Chapter 238 Breaking through one billion
Hollywood Universal Studios.

Famous producer Don Murphy brought a bucket of popcorn and walked into the screening room of "Pacific Rim 2" with his girlfriend.

As the most important driving force behind the birth of the movie "Transformers", Don Murphy has been paying close attention to the project status of "Pacific Rim 2".

I thought "Transformers 2" would be able to get ahead this time, but it turned out that "Pacific Rim 2" which started shooting later was released first. There is really no way to complain!

Not only that, after its release, "Pacific Rim 2" also won the weekly box office championship and received high reviews, which made the people related to the "Transformers" series of films unable to sit still.

Michael Bay was busy with post-production at the time and couldn't spare the time, so Don Murphy volunteered to come.

In the theater, Don Murphy looked at the crowded crowd, frowned subconsciously, and muttered: "Damn, there are so many people here!"

His girlfriend is also in the entertainment industry. She is an actress with a great figure, but she is not completely brainless.

Shrugging, he said, "Maybe they think of this as Transformers 2?"

Don Murphy said angrily: "That bitch Amy is so shameless. She actually made the poster of Ring 2 look so similar to Transformers. She should sue them until they go bankrupt!"

However, when Columbia Pictures was promoting the film, it held a premiere ceremony and posters were also released in major theaters in North America.

The problem is that the style of the film's promotional poster looks too similar to "Transformers", so much so that some North American audiences can't tell which is "Transformers" and which is "Pacific Rim".

Later, experienced viewers shared their experience and identification methods online. The one where robots fight robots is "Transformers", and the one where robots fight monsters is "Pacific Rim".

Someone replied, shouldn’t they be distinguished based on their names?

Then, no one discussed this topic anymore.

This is not surprising. Perhaps due to the prevalence of "happy education", many Americans lack common sense and know nothing about the world outside the United States. Some are even ignorant of their own country.

It's quite outrageous that some Americans don't even know when Independence Day is.

Therefore, there are many viewers who mistakenly watch "Pacific Rim 2" as "Transformers 2", after all, the styles are too similar.

You know, Shelter Films made a lot of money by relying on blockbuster movies with copycat special effects and being the first to release them, and they made films like "Sharknado", "Atlantic Rim", "Transformers", "Triassic World" and so on. This shows that if films of the same type are released first, you can really make a lot of money!
One more thing to mention is that the English name of "Pacific Rim 2" is very similar to "Transformers", and it's not entirely because of the poster.

Taking into account various factors, "Pacific Rim 2" earned $9135 million in box office revenue in its first three days of release over the weekend, far exceeding the previous "Inception"'s $6600 million.

而在北美市场首周末三天票房榜单上，《环太平洋2》的成绩屈居2002年《蜘蛛侠》的1.14亿，2005年《星战前传3》1.085亿，《怪物史莱克2》1.08亿，《哈利波特4》1.02亿，《哈利波特3》9368万等片之后，也是相当耀眼的存在。

Once the news came out, more and more people came to watch the movie, so much so that Don Murphy couldn't buy tickets for the nearest show. He was very depressed.

After finally sitting down, the theater was still noisy with people constantly coming in and out.

The atmosphere died down a bit when the film started, because even the North American audiences were shocked by the images shown in the film.

Everyone stared with their eyes wide open and their mouths wide open, and when they saw "Storm Red" falling from the sky and chopping off the head of the monster that was spewing blue acid with one sword, the whole place cheered.

"Oh yes!"

"This shot is really great, Director Jiang Heng is so amazing!"

"How can they fight monsters together? Aren't they two groups of robots fighting?" "Dude, those are Transformers you're talking about!"

"Well, isn't this a Transformer?"

……

Don Murphy in the back row really wanted to cry after hearing this. He had said long ago that he would release it earlier, earlier. If it could have been released before Pacific Rim 2, why would he have to suffer such a loss!

In the end, he forgot how he walked out of the theater, and he didn't remember the plot of the movie very well. He just felt that the fighting scenes in "Ring 2" were super shocking, and seemed to have exceeded the expected effects of "Transformers 2" which was currently in production.

So he left the cinema and rushed to where Michael Bay was working.

"Hey, man, we might be in big trouble!"

"What happened? Is it really that good?" Michael Bay still found it a little unbelievable.

Don Murphy nodded slightly. "The comments online and in the media are not exaggerated. The truth is, they don't describe the shocking aspects of the film. Really, if you don't go to see it in person, you can't imagine it just by reading the comments."

Michael Bay's face turned ugly when he heard this. "Oh, damn, that Chinese movie should be banned from entering the American market!"

Don Murphy smiled bitterly. "I also hope that the gentlemen in Congress can come up with a relevant bill, but the problem is that we all know that it is impossible. Now let's think about what to do during the summer vacation."

The movie "Transformers 2" is currently scheduled to be released in the summer of 06. If the two blockbusters with such similar themes are released so close to each other, and the main selling point of the latter, the special effects and fighting scenes, are crushed, the box office will be really bad.

Michael Bay probed: "What do you think about additional investment?"

“I’m afraid it will be difficult to pass!”

"So what do you think we should do?"

Don Murphy spread his hands and said, "I just don't know what to do, so I came to ask you!"

"Well, let's forget about it and let those executives have a headache!"

The two discussed for a long time but could not come to a good conclusion, so they finally decided to pass the buck to the production company.

The executives of Paramount and DreamWorks were also troubled by this. They had already secretly started filming in advance, but Jiang Heng got there first. There was nothing they could do!
As for this moment, we are really watching "Pacific Rim 2" conquer the North American market and win the annual box office championship in the North American market with a super high box office of 4.1 million US dollars.

In Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, Germany and other box office powerhouses, Pacific Rim 2 has also triggered a viewing frenzy.

The final result reflected in the box office was that the global total box office of "Pacific Rim 2" exceeded one billion US dollars, reaching 10.39 billion US dollars.

When the news spread back to China, it shocked the entire entertainment industry.

Although it has been shaken repeatedly over the years, this time is different.

This time, the global box office performance of a single film exceeded one billion US dollars, which is something worth writing about in the entire history of Chinese-language films.

Jiang Heng was extremely famous at the moment, and he was flooded with calls requesting interviews, with everyone hoping to get an exclusive interview as soon as possible.

(End of this chapter)