A brand new original animated film, even before it was officially released, made the industry explode.
Last Saturday and Sunday, the animated film "Lion Boy" carried out a small-scale screening activity, and the total box office of the film on-demand and pre-sale was currently 17.393 million yuan. Compared with the mediocre box office and on-demand attendance, the audience who have read the film is full of enthusiasm.
On December 11, after the screening of "The Lion Boy", Maoyan scored 9.4, setting the first word of mouth in the annual animation film rating. There are also more than 10,000 short reviews on Douban, and most fans have given more than 4 stars.
What is even more outrageous is that several box office prediction agencies in the industry have given 1.5 billion+ box office imagination space, and even exaggerated box office predictions of 2.5 billion +.
Although the reference value of the cat's eye rating and the agency's prediction box office is not very large, in the secondary market, the producer behind the film, Hualu Baina, has benefited a lot. In the past week, Hualu Baina's stock price has soared from 4.9 yuan to 7.29 yuan, up 48%.
01
The story of the teenage lion dance, the sword refers to the 2.5 billion box office?
"Lion Boy" really has such a god? First look at the film's main creative configuration, director Sun Haipeng has won the 2014 "Excellent Animation Creative Talent" award of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television; screenwriter Li Zelin's previous representative work is "The Sky of the Wind Dog Boy"; producer Zhang Miao has many successful cases, and has participated in many blockbuster films such as "I Am Not a Medicine God", "Wolf Warrior", "Wandering Earth" and so on.
In terms of story setting, "Male Lion Boy" is a bit similar to the routine of the rise of small people commonly seen in Stephen Chow movies, telling the story of the growth story of the left-behind teenager Ah Juan and his friends A cat and A dog participating in the lion dance competition under the training of retired lion king Salty Fish Qiang, and after a lot of tempering, from a sick cat to a male lion.
For the animated film of the non-well-known director + the young lion dance, it is difficult to have a great interest from the audience by looking at the key information in the early stage of the film. Even though many tap fans have been gained through on-demand screenings, the film is currently only 49,000 people who want to see it on Cat's Eye, while the number of people who want to see "Manslaughter 2" released on the same day is 394,000.
In fact, "Lion Boy" was very unpopular with the market earlier, and it was initially announced to be released in China on August 6, 2021, and then chose to change the New Year file due to the epidemic.
Before the film was released in November, the film's related box office was expected to be less than 100 million yuan, after all, looking at the box office rankings of Chinese animation films, "The Devil Boy of Nezha", "Jiang Ziya", "The Return of the Great Sage of Journey to the West", "The Primitive Era of Bear Haunting", "The Metamorphosis of Bear Haunting"... It is either a familiar adaptation of a traditional mythological story, or a sequel to the low-child IP.
However, optimistically, as long as the story is told well, everything is possible. Thinking that an Indian film about wrestling can win nearly 1.3 billion yuan at the domestic box office, "Lion Boy", as one of the few realistic animations in recent years, may also be able to create a box office miracle with high reputation.
"A mountain always has a mountain high, there is always a miracle in the world that cannot be achieved", "Lion Boy" itself is also a miracle story of "salted fish turning over", the film wants to bring the audience the spiritual core is by no means more than the thin growth of teenagers, but through the true analysis of the low-level small people, triggering high-frequency resonance in real life,
Some fans described "The Lion Boy" as a huge emotional bomb, taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster for 100 minutes, and the mood and sorrow were constantly flipped. And these emotional resonance points can be accurately converted into box office selling points.
Not to mention the 2.5 billion box office, if "Lion Boy" can eventually create a box office of 1 billion+ box office, it is foreseeable that slogans such as "the rise of national comics" and "a new leap in the perspective of national comic content" will be widely spoken.
So, when "Lion Boy" counterattacks all the way to become the big dark horse of the film market at the end of 2021, which companies behind it will become the beneficiaries?
02
With the help of "Lion Boy", Hualu Baina has gained fame and fortune
Maoyan Professional Edition shows that "Lion Boy" has a total of four producers, namely Wonderful Time, Easy To Move Culture, Mokexing Pictures, Hualu Baina, and the co-producers also include 12 companies such as Chinese Impression, Chinese Online, and Zhongnan Red Culture.
Among them, Hualu Baina has achieved fame and fortune with the help of "Lion Boy".
Hualu Baina previously mainly relied on dramas and variety shows, representative works include "Before dawn", "Emperor Hanwu", "Indelible Fan", "Let's Get Married", etc., and the market value at its peak once exceeded 50 billion yuan.
Since 2018, the film and television industry has been in a rather unoppostic situation, and Hualu Baina has also been greatly affected. For example, Blue Flame, a well-known variety show production company acquired for 2.5 billion yuan, fell sharply after the completion of its three-year performance commitments, dragging down the parent company's net profit loss of more than 3.4 billion yuan in 2018.
Fortunately, Hualu Baina later found Infore Group to "support" and was able to continue the previous personnel team and governance model.
In May 2018, Infore Group, the son of Midea Group founder He Xiangjian, invested 1.8 billion yuan in Hualu Baina, and then invested hundreds of millions of yuan, becoming the controlling shareholder of Hualu Baina holding 33.77% of the shares (the data disclosed in the 2021 semi-annual report).
After the intervention of He Jianfeng, the young lord of the Midea Department, Hualu Baina gradually divested the variety business and vigorously laid out the film and animation business. Relying on the project reserves of the wonderful time, Hualu Baina, who has been in the doldrums for many years, has seen the real dawn.
Wonderful Time is a film company founded in 2016, and in November 2020, the well-known producer Zhang Miao became the legal person of Wonderful Time. Therefore, in the media reports, the wonderful time is the company that Zhang Miao started after leaving Beijing Culture.
Wonderful time is inextricably linked to Beijing culture. For example, Beijing Culture was once one of the shareholders of Wonderful Time (withdrawn in March 2017), "Lion Boy" appeared in the sequence of works of Beijing Culture in 2019, "Hello, Li Huanying" and "King of Bath" voted by Beijing Culture, and Wonderful Time was also one of the producers.
In the media reports, at the end of last year, when Zhang Miao left Beijing Culture to start his own film and television company, he also took away some film and television projects, and with these film and television projects and Zhang Miao's own ability and qualifications, the wonderful time was quickly favored by capital.
In January 2021, Wonderful Time officially obtained financing from the listed company Hualu Baina, exchanging 46% of the shares for 300 million yuan; in November 2021, Hualu Baina spent another 32.6087 million yuan to increase the shares of Wonderful Time by 5%, so that Hualu Baina held 51% of the equity of Wonderful Time and officially controlled Wonderful Time.
After receiving the first round of investment, Wonderful Time handed over two works to the market: the romantic comedy film "A Little Heartbeat" directed by Chen Jiashang and the documentary "We Are the First Secretary", but neither film had much repercussions.
The highly anticipated "Lion Boy" is the third work after the wonderful time. In Zhang Miao's conception, this animated film is the first work of the "Chinese Teenager" series planned by Wonderful Time, and in the future, this series will also be extended to ancient, science fiction and other genres (tentatively named "Sword Casting Teenager" and "Day by Day Teenager"), thus forming a unified cosmology.
03
A great opportunity for easy-to-move culture to make a name for itself
In order to take the first step of the "juvenile universe", Zhang Miao found a "newcomer" director Sun Haipeng. As early as 2009, Sun Haipeng directed two animated films, "Bao Qiang Zhan Sushi Man" and "Chinese Super Bun Vs Japanese Sushi Man", and in the years since, Sun Haipeng has directed several "Food Adventure" series of animation dramas. In 2018, "Food Adventure" was released as a movie of the same name, but the domestic box office was less than 10 million yuan.
It can be said that although Sun Haipeng has been tossing and turning in the animation industry for many years, for the audience, he is still a newcomer director, and this "Lion Boy" is undoubtedly a good opportunity to make a name for himself.
It is worth mentioning that Sun Haipeng is not only the director of "Lion Boy", but also one of the producers behind the film.
According to Tianyan, Sun Haipeng is one of the ultimate beneficiaries of Guangzhou Yidong Cultural Communication, the main producer of "Lion Boy", with a shareholding ratio of 25.17%.
Founded in 2013, Yidong Culture is a Chinese original animation operation platform that integrates publicity and distribution, and its main works include "Food Adventure", "Pantheon Office", "Strange monsters" and so on.
At present, Yidong Culture has obtained three rounds of financing: in 2013, it obtained a Series A financing of 12 million yuan from Shenzhen Venture Capital; in 2016, it obtained a Series B financing of 60 million yuan from Guangguang Media, Shenzhen Venture Capital, Pegasus Brigade, and Chengcheng Investment; and in 2017, it obtained a B+ round financing of 10 million US dollars from Lei Yan Investment.
In 2018, the product positioning of Yidong Culture changed from "cultural export" to "new national tide", and the "Lion Boy" released this Friday is one of the representative works of Yidong Cultural Strategic Change, that is, using modern scientific and technological language to tell the story of traditional Chinese culture.
In addition to the wonderful time and easy-to-move culture, the other major producer of "Lion Boy", Mokehang Pictures, also has a lot of highlights: the well-known cross-talk actor Yu Qian holds 10% of the shares, and has invested in more than 30 films in a low-key manner less than three years after its establishment.
As a company established in 2019, Mokehang Pictures has silently invested in more than 30 films, including "Galaxy Tuition Class", "Teacher Good", "The Best of Us", "囧Mom", and "Anti-Corruption Storm 4", "Acts 2", "Emergency Rescue" and other films with Hong Kong film genes. This year's New Year's seed player "Anti-Corruption Storm 5", Mokexing Pictures is also one of the main producers.
However, due to the investment matters involving "Anti-Corruption Storm 5", Mokexing Pictures was caught in a lawsuit this year. Because "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" failed to be released before December 31, 2020 as agreed in the agreement, Mokehang Pictures needed to return the investment of 5.85 million yuan to Shanghai Banhe Film and Television Company, the corresponding interest and liquidated damages, legal fees loss of 250,000 yuan and bear most of the litigation costs.
Through Tianyancha to check the "own risk" of Mokexing Pictures, this young company is always disturbed by various cases, and the cause of disputes is mostly caused by film investment agreements.
Fortunately, to be able to get the investment share of "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" and "Young Lion", Mokexing Pictures should be regarded as one of the biggest winners of this New Year file.
Author/Hunan pig blood pills
Responsible editor/ Ru Qian
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