Chapter 178: Hot Around the World
The release date of Inception is still scheduled for the summer, and mid-July has become Jiang Heng's exclusive schedule. No domestic film dares to compete head-on, not even Zhang Yimou's.

Originally in history, mid-July of this year belonged to "House of Flying Daggers".

But because of Jiang Heng, the usually arrogant Zhang Weiping thought again and again and decided to set the schedule in early August, a full half month apart, for fear of being affected.

Other companies are even more afraid of letting the films they have worked so hard to shoot become cannon fodder.

So at the end of June and the beginning of July, it seemed as if there was only one movie in the entire Chinese entertainment industry, and topics and advertisements about "Inception" were everywhere.

Especially after the premiere, the distributor China Film Group made a full-scale effort, with promotional posters posted everywhere and related actors also accepting media interviews to help promote the film.

For example, Yang Mi, who only appeared in the film for a few seconds holding hands with Jiang Heng, was noticed by the media at the film's premiere. Everyone was curious about who this person was?

"The Return of the Condor Heroes" has not been aired yet, and the "Little East Evil" Guo Xiang played by Yang Mi is not yet well known to the audience, which makes it seem that this person has a "deep background".

As for the heroine played by Megan Fox, she was hailed as a goddess by fans attending the premiere because she was photographed so beautifully by Jiang Heng. She was highly praised in various film and television forums, which made the audience look forward to the film more and more.

A combination of various factors resulted in tickets for the preview screenings being hard to come by, and many people online calling for the film to be released earlier.

However, Jiang Heng didn't have time to care about these things because he was not in the country at all.

After the premiere ceremony in Beijing, he flew to Los Angeles to attend the local "Inception" media meeting, and then flew to Tokyo, then Paris, Berlin...

Originally in history, the global box office of "Inception" was 8.25 million US dollars. Even if Jiang Heng does not surpass it this time, it cannot be too far behind.

What's more, he is planning to win several awards with this film to make his title of "the best director in the country" more legitimate and avoid being mocked for his lack of substance!

On Friday, July 7, "Inception" was released simultaneously around the world.

In the mainland market, the prime-time screenings in theaters across the country were almost all scheduled for Inception, and other films had almost no room to survive on that day. The first-day box office reached 4790 million, once again breaking the mainland's first-day box office record.

On Douban Movies, over 9.4 fans gave it a high score of , making the film a peak hit as soon as it debuted and earning it numerous praises.

Of course, there are still some voices pouring cold water on the film. Well-known film critic Zou Liming wrote that "Inception" is worth watching, but it is not a groundbreaking work.

The general meaning is that "The Matrix" still gives him topics to talk about, and there are several unforgettable scenes and shots.

For him, "Inception" is just an intellectual game, and Wu Aizu's performance is even more formulaic, conventional and without any surprises.

At the same time, he said that he did not mean to belittle Jiang Heng by saying this, and that being able to turn an intelligence game into a commercial blockbuster is also an amazing skill!
Another less famous film critic said in an interview that it is important to understand the conceptual setting of the film.

Because the whole movie is like a fantasy novel, you have to accept the countless fantastic settings in it and understand all the settings mentioned in the movie.

These set concepts appear anytime and anywhere, so during the more than two hours of viewing time, it is best not to go to the bathroom, because it is easy to miss a concept and make it difficult to understand the subsequent plot.

Especially in the first half of the movie, before the dream-stealing gang enters the dream of their target Fischer, it is "teaching time", interpreting these abstract concepts through practical actions and shocking special effects.

But for ordinary audiences, it is enough to be exciting and interesting.

Someone said in an interview with CCTV Movie Channel that the special effects alone are worth the price of admission. Although they are a little difficult to understand, the special effects are really beautiful. What the audience talked about most was, of course, the scene where the city was folded up like origami.

In addition, the weightless fighting also feels novel to the audience.

In Hong Kong, "Inception" instantly became the best-selling movie of the summer.

Although many people are dissatisfied with Jiang Heng's long stay in the mainland and his increasing lack of care for Hong Kong filmmakers, there are still many people who regard him as the most successful case of "Hong Kong stars going north" and they really support him when the film is released.

According to the current box office trend, there is a high probability that the box office will exceed 70 million Hong Kong dollars.

In North America, the film opened simultaneously in 3798 theaters across the country, and took in $6600 million in the first three days of its opening weekend, firmly topping the weekly North American box office charts.

What is even more surprising is that, due to the popularity of movie fans, "Inception" received a high score of 9.6 on the famous movie website IMDB.

Of course, reviews in print media are more objective. Those reviews that are mainly positive do not praise the film to the sky. For example, the review in the New York Times is similar to Zou Liming's evaluation.

Everyone thought the film was worth watching, but not as great as advertised online.

Some media even said that "The Matrix" is the best and "Inception" is still a little bit inferior.

The film is not only popular in film markets such as North America and China, but also performs extremely well in other film markets that rank at the top in market size.

In France, Spain and other places, "Inception" has remained firmly at the top of the box office.

It also continues to rank among the top three in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Australia and other places.

The global box office total has exceeded the 6 million US dollar mark at an extremely fast speed. According to media predictions, it will undoubtedly exceed million, but it is not known whether it can break the million US dollar mark.

At the same time, some Japanese media mocked Jiang Heng sourly, saying that the global box office performance of a single film could never exceed one billion US dollars, and there was still a gap between him and the world's top directors.

Then, he praised a lot of big Hollywood directors, which made countless domestic movie fans indignant. They left messages on the Douban short review of "Inception", hoping that Jiang Heng would make a blockbuster movie with a global box office of over 1 billion US dollars as soon as possible.

However, this topic was brought up by the "Six Princesses of CCTV" for a program, which analyzed data from various sources to demonstrate the gap in strength between Jiang Heng and other major Hollywood directors such as Spielberg, James Cameron, and George Lucas.

The conclusion is that Jiang Heng is more productive, and the quality of his films is stable. It is only a matter of time before a single film reaches over 1 billion at the box office.

But as to how long we have to wait, we need to ask Director Jiang Heng!

Then, Jiang Heng, who had finally had a few days off, was harassed by phone calls from all over the place.

Some are asked by friends out of concern, and some are just casual chats when they have nothing to do.

Jiang Heng was so fed up with it that he simply turned off his cell phone and took his bodyguards to the northeast to escape the summer heat and find some peace and quiet.

(End of this chapter)