Made in Hollywood

The three most important characters in the film are the male protagonist Sam, the female protagonist Mikaela, and Renlox, who is the representative of the US military. Duke has long let people release news that the main characters will use newcomers, attracting a large number of dreams. Famous young actors and actresses come to audition.

Just by submitting their resumes to the crew, the number of actors who wanted to audition for Sam and Mikaela exceeded two hundred and fifty.

All the agents who think they can get in touch with the crew members are almost jumping up and down to find opportunities. Even if they can't win Duke's favor, as long as they can participate in the audition, it is also a kind of qualification and even the capital to hype themselves.

However, a considerable part of the candidates who passed the first audition for the three roles came from Nancy Josephson's ICM.

Duke didn't mind that, and Nancy was a core member of his team, and he wasn't someone who didn't know how to work around as long as it made sense.

What's more, the quality of the actors Nancy Josephson sent to the crew to audition was basically the best.

It's just that when Duke opened the file bag and opened the audition information, the first photo that appeared in front of him was an unusually familiar face, Steven Spielberg's godson - Shia LaBeouf.

"This was introduced by Spielberg." Tina Fey said timely.

Duke nodded, but Shia LaBeouf was basically sentenced to death in his heart. Unless he couldn't find a suitable candidate, he would definitely not be used.

There are always differences between people, if he was recommended by George Lucas, Duke would definitely give priority.

I looked through the profiles of the male protagonists, and there are some familiar names, such as Chris Hemsworth, Andrew Garfield, Robert Pattinson, Chris Pine, and even Duke. To the name of James Franco.

Actors born in the 1970s are certainly not on Duke's radar.

Close the profile of the male protagonists. Duke put it aside temporarily, and then took the part of the actresses. The requirements of the actresses are actually simpler. On the basis of ensuring basic acting skills, the appearance must be beautiful and the figure must be hot enough.

This is a teenage popcorn movie after all.

Take a look around. More than half of the brokerage companies that the actresses remarked on were all ICM. Duke nodded when he thought of the names he had seen before. Nancy Josephson's vision was not bad.

Among them, there are also many names that he vaguely remembers, such as Emma Stone, Blake Lively, Emma Roberts, Emma Watson and so on...

However, Duke of these people is not very satisfied, this is mainly from the appearance, they are still a little far from the hot body. On the contrary, the two newcomers recommended by IMC seem to be very good in terms of appearance.

One of them is Amber Heard and the other is Margot Robbie, both of them are typical blonde girls.

Although I think the two names are a bit familiar. But Duke couldn't really remember what part they played.

He made a note on the profiles of the two, then said to Tina Fey, "Let Ana focus on them in the next audition."

"Where's the actor?" Tina Fey asked.

After taking the actor's information, Duke thought about it. Marked under the names of Andrew Garfield and Robert Pattinson, then took the last document and looked at it. A male model named Channing Tatum was highlighted.

After simply sorting out the information, Duke handed it to Tina Fey, "Leave it to Anna, I may go to the Pentagon in a few days. You and her are responsible for the second audition."

Duke wants to go to the Pentagon to shoot on the spot, but since 9/11, no Hollywood crew has ever filmed the scene from the Pentagon, which also requires coordination and communication between the two parties.

Tina Fey was about to leave, Duke thought of another thing and said, "The candidates for Renlox will be finalized as soon as possible, and the hero and heroine can take their time."

The male and female protagonists do not need to undergo special training, but actors who play special forces officers must receive professional training from teams sent by the military together with other actors who play soldiers.

All major Hollywood productions involving special themes will do so, and it has even become a practice that it does not become.

For example, James Cameron's crew, after finalizing several main actors some time ago, the King of the World brought the actors and crew together to a Maori tribe in New Zealand to experience the primitive jungle life.

Making a movie has never been an easy task, and even more so with a commercial production.

Before going to the Pentagon, Duke participated in the priority audition for the role of Renrocks, and then finalized Channing Tatum. It's that stiff face, but that's not a problem for a military character.

Throwing Channing Tatum and other actors to Colonel Daniel Fries and others for training, Duke took a plane to Washington, D.C., to meet the top figures in the Pentagon to completely finalize a series of matters in the shooting.

Duke is busy, and David Ellison, who stole "The Man From Earth" from him, is also busy with the movie.

After spending $2 million to buy the rights, David Ellison naturally wanted to push the film into theaters, and let the distribution department of his Sky Film Studios actively contact the theaters to prepare for the film to be released as soon as possible.

David Ellison doesn't care if he spends another 2 million dollars to promote the film now that he has already spent 2 million dollars. If the film can sell tens of millions of dollars at the North American box office, the next time he sees Duke, he will There is also reason to be sarcastic.

$2 million is a lot to say, but in this day and age, trying to use $2 million to promote a film is like throwing a pebble into the ocean with only a tiny splash.

Advertisements for this film can only appear in some unimportant pages and time periods on the Internet, newspapers, TV and radio. It is difficult to attract the attention of the audience.

But David Ellison is not stupid. After an additional $1.5 million in promotional expenses, he controlled the expenditure. After all, this is a niche independent film.

Even the most optimistic estimate, David? Ellison does not think the North American box office will exceed 30 million US dollars, his expectation is 10 million US dollars, this achievement is enough to make him sneer a few words in front of Duke.

After the additional publicity investment, "This Man From Earth" also caused some waves. In North America, although the audience of niche films is limited, there is no shortage of fans. The off-season of each year is the most active time period for these fans.

However, "This Man From Earth" got attention in its publicity, but encountered quite a bit of trouble with its release.

Distribution is not a department, it can be done by recruiting some experienced employees. North American cinema companies are inextricably linked with established Hollywood companies. Films with the same conditions and the same investment scale, cinema chains The resources of the company will definitely favor those traditional old companies.

A new company like David Ellison has just started publishing, and the number of theaters given by the theater chain is not only very small, but also the location is relatively remote.

If it wasn't for his money, "This Man From Earth" might have been queued by the North American Cinema Alliance until next year...

However, money can always play a lot in this country. Although the number of theaters is less and the location is more remote, "This Man From Earth" will finally be officially launched in North America with more than 120 theaters in late September. market.

In David Ellison's view, this is not entirely a bad thing. Just treat the film as a point release. As long as the point release results and audience's reputation are good enough, even if it is for commercial gain, the theater company will expand. Show size.

But the film needs to be released, and there are also a lot of expenses, such as copies. More than 130 copies cost Sky Film Studios 300,000 US dollars.

The film's shooting quality was fairly average, and it would have been a disaster if it were screened in high-definition digital technology, and only traditional 35mm film could be used to make copies.

Now the cost of digital technology has dropped dramatically, while the price of film has continued to climb…

After investing nearly five million dollars, David Ellison finally waited until the film was released. His expectations were really not high, as long as the box office of "This Man From Earth" was only seven days a week. If it can exceed $5,000, it will be able to gain a certain amount of attention and the opportunity to expand the screening in this off-season, so as to achieve the North American box office plan to exceed $10 million.

However, there is always a wide gap between imagination and reality. In the eyes of fans of niche films, "The Man From Earth" is indeed a good movie, but it is like "The Shawshank Redemption" in the past. Just as re-screening in the eyes of sympathy and concern is a box office failure, not all good movies are suitable for screening in theaters, and not all good movies deserve to be high box office.

The day after The Man From Earth was released, David Ellison got a statistic.

"125 theaters, a total of 426 audiences, and a single-day box office of $2,556..."

Seeing the numbers on the report, David Ellison already had a bad hunch, but there was still some hope. After all, it was the first day of a small-scale release. Perhaps with the passage of time, word-of-mouth spread and the film's performance will get better.

On IMDB, the film's score is quite high, and in the following days, the IMDB score of "This Man From Earth" has remained high, even after a week of release, the score is still as high as 8.6 points.

At the same time, some fans also commented in the comment column, thinking that "This Man From Earth" is a good movie, and it can be called a masterpiece...

But in contrast, the film's attendance and box office numbers were appallingly low. (To be continued ~^~)

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