The domestic film market has once again ushered in a small peak after the Spring Festival holiday. According to Maoyan Professional Edition, the cumulative box office of Valentine's Day on February 14 exceeded 527 million yuan, of which three newly released love movies "Ten Years of Wen Ruyan", "I Want to Go to Your World love you" and "Don't Forget I Love You" brought a total of about 249 million yuan at the box office. Among them, the box office champion of the day was "Ten Years of Wen Ruyan" produced by Light Media, which received a total of 143 million yuan.
The good news at the box office also drove film and television stocks up on the day. The stock prices of the production companies involved in "Ten Years of One Product Warm As Words" were both red, up 2.3% and 2.21% respectively. Huanrui Century also issued a statement on February 15, and the operating income from "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ru Yan" was 4 million yuan. Stocks of other film and television companies that did not participate in Valentine's Day films, such as Huayi Brothers, Huace Film and Television and ST Beiwen, also rose in response.
With the entry of "ugly ten years of warm as words" on the evening of February 14 on Weibo, other movies have also been rumored to have poor word of mouth, and audiences are reluctant to buy tickets to win the show.
February 15 is still the "Chinese Valentine's Day" Lantern Festival, but the schedule of these three love movies has declined significantly, of which the schedule of "Don't Forget" is even lower than the animation film "Bear Haunting and Return to Earth", which has been released for 15 days. Douban Movie also took the lead in disclosing the rating of "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ru Yan" on February 15, only achieving 2.9 points, and before the deadline, it had fallen to 2.7 points. In terms of box office performance, the box office of "Ten Years of One Pint of Warm Words" plummeted from 143 million yuan to 13.0606 million. The single-day box office of "Love You in Your World" and "Don't Forget I Love You" were 7.563 million and 3.0557 million, respectively. The Lantern Festival, despite the weak performance of the three newly released films, finally achieved only 203 million yuan at the box office, a new low for the single-day box office since February.
Three love movies have begun to show weakness on the second day of release. Source: Maoyan Pro
Although Valentine's Day in 2022 achieved a box office performance of 527 million yuan in a single day, the three films with poor reputation directly affected the lack of box office momentum, so that this short-lived small peak was only maintained for one day.
In recent years, "Valentine's Day" as a new slot can not actually be used well, the main reason is that this day is too close to the Spring Festival stall, the duration is also very short. As a result, there are not many love movies that really choose to go online on Valentine's Day, and there are no really weighty films that can support this so-called schedule. In 2021, Valentine's Day coincides with the third day of the Lunar New Year, and the Spring Festival film is still in hot screening. The situation in 2020 is that theaters are closed due to the epidemic. Valentine's Day in 2019 coincided with blockbusters such as "The Wandering Earth" and "Crazy Alien" of that year, only 4 smaller love movies, including "A Kiss and a Promise", decided to fight hard, and the four movies only achieved 99.9261 million on the same day, failing to break 100 million. Time back to 2018, Valentine's Day happens to be the day before the Chinese New Year's Eve, and the market is waiting for the Spring Festival stalls.
The last Valentine's Day slot that still makes an impression was 2017. At that time, "Philharmonic City" received 14 Academy Award nominations, and has been the first to be released in North America in 2016, and the good reputation of overseas coupled with the hot physique of Oscar winners has made "Philharmonic City" attract much attention after it is finalized. In the end, "City of Philharmonic" beat three other newly released love movies and became the runner-up on Valentine's Day, earning a total of 71.3646 million yuan at the box office on the same day, second only to the Hollywood action film "Extreme Agent: The Ultimate Return" starring Van Diesel and Zhen Zidan.
The example of "City of Philharmonic Music" undoubtedly gives an encouragement to the love movie that is scheduled for Valentine's Day, although this schedule seems to be non-existent, but as long as there is space, the filmmakers are still willing to try. This year's three new films still eat the dividends of Valentine's Day.
According to the "2021 China Film Market Annual Report" jointly released by the Lighthouse Research Institute and the Lighthouse Professional Edition, Chinese audiences have a trend of festive movie viewing. Not only the traditional Spring Festival and National Day stalls, other short-term slots such as Qingming stalls, May Day stalls and even the newly added artificial slots 520 stalls have a good box office performance.
A total of 8 films were released in this year's Spring Festival file. From an average of about $986 million in a single-day box office in the first week of the show to a single-day box office in the week after the holiday (February 7 to February 13), which has slipped to an average of about $337 million, cinemas are in dire need of new films to attract audiences again.
At this time, the Valentine's Day slot of "returning" after many years has brought some hope to the market. Among the three newly released love movies, Guangguang's "Ten Years of Warm Words" is the most anticipated. The film is adapted from shuhai Cangsheng's novel of the same name. The original novel was created in 2009 and was one of the famous romance novels on the Internet at that time. After many years on the big screen, book fans have certain expectations for this adaptation. However, after the release of the film, it was quickly scolded for "rotten".
In recent years, for the first time, the light that has frequently exerted its strength in the field of youth love has encountered such a fierce audience anger at home, and the original schedule and theme advantage may become the word-of-mouth warning of this label.
Guangguang has always wanted to take the theme of youth as its main genre, and in view of the characteristics of this type of film "light in volume, short in cycle, and fast in recycling", it has made great efforts in the market to "take small and broad", and there are also very successful cases. For example, in 2021, Guangming launched "Your Wedding" on May 1, which became the box office champion at the time, and finally achieved 789 million yuan. On May 6, 2021, Guangguang announced that as of May 5, the company's operating income from Your Wedding ranged from approximately RMB220 million to RMB240 million.
At the end of July 2021, Guangguang said on the "Interactive Easy" platform of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange: "After the release of films with lower costs and a relatively high proportion of the company's investment, if the box office performance is better, it is expected to contribute more revenue to the company." For example, "Your Wedding", the cost is not high, the company accounts for a high proportion, and has achieved nearly 800 million yuan of box office results, bringing a good return on investment to the company. In the future, the company will have more reserves of such films. ”
Image source: Stills from "Your Wedding"
On December 31, 2021, the light took advantage of the victory to chase and launched "Love in Year units" in the New Year file. The film was originally called "The One Year Itch", and after changing its name, it was closer to the theme of the New Year's Eve, and achieved the third place in the daily box office on the day of release. The film is still in theaters and has grossed 231 million yuan at the cumulative box office.
The choice of this small and broad route is also limited by the impact of performance. Ray's net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies has declined for three consecutive years. On January 28, 2022, Guangguang announced that it expects net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies to be 170 million yuan to 220 million yuan in 2021, down 24.41% to 41.59% from the same period last year. In 2019 and 2020, it has declined by 31.0% and 69.28%, respectively. Ray can make a profit by investing in these lower-cost youth love movies, which will help the company gradually recover in the film market after the epidemic and avoid the dilemma of facing a four-year decline in net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies next year.
However, coming to this year's "Ten Years of A Pin Of Warm Words", although there is a long-lost Valentine's Day schedule and the blessing of previous box office success cases, Guangguang also carefully planned the "Wedding Invitation" event, inviting the audience to the cinema at 13:14 on February 14 (meaning a lifetime) to witness the "wedding". However, the final result is to anger the audience, directly because of the ugly was scolded on the hot search.
And the reason for being scolded is nothing more than the magic change of the original work, the routine is outdated, the dog blood and so on. Interface Entertainment interviewed a small J who has already watched the movie. Xiao J said that she has always been more tolerant of domestic love movies, but she believes that at present, these movies still "can't tell stories without life and death, and can't create contradictions without big ups and downs."
At present, other Spring Festival movies with better audiences are still screened, and the animated film "Our Winter Olympics", which has the hottest ice pier IP on the whole network, and Disney's "Massacre on the Nile" of Disney 20th Century Pictures will also land in mainland theaters on February 19. The substandard quality of "Ten Years of Warm Words" is expected to be difficult to surpass the box office results achieved by "Your Wedding" and "Year-based Love".
This time the light of Waterloo is not untraceable. "Your Wedding" and "Love in Year Units" have previously received good box office, but they have not won word of mouth, and the ratings of these two films on Douban are 4.7 points and 5.6 points, respectively, both below the passing line. From the creative level of this type of film, the light is obviously insufficient in the face of the market, and it is inevitable that it will not be able to stand for a long time by relying on distribution strategies and marketing skills. Truly respecting the audience and caring for reality is the foundation of a good movie.
Judging from the feedback from the audience, the plot that fails to get close to reality and sprinkles dog blood has almost become synonymous with light love movies. 3 months later, Guangguang will launch "I Really Hate Long-Distance Love" in the 520 slot, written by Fu Dandy, screenwriter of "Year-for-Year Love", and starring Ren Min, the heroine of "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ru Yan". If the light delivers a love movie of failing quality, will the audience still buy it just because of the harmonic stem of 520?