The premiere of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in China last Monday, Dec. 31, quickly drew impressive numbers at the box office. The film made $37.9 million on its opening day to beat the box office opening numbers of the superhero Hollywood movie "Venom." However, moviegoers ended up angry and unsatisfied after realizing that it was not the kind of film they expected to watch.
According to Variety, China movie fans were tricked into watching the highbrow film with a different kind of promotion. The marketing campaign for "Long Day's Journey Into Night" billed the movie as perfect for the first date on New Years' Eve thus it pre-sold $15 million tickets. Theaters also received full bookings before the movie opened, while some cinemas even added screenings because of the high demand.
But the audience felt short-changed after seeing that "Long Day's Journey Into Night" was not a romantic comedy. Some walked out of the movie after 20 minutes, while others slept through the film's run. Some Chinese moviegoers also took their complaints about not understanding the movie to Weibo, while others posted bad reviews of the film in the ticket-selling platform Maoyan.
The next day, viewers of the "Long Day's Journey Into Night" drastically fell from the box office ranking as the movie just made $1.5 million. Chine Box Office on Twitter said that the film had a 95 percent drop after one day of showing.
Bi Gan directed "Long Day's Journey Into Night" as his second feature-length movie. He defended the film's marketing and said that there was no intention to steal nor rob the moviegoers of their money because the people who worked to promote the film did not do anything wrong.
The 29-year-old writer and director also said that it's not right to assume that the average person won't be able to understand his movie. He defended that he also comes from a fourth or fifth-tier city, but he knows a lot of people with the same background as him who would watch his movie, even if they won't necessarily like it.
"Long Day's Journey Into Night," which stars Tang Wei, Huang Jue, Silvia Chang, and Li Hongqi, received mostly positive feedback from the international audience at the Cannes Film Festival last May 2018. Critics loved the movie for its innovative expressionism and technically mesmerizing quality. It even earned an 89 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating.
