Chapter 385 The Expendables Released
During the filming of "Captain America" in Los Angeles, Link also took time to guest star in the crews of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "You Are Still Here".
In the former film, he played the male protagonist's brother, a football star, and also the male protagonist's idol and role model. There were four scenes in total, which was not difficult.
The latter was a documentary about Joaquin directed by Casey Affleck. Link played himself in the film, a top singer who successfully crossed over. His personality was a big star, a playboy, and his private life was relatively chaotic.
His scenes mainly consisted of two parts. One was his conversation with the protagonist Joaquin Phoenix backstage at the performance, talking about their attitudes towards rap music and their feelings after becoming famous.
The other part was him and Joaquin singing the title song "Believer" from the second album on stage, as well as the rap songs "I'm the one" and "Lighters".
In order to shoot this scene well, the crew held a small concert in the Burbank area of Los Angeles, and Link sang on stage as a guest.
In October, he also flew to Paris to attend the engagement ceremony of Marion Cotillard and Guillaume Canet. When he met Marion, he unexpectedly discovered that she was also pregnant, but her belly was much smaller than Taylor's.
Link asked her how many months she was pregnant.
Marion said it was not his and asked him not to worry. She also leaned on his arms and said that Guillaume treated her very well and loved her very much, so she agreed to his proposal.
Link stroked her belly and felt that it was similar to Taylor's. He remembered that Marion was pregnant before filming the movie "Rust and Bone", which was this year, so he was not sure whether the child was his.
Afterwards, Guillaume also found him and said that Marion was already his wife and asked him not to disturb their married life again.
Link could only return to Los Angeles with mixed feelings to continue filming and training.
In early November, "The Expendables" was released. The film was completed in May. After half a year of scheduling, it was confirmed to be released in November.
This movie brings together many top action stars from around the world, including veterans such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, and Linkback, the most popular male singer and world boxing champion.
Before it was released, this movie has attracted the expectations and pursuit of many action movie fans, and has also been called the most anticipated action movie of 2010 by many media, with labels such as "tough guy movie of the year" and "must-see movie for real men of the year".
"The Expendables" did not disappoint everyone's expectations, and earned 41.05 million US dollars in box office in 3,270 theaters in North America over the three days of the weekend.
It beat the spoof film "Twilight Movie", Jennifer Aniston's "Sowing Love", Weinstein Films' "Piranha 3D", Universal's big production "Nanny McPhee 2" and other movies, and won the weekly box office championship.
The reputation of this movie is both praised and criticized.
People who like this movie say that the action scenes are very exciting and it looks like going back to the 1980s and 1990s to watch classic action movies such as "Rocky" and "First Blood". It is a real action movie.
Those who don't like it say that the plot of this movie is old-fashioned, not in line with the taste of the current audience, and not as exciting as imagined.
The media's overall rating is 72 points, and the Rotten Tomatoes website scores 68% freshness, with 46 people supporting and 14 opposing; Yahoo's film critics score B.
Whether they like it or not, the audience is relatively satisfied with Link's performance in the movie.
They think that his action scenes are no worse than those of several veteran action actors. They say that he is handsome, strong and sexy, cool and good at fighting. He injects some fresh air into this movie with an old style, old-fashioned plot, and a cast of greasy uncles, which makes the whole movie more enjoyable.
Some fans directly said that when watching the movie, they only watch the clips where Link appears and skip all the others.
Many fans also advised Link to take more action scenes and become an action actor, instead of having love affairs with actresses in movies. They said that if they wanted to see him having love affairs, they could read about it in the newspaper, and they didn’t need to buy tickets to watch it in the cinema.
Link also became popular again around the world with this movie. His handsome looks, cool fighting moves, and playboy style in the movie also attracted countless fans.
"Complete Movie" rated him as the "next action superstar".
"Vanity Fair" rated him as one of the most anticipated action actors among the new generation of actors.
"The Expendables" received another $20.67 million in box office in its second week of release. Although the drop was as high as more than 50%, it still won the weekly box office championship due to the lack of strong competitors during the same period, with a cumulative box office of $61.72 million in North America.
The North American box office is expected to be more than 130 million, which is not too high compared to the production cost of $82 million.
But the film's leading actors come from eight countries. Link, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis have extremely high popularity and box office appeal overseas. The media believes that the film's overseas box office performance will be higher than the North American box office.
Conservative estimates put the global box office at around 300 million US dollars. Based on 300 million, this film can be considered a big hit.
After the release of "The Expendables", Link's box office appeal was once again confirmed. Many film companies waved large checks to him for cooperation, including many action movies, but Link refused.
After becoming a global superstar, his desire for fame is no longer so urgent;
After becoming a billionaire, the millions or tens of millions of dollars in film pay are not very tempting to him. Now he has limited time and is more willing to participate in some movies that can make money for the company.
For example, "The Hunger Games".
After investigation, the adaptation rights of this novel are in the hands of Lionsgate Films, an independent film and television production company that focuses on horror movies. It was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Canada.
It has produced the "Saw" series, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D", "No Bones", "The Cabin in the Woods", "Blair Witch", etc., and some good independent films such as "Hotel Rwanda", "Monster's Ball", "Girl with a Pearl Earring", etc.
After "The Hunger Games" was published in 2008, Lionsgate Films immediately won the adaptation rights. Because the adaptation rights are only for five years, Lionsgate Films is currently preparing to shoot.
Palm Beach Films invited Lionsgate to cooperate, but has not yet received a response.
However, Link is not in a hurry. According to media reports, due to the impact of the financial crisis and the development of the Internet, DVD sales have been greatly reduced. Lionsgate has faced huge losses in the past two years. From 2008 to this year, it has laid off 8% of its employees, cutting 45 positions.
Even so, Lionsgate Films is still burdened with 350 million debts. In May, it announced a quarterly loss of 93.4 million US dollars and said it would continue to reduce film production plans to reduce losses.
As producer Bent said, there are almost no film companies in Hollywood that are not short of money.
Especially in the field of independent production companies, large independent production companies such as New Line, Focus, Lionsgate, Dimension, Weinstein Films, and Castle Rock Films almost all have fiscal deficits of hundreds of millions of US dollars.
As long as you have money and dare to invest, you don’t have to worry about no one taking over.
Hollywood is also like a big casino, but the risk of this casino in Hollywood is higher than that in Las Vegas, because once the bet fails here, the loss will be as high as tens of millions of US dollars.
Producer Bent was talking about the film company's losses, but in fact he was persuading him to take smaller steps, not to invest in too many projects at the same time, and not to participate in too large a project investment for the time being to prevent losses.
Link understood what he meant, but the "Hunger Games" series had good box office results and was the most successful series of movies after the "Twilight Series". It would be a pity to miss it, so he asked the company to continue to contact Lionsgate.
