Chapter 793 Action!

"The Matrix premiered in Los Angeles, and received rave reviews from the audience. The audience responded strongly, and critics gave positive comments."

"The well-known film critic Peter Rogier told the "Los Angeles Times" reporter after the premiere that "The Matrix" is the best film he has watched in recent years, and the film is a philosophical reflection on the relationship between virtual and reality. It is a complete sublimation of the original novel, and innovative shooting techniques such as bullet time and 360-degree lens rotation effects are even more eye-catching."

"The Wachowskis have shown amazing directing skills, and Eric Williams has once again proved his vision for filmmaking."

After the well-received premiere, Firefly basically put down its worries about the box office prospects of "The Matrix", and began to launch small-scale screenings in major ticket cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. With a strong publicity campaign, the film's reputation and popularity quickly exploded.

From the premiere on May 27 to the official release of the film on May 31, in just three days, the box office of "The Matrix" on 26 screens in major cities in North America has reached a total of 680,000 US dollars, while "The Matrix" has reached a total of 680,000 dollars. Empire's midnight box office on May 30 on 3,100 screens in North America surpassed Jurassic Park three years ago, reaching $4.65 million.

After the release of these two data, all the media who had been fascinated by "The Matrix" closed their mouths, and the executives of several film companies were also secretly thankful that they did not put their summer flagship movies on the schedule against "The Matrix". superior.

Even Universal, who changed "The Mummy 2" to "Brave to the Dead Island" a week after the original "Titanic" bounced, was secretly worried, for fear that "Brave to the Dead Island" would be the same as "The Matrix" "The same quality, although "The Mummy 2" has the audience base of the previous work, and the test screening reputation is also very good, but the collision between the two strong films will inevitably hurt both sides.

In the original time and space, from the beginning of the production of "The Matrix" to the release of the film, Warner maintained a very indifferent attitude, and even put the film's release date on the relatively deserted Easter schedule, but even so, "The Matrix" The first film still made $170 million at the North American box office with a moderate cost of $63 million, and completed another $170 million "Raiders" starring Will Smith, winning Time Warner's that year. The box office winner of the release film. Subsequently, with the accumulated super reputation of the first film, although the quality of the second film has seriously deteriorated, the box office still reached 150 million US dollars in the first week.

The new version of "The Matrix", while maintaining the original main creative team and core plot, has far surpassed the previous year in terms of production level, publicity intensity and schedule selection. The film may be subject to an R-rated viewing restriction and cannot reach the box office miracle of "Jurassic Park", but it is almost certain that the film will far exceed the original.

Therefore, after the premiere, Eric flew to the Bahamas with confidence to start the production of "007 Casino Royale".

Like Canada, Australia and other countries, the Bahamas belong to the Commonwealth of Nations. These countries basically regard the Queen of England as the head of state, so most of them do not have a president, and the Bahamas retains a very ancient system of governors.

As the best tourist resort in the Caribbean Sea, the Bahamas has more than 3,000 islands, but only less than 30 have been developed.

Although many plot elements of the old version are retained, in general, the new version of "Casino Royale" is two completely different stories compared to the year. In the new script, there are still not many plots of the Panama Islands. However, Eric has retained the plot of terrorists attempting to attack the airport, and this plot is not planned to be filmed in Miami, the United States, but is determined to be in the capital of the Bahamas. Shot at Nassau International Airport, along with other changes, the filming cycle in the Bahamas lasted for a month and a half.

In order to cooperate with the filming of the crew, the Bahamas specially designated an island named Providence for the filming of the crew. The filming on Nassau, Paradise Island and other islands also received the full support of the Bahamas government.

Eric arrived in the Bahamas on May 28, where filmmaker Barbara Bullockery, star Pierce Brosnan and a whole host of supporting cast have assembled at Paradise Island, where the crew is stationed.

Hundreds of people in the entire crew cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to do nothing, and when Eric arrived in the Bahamas, he didn't have time to fix it, so he quickly got to work.

After all, he did not direct the film for more than two years. Although the "Victoria's Secret Annual Show" was produced during the period, it had nothing to do with the film. A few days before the start of filming on June 2, Eric was basically re-entering the state of director. Fortunately, after two lifetimes, various professional cognitions related to the director were deeply instinctive. Two years. It is impossible to forget, and with the support of the strong production team behind him, the corresponding unfamiliar feeling quickly disappeared in the rapid running-in.

On June 2, on Paradise Island Beach, Bahamas, "Casino Royale" was officially launched.

In line with the principle of first easy and then difficult, the first filming of the film is the situation where Bond meets the third Bond girl in this film on the beach.

This shot has no specific lines and is relatively simple to shoot.

According to the primary and secondary order, the No. 1 Bond girl of this 007 is naturally Cate Blanchett. In order to give Kate some intellectual temperament of a professional girl, Eric currently arranges her to experience life at the Firefly UK branch. Bond Girl is the sister of Kate's character, played by Christina Aguilera, who is also a backup angel for Charlie's Detective Agency.

Therefore, the woman in the Bahamas at this time is Bond Girl No. 3. Eric did not intervene in the selection of this role, but the final selection of the casting team was very coincidental. Teri Hatcher, according to the original time Line, Teri Hatcher is also a Bond girl in the eighteenth 007. Eric also saw this woman on the casting list of "Wanted City" last year. It is not difficult to guess that Teri Hatcher should be an artist under ICM, otherwise she will not appear in the Firefly system for two consecutive years. In the list of protagonists produced by the major focus.

Of course, Eric has no time to take into account these tangled game entanglements, Hollywood is a complicated chess game.

Standing behind the familiar monitor, Eric looked at the surrounding filming rails, the actors who had finished burying their positions, and his crew members. A familiar feeling came to his mind, and he was somewhat excited.

The assistant director waved to Eric, saying that when everything was ready, Eric finally raised the microphone in his hand and said to everyone: "OK, "Casino Royale" Act 1, Scene 1, Action!"

In the long shot, Teri Hatcher's female No. 3 Katerina runs on a white horse on the beach, followed by a group of excited children.

As the camera moved slowly, Katerina rode away, and the camera was frozen on the bright faces of several children. Eric made a gesture again: "Ka, Good, prepare for the next game."

After all, it was the first shot after Eric took charge of the guide tube again. Eric's voice fell, and everyone around him temporarily stopped the guy in his hand and applauded softly.

Teri Hatcher, who was helped by the staff and jumped off the horse, even came over and squeezed beside Eric pretending to look at the monitor. He had nothing to say: "Eric, don't you need to take a few extra shots?"

This is just to win a lot of money, not to mention that this simple shot has more than a minute of material accumulated by four cameras in different positions, and the post-editing takes only about 15 seconds, of course, there is no need to reshoot.

"I don't need this shot," Eric smiled and shook his head, looking at the hot woman in a bikini in front of him, and said, "There will definitely be opportunities for NG. I hope you don't lose patience when that time comes."

"Of course not, how dare I lose my patience in front of you, Eric," the woman gave Eric a charming look, got up and walked away.

Several staff members around pretended not to see the 'interaction' between the director and the actress, and were busy with each other. Eric just shrugged slightly. Similar to the character setting in the movie, Teri Hatcher is married in reality, and Eric is not a person. Wife control, usually does not provoke this kind of woman.

Taking advantage of Pierce Brosnan's preparations, Eric and his old partner in charge of photography, Nickel Frank, took a few sets of empty shots of the beach and the sea, and then began the next scene, that is, James Bond surfaced. , the first time I saw Katarina's scene.

To be honest, Daniel Craig's figure in the original version can only be described as 'strong', and there is not much beauty in the male body. Pierce Brosnan is different. When he wears a suit, he is a living clothes rack. Under the suit, the body-building figure specially exercised for the role of Bond, with eight-pack abs, mermaid lines, and long legs, is enough for a group of young women and girls to scream directly at a glance.

In the camera, James Bond emerges from the water and slowly walks towards the shore, Katerina jumps off the horse, the two look at each other, Pierce Brosnan shows an appreciative smile, but Katerina seems a little reserved, slightly Glancing at Bond, he walked away with the flattery.

This is the second official shot. Eric also doesn't want to call Ka, but looking at Pierce Brosnan's performance on the monitor, Eric still raised the microphone: "Ka, No-Good, Pierce, Terry Come over here, okay?"

The two quickly got together, and Pierce Brosnan was wiping the water stains with a large towel that was sent by a female assistant on the crew just now.

Eric held the script and explained with a slight gesture: "That's it, Pierce, your eyes just now were too purposeful, as if you were looking for something, this is not right, I need your eyes to be more casual. Terry, what you have to show is not just curiosity, but also a feeling of being attracted, hey..." Eric said, gestured to Pierce Brosnan, and said with a serious expression: "Is it so wonderful? Can't a male body be attractive to you?"

Pierce Brosnan looked slightly embarrassed, Teri Hatcher nodded subconsciously, and said, "Okay, Eric, I probably know what to do."

"Then, let's do it again," Eric said, motioning for the two to start re-burying their positions.

In the original version, James Bond did deliberately come to the door in order to track down the clues left by the bomber, but in this version of the script, the two people met completely by chance.

Katerina's husband, Alex, is a grey deal broker on the outskirts of Spectre, and is sent by Mrs. M to the Bahamas for a vacation. Bond meets Alex's wife Katerina on the beach. They met at the Paradise Island Casino. Because of Alex's cold and rude attitude towards Katerina, he had always been sympathetic to each other. In order to punish each other, he won Alex's Aston Martin at the poker table. An Aston Martin also became a key prop in Bond's accidental involvement in the Spectre vortex.

Speaking of which, the most obvious feature of this 007 is that from the script stage, Eric intends to let 007 start the stage of serious storytelling.

In the past, most of the 007s took the route of playing gimmicks and selling scenes. Scenes were shot all over the world, and all kinds of aircraft and cannons were bombarding wildly. As for the plot, although large-scale production films inevitably have weak plots, the 007 series is very difficult. There are few times when stories are told well. If it was before the 1990s, because of the general backwardness of film shooting technology, these gimmicks can still attract a large number of audiences to buy them. The audience will gradually become accustomed to this scene, and the 007 series will continue to follow the original route and can only gradually decline.

In the original time and space, although the James Bond created by Pierce Brosnan has won a lot of praise, because of the several films he participated in, the stories are riddled with holes, not to mention the continuity of the plots of several films. Sex, even within a movie, can have a variety of unrelated plots, so Pierce Brosnan has participated in four consecutive Bond movies, and the box office is generally not too high.

Until Daniel Craig took over the helm of 007, the series began to awkwardly tell a slightly more reliable story, perhaps with a little more luck, starting with the first "Casino Royale", played by Daniel Craig. The total box office of the four Bond films is almost double that of Pierce Brosnan's version, making Daniel Craig the highest-paid Bond actor in history.

The first day of filming went very smoothly. Because of the weekend, the crew chose to stop work early, and held a small opening party in the resort where Paradise Island was stationed in the evening.

On the second day after the official launch of "Casino Royale", the three-day box office of "The Matrix" in the North American first weekend was also released smoothly.