The author | Ho West Window
Looking at the current situation of the film market in December, most of the films released are "Squibs". At first glance, the New Year file where movies are piled up and companies are fighting, in fact, it is facing the dilemma of industry film shortage and lack of explosive models.
Yesterday (December 20th), the suspenseful romance film "Flames on the Plains", which was originally scheduled to be released on Christmas Eve, announced the withdrawal, the release time is to be determined, and the official did not explain the reasons for the withdrawal, which is undoubtedly worse for the New Year file that originally lacked blockbusters. The happy twist comedy "Li Mao Dressed as a Prince", which was originally expected to be released across the Chinese New Year's Eve, was also temporarily rescheduled, and the film market was even more bleak.
As of writing time, the cumulative box office in December was 1.506 billion yuan. Among the new films, the suspense film "Manslaughter 2", which was released last Friday (December 17), completed the lead, followed by the IP movie "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" released at the beginning of the month, and the animated film "Lion Boy" that caused some discussion. It is worth noting that the small-budget dark horse film "Fame and Fame", released in November, still occupies a considerable share of the film market in December, and the cumulative box office of the film has exceeded 800 million yuan.
From the perspective of today's box office, even the vanguard of the box office market, "Manslaughter 2", occupies 47.4% of the market, the single-day box office has not yet exceeded 20 million, and the current cumulative box office has just exceeded 400 million yuan. In this case, there is still a considerable fault in the box office market, and the single-day box office of "Crossing the Yalu River" and "Lion Boy" released at the same time is only in the million level, and the coldness of the box office market is not difficult to understand.
The industry seems to be focusing its hopes on Christmas stalls and New Year's Day. The romance film "Love Myth" starring Xu Zheng is scheduled for Christmas Eve, and the cross-Chinese New Year's Eve focuses on the sequel Tonkin 5: Final Chapter (hereinafter referred to as "Anti-Corruption Storm 5"), and the romance film "Embracing You Through Winter" (hereinafter referred to as "Embracing You") starring Huang Bo and Jia Ling.
It's just that even if there are head actors and larger films entering, no one still dares to guarantee that the New Year file can light a fire at the last moment.
"Manslaughter 2" and "Lion Boy" have not broken through, and the New Year file is missing
Maoyan data shows that there were 57 scheduled movies in December, but the industry knows that only a few of these 57 films really have the potential to convert at the box office, most of which are indiscriminate day-trip films. And only these few seed players who can monetize, most of them are also small and medium-cost movies, with the randomness of "giving a fight, cycling into a motorcycle".
And now, the movie that realizes the "bicycle into motorcycle" has not appeared. Roughly divided, there have been two waves of new films in the film market in December, the first wave is represented by the IP adaptation film "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" released at the beginning of the month, which was withdrawn from the May 1st file and released after half a year, and the number of cat's eye wanted to see reached more than 230,000 before the release, becoming one of the most concerned movies in the New Year file.
The industry also once expected "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" to bring up a wave of box office boom, the film was released on the first day of the film to reach 33.7%, pressure on the old film "Fame and Fame", but the opposite happened, the film Douban scored 6.3 points, the reputation was not satisfactory, the first weekend box office of about 160 million yuan, although maintaining a box office leading position, but failed to break through the cold atmosphere of the market, the cumulative box office of 377 million yuan in half a month of release.
The second wave of new films is "Manslaughter 2" and "Lion Boy", which were released in the middle of the month. In this wave of new films, you can clearly feel the game of the cinema. The animated movie "Lion Boy" opened for screening in the morning and successfully completed the word-of-mouth fermentation, douban score reached 8.3 points, and "Manslaughter 2" was highly anticipated because of the double harvest of the first word-of-mouth box office.
On December 17, the two movies began to draw, "Manslaughter 2" and "Lion Boy" were equally scheduled, and the theater line basically achieved a bowl of water level. But the audience market is more willing to put its hopes on a sequel movie with market recognition than to believe in a well-known but unknown animated movie. On the first day of release, the single-day box office of "Manslaughter 2" approached the billion level, while the box office of "Lion Boy" on the first day was only 7 million.
In this case, if "Manslaughter 2" maintains the box office trend on the first day, there will also be a box office dark horse in the market in December. However, after the first day of "Manslaughter 2", the word of mouth was not as good as expected, douban scored 6.2 points (now falling to 5.9 points), the content has almost no connection with "Manslaughter 1", and fans unceremoniously commented, "Rough, deliberate, sensational, and sad." ”
It is not difficult to find that from "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" to "Manslaughter 2" and "Lion Boy", there are few films in the market that have double harvests of word-of-mouth and box office.
On the one hand, the objective reasons of the market, the epidemic is repeated, invisibly affecting the audience market, although the cinema has almost returned to the right track, but the audience has made subtle changes to the cinema viewing, to advance the cinema viewing is a daily pastime, and now, offline viewing needs to bear relative risks, and psychological construction. In this case, the audience's requirements for the film are more demanding, and the film is also required to have greater coverage and attraction in the subject matter. This may explain the coldness of "Lion Boy", and the animation theme is not popular.
On the other hand, the movie itself, the audience returns to rationality, the requirements for the content of the film are improved, the market has long passed the era of relying on IP for the box office, "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau" has been criticized for not making sense of logic, "Manslaughter 2" is considered to be a forced sequel, bad film to make money, there is no word of mouth, and the film has limited vitality in the market.
Love movies are in charge, can there be a winner on New Year's Day?
Now that the Lunar New Year file is nearing its end, movies such as "Manslaughter 2" are struggling to support the market, while the industry will focus on the last batch of movies such as "Love Myth", "Anti-Corruption Storm 5", "Embrace You", "Love in Year-based Units" (hereinafter referred to as "Year-based Units"), "Loyal Dogs Hachigong" and so on.
Among them, it can be clearly felt that the mainstream of the market, romance films occupy an absolute number of advantages. Xu Zheng starred and supervised the production of "Love Myth", focusing on the love story of middle-aged people; Huang Bo and Jia Ling's "Embrace You" is based on the epidemic as the background to portray the love group portrait of ordinary citizens; "Year as a Unit" is Mao Xiaotong and Yang Jiu's cooperation again after "Thirty Only", although the film volume is not large, but the two have a group of CP fans as the foundation.
The rest of "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" and "Loyal Dog Hachiko" are genre films with a content basis. The "Anti-Corruption Storm" series is already one of the Hong Kong film series with good domestic box office conversion ability, although there is no inevitable content connection between the movies, but the IP of "Anti-Corruption Storm" has been launched; and "Loyal Dog Hachigong" is a classic remake, starring Feng Xiaogang and Chen Chong, it can be expected to pry the original fans and complete the word-of-mouth fermentation.
Compared with the first two waves of new films in the Lunar New Year file, the batch of movies from Christmas to The New Year is obviously larger, with more than 790,000 people wanting to watch "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" and "Embrace You" reaching 520,000, surpassing "Manslaughter 2" and "Antiques Bureau Central Bureau".
The number of film companies involved behind the head movie is often dozens. For example, there are 20 film companies behind "Anti-Corruption Storm 5" and 35 behind "Embrace You".
It will also be the last scuffle for studios in 2021. According to incomplete statistics, more than 150 film companies participated behind the 57 movies in December, including China Film, Wanda Film and Television, Guangguang Media, Huace Pictures, Hualu Baina, Ali Pictures, Zhenledao, iQiyi, Beijing Wonderful and other head or upstart companies.
Who will be the final winner of the Lunar New Year file needs to be seen. But the result may be unexpected, taking "Lion Boy" as an example, the listed company involved in the film's producer is Hualu Baina, before the official release of the film, affected by the film's word-of-mouth explosion, Hualu Baina's stock price rose all the way, increasing by 45.58% in one week.
At the same time, the other major producer of "Lion Boy" is Beijing Wonderful, and Hualu Baina holds 51% of the equity of Beijing Wonderful. According to media reports, the overall cost of "Lion Boy" is less than 100 million yuan, and 400 million yuan - 500 million yuan can recover the investment cost.
Although the box office trend of "Lion Boy" is not as good as expected, the dividend effect generated by the film has already emerged.
In fact, this is a domestic film as the only pillar of the New Year file, last year the import market contributed to the "Wonder Woman 1984", "Journey of the Mind" and other movies, although the box office fermentation ability is still limited, but to the audience market to provide more choices, but this year "Spider-Man 3: Heroes No Return" and other Hollywood blockbusters have not been able to finalize, overseas markets because of IP set off a wave of climax, and the domestic did not have access to this wave of heat.
The film industry needs to be mentally prepared, the state of the New Year file may be the norm in the box office market in the future, fortunately, the Spring Festival file in 2022 is not too far away.