This article is from the WeChat public account: Poison Eyes (ID: DomoreDumou), author: Liu Hanqing, editor: Zhang Ying, head picture from: "This killer is not too calm" stills
On the night of the black wind and high killing, a killer was unharmed in the fire of guns and bullets, turned his head to the empty restaurant and said: "This machine is not good, let's do another one." "This Killer Is Not Calm" just ended, and the theater immediately sounded a burst of laughter from audiences of all ages.
As the only comedy film in this year's Spring Festival file, "This Killer Is Not Calm" (hereinafter referred to as "Killer") accounted for only 14.7% of the first year of the first year, ranking fourth only in the new films in the Spring Festival file, coupled with less than 200 million pre-sales results, few people thought that it could stand out in the fierce Spring Festival file.
But the story of the counterattack still happened, the proportion of "Killer" in the second day of the Chinese New Year has risen by three percentage points, and the single-day box office of 214 million has increased slightly compared with the first day of release. Up to now, the cumulative box office of "Killer" has exceeded 600 million, and it has opened a gap of nearly 300 million yuan with "Four Seas" and "Miracle" ranked third or fourth, and it seems to be sitting firmly in the second place of the box office in this year's Spring Festival file.
Source: Lighthouse Pro
From the dismal pre-sale estimate to the double reverse rise of the film + box office, the analysis of the reasons behind the dark horse performance of "Killer" naturally cannot leave the genre setting of its comedy. For the current Chinese film market, comedy is still the strongest demand for the Spring Festival, and in such a family reunion festival, laughter can still drive box office miracles.
First, the New Year, of course, to see comedy
In the film market at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, comedy has always been an unavoidable topic.
In 1997, one of the sentences of "Party A and Party B" "Wish the people of the whole country a good year of the tiger", officially linked watching movies to the traditional festival of the Spring Festival, and from then until 2003, in the period of 6 years, Feng's comedy successively brought "Not Seen and Not Scattered", "Endless", "Big Names" and "Mobile Phone" five New Year films for the people of the whole country, relying on feng's golden sentences such as "landlords have no surplus grain" and "do not seek the best, but seek the most expensive", the habit of watching movies during the Spring Festival began to lay a foundation in the hearts of the people of the whole country.
The opening subtitle of "Party A and Party B"
Since then, the market has gradually had a vague concept of the New Year file. However, at that time, the New Year file, whether it was the film type or content setting, did not deliberately design for the needs of the Spring Festival file, like in 2004 to 2008, the New Year file appeared in the "No Thief in the World", "Kung Fu", "Yangtze River No. 7", "Cast Name" and other large films, are so, the film content and the temperament of the schedule is not closely fitted, everyone only knows that this schedule has space opportunities, but do not know how to fully explore and use.
It was also during that time that Chinese comedy films have developed vigorously, and what has taken over the baton of Feng's comedy is Ning Hao's "Crazy" series, in the case of "Crazy Stone" word-of-mouth box office explosion, comedy began to officially become the most important part of the domestic film business system; since 2010, the "囧 series" film with "People on the Road" as the starting point has allowed Xu Zheng to complete the actor's progress to comedy director in one fell swoop; since then, including Chen Sicheng's "Tang Detective" series, The emergence of a series of label comedies such as Happy Twist has laid a solid foundation for the development of domestic comedy films.
The development of domestic comedy has laid the foundation for its big cake in the big stall period, and at the same time, it has also given the Spring Festival stalls more imagination space.
In 2013, Stephen Chow's return work "Journey to the West • Descending Demons" officially played the slogan of the Spring Festival New Year blockbuster, and the Spring Festival file and the booming comedy film had a clear intersection, and it was from this that the Spring Festival file was truly transformed into an industry-recognized super file. While the film swept the box office of 1.247 billion, it not only introduced Chinese films into the era of one billion box office in one fell swoop, but also marked that the Spring Festival file officially became a must for all film and television companies.
In the nearly ten years since then, capital has poured in madly, and the total box office volume of the Spring Festival file and the box office performance of single films have been constantly refreshed and rewritten, but the figure of comedy has never been absent from this special period, and the king of comedy films in the Spring Festival file has alternately staged every year. After "Journey to the West and Descending Demons", Zhou Xingchi launched "Mermaid" in line with the trend, and the box office performance of 3.39 billion yuan was unlimited for a while, but since then, "Journey to the West • Fu Demon Chapter" and "The King of New Comedy" have no follow-up power, and Zhou Xingchi has been away from the Spring Festival file for three years.
The reason is that whether it is the earliest Fung comedy or Chow Sing Chi's return series of films, or at that time relying on the "Macau Storm" series of frequent gold-sucking Wang Jing's works, although at that time it seemed that the box office performance was already good, but relying on the "sketch-style" output of golden sentences and nonsense plot reversal accumulation of comedy mode, has begun to be gradually replaced by the high-frequency daily output of short video platforms, the audience does not need to enter the theater to get such an entertainment experience on various screens. On the contrary, there is a greater need to watch more solid comedy movies in theaters.
"Macau Storm" series
Since the beginning of 2018, the Spring Festival comedy has officially leapt into a more vigorous era, Chen Sicheng and his "Tang Detective" series have earned nearly 8 billion box office in 2018 and 2021, and last year's explosive "Hello, Li Huanying" also single-handedly harvested a huge cake of 5.4 billion+ by itself.
Among them, it is worth mentioning that although in the 2018-2019 two years before the epidemic, the Spring Festival box office champions were the war and science fiction films "Red Sea Action" and "The Wandering Earth", the box office runner-up in 2018 "Tang Detective 2" and the champion had a box office gap of less than 300 million, and behind the "Wandering Earth" in 2019, it was comedies such as "Crazy Alien" and "Flying Life" that supported the other half of the market.
"Destroy it, hurry up"
Such a variety of successful cases at the commercial level represent the comprehensive upgrading and progress of comedy films, since then, whether it is the comedy of "Hello, Li Huanying" + the laughter of family affection and tears double harvest, or the comedy + suspense detective big production of the "Tang Detective" series, when comedy carries a more solid emotional foundation, even in the Spring Festival file where various types of blockbusters emerge today, comedy still has its solid and solid basic bottom.
Second, why comedy
The logic of watching comedies in the New Year is very simple, the most obvious thing is that the Spring Festival is the most important, the most representative and joyful festival in the eyes of the Chinese, and the comedy genre is highly compatible with this traditional festival atmosphere.
From "Journey to the West" to "Mermaid" to "Hello, Li Huanying", the box office record of the Spring Festival file has been rewritten by comedies again and again, and the solid box office figures frequently prove to the market that the audience likes to watch movies that can make them laugh during the Spring Festival.
So it's not hard to understand that the story of the counterattack will happen to comedies. Taking last year's "Hello, Li Huanying" as an example, the proportion of the first day of release was only 20%, which was crushed by "Tang Detective 3", but with the divergence of word of mouth, for five consecutive days, the proportion of the film rose to 40%, and the average daily box office also soared from 300 million on the first day to 600 million peaks during this period.
This year is no exception, "This Killer Is Not Calm" from not optimistic to the success of the counterattack, but also inseparable from the extreme lack of comedy movies and elements in the same period. It is true that in the Spring Festival file, the audience still needs to explode the visual effects spectacle of the blockbuster and the story of warm emotion, but a hilarious film that can make people completely relax in humor and do not have to think too much about the meaning behind it, who is willing to refuse?
Therefore, comedies that occupy favorable times and places and advantages can often become the dark horses of the Spring Festival file.
In the world, China's Spring Festival stalls are a unique slot, it is different from any of the holiday free time or single film word-of-mouth lineup and other factors to support the box office performance, the Spring Festival movie consumption habits decisively rely on the traditional customs that people need to get together with friends and relatives during the Spring Festival.
And when the young user group who are happy to walk into the cinema on weekdays begins to have the ability to spend money to dominate the cultural and entertainment activities during the Spring Festival, it is natural to watch a movie at the time of gathering has become the mainstream choice. Under such preconditions, most of the Spring Festival movie-watching crowds that are hundreds of millions of times a year do not have stable viewing habits on weekdays, and ticket buyers often need to choose the most unlikely "wrong" movie from many films.
So we will see that in the 2021 film market data insight report released by the Maoyan Research Institute, 23% of the audiences who only entered the theater to watch a movie throughout the year chose to complete this movie in the Spring Festival file, which confirmed from the side that the Spring Festival file has the largest incremental audience group in the whole year, and it is these incremental groups that make the box office capacity of the Spring Festival file rise again and again.
Source: Maoyan Research Institute 2021 Film Market Data Insight Report
When the ticket purchase behavior of the incremental audience of the Spring Festival file is driven by "whether this film is suitable for viewing with relatives and friends", rather than out of personal preference for the content of the film in the traditional sense, the unique attributes of comedy films are just in line with this special viewing needs.
The highest mission that a comedy needs to complete is to create humor and laughter, and for such a comprehensive user group composed of relatives, classmates, friends, lovers, etc., it is precisely the "no mistake" safety option that can walk out of the theater with a smile after watching the movie.
In addition, the public opinion fermentation and word-of-mouth transmission mode during the Spring Festival file are different from any other holiday period. During the Spring Festival, the disposable time of the audience group is longer, the audience spontaneously communicates the quality of the film is strong, and the path of radiation with friends, relatives, colleagues and other groups of people around them is also shorter, these factors make the public opinion fermentation of the Spring Festival file has a "fission" level of speed, from the beginning of the opening of the theater on the first day of the New Year, the film's word-of-mouth performance will most rapidly affect the box office conversion.
Not only that, in the same word-of-mouth fermentation path, comedies are faster than the positive word-of-mouth of other types of films, after all, to describe where a science fiction blockbuster is exploding, where hardcore, or to popularize the meaning and touching behind a realistic film, than a sentence "particularly funny" The cost of dissemination is much higher, so for comedy films, as long as it is funny enough, you can safely recommend it to the people around you.
At the same time, the audience's discussion of the content of the film during the Spring Festival is actually not deep enough, in most cases, it is only necessary to stay good or not good, and a simple evaluation of the people around them is enough to support a ticket purchase behavior. The mentality of "watching one anyway, just don't step on the thunder" makes the audience's choice of film shorter, flat and faster.
At this point, the comedy film once again effectively caters to the needs of the audience, taking "This Killer Is Not Calm" as an example, a comedy story with an extremely overhead realistic background, which minimizes the audience's understanding of the film's inner expression, and people can pay more attention to the humorous bridge and contradictory design of the story itself, which efficiently meets the audience's needs for easy viewing.
We may be able to understand in this way, in essence, the Spring Festival film is provided to most of the audience is an experience, a similar to the experience of Chinese New Year's Eve meals, watching the Spring Festival Gala, and eating dumplings at the New Year, we always describe it as a family celebration when we talk about the Spring Festival, if "family" is a physical reunion, then "huan" needs to be achieved through the happy emotions that people in these experiences experience together.
Behind the repeated counterattacks and record-breaking of comedy films, to a certain extent, it is not to verify the market logic of a certain film, but to verify that in such a special period, the audience is paying for some beautiful moments, and in the rare reunion moments throughout the year, people are always reluctant to be absent from the laughter of the people around them.
What comedies need to carry most may not necessarily be how strong the emotional resonance and how grand the narrative is, for most of the Spring Festival special audiences, a movie can serve humor in a down-to-earth manner, and it is enough to sit with family and friends who have been busy for a year to spend two hours of calm and entertainment.
After all, the audience who walked into the theater in the Spring Festival file really wanted to figure out what the movie point, wasn't it Tu Yile?
This article is from the WeChat public account: Poison Eye (ID: DomoreDumou), author: Liu Hanqing
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