Made in Hollywood

Having experienced the super-hardening of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for Duke and his team, the preparation of the Batman series is not too difficult, and it is far less cumbersome than rebuilding a Middle-earth world, and the time is slowly approaching At the end of October, the preparatory work of the crew was gradually coming to an end, and according to the plan, the first filming of the Icelandic location scenes, such as the more cumbersome props such as the Batmobile, can be made while shooting.

In the past few months, Lamborghini has completed a total of six copyrighted Batmobile designs, combined with Duke's transformation opinions.

Duke also found the type he wanted.

In the previous Batman movies, the Batmobile was in sync with the times and played to the extreme in publicity, but Lamborghini successfully combined the delicate and agile sports car with the sturdyness of the chariot, and designed and created a fast and muscular feeling. monster.

In "War Hour", the Batmobile is actually a prototype of a military vehicle called "The.Tumbler", which was developed by the Wayne Company to carry personnel and equipment across trenches and facilitate passage in open areas, but due to the price Expensive, the Wayne Company failed to put into mass production, but was discovered by Bruce Wayne, which developed into a tool for Batman to maintain justice.

At the beginning of November, Lamborghini shipped a concept car to Los Angeles, and as long as Duke was satisfied, the subsequent prop cars could be built soon.

The Batmobile is equipped with a 5.7-liter 340-horsepower engine that can output 400 pounds of torque, is 9 feet 4 inches wide, 15 feet long, weighs two and a half tons, and can go from zero to 60 mph in less than 5 seconds. , and can complete long-distance jumps.

The most unique aspect of the Batmobile is that it does not have a front axle, but instead supports the wheels through the sides of the body.

The Lamborghini technicians upsized the rear wheel. With the engine and transmission close by, the Batmobile even has an insect-like waist that twists when the horsepower is increased.

In addition, the Batmobile is also equipped with 6 truck tires. In order to achieve the designed side-slip effect, tires with different degrees of wear can be used in different scenarios. The tire pressure can also be adjusted accordingly.

According to the plan, Duke will use a total of 6 to 8 Batmobiles in the film, of which 5 are fully equipped, 1 electronic version is equipped with a movable roof for easy entry and exit, and two have no engine and are reduced in weight for special action scenes. was ejected.

"I never expected them to build a Batmobile that was all-in-one, but they did. It's a monster, it's a beast."

This is Duke's evaluation of the Batmobile, what Lamborghini has done, and he is quite satisfied.

Of course, the rights to the Batmobile are shared by both companies. After the film is released, it will be officially launched to the market, which is also one of the profit points of peripheral products.

There is also Bruce Wayne's sports car in the film, which will use Lamborghini's latest products across the board.

And Lamborghini company in order to promote products and advertising, but also to Duke and Christian? Bale presented the latest concept sports car.

Duke doesn't care about cars, though. He also rarely drives a sports car, so he gave it to Tina Fei.

Negotiations between Tina Fey and Warner Bros. did not go well. Time Warner has concerns about stock swaps. Duke is already the largest individual shareholder of Warner Bros., and his holdings are too many, which is not good for Time Warner Group's holding of Warner Bros.

Negotiations also involved Steve Jobs' Pixar studio. If Pixar cannot be won, and Duke's shares will increase after the redemption, Time Warner will undoubtedly be quite passive.

But Steve Jobs had absolute initiative and was not in a hurry at all. This was destined to be a marathon negotiation.

Duke's main energy is still on new movies, which is his interest and the foundation of his career.

Duke and Warner Bros. had a little bit of a disagreement over the release date of Hour of War, for the simple reason that the fiasco of Batman and Robin cast too deep a shadow on Warner Bros.

"Warner's opinion is to put the film's schedule in late July or early August when the competition is relatively calm."

In Duke's studio, Jamie Johnson, who was promoted to distribution manager at Warner Bros., told Duke, "Batman can't be lost again, or the series will be sealed indefinitely."

Duke thought for a moment, then said, "My opinion is still in early May."

With the opening of the Marvel series still waiting next year, it is impossible for him to delay the release of "War Hour" too late, so as not to distract himself too much.

And he vaguely remembered that the previous "War Time" was a summer movie, and the market response can also be said to be relatively successful.

What's more, the former Christopher Nolan is incomparable to his current influence in the summer.

"The schedule in May is already crowded." Jamie Johnson thought for a moment, but did not insist on his own opinion, and said, "Memorial Day is definitely not suitable, George Lucas' "Star Wars Episode 3" Released on this schedule.”

These Dukes know that he will definitely not collide with the last Star Wars in Lucas's mouth.

Jamie Johnson continued, "There's Spielberg's War of the Worlds in mid-May, which is the sci-fi genre."

"What about the beginning of the month?" Duke asked directly.

"20th Century Fox's big production 'Kingdom of Kingdom' hits theaters on the first weekend of the summer..."

Hearing this name, Duke's eyes lit up immediately, "Jamie, we'll choose the first weekend."

Before waiting for the other party to speak, he gave an explanation, "I don't know if you have noticed that epic films have already caused aesthetic fatigue in the market, and Warner's "Troy" did not meet expectations, right?"

"Yes." Jamie Johnson nodded. "Although the profit was finally achieved through peripherals and discs, it was far from our expectations."

"King Arthur, which was released in July, performed extremely poorly, and I believe its dismal market response is doomed to lose money," Duke reminded. "And last year's "Alexander the Great" had a terrible business performance."

Jamie Johnson's eyes suddenly lit up. Duke's grasp of the film market has always impressed him, even if he did not make films himself, he invested in the "Titanic", "Mission Impossible" and "Harry Potter" series All proved this, especially with Alexander the Great, Warner Bros. followed his advice and avoided the risk of a loss by not releasing Oliver Stone's epic.

"Every type of film in Hollywood, after it reaches its peak, will always lead to a softening of the market." What Duke said is what the film market has proved in the past countless years, "In recent years, Hollywood's epic films have Zatui appeared, filling the screen and beyond..."

Having said that, he shook his head, not only epic war movies, but also future superhero movies will follow the same path.

Duke has no magic power, but what he said is not difficult to analyze. Jamie Johnson thought about it for a while, and couldn't help but nodded slightly.

Of course, as for the specific release date of "The Time of War", he has to go back and investigate before making a decision.

After Jamie Johnson left, Duke looked at the release schedule for next year's summer season that he left behind. It was full of films that had already been announced, and "Kingdom of the Kingdom" seemed to have an amazing momentum - Ridley Scott Teaming up with Orlando Bloom, the production cost is 130 million US dollars - but it is a veritable soft persimmon.

Many people once blamed Ridley Scott's lack of editing rights for the film's box office failure. This is indeed part of the reason, and Ridley Scott's director's cut version is more than one level higher than the public release version. If the director's cut version was released a few years earlier, it might have been a great success.

But in this time period, even if the director's cut version of Lao Lei is shown, more than 80% of it may still be a hit.

Movies are deeply affected by the social environment. In recent years, Hollywood has followed suit in the genre of epic films. Various large-scale investment and small productions have emerged in an endless stream. The market demand for epic films has obviously begun to weaken. This is an extra-film element that the director cannot control at all.

Like Duke's last few years of thriving superhero movies, everyone knows that audiences will get bored one day.

A week later, Warner Bros. came to the news that they accepted Duke's opinion that "Batman: War Hour" will be officially released in North America on May 6, which starts next summer, and the film released on the same day is "Kingdom of Heaven" .

Whether the film will change the schedule is not in Duke's consideration at all. With the arrival of mid-November, he reviewed all the preparatory work and contacted Hannah Serena who went to Iceland ahead of time. After that, get ready to start shooting.

The opening shot of the film will be placed on Vatnajökull Glacier in Iceland. When Warner Bros. held a press conference to announce the release date of "Batman: Hour of War", he led the crew to take a special charter flight, leaving North America and flying directly to Iceland.

Before he left, "Hurricane Rescue", which was released in June, was completely removed from North America. After five months of long screening, the film finally won 235.78 million US dollars in North America. Compared with the investment scale of the film, it has achieved great success.

The overseas screening of "Hurricane Rescue" has not yet ended. At present, the total global box office has reached 482.76 million US dollars, and it is not difficult for the final global box office to exceed 500 million US dollars.

Although this is Duke's relatively average box office performance in recent years, "Hurricane Rescue" has no problem entering the annual top ten charts at the North American and global box office.

Moreover, "Hurricane Rescue" has been well received by the audience until it was released in North America, with an IMDB score of 8.3 points, and subsequent disc sales will not be bad.

The crew arrived in Iceland. After just two days of rest, Duke kicked off the shooting. The first scene was the fight between Liam Neeson and Christian Bale on the ice lake. (To be continued ~^~)