Ch 27: Release

14th March, 2008

{3rd Person POV}

A new video, titled 'Oliver Knight at The Departed's Premiere', was released on the following day after 'The Departed's premier by CNO, a large news channel on social media platforms like MyTube and Tweeter. 

The video gained quite a lot of traction, with it garnering 37K views in 24 hours. The reactions to the video itself was also quite positive.

"He's British? Well, now I wanna see him say b'oh w'o'wo'er.", "Dang, he's the screenwriter for Bird's next movie? I'm not sure how to feel about that.", "It's based on the Boston Winter Hill gang? Now I'm interested.", "He's really gonna work with Michael Young? That's really surprising.", etcetera, etcetera.

The review embargo had also been lifted, unveiling to the world about the quality of Oliver Knight's second film, 'The Departed'. 

Opening with an 87 on Metacritic, 94% with an 8.5/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.7/10 on IMDB.

Amazing scores all round, yet of course, there were still a few negative reviews.

|Plausible psychological scrutiny loses out to shot after shot of brains being splattered. And boy, do you get a lot of brains for your buck. It's just a shame they're all on the walls and not in the script

3/10| 

|Managing to convey nothing for the mind or soul in its over two and a half hours of excessive overkill

C+|

|The director thinks having 3 'fucks' a minute makes this movie mature and great.

D-|

However, the positive reviews overwhelmed the negative ones, and that too by a VERY large margin.

|If you like your films loaded with guns, blood and bad asses with dialects this is the film for you. Knight delivers a well-crafted story that will keep you engaged throughout

4/5|

|Oliver Knight must have missed the memo stating that Hollywood movies were being dumbed down for mass audiences. The director has created one of the best films of the year, guaranteed to keep audiences on their toes.

9/10|

|The shocking violence is well-placed. The action scenes are always comprehensible -- no jump cut cheats here -- and the suspense will make you fidget in your seat. What a corker.

4.5/5|

The positive reception only gave confidence to the studio, and they let Oliver have some control over the promotion of the movie.

The trailer for the film was being played in front of almost every movie for the week till 'The Departed's release. 

The ensemble poster had a black background with just the words 'The Departed', which itself had images of all the actors inside, was written in a large font and covered almost the whole poster. There were also a few words above the title, "From the Producers that brought you 'Halloween' and 'Signal". Other than that, the release date of 3/12/08 was present on the bottom. 

(Note: I'm going to be using the American date system when talking about release dates, which is MM/DD/YY instead of DD/MM/YY)

The reviews only added fuel to the ongoing discussions about 'The Departed' and Oliver as a director.

Many people were not convinced that 'The Departed' would be successful even with positive reviews, and their doubts were reasonable.

This one posts describes it quite nicely:

"What does the future for Oliver Knight look like?" Was the title of the post.

-The Departed, the second and latest film released by the young director Oliver Knight, held its premiere last week.

When the review embargo was lifted, positive reviews flooded out like water gushing out after a dam has been lifted. 

And these reviews weren't just a 6 or 7 outta 10. No, they were 8 and 9 outta 10. Something which Oliver Knight's previous film, Halloween, also received. 

Now, what does all this bode for Oliver Knight's career?

Well, first of all, The Departed obviously needs to be commercially successful for Oliver Knight to make his next movie.

However, 'The Departed' doesn't have that many recognizable names, and instead has an unknown actor as one of the two main characters.

This is certainly bad for the film's box office success. 

However, the interview with Michael Young last week where he revealed that he got to watch The Departed in a private screening and called it one of the best films ever will certainly drive a chunk of his fans to go in droves to watch the movie.

But will that really happen? That, my friends, is a hard thing to answer.

But one thing is for certain; If The Departed failed to generate a profit, Oliver Knight's career would be on a tight leash, with him having to create films that would be commercially successful rather than just getting positive reviews. 

However, Oliver himself publicly announced in an interview, in front of dozens of people, that he already had his next film in the works, and that too with Michael Young.

If The Departed becomes a flop, there are two plausible scenarios that I see happening: A) The studio pulls the plug on 'The Prestige', Knight's next film with THE largest star of the 21st century, or B) They still move with the movie and hope that it too receives positive reviews. 

Certainly, option A seems far more reasonable and sensible, but option B isn't bad either. Oliver Knight, with his limited portfolio, has shown us that he is a capable director-writer. And rumours has it that he'll also star in 'The Prestige'. 

If, the keyword here being 'if', The Departed becomes commercially successful and generates a hefty profit, The Prestige releasing is a guarantee, and if that movie too turns out to be both critically and commercially successful, then we'll be witnessing the birth of a legendary director.

Well, that was my two cents on the matter. What do you think?-

The scenarios theorised by the posters were going to be tested real soon, as today was the release day of 'The Departed', 12th March, 2008.

March itself was quite a dry month in terms of film releases, with large movies being released in the last week due to the Spring Break and Easter sometimes being in March. 

And this time, Easter was on 23rd March, which meant that The Departed had two weeks till new and large films would be released.

There was also the fact that 'The Departed' was being released in 35 countries in its first week, and had already generated $22M from there.

***

{3rd Person POV}

A man who looked to be in his early 20s wearing a denim jacket and cargo pants was standing outside of an old-school theatre in New York City.

Leaning on the wall, he looked at his watch, which read 4:33 P.M. The man groaned and looked at the sky.

Soon after, a voice called out to him. "Hey Joshua!"

The man looked at the direction the voice came from, and saw two men dressed similarly to him walking in his direction. 

The man known as Joshua walked towards the group. "Haa, finally here? Took you guys long enough!" Joshua exclaimed.

"Sorry, man. There was just too much foot traffic today." One of the men, Robert,  who had short blond hair explained.

"Well, whatever. Let's quickly get going or we'll be late for the showing." The third man, Elijah, said.

The three of them quickly made their merry way inside the theatre and got tickets for the newly released movie 'The Departed'.

"This better be good, or my faith in Michael Young will drop." Muttered Joshua.

"Hey, this movie got great reviews from basically everyone! That has to be something, right?" Said Elijah.

"Or the studio paid those critics for positive reviews." Said Robert, before moving to their showing with Joshua.

Elijah sighed before going after the two.

The three of them got seated in their seats, with popcorn and sodas in their hands.

Soon, the film started playing, starting with SkyMount's logo.

As soon as the narration by Costello started, the group of men became engrossed into the story of the film.

They cackled at the comedy, clenched their buttcheeks in thrilling scenes, and cried at Billy's death, and finally, they felt satisfaction when Colin got what he deserved. 

And when the credits started rolling, they left the theatre with an amazing experience.

"Man, that was something." Muttered Josua.

"See? I told you this movie would be good! I said the same for 'Halloween' too, and yet you two didn't believe me!" Exclaimed Elijah.

"Yeah, yeah, we get it, you were right and we should've believed you." Chuckled Robert. "Though, this was one of the best movies I've ever seen. I think I'll watch this with my girlfriend too." 

"Didn't she hate 'A Man With A Gun' because it was too violent and serious? How do you think she'll like this?" Asked Joshua.

"Well, fingers crossed that she'd like this. Otherwise, I'll just watch this again with you guys."

"Well, if we'll watch it again, then you'd be paying!" Elijah said.

"You think I have any money left?" The three of them laughed and went to their homes.

~~~

A/N: Uhm, yeah. I wrote this thing.

Probably for the better as I have a Maths exam on Monday.

Anyways, this is the first chapter without Oliver! Took me 27 chapters, but here we are!

And I finished watching Pirates 4 and 5! Ngl, they're not as bad as people make them out to be, but that doesn't mean they're underrated gems or something like that.

No, they're just boring movies that just exist. Johnny Depp seemed like he was actually drunk while playing Jack in the 5th one. And why does Salazar have CGI hair? Also, 5th one could've been the last because of the ending, but because money, they added Davy Jones in the post credits, which makes absolutely zero sense.

Also, I'll try my best to get 2 chapters next week.

Also also, we're just 4K away from 100K views! I know most of them are bots, but like still!