One Hundred and Fifty-Seven - Someone Is Investigating You and Your Parents, Boss

Facing the sun that had just risen, Wayne and his publicity team returned to New York again. After getting off the plane, they did not leave JFK International Airport. They joined Nicolas Cage and others from another group and transferred directly to London, the capital of the United Kingdom. !

Warner Bros. treated the crew fairly well and booked the entire business class and first class cabins of the plane to accommodate the physically and mentally exhausted people.

The team is led this time by John Gray. This gentle production manager has talked with Wayne. After the "Joker" project, he will probably not continue to work in front-line work. This will be his last one. Supervise production projects.

If nothing else goes wrong, John will be promoted to the vice president of the film and television production department. Although in addition to the head Jeff Robinoff, there are as many as three or four project vice presidents, John can be considered a smooth step into the high-level position. management position.

It's still far from the start of Wayne's next project, and he hasn't considered the issue of a new producer for the time being. For a week, the tight arrangement of publicity activities made him, a young man, feel like he couldn't bear it.

Ever since he got on the plane and Nina put a blanket on him, Wayne had entered a state where he couldn't sleep and was unwilling to expend energy to work.

"Wayne!"

Nicolas Cage, who was lying across the aisle, called him, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the same tired "Joker". Maybe now he really looks like a clown. This week, Cage, who had already gained some weight, became skinny again.

The plane had already flown into the stratosphere. Nicolas Cage left his seat and walked over. After politely changing seats with Nina temporarily, he looked at the young director with complicated eyes.

"It's been flying in the air all week and I haven't even congratulated you yet, Wayne!"

At this moment, his strange face seemed to have matured a lot in the past few months, and Nicolas Cage showed his iconic smile. "Congratulations, "Joker" broke the first-week box office record in film history!"

"You're welcome." Wayne's hoarse voice sounded from overwork. "This is not my fault alone, a large part of it is your efforts. Of course, this is an honor that belongs to all of us in the crew!"

Thinking back to the time when the film started to be filmed and started to be filmed, until today when it was officially released and became a hit across the United States, the seven or eight months in between felt like a dream. Nicolas Cage and Wayne chatted all the time, passing the boring time.

"Wayne! Thank you for giving me this opportunity to participate in this work that is destined to be written into film history!" Suddenly, Nicolas Cage put away his joking side and started to become serious!

After saying these words of thanks, he walked back to his seat and changed with his assistant without waiting for the other party's response.

At this moment, in Nicolas Cage's heart, he really still doesn't like this director, but he is convinced by his abilities and achievements. It was this young Jewish director lying not far away who once again caused a media frenzy before boarding the plane.

On the plane to New York today, he couldn't help but read the report on him and the film in "Premier" magazine. Although the magazine didn't mention him much, when he saw the above-mentioned week's box office results, it still made everyone The crew cheered on the plane.

Since its release last Friday, "Joker" has begun to dominate the summer season. It grossed US$39.35 million on Friday, US$32.47 million on Saturday, US$24.37 million on Sunday, and US$96.19 million in the three days of the first weekend. It achieved the highest box office record for the first weekend with overwhelming momentum!

Not to mention that this is an R-rated movie that requires parents to accompany children if they want to watch it. Even if you search the entire film history, this can be regarded as the most dominant opening weekend box office.

After this result came out, he single-handedly made many professional research companies dare not make easy predictions on the film's North American box office. All movie viewing rules lost their effect in the face of this film.

And starting from Monday, the film has swept across the theater market in a completely unreasonable manner.

Monday was still a working day, and $9.7 million was withdrawn on that day.

On Tuesday, a traditional discount day for theaters, the box office rose to $13.9 million.

$9.61 million on Wednesday, $8.3 million on Thursday…

After a full week, it took in a box office of US$128.7 million in North America. This terrifying efficiency in absorbing box office has caused a great discussion in the media across North America.

Nicolas Cage can already predict that countless companies in Hollywood will follow this director's production style. There will definitely be a large number of dark and realistic films on the market next year.

In Hollywood, whenever the market proves that a type of film is a hit, countless follow-up films will appear. Just like the past trend of western movies, musical movies and gangster movies.

He could think of no film that could reach this level. Even if Wayne Greenberg were to do it again, it might not be possible. The success of "Joker" was due to a series of coincidences and unprecedented publicity. Caused by the method, it cannot be copied again.

No matter how brilliant the box office performance is, as long as people mention this film, Nicolas Cage cannot be avoided. Compared to Wayne's improved status in the circle, he is the one who has truly benefited greatly.

Think about the crowds of movie fans outside the airport every time I visit a city this week. They empathize with Arthur, see their own reflections in life, and transfer all their feelings for Arthur to Nicolas Cage. .

This made him famous, much more famous than all the art films he has appeared in combined.

That's why he's grateful to Wayne, and feels only lucky to be able to play such a great role. Not to mention others, even his stand-in, Li Guohao, is fully capable of playing this role.

If nothing else, Nicolas Cage believes that when people think about the movie stars of the 1990s more than ten or twenty years later, he will be the unavoidable representative figure in Hollywood with just one film "Joker" one.

This is where actors are more popular than directors. After all, behind-the-scenes jobs are not as exposed as stars standing in front of the stage.

And all of this comes from the director lying across the aisle. It was he who planned this project and this extremely elegant, crazy, cold and dark character Arthur Freddy!

It's just a pity that this is a comic book adaptation. If this was a realistic crime thriller, Nicolas Cage even thought about using the Coppola family's connections to attack the statuette that represents the title of Best Actor.

This is the biggest shame for Wayne and him, compared to the "standard" movies made for the sake of Olympics. The artistic achievement of "Joker" is definitely much higher. Now they can only hope to use the box office results to try to break through the defenses of those old men in the academy!

Wayne didn't know what Nicolas Cage was thinking, and would have scoffed at it if he knew. In this era of Oscars, except for the truck driver Shengsheng who used his market performance to open the door, there is no one left who can do it.

And the "King of the World" picked up the statuette. In addition to the unparalleled box office achievements of the big ship, the bigger reason is that James Cameron drove that aircraft carrier and smashed countless countries' opposition to Hollywood. The barriers to film made subsequent Hollywood blockbusters popular in all regions of the world.

This achievement is no less than that achieved by George Lucas, who ushered in the era of commercial films with "Star Wars".

"Boss, there's something." Carefully looking at the boss who opened his eyes, Nina also leaned back and reported softly. "Someone has investigated all your information, information from Mr. Hollywood Eyes."

"Um?"

This news was quite unexpected, and Wayne's eyes widened suddenly. "It seems that the public relations money given to Mr. Pellicano really worked! What did he say?"

Since Jimmy contacted Anthony Pellicano, Nina naturally took over the way the relationship was maintained. Wayne doesn't lack the money to buy the other party's information, but the premise is that it must be accurate.

Nina raised her eyebrows playfully, observed the distance between people around her, and whispered: "You would never expect this person to be the president's secretary of New Line Cinema. Anthony left me a message saying that the other party not only hired a private detective to investigate you , and also investigated Ruben and Anna!”

"hiss!"

Originally, Wayne was not afraid of others investigating him. He had no shameful problems. At most, it was discovered that his private life was quite chaotic. However, this had already been hyped up by the tabloids and everyone knew about it.

His playboy character won't detract from him, and movie fans don't care which female star he sleeps with today as a director.

But the investigation of Wayne's parents revealed something strange, which aroused his strongest vigilance.

Could it be that Old Ruben offended someone back then, and now that someone has gotten ahead of himself, he is looking back to take revenge? That was Wayne's first instinct, because Ruben Greenberg was a jerk when he was younger.

"Anthony Pellicano is still investigating the follow-up matters, but it will take time. We still don't understand the other party's purpose."

After saying that, Nina ignored the boss who suddenly became energetic, pulled up the blanket with peace of mind, put on the eye mask and fell asleep. During this period of time, she has also been tortured.

"Is this interesting!?"

Gently scratching the stubble on his chin, Wayne waved to his agent. He had to figure out who would investigate him at this time of his greatest glory, and for what purpose? This is not just poking at one's own ant nest.

The most important thing is that it has poked holes in the hornet's nest of Warner Brothers and even Time Warner. Now, as long as there is a problem with Wayne, this one of the world's top media giants can tear up the initiator.

Jimmy came over with a newspaper in his hand, which also had a large poster of the Joker. "What's wrong? Wayne."

"After you get off the plane, make an appointment with George Lucas and say I'll treat him to Chinese food!"