Last weekend, the North American box office market was quiet, and only one new film was released on a large scale, and that was the new work “Malignant” from the horror film director James Wan.
However, the top spot on the weekend box office chart is still the Marvel movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” released the previous week.
“Malignant” Simultaneously Different Versions of China and the U.S. Cite Controversy
The restricted-level horror film “Malignant” produced by New Line Pictures was shown in nearly 3,500 theaters in North America, and it only got $5.57 million at the box office.
“Malignant” ranked third on the weekend box office chart, not even as good as “Free Guy”, which has been in theaters for more than a month, which is surprising.
It stands to reason that the North American box office of many horror films that were released during the epidemic was pretty good.
After all, the audience market targeted by such works is mainly young people, that is, the part of the population that is least affected by the epidemic.
But “Malignant” only got such a premiere box office result, perhaps due to the simultaneous release of the film on the HBO Max online platform.
Another big reason for the unsatisfactory box office of “Malignant” is the reputation of the audience.
Judging from the scores of professional film critics on the film review collection website “Rotten Tomatoes”, “Malignant” has 74% praise, which is considered to be recognized by the media.
However, the audience did not buy it, and the praise rating was 50% below the pass line.
After the premiere of “Malignant”, the score was only C, and the user score on the movie information website IMDb was only 6.3.
The audience rating on “Malignant” on Rotten Tomatoes is not high, only 50%.
With the title of “the first restricted horror film to be broadcast simultaneously in Mainland China”, “Malignant” also landed on the video platform in Mainland China on the day of its premiere in North America. It can be watched on demand at a cost of RMB 12.
However, the version broadcast on the Chinese video platform is 4 minutes shorter than the version broadcast in North America, and it is also personally edited by director James Wan.
For a movie like “Free Guy”, deleting one or two bad jokes is generally acceptable to Chinese audiences.
But for a restricted-level horror film, what it means to delete four minutes is a matter of opinion, so it is inevitable to encounter piracy problems.
To this end, the official Weibo of “Malignant” issued a statement yesterday, calling on viewers to choose genuine.
They stated that “if the work is pirated, the legitimate rights and interests of the creators will not be protected, and the platform will no longer have the courage to buy genuine films.”
However, there are still netizens who do not buy into this kind of rhetoric.
Anti-choke: “If the end of the work is to delete and modify, the creator’s achievements will not be fully displayed, and the audience will no longer have the courage to support the original film.”
No matter what viewing channel the viewer chooses, the score of “Malignant” on “Douban” is much higher than that of foreign websites, reaching 7.0 points, showing better than 83% of horror films.
