Chapter 102 102. Opening score 9.5, Zombie Conqueror

Georgia State University, Atlanta.

This is an institution of higher learning that has been established for nearly a hundred years. However, since it is a public university, its conditions in all aspects are naturally not as good as those of private universities, and it does not belong to the Ivy League.

In the morning, Little John dragged his tired body back to the dormitory. He drank too much at the party last night. When he woke up, he was lying in the trash can.

He shook his roommate who was still in the quilt: "Jon, wake up Jon, it's time for class!"

"Wow. Zombie!"

Jon's reaction was very violent. He kicked Little John down and woke him up.

"Wang Defa! What are you doing!"

Fortunately, the kick was not very powerful. Little John rubbed his abdomen and stood up again.

After a moment's pause, Jon finally reacted when he looked at his buddy in front of him.

"Sorry, it's a stress reaction. I had a nightmare. There were zombies. Lots of zombies."

Little John looked at him speechlessly: "Brother, 28 Days Later was last year's movie, are you still dreaming?"

Jon got dressed and got out of bed: "No, not 28 Days Later John, it was The Walking Dead. Last night in the common area, Tina and I were on a date."

"Then the TV screen jumped to HBO, and I don't know what son of a bitch changed the channel, and then it came on."

"This is a new drama, a very pure zombie TV series, you know? A zombie TV series!" Jon emphasized word by word.

"I've never watched such an exciting TV series. The sense of the end of the world is even stronger than that of 28 Days Later. It's so exciting!"

"Originally, Tina and I wanted to do something, but we were so absorbed in the TV that we didn't see the scene yesterday. The public area has never been so crowded."

"It felt like half of the school was here, and everyone was still using their phones to notify others. Luckily, Tina and I were sitting on the sofa in the front, so those who came late could only stand on the table to see clearly."

"What! That's too much!"

Little John naturally didn't believe it. He knew about zombies, but this was the first time he had heard of a zombie TV series.

"Exaggeration? That's because you didn't see what happened last night. You can check out the school forum. I think it's already been posted there."

When the two of them went to the classroom, Little John was surprised to find that many of the classmates he met on the way were actually talking about zombies.

As soon as she entered the classroom, Beatrice stood up and asked loudly, "Jon, they said you recorded a video last night? Do you have a videotape of The Walking Dead? Can you lend it to me?"

"And me!"

"And me!"

"I want to watch it too. Everyone says this show is great. It's a pity I didn't catch it last night."

"Me too, and by the time I got to the common area, it was already packed."

Jon shook his head. “Who said that? I don’t have the tape. I’m looking for it. I need to review it. Last night was so sudden. The show suddenly popped up and I missed a lot of details.”

"Well, then I can only post on the forum to ask for help."

Finally, the get out of class was over and it was noon. Little John found a computer and entered the school forum.

Sure enough, there are a lot of new posts here, almost all of which are discussing "The Walking Dead".

A photo was hung high on the ceiling, showing a scene of a crowded school public area. A sentence was photoshopped onto the photo: Zombies have come to reality!

"It's just a TV show, is it really that good?"

Little John's curiosity was aroused and gradually grew.

Similar situations occur not only at Georgia State University, but also at various schools across the United States. College students can watch it at school, while many middle school students watch it at home after school.

As for primary school students, their parents will send them away and watch the show themselves.

Of course, there are also parents who are fascinated by the show or don’t care much, and just hold their children while watching it, regardless of whether it will leave psychological trauma on the children.

Overnight, after HBO aired just the first episode, The Walking Dead became a hit, topics began to appear on the Internet, and the discussion gradually increased.

In the MGM building, Eric came to the office and took a sip of the coffee brewed by Chen Xing. The temperature was just right.

Eric turned on the computer, opened Google, and typed in the words "The Walking Dead". Links popped up instantly.

He looked at the page numbers and found that there were already hundreds of pages. Although some of them had been available before the show started, the speed of their spread shocked Eric.

You have to know that it is not 2010 when the original time and space of "The Walking Dead" was broadcast. The Internet has not yet been fully popularized, and families use more slingbacks, and ordinary people cannot afford easy-to-carry laptops.

Moreover, even without the 7 years of accumulated popularity of the original comic, it can still reach this level of discussion overnight. We can only say that this drama is truly excellent.

There is another reason, that is, the incomplete popularization of the Internet has led to the fact that today's family entertainment is still mainly based on television. People sit in front of the TV after work and have dinner, which is still the mainstream habit.

Another thing is that excellent large-scale dramas have not entered a blowout era like they would in a few years, and the audience's tastes have not yet been succumbed. "The Walking Dead" makes the audience feel novel.

"We must quickly establish Facebook and use its social nature to play an important role in the dissemination of film and television dramas."

While thinking, Eric opened IMDB. As expected, the entry interface of "The Walking Dead" appeared here, and the scene selected was the one where Rick was riding a horse in Atlanta.

I looked at the number of people who rated it. There are already 5,322 people, and the score is 9.5 points, of which 72% gave 10 stars and 1.3% gave 1 star.

This score certainly cannot be used as the final standard to measure the quality of "The Walking Dead", after all, the number of people is too small.

As the number of TV series increases, it is impossible for every episode to be as exciting and full of grand scenes as the first one.

The increase in the number of raters will also cause the scores to continue to decline, which is normal.

So far, the film with the most ratings is "Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back", with more than 600,000 people rating it.

In second place is Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, with more than 500,000 viewers.

This shows the influence of the Star Wars series around the world, especially in Europe and the United States. However, the two movies have existed for more than 20 years and have a solid foundation.

Ranked third is "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", which also received ratings from over 500,000 people, only 50,000 fewer than "Star Wars: A New Hope".

Ranked fourth is "The Matrix", with more than 480,000 people rating it.

The fifth place is Middle-earth Cavalry again. "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" has only been released for 5 months, but it has received ratings from over 430,000 people, which is outrageous.

Turning the mouse and scrolling down, Eric browsed the comments.

The reviews were almost all positive, with key words concentrated on such words as excitement, authenticity, novelty, humanity, survival, and morality.

The few criticisms were mainly focused on the horror, especially the scene of the half-body female zombie crawling on the ground, which scared many people.

Knock, knock, knock. Dad and Bordeaux walked in, the latter holding a stack of newspapers in his hands.

Dad was so happy that his mouth almost stretched to his back teeth: "Eric, take a look at these reviews. Those picky movie review bastards have given recommendations. Hahahaha."

Eric flipped open the newspaper and sure enough, many of them mentioned The Walking Dead in the entertainment section.

Independent Spirit: "I have been following this project since I learned that MGM has started it. We have seen sitcoms, urban emotional dramas, and crime suspense dramas, but this is the first time I have seen a zombie TV series."

"Although there have been many zombie movies on the big screen, this is a groundbreaking first on the small screen. After I watched the first episode, I knew that The Walking Dead was a success. Congratulations to MGM and HBO!"

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ABC Entertainment Online: "Frank Darabont is a director I like very much. I love his "Shawshank Redemption". When I learned that he took over a zombie TV series, I thought that maybe he would usher in his second failure after "Forget Who I Am", but it turned out that "Forget Who I Am" was an occasional failure."

"Frank Darabont and MGM have brought us an amazing apocalypse journey. If the subsequent episodes can maintain the same level, I dare say that The Walking Dead will sweep this year's Emmy Awards."

Los Angeles Post: "Last night I was notified to watch a new HBO drama, The Walking Dead. Frankly speaking, I am not interested in fantasy creatures like zombies, and the beginning of this drama is very similar to 28 Days Later, with the same routine of coma, hospital, awakening, and the end of the world. I thought it was just a poor imitation drama."

"But when I saw the Morgans struggling to decide whether to kill their transformed wife, and when I saw the survivors arguing over whether to risk saving Rick, I discovered something different. The struggle of human nature is what a qualified TV show should have. In this regard, The Walking Dead did a better job than 28 Days Later."

“When The Walking Dead doesn’t focus too much on the zombies, it will be liked and accepted by more audiences, so I recommend it.”

"Eric, this time MGM didn't give any money, and HBO just used normal promotional methods. The Walking Dead is conquering the market."

"Did you get the viewing data?" Eric asked expectantly.

Dad was silent for a moment: "The prime-time data is 6.2 million subscribers watching online at the same time, which may be less than everyone's expectations."

Eric frowned when he heard this. The figure of 6.2 million would certainly be impressive in 2010, but in 2003 it was not worthy of the cost of "The Walking Dead".

As a result, when he was thinking about what went wrong, his father suddenly shouted: "But the 11 o'clock replay episode reached 9.5 million subscribers, second only to Band of Brothers' 10 million. We did it!"

“Yes!”

Eric immediately stood up and threw a left hook into the air. This is the power of a good work. As long as it is not too advanced like "Waterworld", it will still be loved by the audience even if it is released ten years earlier.

It should be noted here that 9.5 million refers to HBO's subscribers, not the specific number of people. One user may be a family, and a family generally does not have only one viewer, so the specific number of people is often two to three times as much.

"Eric, the ratings of the reruns can illustrate the potential of The Walking Dead. Even though it is now half a step behind Band of Brothers, I believe that The Walking Dead will definitely surpass Band of Brothers, perhaps within the next week." Dad said confidently.

"No need to comfort my dad. The director of Band of Brothers is Spielberg. Its cost and publicity are more than three times that of The Walking Dead. I will be very happy if it surpasses it, but I will not be disappointed if it does not."

"It's best if you think so. Now I'm sure I can kick that guy Zach Thomas' ass!"

As my dad said this, he kicked the air with his left leg, laughed loudly and walked out of the office.

After his father left, Bordeaux handed over a report with information about the crew of "Happy Death Day". The project was ready to start.

Since the cost was not high, only 5 million US dollars, after it was approved, Eric handed it over to Volvo for overall operation and never paid much attention to it.

The preparations are almost done, just come over and give a report.

The quality of a movie is most closely related to its director, screenwriter and leading actors. Other aspects have an impact but are secondary factors.

In addition to Eric, the other screenwriter is Christopher Smith, who was found from the union and is a newcomer who has only been in the industry for a few years.

However, in a few years his career will see a turning point, as he will write and direct a famous movie, "The Cruise", which shows that this man is capable.

In view of Smith's potential, MGM signed him to a screenwriter contract for three films.

The director column says Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, yes, the famous Russo brothers.

In the future, the Russo brothers will co-direct films such as "Community", "Captain America 2", "Captain America 3", "Avengers 3" and "Avengers 4".

It can be said that the Russo brothers have accounted for half of the high-scoring works in the Marvel series.

But now it is 2003, and it is still early for the Russo brothers to rise. Now they are still small-time actors who have only directed two or three unsuccessful movies.

Eric is very satisfied with this choice because his brother Anthony Russo is good at using time and space montage. He believes that it would be a very good choice for them to direct "Happy Death Day".

MGM also gave the Russo brothers a five-picture directing contract.

Five movies may take seven or eight years to make. Ordinary famous directors will definitely not sign, but now the Russo brothers are lucky to have made some, so what else do they want?

The male lead has been confirmed to be Benjamin McKenzie, a newcomer who made his debut last year. He will later play the one-on-one king James Gordon in "Gotham".

The female lead column was left empty, leaving the decision to Eric.

He picked up a pen and wrote Gal Gadot in the blank space.

According to his idea, after Gadot finishes filming "Transformers", she will take a break and MGM will start filming "The Hunger Games", in which she will continue to be the heroine. The two large investments will be enough to make her jump directly from an amateur to a first-line female star.

However, with so many things happening later, MGM is now under great financial pressure, and "The Hunger Games" may have to wait until next year to start filming.

So Eric kept a trick up his sleeve. If he could finish filming "Transformers" before "Happy Death Day", he would let Gadot play the leading female role.

If the filming cannot be completed, Hollywood has no shortage of young girls like this, so let the dad use them to sell favors.

Now that the filming of "Transformers" has been completed, the good projects will naturally be left to our own people.

If nothing unexpected happens, this movie will be released before "Transformers", which can accumulate popularity in advance and will also help the box office of "Autobots".

(End of this chapter)