Author | Vernica
Editor| Li Chunhui
The film market, which has been bleak for more than three months during the epidemic, has finally ushered in the first dark horse that is expected to have a box office of 1 billion + - "Life Events".
The imported blockbuster "Jurassic World 3", which was originally placed on the hope of saving the market, did not sell as expected, and the domestic film "Life Event" that exceeded expectations became the new "hope of the whole village" in the industry. So before the release, major data institutions touted its 1 billion+ in a high profile. As a result, after the release, the box office of "Life Events" in the first two days was not as expected, and the predicted box office was "cut off" back to 600 million+.
Peak loop turn. By the second week, "Life Events" was again predicted to be 1 billion+ because of the weekday box office "not falling but rising". Now the box office has exceeded 800 million in the 12 days of release, and it is predicted that the box office will once again be raised to 1.6 billion+.
Good things come in pairs, "Life Events" brought heat to the market, and incidentally raised the box office expectations of "Jurassic World 3", and also properly entered the 1 billion + club. It seems that the audience really did not abandon the cinema, but the data agency is becoming more and more ignorant of the market.
Not only about the box office prediction of "Life Events" going through a "roller coaster", the post-epidemic data agencies are becoming more and more unreliable no matter which movie they predict, as if opening a blind box. In the past, the market law summarized by data agencies through box office data has completely failed after experiencing various variables of the epidemic.
But what is amazing is that lianrui, the main controller behind "Life Events", seems to be more and more quasi-market law after the epidemic.
From "My Sister" to "Life Events", it seems that there is a common set of content formulas. Lianrui has successfully made a bloody road in the dismal film market with small-budget films - the box office has also doubled, from "My Sister" with a box office of 800 million to "Life Events" may exceed 1.6 billion box office.
To be fair, Hard Candy Jun himself does not like to watch crying films, and he does not like to grasp the film production model that is copied by the law and fiercely. But the release of the post-epidemic era to turn the master, is indeed a wonderful drama not to be missed.
"Family Love Film" Concocted
Hard Candy Jun discussed the popular "crying film" on the market last year. Even brainwashed creators in the industry, no matter what the subject matter, must have sensational crying drama and family affection and love elements. Because this is the commonality they have summed up from the New Year's Day champion "Send You a Little Red Flower", the Spring Festival champion "Hello, Li Huanying" and the dark horse "My Sister" and "Your Wedding".
But this year, the "crying film" played the most slippery is lianrui. "My Sister" and "Life Events" were originally two completely different theme stories, but when they reached Lian Rui's hands, they presented the same content formula.
"My Sister" tells the story of whether the sister Enron should raise a "strange" brother after the unexpected death of her parents - when the second child belonged to the supernatural birth, Enron had to pretend to be disabled for the birth of her brother, and the parents always preferred sons to daughters; "Life Events" tells the story of Mo Sanjie, whose ancestors were engaged in funeral workers, who have always been despised by her father to inherit the family business, because the accidental intrusion of "orphan" Xiaowen changed his life.
The former focuses on the original family, the latter focuses on the funeral industry, but in the end, the story is presented like the same pattern: the story of an adult and a cute baby, a "family" relationship from strange to familiar, from unmistakable to intimate changes. As long as the details of "family affection" are vividly displayed, even the hard-hearted audience will be moved.
This can be described as the most popular gameplay of "crying film". There are female audiences around Hard Candy Jun who summarize this kind of film as a "cheating baby" type film, even if it is a successful big movie version of "Where Daddy Goes".
This parent-child "with baby" model has also been played very well by Disney. After Disney focused on streaming dramas, the various spin-offs of the "Star Wars" series were developed, and almost all of them used the "with baby" mode. For example, "The Mandalorian", "Obi-Wan", "Star Wars: Alien Squad" and Jude Law's upcoming "Star Wars: Skeletons".
In fact, the Spring Festival file's "Miracle Stupid Child" also has a "baby" model - Yi Yanqianxi and the sister and brother of Meng Wa Chen Halin get along, which is also a major type of content feature of the film. However, "Life Events" does not have the shell of the main theme, and the reputation has been elevated to become a "superior student" with no film to watch in the market, and the final box office is estimated to be 1.6 billion+, which may even surpass the Spring Festival runner-up "Miracle Stupid Child".
Some people in the industry believe that any subject matter in the hands of Lianrui can be applied to this model. The most important thing is to hire a transformed traffic actor, which can increase the topicality of the film. For actors, they can also apply for a Golden Rooster Award like Zhang Zifeng, after all, the only one in the circle who can prove his acting skills is the Golden Rooster.
Lianrui's unaired "Mom! "Is also a family affection + crying film, about the white-haired old man taking care of the elderly Asheimer's daughter. But compared with "My Sister" and "Life Events", there are fewer traffic stars and cute babies. At that time, it will be more able to test how much traffic and cute babies can add to the box office in this type of mode.
Issuing the most understanding of the big market?
Insiders who have run through film and television venture capital understand that many newcomer directors' projects are obsessed with self-expression, resulting in too heavy literary and artistic attributes. It's hard to find a new director of a commercial genre from venture capital.
"My Sister" director Yin Ruoxin's debut film "Goodbye, Teenager" has been shortlisted for Shanghai International Film Festival Venture Capital and First Venture Capital. As the first producer, Dadi Film found a Taiwanese film team for "Goodbye, Teenager" to do quality control, and after Jiao Xiongping's supervision and Liao Qingsong's editing, the whole film is full of literary and artistic temperament. However, although he starred in Zhang Zifeng, he only received 20 million box office in the end. And Yin Ruoxin's "My Sister" cooperated with Lianrui, no one will say that this is a literary film.
"Life Events" has also undergone such commercial transformations. When it was first shortlisted for venture capital at the Pingyao International Film Festival in 2019, "Life Events" was also named the literary and artistic "Heaven", focusing on the group portrait story of small people who were released from prison and re-employed, full of funeral culture in North China, mixed with Yan Zhao's chivalrous drama style.
As a result, three years later, it appeared in front of the public with a more commercial appearance, and the story was simply focused on the "father-daughter" relationship line between Mo Sanmei and Xiaowen.
And "Life Events", like "My Sister", has become a southwest dialect movie (Hebei people say that they are very hurt, and our North China culture is so thin and unpopular). One is Wuhan dialect and the other is Chengdu dialect. "Life Events" is also mixed with Chengdu dialect, "Meng wa" Xiaowen speaks Chengdu dialect, and Zhu Yilong's Wuhan dialect achieves barrier-free communication.
Between the new director and the dark horse commercial works, there seems to be a lack of a bridge to understand the sinking market. From Guangguang and Bona to Lianrui, there are many companies that have transferred film distribution to upstream content production, and they seem to have formed a clear advantage.
In 2012, "People in the Journey of Tai 囧" unexpectedly created a domestic film box office record, and the bosses at that time were still very happy to share successful experiences, especially in the early years of Hong Kong films repeatedly frustrated, and finally with "Tai 囧" to raise their eyebrows. Wang Changtian owes his discernment to a large extent to the first-hand market observation brought by the local network distribution personnel who cover theaters across the country. Distribution practitioners understand the general audience better, especially the relatively silent sinking market. Of course, the word was not used at the time.
At that time, Xu Zheng took the "Tai 囧" project around looking for capital and ran into a wall, but Wang Changtian voted without saying a word. In the end, the cost of 30 million yuan of "Tai 囧" created the first 1 billion + box office of Chinese films. Xu Zheng faced with the bad review of criticizing the film as "not funny", he once said, "There is nothing wrong with such a person, he is just different from others, the laughter point is higher, and I am the laughter point that meets most people's points." ”
Chinese movies need people who understand most people's laughter, tears, and interests. On Douban, where there are mostly young people in literature and art, some people complain that "Life Events" is not as good as the Japanese film "Entering the Mortician" for funerals. However, these two films are the difference between commercial and literary. If "Life Events" is really made into a Chinese version of "Entering the Mortician", there is probably no hope of selling to 1.6 billion+.
Distribution is the boss of the post-pandemic era
Film distribution has been asking theaters for many years in the form of "selling" films. Over time, you can grasp the first-hand audience preferences through the audience data feedback on the theater side. In fact, it is not that there is any mysterious advantage in the release of the creation, but more and more of them know how to pay attention to the preferences of the sinking audience and successfully run commercial films.
And pure content production companies do have the disadvantage of making things behind closed doors. To say that the theater side is actually the person who grasps the audience's first-hand information, but the hard candy jun can't see the logical basis for Wanda and Dadi Film to do content at the upstream end. It may be because the theater side has been party A for a long time, and the distribution is party B, in order to make its own films "sent out", Party B's positive initiative is stronger. And many times, the big cinema line participates in the upstream, just playing a pure role of capital.
Especially in the days after the epidemic, the discourse power between distribution and theaters has changed, and large distributors have gradually grasped the initiative. They have aggressively introduced their proven business type model to the market, and the youth romance of the light and the pan-family "crying film" of Lianrui are popular.
However, in the new era when distribution holds the right to speak, the contradiction between it and the theater side is becoming more and more prominent. Lianrui first became famous in 2016 when it was exposed to the release of "Mermaid" by five companies such as Hehe Pictures. Since then, Lianrui has "bound" Zhou Xingchi and cooperated with Xingye's subsequent works.
However, Lianrui, which started its distribution, seems to have been unwilling to face the theater with a "Party B" attitude. When the release of Xingye's "The King of New Comedy", Lianrui made the first major event in the circle to stop the key - because the theater did not agree with it on the schedule, it applied to China Film to stop the issuance of keys for 76 studios. Lianrui became the first distributor to dare to compete with the theater, and since then, the single individual theater has continued to expose the news, and Lianrui often has the threat of "stopping the key without giving many rows of films".
After the epidemic, the big distribution grasped the initiative, and the theater side complained about Lianrui even more. This release of "Life Events" was exposed by the theater to the high threshold for screening. In addition to the need for a box office of more than 2 million in 2021 and a box office of 15,000 in the Dragon Boat Festival, it is also necessary for the studio with a "Four Seas" schedule of more than 15% - "Four Seas" is a film released by Lianrui Spring Festival. Some theater managers joked that Lianrui was like a theater that was "disobedient" in the Spring Festival stalls after the autumn.
In the past, it was the single theater that complained, and now even the large theater line headed by Jin Yi has stood up to boycott Lianrui. Jinyi Cinema Line would rather do e-commerce crazy in its own community group, and also grit its teeth and not give any scheduled film in the first two days of the release of "Life Events". This may also be one reason why the box office of "Life Events" did not perform as expected in the first two days, leading data agencies to lower their box office forecasts.
Although before the epidemic, there was also a lot of industry chaos on the theater side. For example, every time there is a big slot, the distribution must give the theater a sky-high "red envelope fee" to schedule the film. At that time, we also remembered the news of those kneeling and begging for films and tearing up the films by hand. After many years of suffering from the release of the theater, now we must also give the theater a little color to see.
But after all, this change of discourse power is brought about by the epidemic. Obviously, it is a crisis moment when common suffering needs to move forward hand in hand, and distribution and theaters still have to fight and kill each other, which is undoubtedly digging their own graves and sinking together.
Fortunately, the pile of broken things behind "Life Events" did not affect the box office, and it also fully demonstrated the movie audience's desire for "good content". The audience has not abandoned the cinema, and the cinema and the distribution and production parties should not fight in the nest. After all, it is more important to open the door to do business with Harmony and live together.