The author | Mia
When the 19-year Lunar New Year ticket crown "Manslaughter" IP sequel and suspense film "Manslaughter 2" collide head-on with the recent Douban score of 8.3 points, quite dark horse phase of the national comic "Lion Boy", which wins or loses?
This is the biggest suspense this weekend after the release of two weighty new films. The latter has attracted much attention, only because behind the "newcomer director + niche lion dance theme", its supervising producer and producer is Zhang Miao, a senior producer who has bet on box office hits five times in a row.
After the advanced screening, the media reputation burst, the box office forecast was also greatly adjusted, some media gave the prediction of "the biggest seed player in the New Year ticket", the box office was raised from the initial 50 million to 1.5 billion +, 2.5 billion +, soaring 50 times, and led the producer Beijing wonderful shareholder Hualu Baina stock price soared. On December 7, Hualu Baina (SZ:300291) closed up 19.92%, and in the last monday week, Hualu Baina shares rose 48%. However, affected by many factors such as "black powder", the trend of the film on the first day and the pre-sale box office are slightly flat, and it remains to be observed after the word-of-mouth fermentation and box office staying power.
Today, "Spider-Man: Heroes No Return", which has been released in fourteen countries and regions, is still missing in the mainland, and "The Matrix 4: Matrix Restart" is scheduled for next year, and imported films continue to be absent. "Love Myth", "Flame on the Plain" and other romance films will enter the Christmas file, the next wave of new films will arrive around the New Year's Day file, can domestic films carry the Beam of the New Year file?
Beijing brilliantly launched the first shot of the "Juvenile Trilogy": "Hong Kong Film Afterglow" and "Black Powder Variables"
"Wolf Warrior 2", "I Am Not a Medicine God", "The Wandering Earth", "My Hometown and Me", "Hello, Li Huanying"... These super hits, which rank in the top 15 of the domestic film history box office, have the same producer's name behind them - Zhang Miao.
In the early years, he worked at Sony Columbia Pictures and was responsible for the film business in China for 15 years, Zhang Miao has introduced and publicized dozens of Hollywood films such as the "007" series, the "Spider-Man" series, the "Men in Black" series, "2012", and was responsible for the promotion of many domestic films such as "Kung Fu". It is not difficult to imagine that years of immersion in Hollywood's mature business system made him realize the importance of the IP universe. From 2015 to 2020, Zhang Miao worked in Beijing Culture, in addition to the above-mentioned blockbusters, he also produced and publicized films such as "The Unknown Generation", "The King of Bathing", and "No Problem".
According to media interviews, Zhang Miao chose to leave Beijing Culture in December 2020 and join beijing wonderful time as general manager, chief producer and general distributor to restart the entrepreneurship of "making publicity and publicity", and mortgaged his collection to borrow 200 million yuan for this purpose. In January 2021, Beijing Brilliant obtained 300 million yuan in financing from the listed company Hualu Baina, which held 46%; in November 2021, Hualu Baina spent another 32.6087 million yuan to increase its holding of 5% of the shares of Beijing Brilliant, holding a total of 51% of the equity of Wonderful Time, officially controlling Beijing Brilliant.
At this year's Film Festival press conference, Beijing brilliantly announced the film list, and the "Juvenile Trilogy" "Cast Sword Boy" and "Day by Day Teenager" brought from Beijing culture will be combined with three live-action movies "Dunhuang Heroes", "Demining Force" and "Space Spring Festival" to form the "Chinese Junior Universe".
After the romantic comedy "A Little Heartbeat" and the documentary "We Are the First Secretary", "The Lion Boy" is the third film produced by Beijing, and the first shot fired by the "Young Universe". From the summer file to the new year file, it is undoubtedly burning, especially the last few tens of minutes of the lion dance competition colorful paragraphs are blood-boiling. It is also full of southern Cantonese style, small shops walking through the streets, kapok in the sky, tall banana trees, and paddy fields with fireflies flickering under the moonlit night. Specially joined the rock band Wutiao from Guangdong "Daoshan Liangzai" as an interlude, Jiulian Zhenren sang the ending song "Mo Bully Young Poor" to bring out a strong Cantonese flavor. The hair on the lion's head that has been drenched in rain is fine, and some scenes are like "real scene shooting" in a fake and real way, and the art and music can be remarkable.
The "afterglow" of Hong Kong films flashes in "The Lion Boy". Fans who are familiar with the "Huang Feihong" series and Stephen Chow's films, it is not difficult to see familiar people and bridge sections in it, the trio set up, the master took the trio to the game and other bridge sections remind people of "Shaolin Football", and the "salted fish strong" couple inevitably reminds people of "chartered public charter wife". For this kind of tribute, some fans may feel that "the director has eaten through the spirit of Hong Kong films", but it is inevitable that there is a suspicion of excessive routine and lazy creation.
In addition to the content itself, a "squinting storm" caused by character modeling is enveloping "The Lion Boy". Recently, from the "insulting China" controversy of "Shangqi" extending from Mandarin to the appearance of the actor's small eyes, to the well-known fashion photographer Chen Man, who fell into controversy such as "vilifying the image of the Chinese people" because of the orientalization of a group of photographs, he finally chose to apologize, and "squinting" became a high-incidence minefield in the public opinion environment. And "Lion Boy" unfortunately stepped on this minefield - several protagonists are small eyes, their appearance is not proud or even "ugly", in Weibo, Tieba, Douban and other platforms, there has been a wave of resistance to follow the trend, and affected its word-of-mouth fermentation speed, becoming an unexpected "variable".
This is an inspirational movie about "little people counterattacking", and it is also a film that promotes the traditional culture and cultural self-confidence of the Southern Lion. The judgment of beauty and ugliness is subjective and at the same time pluralistic. No matter what the final results are, just because the character modeling has not met the expectations of the appearance in their hearts, they have not seen the film and come to a conclusion, and even go online to the level of "insulting China", which is undoubtedly unfair to "Lion Boy", and it is also not a healthy public opinion environment.
After "Nezha", the national comic movie is still difficult
The release of "Lion Boy" has made the "National Comic Movie" attract attention again. The production cost of the network is 140 million to 200 million - this figure belongs to the first-line level in domestic animation films.
In recent years, low-cost production costs of low-child animation films have been piled up, and there have been no more mature adult-oriented animated films for a long time. Time back to 2015, the box office of more than 956 million summer dark horse "The Return of the Great Sage" for the first time let the animators see a glimmer of light, in 2019, the 5 billion + box office "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" for the national comic film to bring new hope, but then in the next two years, it is difficult to have a second "Nezha" appear, the rise of national comic films is still difficult.
In 2020, the box office of "Jiang Ziya" in the 18 national comic films was 1.602 billion, accounting for 95% of the total box office of the national comic films in the whole year, but the popularity, box office and word of mouth failed to take over the baton of "Nezha", and the number of records filed in the year was 102 at a new five-year low.
This year, the film market is cold as a whole due to the repeated epidemics, and the national comic films are shrinking as a whole, at present, there is no domestic animation film with a box office volume of 1 billion + appears, and the two adult animation films produced by Chasing Light Animation and Ali Pictures lead the way in animation, "New God List: Nezha Reborn" and "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery" have achieved box office results of 450 million and 580 million respectively. This year's summer program has a total of 13 domestic animation films, basically all of which are low and young, and the box office is almost all below 100 million.
"I wanted to finish the film in 24 months, and we did. Because I can judge that after two years, 'teenagers' and 'national tides' will be a content outlet, but I can't judge the content trends in five years. In the post-screening exchange of the premiere of "The Lion Boy", producer Zhang Miao said so.
Behind the remarks are some facts about chinese comic films: their average production cycle is very long. Animation itself is a technology-intensive industry, the production cycle of 3D animation films is 3 times longer than the average live-action film, due to the late start, the overall industrial level is limited, the entry threshold is low, the domestic animation film generally polishing cycle is as long as 5-10 years or even longer, many projects may have been in a gap with the audience's aesthetic taste after a few years, so it is difficult to achieve the desired results. "The Return of the Great Sage" took up to 8 years to polish, "Big Fish and Begonias" took a total of 12 years, and "Nezha's Demon Boy Descending" took five years.
From the early stage of script creation, character, scene and prop design, storyboarding, color setting, mid-term scene props computer modeling, character and prop binding, animation testing, character animation, character scene and prop materials, to the later material light rendering, special effects production, synthetic color correction, editing soundtrack, in addition to time-consuming, there is also burning money. Zhang Miao said that "Lion Boy" "takes 10 hours to render each frame, and the production team almost used up all the resources of the cloud rendering farm, and also went down countless times."
Another feature is "many production teams", most of the domestic animation studios originated from outsourcing, fighting each other alone, lack of support from industry giants such as Disney, coupled with a large amount of work, tight construction period, many and scattered teams. "Nezha's Devil Boy Descending" is a domestic animation film with the largest number of participants, with a total of "more than 1,600 people from more than 20 companies across the country participating in the production", and a large number of outsourcing companies participating in the production means repeated coordination and modification, which lengthens the production cycle from another level.
Most of the audience for chinese comic films is more limited than live-action movies, so there is an industry consensus that this is an industry that will be difficult to stick to if there is no love.
In addition, the national comic film also has the characteristics of a bunch of mythical IP. According to the statistics of "Three Cultural Entertainment", a total of 878 domestic animation films were recorded from 2015 to 2020, of which at least 119 told the stories of classic Chinese mythological figures, involving "24 Sun Wukong", "11 Nezha", "8 Erlang Gods", "6 Pig Eight Precepts", "5 Bai Suzhen"...
Considering the high cost of creating original IP, myths and legends belong to public copyright without authorization fees, starting from the mythological figures familiar to the audience, with their own publicity and audience base, this phenomenon can be understood, but for the big screen where the Westward Journey and fengshen IP are piled up, it may overdraft the IP value, and the audience will inevitably have a sense of aesthetic fatigue. If "Lion Boy" has achieved considerable results, it is undoubtedly an affirmative exploration in the field of adult to realistic animation.
Unlimited animation forms bring greater room for creativity, and the Japanese fire's "Luo XiaoHei War" and the allegorical dystopian "The Great Protector" can be called the best works of national comics in recent years, "different fireworks".
At present, the baton of the national comic film has been handed over to the hands of "Lion Boy". Can it become a "lion" in the market? With all the variables, the answer will soon be revealed before the Christmas file.