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Chapter 378 Fox: How to lose when a dragon hits your face?
🕑 Added 2025-06-30 15:12:04 +0000 UTCMemorial Day may seem strange to some people who are not familiar with American holidays. But in the United States, it is a pretty important
Memorial Day may seem strange to some people who are not familiar with American holidays.
But in the United States, it is a pretty important holiday.
Since 1868, May 30th has been officially approved as a day to lay flowers to soldiers who died heroically defending the motherland.
However, because May 30th may be a holiday, many people will feel that they are at a disadvantage.
If we were in China and encountered such a situation, we would just take a day off.
I don’t know why Americans are so stubborn, but they just don’t do it.
But we can't miss the holiday.
Therefore, in order to ensure that Memorial Day would be a holiday, starting in 1971, Memorial Day was moved from May 30th to the last Monday in May.
This is indeed a good idea, everyone can enjoy this day off.
But have you ever thought about how those dead soldiers felt?
We agreed to offer sacrifices at a fixed time every year, but how come you guys changed it to where we can't decide when to offer sacrifices?
How can you expect me to pay my credit card bills on time?
What? You said burning paper money is not popular in the United States?
Then it's okay.
Memorial Day is a day for American soldiers to commemorate their comrades.
But for most American people, this is probably just like the Dragon Boat Festival holiday.
Being able to have one more day of rest is still very meaningful to Americans.
The corresponding entertainment industry will also become developed during this short holiday.
The most obvious thing is that the movie box office is much higher than usual.
Despite only having one extra day off, the three-day total box office data was much higher than the weekends in the first few weeks of May.
This incident itself is quite magical.
But these strange things could not affect the mood of the executives of 20th Century Fox at this time.
Because their big production this year, "X-Men 3" is finally going to be released.
The box office performance of this movie is not only related to the salaries and year-end bonuses of Fox executives, but also to the face of the battle between Fox and Vulpec that began in early May.
So the Fox executives were united in purpose and issued an order to the entire company: This battle must be won! And it must be won beautifully, so that Washimine would be convinced!
To be honest, it is indeed a good choice to release "X-Men 3: The Last Stand" at this time.
Because there are many audiences during the short holiday, the film can achieve a very good opening result, which will also have a very good promoting effect on the subsequent box office curve of the film.
In the eyes of everyone at Fox, compared to Fate, a new IP that only started to emerge last year, their own "X-Men 3" is an IP that has been operating for several years.
The movie should have more fans and perform better.
In addition to the war of words that had occurred between him and Washimine before, although he helped Washimine with some publicity, his movie also received a lot of free advertising.
According to Fox's prediction, this movie should beat "The Da Vinci Code" and step on UBW, and win this year's box office championship in a pretty awesome manner.
Although they changed the director and screenwriter for this movie.
But that’s okay!
Because this time the director of "X-Men 3" is not Bryan Singer, but the good boy Brett Ratna.
Moreover, the screenwriter of the film is Simon Kinberg, the ultimate bootlicker in the family.
Although these two guys can't do anything except say "The bosses at Fox are so awesome" and "Fox executives are really the most awesome executives in Hollywood."
But that’s no problem!
Because they are Fox’s own people, they will definitely succeed!
What's the point of breaking 140 million in the first weekend box office? Our "X-Men 3" will directly break 200 million!
X-Men is great! Heaven punishes the eagle and hell!
It’s a pity that Fox’s headquarters is not in Japan, and these people don’t understand Japanese and don’t care about Japanese entertainment.
Otherwise they would know that in March of this year, a Japanese colleague named Emiya had the same idea.
And now his wife has taken power away from him, and he has changed from being the boss of a film company to a filmmaker on the set.
“A-choo!”
Kiritsugu, who was filming "Kara no Kyoukai", sneezed loudly.
"Uncle Emiya, do you have a cold? If you do, don't hold on and take medicine immediately."
Ryougi Shiki, who was discussing the script with Kiritsugu, asked with concern.
"Fine."
Kiritsugu rubbed his nose with his fingers and replied, "I can still bear it. Thank you for your concern."
But Ryougi Shiki said disdainfully: "Whether you can hold on or not is none of my business. Please don't infect me. Let me make it clear, if I catch a cold and postpone the filming, I won't pay the penalty."
“…”
Kiritsugu suddenly felt that his life was very difficult.
[Ah, I feel like I have less and less dignity. It’s all that little bastard’s fault! ]
In his heart, Kiritsugu let out a roar of impotent rage at a certain director who was traveling in Europe on a sponsored trip.
"Come to think of it." Ryougi Shiki thought of something, "I heard that Fox, which is currently engaged in a war of words with Washimine, has a new movie coming out."
Kiritsugu nodded, "Yes, it's called X-Men 3. This movie is a hit series, and it should do well at the box office in North America."
Although as a Japanese filmmaker, Kiritsugu is not very interested in superhero themes, he still hopes that this movie can beat UBW in North American and global box office.
This was also a way for Fox to vent his anger, after all, the enemy of his enemy was his comrade-in-arms.
Although Kiritsugu no longer cares about the fact that those people made him so angry that he was hospitalized, if he had the chance to see them get into trouble, he certainly wouldn't miss it.
Of course, Kiritsugu is still very realistic. He never expected from the beginning that "X-Men 3" would be able to outperform UBW at the box office in the Japanese market.
It is well known that superhero movies perform averagely in the Japanese market. Except for Spider-Man who appeared in a special drama, other superhero movies in Japan have been a failure.
Therefore, the Japanese film market is also nicknamed the "Super Hero Graveyard."
Of course, many of these words are exaggerated and nonsense. In fact, superhero movies have always performed well at the box office in Japan.
Although compared with other film markets in the world, they occasionally win the weekly box office championship and occasionally break records.
Japan’s market performance is indeed a bit shabby, but at least the publishers are still making money!
Otherwise, why are there so many superhero movies introduced to Japan every year? Isn't it profitable?
20th Century Fox didn't know that across the Pacific Ocean in Japan, a colleague was silently cheering them on.
But this does not prevent them from smiling happily when looking at the first day box office performance of "X-Men 3".
According to the data currently collected, thanks to the excellent reputation of the first two films in the "X-Men" series and the previous war of words during UBW, "X-Men 3" had a very good box office performance on the first day, earning a total of 43.1 million US dollars.
This result was nearly $5 million less than that of UBW, but the bigwigs at Fox didn't care. After all, "X-Men 3" had not started its large-scale premiere until Thursday, so it was normal to have a gap.
If "X-Men 3" had a large-scale premiere on Thursday, it would definitely win over UBW based on the current results.
But Fox's middle and lower-level employees feel a little worried about the current situation.
Their concern lies in the reviews after the first day's box office.
Whether it is the reviews from film critics or audiences, their attitude towards "X-Men 3" is not friendly.
Film critics think that this movie is worthless. Although both are ensemble dramas, the way "X-Men 3" portrays characters is completely different from that of "UBW".
After UBW ended, everyone could clearly remember every Master and Servant in the movie, and were either happy or regretful about their experiences in the movie.
But "X-Men 3" is completely different. The entire movie hardly creates any character images. If it weren't for the foundation of "X-Men 2", even major characters like Wolverine and Magneto would make almost no difference whether they are there or not.
Everyone plays the role of a tool, and the purpose of their existence in the movie is to complete the tasks assigned to them by the director in the movie.
But the problem is that all the characters are just tools, so who is the leading actor?
Unfortunately, no.
So it's no surprise that "X-Men 3" has a 55% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In fact, the impact of film critics' reviews on movie box office is no longer as arbitrarily influenced as it was in the last century, but the problem is that "X-Men 3" not only has a bad reputation among critics, but also not much better among audiences.
Many viewers have reported that the movie is almost completely disconnected from "X-Men 2". Except for Jean Phoenix, who is more or less connected, there is a break in the story for almost everyone else.
In particular, many characters that appeared in the second part disappeared in this movie, which gave many fans who have been following this series a strong sense of frustration.
They felt that their favorite characters were worthless in the eyes of the film production team.
The entire movie is just a hasty introduction of the characters, and then a hasty exit. The opening is inexplicable, and the ending is also extremely hasty.
Fox employees were very worried about the situation, but there was nothing they could do.
After all, the company's executives have become so overwhelmed by the current sure win situation that they only have their eyes on the outstanding first-day box office performance and don't care about the criticisms at all.
In their opinion, with such good first-day box office results, how could there be any more unexpected changes?
There are countless movies in history that have poor reputations but excellent box office performance. "X-Men 3" is probably one of them.
Let’s not talk about the distant past, just look at all the Michael Bay movies, which one didn’t get a bad reputation from both critics and audiences, but still had great box office performance?
They also planned to hold a celebration ceremony in the boardroom before the first weekend box office statistics were released.
"Mr. Ganopoulos, is it too early to celebrate? Should we wait until the first weekend box office comes out?"
Jim Ganopoulos didn't care at all about his subordinates' concerns.
"It's okay. With such first-day box office results, what surprises can there be?"
"The critic's reputation..."
"The era of film critics has long passed. Now the audience's feelings are what matters most."
"The audience's reputation is not very good..."
"The audience just buys tickets to watch movies, they will review shitty movies!"
"..."
The subordinate found that his boss could no longer be persuaded, so he could only tell himself that he was overthinking it.
On Memorial Day Monday, Fox executives held a simple celebration in the board room.
At the meeting, Chairman Ganopoulos was full of expectations for the upcoming first weekend box office results, and he even took the initiative to open a bottle of champagne.
But the fact proves that there is no result in everything, so you can't expand it in advance. The probability of encountering a dragon riding on your face is still very high.
Just as Jim Gianopulos raised his glass and was about to pay tribute to his boss Murdoch and then his own pet dog.
The official statistics of the first week's box office performance helped him finish his nearly 10-minute thank-you speech in just 30 seconds.
"X-Men 3" only grossed $90.43 million in its first weekend.
