
It caused an uproar throughout the entire film industry!
A script provided by a newcomer; a director who had just entered the film industry; a couple of film stars past their prime; a group of actors who were not even stars at all—to think that all those elements produced such a high-quality movie!
Some professionals even analyzed Huo Yuanjia and figured out that its investments did not cross the 30 million mark. The reason for that was because there was no money spent on it other than a few special lenses and props!
It was completely unimaginable for such a low-cost movie to make 500 million in the box office within a mere seven days!
That was practically 17 times the budget!
Most importantly, that was not the end of things. Many people predicted that Huo Yuanjia's meteoric rise was far from over. It was only a matter of time before the box office broke through 1 billion!
At that exact moment, everyone thought of a word—Y!
The letter Y once again proved to be a miraculous one!
He could create such a mind-blowing script within such a short time simply because he was angry at Shi Lei. Y was certainly a genius among geniuses.
On the other hand, I am Hero spent 50 million in total just to hire film stars, not to mention all those special effects that were put in to try and please the masses. It was announced that the total investment was more than 100 million!
It was undoubtedly going to be a loss.
The public initially thought that Huo Yuanjia's popularity correlated to the National Day screenings. They believed that its performance will face a slow decline after the National Day holidays were over.
However, the reality was anything but that!
Despite the end of the holiday, the tickets from Monday to Friday were all sold out—a rare sight indeed!
An apt description of the situation was 'spectacular'. No movie could block out Huo Yuanjia's limelight during that period of time!
On the contrary, the number of people watching other movies began plummeting, making for a very strange situation throughout many cinemas.
Huo Yuanjia's halls were chock full of people while other halls were empty!
Many people watched once, then twice, and even thrice!
In response to that phenomenon, cinemas immediately made a joint announcement to add on more showtimes on top of the original quota. Huo Yuanjia took up with 80% of showtimes!
The cast and crew of films that were released at the same time as Huo Yuanjia were all feeling bitter.
Whenever a movie was released, the one thing that cast and crew feared most was a sudden craze, as it would suck up large audiences and cause other movies at the same time to suffer setbacks in the box office. If anyone had the bad luck to run into such an unreasonable situation, there was nothing one could do except admit that luck ran out!