Sohu Entertainment Special Article (Hamai/text) In September, iQIYI Cloud Cinema once again adjusted the billing rules, increasing the billing ratio of single-film pay-on-demand movies from 60% to 90%.
In November, Tencent Video released a 2023 film list, including more than ten online movies, including big IPs such as "Infernal Affairs", "Ghost Blowing Lights", "Dragon Babu", and "Breaking the Firmament", and the project collaborators include Andy Lau, Chen Guofu, Donnie Yen, Zhao Xiaoding and other industry celebrities.
Resources and talent are now gathering towards video platforms. What about cinemas as competitors? On the one hand, it relies on the hospital to transfer the network to draw blood, and on the other hand, it invests in theater movies, is the video platform mending the knife or saving the cinema?
Movie celebrities enter the "online Spring Festival file"
On November 3, Tencent released a film list at its 2023 Online Video V Vision Conference, with more than a dozen online movies, including some major projects that have attracted much attention, such as "The Legend of Qiao Feng" supervised and starring Donnie Yen, the new "Infernal Affairs" series supervised by Andy Lau, the "Ghost Blowing the Light" series cooperated with Chen Guofu's Gongfu Pictures, and the IP work "Breaking the Firmament" directed by Zhao Xiaoding.
"The Legend of Qiao Feng, the Eight Dragons" and the comedy "Northeast Farewell to the Heavenly Group 2" are prepared for the "Online Spring Festival Stall" in 2023, which is a key schedule jointly created by several major video platforms, corresponding to the most lively Spring Festival file in cinemas every year.
At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic struck, all theaters were closed, and the Spring Festival stalls failed.
Video platforms have taken advantage of this.
ByteDance spent a huge amount of money to buy "Aunt", which was originally scheduled to be released during the Spring Festival, and played it for free on its platforms Douyin, Watermelon Video, and Toutiao on the first day of the new year, gaining traffic.
This move has aroused heated discussions in the industry and has been condemned and boycotted by many theaters and film practitioners.
But the general trend is unstoppable, under the impact of the epidemic, later there were Wang Jing, Donnie Yen's "Fat Dragon Across the River", Hao Lei starring "Spring Tide", Chen Desen's "Journey", Dapeng and Liu Yan starring "The Big Winner", Guo Jingming's "Jue Trace 2: Cold-blooded Feast" and more than ten other theatrical films turned to online premiere that year, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, Douyin, Kuaishou several long videos, short video platforms have participated.
(Film art poisonous tongue finishing and drawing)
In 2021, it is not a new thing to broadcast a single film transferred from the theater network, and the three parent video platforms of iQiyi, Tencent, and Youku reached a consensus to jointly launch the "online Spring Festival file" and began to compete with theaters for customer flow in popular schedules.
On the first day of the new year, the action film "The Legend of the Depot of Shaolin Temple" directed by Hong Kong famous director Tang Jili , starring Wang Baoqiang , Ni Dahong , Wu Mengda , Liu Haoran , directed by Song Xiaobao , starring Song Xiaobao , Sha Yi , Ma Li , Zhang Yishan The comedy " Fortune Diary " premiered on the three major platforms.
In the 2022 Spring Festival, directed by Wang Jing and starring Donnie Yen, Gu Tianle, Lin Feng, Wen Yongshan and others, "Relying on the Sky to Slay the Dragon: Jiuyang Divine Skill" and "Relying on the Sky to Slay the Dragon: The Sacred Flame Majesty" premiered on several major video platforms. Of course, the major platforms also have their own key online movies and theater copyright films scheduled for the Spring Festival.
The 2023 Spring Festival file is the third year of the online Spring Festival, Tencent has been prepared, iQiyi and Youku will naturally not be left behind, if the theater is not smooth due to epidemic prevention and control or film finalization, it will be a good opportunity for the platform to become bigger and stronger for the online Spring Festival.
Online premiere split ratio increased to 90%
Whether a film chooses to be broadcast online or in theaters is ultimately decided after weighing the pros and cons, focusing on which side of the revenue is more attractive.
Usually, a movie is released in theaters, receives a share of the box office, and then sells the webcast rights to video websites to obtain two parts of revenue.
The box office share should first deduct 5% of the film exclusive capital and 3.3% value-added tax, and then the theater line and theaters will divide 57%, and the remaining 43% will be given to the filmmaker. If the producer and distributor are not one, the distributor also has to take a part of the distribution account (the proportion is generally 3%-25%, each film is different according to the contract), and the last rest goes to the producer.
Roughly calculated, if the distribution fee is not taken into account, the producer can generally get 37%-39% of the net box office (not included in the service fee of the online ticketing platform). That is, a movie with a net box office of 100 million yuan, the film can get about 37 million to 39 million yuan.
For example, the total box office of "Hidden in the Dust" is 109 million yuan, and the net box office after deducting service fees is 97 million yuan, and the film side shares 37%, about 36 million yuan. After deducting the distribution fee and production fee, the net profit is finally the net profit.
Copyright fees are pure income, in the past few years when the market was hot, a blockbuster film can get about 50 million copyright fees after being sold to video websites, and now that the copyright war has cooled down, this part of the income may shrink.
If you choose to premiere online, if the platform does not buy out the copyright, it is usually a single-film pay-on-demand method.
Taking iQIYI as an example, a film chooses to premiere in iQIYI Cloud Cinema, the first 35 days are a single paid on-demand, corresponding to the theater's audience to purchase tickets to watch, the exclusive premiere ticket price is set at 18/24/30 yuan three gears, multi-platform simulcast ticket price is set at 12/18/24/30 yuan four gears, platform members enjoy preferential prices when purchasing a single film.
In this more than one-month cycle, the film party can get a share of non-members and members' paid on-demand revenue, which was set at 60% when the cloud cinema billing rules were released in early 2022, and increased to 90% from September 1, 2022, tentatively implemented for 2 years. However, the film side does not share 90% of all on-demand box office, but after deducting the channel fee, the specific amount of this channel fee is not explained.
After the 35-day on-demand billing period, the 180-day membership billing period is entered, and the film party receives a split bill calculated according to the effective on-demand time of the audience, with an hourly billing price of 1.5 yuan for exclusive films and 1.05 yuan for non-exclusive films.
In terms of specific films, according to the latest rules, the "Fortune Diary" broadcast during the Spring Festival in 2021 was divided into 44.163 million yuan in iQiyi, of which 18.482 million yuan was divided during the on-demand period and 25.681 million yuan was divided during the membership period.
If Tencent Video and Youku are similar to iQiyi's billing rules, and the final billing is similar, then the total account of this film is multiplied by three, about 132 million yuan. After deducting the production cost, it is likely to be profitable.
If it is released in theaters, in addition to production costs, it is necessary to invest in publicity and distribution costs, and finally if you want to get 132 million yuan in the bill, the net box office must reach about 350 million yuan, which is not a small difficulty for a comedy with 5.7 points on Douban.
Tang Jili's "The Legend of Shaolin Temple: The Legend of Depot" was divided into 15.72 million yuan in iQiyi, and Wang Jing's "Relying on the Sky to Slay the Dragon: Jiuyang Divine Skill" and "Relying on the Sky to Slay the Dragon: The Sacred Fire and Heroic Wind" were divided into 21.916 million yuan and 15.189 million yuan in iQiyi, these films are all collaged, and the total score on the three major platforms is estimated to be between 45 million yuan and 66 million yuan, if it is released in theaters, get so many points, the net box office should reach 1.2-174 million yuan.
Although not every film is suitable for online broadcasting, it can be seen that at a time when the theater business is getting sluggish, several major platforms are trying to provide an increasingly tempting option for filmmakers, which is undoubtedly worse for theaters with a film famine.
Video platform mending the knife or saving the cinema?
But from another point of view, the platform and the theater are not exactly the hostility of you and me. Theaters that have existed for more than a hundred years have its advantages, and investors want to get rich overnight, like "Nezha", "Changjin Lake", "Hello, Li Huanying" to win billions of box office, relying on the platform on demand for a while may be difficult to achieve.
The platform not only produces large networks, receiving movies transferred from theaters to the Internet, they also invest in theater movies to provide living water for theaters. At a time when traditional film production companies are generally strapped for money, video platforms with relatively strong financial resources have become the most important participants behind the head cinema films.
For example, Tencent not only has a series of online movie releases, but also has several theatrical film projects, including "Mermaid", "Douluo Continent" (animation), and the classic Hong Kong film remake "New Across the World".
In fact, after several years of development, the production companies behind platforms such as Tencent Pictures, Alibaba Pictures (including Taotao), and iQiyi Pictures have become the main players in the film industry, ranking in the forefront of the box office list in film history, "Changjin Lake", "Hello, Li Huanying", "The Wandering Earth", "Detective Chinatown 3", etc., all have their participation behind them.
Among the 43 domestic films with a box office of more than 100 million in 2021, Alibaba Pictures participated in 13 films, Tao Vote participated in 10 films, Youku Film participated in 1, and in the absence of overlapping projects, a total of 23 films were voted for and 21 were released, including all box office bombs such as "Changjin Lake", "Hello, Li Huanying", "Tang Detective 3" and so on.
In 2021, Tencent Pictures participated in "Fury Heavy Case", "1921", "I Want Us to Be Together", "Secret Visitor" and "Wishing Shenlong", among which "Fury Heavy Case", "1921" and "Wishing Shenlong" are all one of the top two producers, and each of them is mainly controlled and released.
iQiyi Pictures participated in "Manslaughter 2", "Door Lock" and "Secret Visitor" in 2021, and produced "Sweeping Black Decisive Battle".
Douyin Culture, which was registered in 2020, participated in 13 films with a box office of more than 100 million yuan in 2021, including "Me and My Fathers", "Chinese Doctor", "On the Cliff", "Assassination of a Novelist" and other major projects. In some small and medium-sized productions, it is already in the main position, such as "Midsummer Future" and "Love in Years" Douyin Culture are the third largest producers.
There are six domestic films with a box office of more than 1 billion this year, "Changjin Lake Water Gate Bridge" and "Alone on the Moon" have the participation of Ali Pictures and Douyin Culture, "This Killer Is Not Very Calm" has the participation of Tencent Pictures, Douyin Culture, and Taotao, "Life Events" has the participation of Taotao and Douyin culture, "The Way Home" has the participation of Taotao, and "Miracle Stupid Child" has the participation of Ali Pictures and Douyin Culture.
In the filing list announced in the first half of this year, iQiyi filed seven new projects with different themes such as "War 1840", "Kryptonite Life", "Unforgivable Crime", "Investment Storm", "Copycat Drift King", "Bad Review" and "Collision", which is the largest number of new films filed among all mainstream film companies.
It can be seen that the film company behind the video platform is now one of the most important blood sources in the film industry, and there is money and resources to come in, and every link in the industry chain has benefited.
In this respect, the platform is not the enemy of the theater, or even the rescuer.
The only thing that can be concluded is that the line between theatrical films and online movies will become more and more blurred, and whether a movie chooses to be released in theaters or online depends on which party's business model is better and how the film side evaluates the revenue.
In the future, whether online watching will slowly kill movie theaters is still difficult to see clearly.