Have Huace and Douyin supported themselves in the film market?

Image source @ Visual China

Mirror Entertainment, |author 丨Liang Jialie

"The Way Home" was released for 25 days, and the box office has exceeded 1.4 billion, and Huace has refreshed the box office results of his last main investment and control work "Assassination of a Novelist".

Since the beginning of this year, cross-border players who have played the film market have not only Huace, behind the popular summer film "Life Events", there are Weibo and Douyin, although the two are not the main investment and control, but the film selection vision can be called accurate.

Among the drama companies, long and short video platforms, and social platforms behind films such as "Ten Thousand Miles Home", "Life Events", and "New God List: Yang Jian", there are cross-border players such as Huace and Xinli who entered the film market earlier, as well as latecomers such as Douyin, Weibo, and B station, which have different accumulations in the film field and different ways of footholding, but the same thing is that most of them have now embarked on the road of progress.

Cross-border journey

Among the cross-border players, the number and quality of film works participated by Huace ranked relatively high.

In terms of quantity, Huace Films, the main company of Huace in film investment, has participated in 71 works so far, and "The Legend of Wukong", "King Kong River" and "Me and My Motherland" are all co-produced by Huace. In terms of the main control work, after creating "Assassination of a Novelist", it brought "Ten Thousand Miles Home" after a year, and both films entered the 1 billion club.

Like Huace, Sunray Media has been in the film market for many years before it was acquired by Tencent, and has participated in many films such as "Pancake Man", "Love Saint", "The Legend of the Demon Cat", "Iron Fist of Shame", etc., and has ranked among the ranks of many films. After being acquired by Tencent, Sunray's film investment continued, and in the past two years, it has bet on the blockbuster films "Hello, Li Huanying" and "This Killer Is Not Very Calm" during the Spring Festival.

Huanrui Century is also a cross-border drama company with decent activity, as of now, Huanrui Century United Co., Ltd. will participate in the total box office of the film in 2022, ranking 19th among all film and television companies, with a box office of 5.212 billion, but this is mainly driven by the Spring Festival co-production of "Changjin Lake Water Gate Bridge", Huanrui's "Ten Years of a Pint Wen Ruyan" is not satisfactory, with a box office of only 167 million.

In addition to Huace and Xinli, two head drama companies with relatively strong foundations, other cross-border drama companies do not have such a prosperous trend. Beijing Tangde International Film Culture, a film investment and production company established by Tangde, also participated in high-grossing films such as "Jedi Escape" and "I Am Not the God of Medicine" before 2020, but began to die around 2020, which is the time when Tangde was dragged down by "Ba Qing Biography" and fell into a quagmire, and in that year's financial report, Tangde's new project basically only had a bunch of dramas left.

Let's take a look at the film road of Ciwen Media, Straw Bear, and Hualu Baina. The number of film works in which Ciwen participated is not large, there are box office data and only co-produced "Crowds", Straw Bear only invested in a few small-budget films in the early years, Hualu Bainer had a period of concentrated force in the film market before 2014, and then fell silent for three years, and only began to become active again in 2017, but only "Lion Boy" can be mastered later.

In addition to these drama companies, iQiyi, Youku, Douyin, B station, Weibo and other long-term and short video platforms and social platforms have not been less active in the film market in recent years. Among them, iQiyi and Youku laid out earlier, the number of participating works of Beijing iQiyi Film alone is 119, while the number of 94 works of Youku Film Co., Ltd. is comparable, in contrast, Douyin, B station, Weibo power nodes are later, and the scale of works is naturally not as large as the first two.

However, although Douyin only began to vigorously lay out the movie track in 2020, its betting vision is very accurate, among the 27 jointly produced films, 8 works such as "Chinese Doctor", "My Fathers and Me" and "Alone on the Moon" exceeded 1 billion at the box office, and in 2022, "Life Events" produced by Douyin achieved a box office result of 1.7 billion in the summer, and the producer of this film also has a Weibo figure.

Although Kuaishou changed its business scope in 2019 and added film distribution and film production, the only works currently involved in are a documentary "Fireworks on Earth" screened at the Pingyao Film Festival and a documentary film approved two years ago.

The law of footholding

If you look closely, these companies also pursue very different footholds and preferred investment styles in the film market.

In recent years, Huace can be called the "harvester" of young directors. In 2021, Huace's "Assassination of a Novelist" is directed by Lu Yang, which is not the first cooperation between the two parties, as early as Lu Yang's "Embroidered Spring Knife II: Asura Battlefield", Huace appeared as a co-producer, this year's National Day file, although Lu Yang did not participate in the production of "Ten Thousand Miles Home", the free cool whale film behind it appeared in the ranks of producers.

Rao Xiaozhi, the director of "Ten Thousand Miles Home", is a new force director who has risen in recent years like Lu Yang, and the two films "Nameless" and "Crowds" have made him successfully famous in the industry. In "Ten Thousand Miles Home", the new force of Huace's cooperation is not only Rao Xiaozhi, Rao Xiaozhi's friend Guo Fan appeared as a producer, and Guo Fan Film behind him is also in the producer list. A film that gathers three young directors who have close relationships, it is not difficult to see the depth of the connection between Huace and the new forces.

It is worth noting that "Burning Winter", the main investment mentioned by Huace in the first half of the financial report and has entered the post-production stage, also chose young directors, that is, Chen Zheyi, who directed the blockbuster work "Tropical Rain" at the 2019 Pingyao Film Festival and is known as the second Ang Lee in the Chinese film industry, and the producer of the film "Burning Winter" also includes Chen Zheyi's company Tropical Rain Pictures. In addition, "The Last Night of the Earth" directed by Bi Gan is also produced by Huace.

Binding famous directors is the usual way of playing by established film companies, and now Huace chooses to bind emerging directors and their teams, which is indeed a good idea to break the game, after all, these emerging young directors are related to the future of the film industry, and their creations are also bold. "Ten Thousand Miles Home" is a good example, the tone of the main theme film in the past is mostly serious, but this time Rao Xiaozhi's "Ten Thousand Miles Home" is also serious with amuse and humor, and the style is very novel.

Another drama company with the same clear investment trajectory is Sunray Media, in terms of film type, Sunray obviously favors comedies and romance films, and its more deeply bound comedy label is Happy Twist, Happy Twist's "Charlotte Troubles", "Iron Fist of Shame", "The Richest Man in Xihong City", "This Killer Is Not Very Calm" have Sunray Media in the producers. In romance films, "My Early Girlfriend", "A Kiss to Love", "Durara Chasing Marriage" and so on are all works launched by Sunray.

It is not difficult to see that Sunray's style of play emphasizes "mainstreaming", after all, comedy and romance films are evergreen themes in the film market, and both have a huge audience and a stable box office range, in 2021, the overall box office of the six major types of drama, comedy, war, animation, suspense, and love will account for more than 5%. In addition to comedies and romance films, there is also no shortage of main theme works in the films co-produced by Sunray in recent years, such as "King Kong River", "My Hometown and Me", "My Homeland and Me", and "1921" controlled by Tencent Film Owner.

In several video companies, the film investment style of station B is also very clear, that is, mainly animated films, such as Guangguang Media's "My Name is MT Yamaguchi Mountain War" has a figure behind station B, in addition, after the box office success of "White Snake: Origin", station B began to be deeply bound with the light chasing animation, in the "New God List: Nezha Rebirth", "White Snake 2: Green Snake Robbery" and "New God List: Yang Jian" after chasing light, Station B is the producer.

The path to progression

In the past two or three years, the gameplay of these cross-border companies has actually changed.

For Huace, this change is to strengthen the main investment and control capabilities. "Assassination of a Novelist" is not the first work of Huace to be mainly invested and controlled, before this, Huace also launched films such as "A Smile is Very Loving" and "The Last Night of the Earth", but the box office is not ideal, the former is the movie of the same name of Huace's explosive drama, but the reputation has affected the box office, the latter style is niche, and the final box office only fell to 282 million due to the publicity storm.

From "A Smile Is Very Loving" and "The Last Night of the Earth" to "Assassination of a Novelist" and "The Way Home", Huace's content style has a clear change, that is, it has begun to move towards large-scale productions. Behind this actually represents two major trends in the development of the domestic film market, one is that after the steady improvement of the level of the film industry, visual effects have begun to become one of the box office competition points for blockbusters, and the other is that after the market head effect is intensified, large-scale production content is easier to highlight and gain popularity.

Among the drama companies, Huace and Sunray have accumulated a lot of experience in the main investment and main control, and have a keen sense of smell for changes in the market wind, in contrast, Huanrui is relatively blank in the main investment main control, and the trend judgment of the industry is not accurate enough. Since 2020, Huanrui has indeed rarely missed in the investment of the main theme film, but this also stems from the fact that the main theme is now the right time, out of the main theme theme, the romance film "Ten Years of a Pint Warm as Words" invested by Huanrui has turned over.

The main investment and control is not only a proof of the content strength of a film and television company, but also an opportunity for them to take their fate into their own hands, and station B is a case. It can be found that the film "Falling Dust" jointly produced by Station B and Yongsheng Animation has been approved in 2021, the film is adapted from the animated short film of the same name "Falling Dust" that once appeared in the circle of Station B, although the final appearance of "Falling Dust" is still unknown, but the attempt to open up the road of main investment and main control is worth affirming.

When "White Snake: Origin" was released, the chasing light animation was indeed infinitely beautiful, and the Chinese mythological universe it proposed was also widely expected by the industry and outside, but now the sequel to "White Snake" and the "New God List" series have proved that the future of the big ship chasing light on station B is not smooth sailing, and the bad literary drama makes the barrel effect of chasing light more and more obvious. The creative bottleneck of chasing light is actually a microcosm of the current national comic market, and in this context, it is not a good thing for B station to explore its own path.

Huace's changes are not only reflected in Station B, but also in iQiyi. Although iQiyi Pictures has invested more than 100 films in recent years, if you look carefully, it has missed a lot of explosive products, especially the main theme films, and the top box office of its investment films is "Fanghua", "Manslaughter 2", "Nameless" and so on. It is not difficult to see iQiyi's problems in film investment, that is, although the number is large, the head content is small, and the small and medium-sized content occupies a large proportion.

However, this situation has changed in 2022, and now iQiyi participated in the production of the films to be screened "Assassination Storm", "Hot Search", "Chasing the Moon", "China Ping Pong" and "Temporary Robbery", in addition to "Chasing the Moon", the other four films are selling well, and the number of people who want to see the suspenseful theme "Assassination Storm" has reached 210,000; "Chinese Table Tennis" is the main theme of the theme; "Hot Search" is directed by Xin Yukun and starring Zhou Dongyu; "Temporary Robbery" is produced by Er Dongsheng, starring Kwok Fucheng and Lin Jiadong.

For iQiyi, which adheres to the path of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", its investment in the film field also has the meaning of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. But in the final analysis, whether it is strengthening the main investment control or getting closer to the head content, it is the advancement of these cross-border companies.