It's the first free-flowing New Year in three years without theater attendance limits, and it's the time in which people who wouldn't normally walk into a cinema are willing to buy a ticket — which means huge, sinking box office. Behind the Spring Festival fight, there is not only the will and ambition of the main creators, but also a gamble of capital.
Text | Chang Fangfei
Edit the | Golden Turn
Operational | Painted firefly
Brutal fighting
In Lin Yuan's eyes, the Spring Festival stall with such fierce competition has not appeared for a long time.
He is the cinema manager of a chain of cinemas, this year are all limited to the file, almost all after the official announcement, he learned that "The Wandering Earth 2", "Manjiang Red", "Nameless", "Deep Sea" and other 7 films will be released one after another, at that time he sighed that this will be a "big fight" Spring Festival file.
Today, the Spring Festival stall has entered its fourth day, and it is still full of gunsmoke. The battle for 7 films continues, and the champion is between Guo Fan's "The Wandering Earth 2" and Zhang Yimou's "Manjiang Red". Behind the competition between the two films is not only the competition between genre films and sci-fi films, but also the confrontation between traditional fifth-generation directors and emerging directors who have absorbed Hollywood style.
Previously, in the hearts of many theater managers, there was a box office miracle of "The Wandering Earth 1" in front, and "The Wandering Earth 2" was naturally the number one seed this year, but unexpectedly, the situation changed on the first day of the new year: the arrangement of "Manjiang Red" jumped from 28% to 32.5%, narrowly beating "The Wandering Earth 2" by a 1% margin.
According to Lighthouse Professional Edition, on January 24 (the third day of junior high school), the champion has changed hands, and the cumulative box office of "Manjiang Red" has surpassed "The Wandering Earth 2", reaching 1 billion, and today it has risen to 1.39 billion. Zhao Liang, who returned to his hometown in Inner Mongolia, was shocked by the crowd of people in the cinema. When he went to see "Manjiang Hong" in the second year of junior high school, he found that the waiting young people were crowded in the front hall, and finally only bought corner positions, and when he entered, the queue was actually 30 meters away, "I never knew that there were so many young people in our small county." Zhang Yu, who celebrated the New Year in the 18th tier city of Hubei, watched "Manjiang Hong" with his whole family, and felt that it was the first place in the taste of the county, compared with science fiction movies, the story threshold is low, and several leading actors such as Shen Teng, Yi Yangqianxi, Lei Jiayin and others also have audience popularity.
▲ "Manjiang Red" officially celebrated that the box office exceeded 1 billion. Photo / Weibo screenshot
"Nameless", which once became the pre-sale box office champion, has slipped to fourth place after the first day of the new year. On the day of the release, some viewers criticized director Cheng Er for cutting the "timeline to shreds". The film party obviously also saw the negative evaluation, and quickly announced the positive sequence timeline of the entire movie on the official micro.
On the same day, Cheng Er published an article in Zhihu, trying to explain his editing style, "If a movie is finished watching, there is no space to think, it's a pity", and also hopes that the user team of "high aesthetic interest" is getting stronger and stronger. And just a day later, Cheng Er clarified through the official micro of "Nameless" that this article was not his own confession, but written by a staff member "out of anxiety and good intentions". In the future, he will shoot a super art film called "Mermaid", and Yu Dong is willing to continue to invest.
But the market is far less warm. The theater manager does not have to understand the intention of the creator, or even watch the film, just look at the genre and cast, and basically determine the proportion of the film.
On the day of the release of "Nameless", Lin Yuan only gave one or two scheduled films. He compared the spy war film "The Wind" released in 2009. This movie, directed by Gao Qunshu, was finally fixed at 235 million at the box office. "'Nameless' is roughly of this magnitude." Lin Yuan said. The earliest Maoyan Professional Edition gave a box office prediction of 450 million for "Nameless", which also supports this judgment. And these two figures are far from enough to recover the 300 million film investment costs.
Director Cheng Er was once worried about the box office. Dapeng, an actor who participated in "Nameless", remembers that on a rainy night during filming, Cheng Er asked him: "After investing so much money and manpower, how are we going to end this matter in the end?" And his last movie "The History of the Demise of Romance" also faced box office torture, starring Ge You and Zhang Ziyi, with an investment of 120 million yuan, and the final box office was only 122 million yuan, which also did not recover the cost. Cheng Er rarely talks publicly about his loss, but in his article "Worthy of this bowl of white rice", he revealed some clues - "I occasionally exhausted explanations, saying that our movie is not bad... I can read the sentences in his cunning eyes and the lips when he pouts, but it doesn't sell for money. Yes, but it doesn't sell for money. ”
The animated film "Deep Sea" also failed to achieve box office success, and the counterattack story of "The Return of the Great Saint" in 2015 did not repeat itself, and four days after its release, the box office of "Deep Sea" stayed at 214 million, only higher than "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back", which was only released for one day.
During the promotional roadshow, Tian Xiaopeng, the director of "Deep Sea", expressed his ambition in a rare way - he wanted to make a work that could prove himself. It took the team 15 months to create the "Split the Sea" effect, and a lot of money burned over time. According to NHK, after the initial investment has exceeded 200 million yuan, "Deep Sea" has made additional investment. But now that 7 years have passed since the production of "Deep Sea" began, the Chinese film market has also undergone tremendous changes, and the Spring Festival file situation is even more fierce, and Yi Qiao, the producer of "Deep Sea", once asked sadly in an interview with China Newsweek: "How many people still remember Tian Xiaopeng?" ”
Today's "Spring Festival file" is more like a cruel gamble. Years of careful preparation, billions of investments, in just 24 hours to divide the winner and loser. The winner has everything, and the runner does not even leave a name.
▲ "Deep Sea" poster. Figure / Douban
Squeeze into the Spring Festival stall
It's the first New Year in three years when theaters have no attendance limits and people can move freely, and it's also the time when those who wouldn't normally walk into a cinema are willing to buy a ticket — which means huge, sinking box office.
In the past year, the entire film industry was in trouble: the number of new films fell sharply, the total box office hovered in one million, small and medium-sized theaters closed, and finally the total box office for the whole year was fixed at 30.07 billion yuan, the same as in 2014. And this year's sudden arrival of the Spring Festival file has instantly become the key to the blood recovery of all parties, even under the shroud of uncertainty, the film party, theaters, fans, have all bet on everything.
When the pre-sale horn sounded, many films were still ending in a hurry. "Manjiang Hong" is Zhang Yimou's rare film shot and released quickly in recent years, the entire shooting process took less than two months, and the film had not been completed until the official announcement of the first day of the new year. 72-year-old Zhang Yimou endured a high fever and stayed up late to edit before handing over the copy to the theater on time.
Zhang Yimou doubted this decision. Wang Qiang, who is close to the director's team, understands his anxiety, and after three years, no one is sure how many audiences will be willing to walk into the theater. "Seeing the "Avatar 2" in charge of the rescue market sold like this, everyone is drumming in their hearts."
And sci-fi movies such as "The Wandering Earth 2", the level of the later period almost determines the word of mouth and box office. The post-production of the entire film took 9 months, but it was still stretched. Director Guo Fan once half-jokingly said that he lost a lot of hair in a hurry. There were once rumors that because the progress of post-production did not meet expectations, "The Wandering Earth 2" would be absent from the Spring Festival file, and Guo Fan even made a military order in front of fans in order to refute the rumors - "We must bear it!" As long as the audience doesn't dislike it, we will be there. ”
"Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back", which temporarily adjusted the protagonist's name, chose to stay at the card table, but postponed the release to the third year of junior high school. In order to catch up with the schedule, the main creative team is under great mental pressure. At the premiere, director Yu Baimei, who once smiled in the face of negative reviews, suddenly cried. Recalling the filming experience of this film, he described it as "cornered several times". The most recent "cornered" was a week ago, because I wasn't sure if the movie would meet the audience on time.
▲ "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" stills. Figure / Douban
For theater managers, the Spring Festival file is directly related to the revenue of theaters in the next year, and it is the most worthy schedule. In the past half a month, Lin Yuan has been so busy that he has seen 7 movies squeezed in during the Spring Festival, and the theater's team has only 4 employees left, and recruiting people has become a priority.
Fans have also staked all their chips. In this gamble, they invested a lot of time and real money in the idols they supported. Up to now, "Nameless" starring Wang Yibo has a cumulative box office of 330 million yuan, ranking fourth, to a large extent, this is the result of fan organizations purchasing tickets.
Last year's National Day file Wang Yibo as the male protagonist "The King of the Long Sky" suddenly announced the withdrawal of the file, this time, fans can no longer miss the opportunity to prove the strength of idols. Lin Yuan witnessed the organization of Wang Yibo's support association, "from the control of communication nodes to execution, fans are even more professional than some publicity companies."
On the morning of January 14, when the pre-sale of the Spring Festival file officially opened, Lin Yuan received several calls, all asking why "Nameless" had fewer afternoon and evening performances. In the evening, he learned that this was the unified speech of fans after training by the support club, "and more golden performances with the theater manager can increase the number of films."
Communication with the theater manager is only a small part of increasing the number of films, and cooperation with the theater line is even more important. Wang Yibo Fan Support Association has opened a nationwide cooperation with Perfect World Studios platform and Bona Films, the latter has customized a national exchange coupon for "Nameless", fans can redeem movie tickets in the movie theater of the cooperative theater after purchase, and the support club has the authority to uniformly allocate exchange coupons.
In addition, the existing number of games also needs to be preserved. Many theaters stipulate that if the attendance rate of a show does not reach 10%~15%, the screening will be canceled. In order to ensure that the film can be screened smoothly and attract more passers-by to watch the movie, the support club organizes fans to buy tickets to "fill in the venue". Wang Yibo's fans wrote detailed fill-in strategies, and updated the number of national games, the number of targets, and the number of tickets sold every day to ensure the successful completion of the goal. This once allowed "Nameless" to surpass "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" and become the first place at the pre-sale box office. In a live broadcast, Dapeng specially thanked Wang Yibo's fans, and "Nameless" can get such pre-sale results, and fans have made great contributions.
▲ "Nameless" poster. Figure / Douban
Capital gambling
Behind the desperate bet on the Spring Festival stall is also the unprecedented thirst for profits of capital. In this year's Spring Festival file, there is a luxurious capital lineup behind every movie.
Entering the largest schedule of the year, from film production to publicity requires a lot of financial support. Investors have also staked their entire net worth at this table. Especially in the past three years, some small and medium-sized film and television companies have collapsed, and the head companies can only be called barely maintaining, and the Spring Festival file in 2023 is even more regarded as a lifesaver by capital.
▲ Figure / Visual China
The main controller of "Nameless" is Bona Film, which is also the last part of Bona's "China Victory Trilogy" series, shouldering the heavy responsibility of turning around Bona's losses.
Bona's main theme began in 2014, and the successful investment in director Tsui Hark's "Outsmart the Tiger Mountain" was a watershed. On the prospectus, Boehner gave the film a very high evaluation - "opening a new chapter in the commercialization of the main theme film adapted from real events in recent years." "Bona, who tasted the sweetness, began to intensively launch similar commercial films, from "Operation Red Sea" to two films in the Changjin Lake series, the three films controlled by Bona are among the top ten box office in Chinese film history.
However, the failure of the main theme strategy begins in 2022. This year, "The End of the Sea is the Grassland" controlled by Bona had a box office of only 35.59 million yuan, and the box office of the National Day file "Ordinary Heroes" was 215 million, which can only be regarded as mediocre. This directly dragged down PropNex's performance. The third quarter of 2022 financial report shows that Bona Film lost 150 million yuan.
Therefore, the film "Nameless", from the main creator to Bona Film CEO and investor Yu Dong, is under unprecedented pressure. Before the release, in the live broadcast promotion activity on Weibo, director Cheng Er interrupted the host's process several times, complaining that "why can't this live broadcast be on the (ticket purchase) link". Even at the end of the live broadcast, he entered the message link and asked Cheng Er to write down what words he hoped would be on the hot search, and he was still regretting that he couldn't bring the goods, and finally only wrote a few words - there was no link to the live broadcast. And Yu Dong also made a wish at the opening ceremony of the Pingyao Film Festival: "I hope that the box office on the first day of the new year will be more than the cumulative box office of all the past films directed by Cheng Er." ”
Huanxi Media, the main controller behind "Manjiang Hong", also needs this new film to save the decline.
Dong Ping, the actual controller of Huanxi Media, and director Zhang Yimou have long had a relationship. In 1997, Dong Ping participated in investing in Zhang Yimou's "Have Something to Say". With the help of investment, he has established personal relationships with many A-list directors. In 2015, Dong Ping, directors Ning Hao and Xu Zheng organized a bureau to subscribe for the shares of Hong Kong stock 21 Holdings, and then 21 Holdings changed its name to Huanxi Media.
Since then, Huanxi Media has handed olive branches to more first-line directors, no longer signing traditional performance gambling agreements, but anchoring returns in the form of priority investment. Directors Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kexin, Gu Changwei and Zhang Yibai have successively become partners and shareholders of Huanxi Media. In 2018, Huanxi Media officially signed Zhang Yimou, who acquired 150 million shares of Huanxi Media, with a shareholding ratio of 5.14%.
In order to bind the first-line directors, Huanxi Media paid a great price, and spent the additional shares in the form of investment in advance, and only achieved its first profit in 2019 after four years of listing. However, the good times did not last long, affected by the epidemic, Huanxi Media invested in the release of the film postponed and fell into the quagmire of loss again.
At present, "The Wandering Earth 2", which ranks second at the box office of the Spring Festival, has grown from 23 in the first part to 35 now, and there are not only traditional film capitals such as China Film, Wanda, Huace, and the emperor in the capital pattern, but even the figure of director Guo Fan's friends.
Maoyan Professional Edition shows that in addition to Wu Jing's Ascending International, the investment of "The Wandering Earth" and "The Wandering Earth 2" also includes director Lu Yang's Free Cool Whale Pictures. Also newly joined is Yiyi Yiyi Culture Media, and the legal representative behind it is Rao Xiaozhi, the director of "Ten Thousand Miles Home".
The three directors, born in the 80s, are friends in private, and it is film that unites them. In 2014, Guo Fan and Lu Yang met in the "Sino-American Study Class" jointly organized by the Film Bureau and Paramount, and the two were close in temper and aesthetics, and even the company was in the same park, and soon became friends. In 2015, Guo Fan was the producer of Rao Xiaozhi's "Hello, Madman", and Lu Yang went to visit the scene, and the three gradually became familiar.
At first, the three directors only gave advice to each other's film editing, and soon, the cooperation entered the capital level. In Lu Yang's "Assassination of a Novelist", Rao Xiaozhi served as a co-producer; Guo Fan Film and Lu Yang's Free Cool Whale Pictures participated in the production of Rao Xiaozhi's "Ten Thousand Miles Home" as producers. It is not difficult to understand why Lu Yang and Rao Xiaozhi will participate in "The Wandering Earth 2" with such a huge investment volume.
Various investors either hope to turn over or get a piece of the hot IP, and the superposition of various factors has spawned an unprecedented number of capital participation in the Spring Festival file.
▲ Recreate the lively movie theater. Photo / Zhang Yun (Shanxi Branch) / China News Agency / Visual China
Are movies still a necessity?
Even if creators and capital bet all the chips, the key to victory or defeat depends on how many audiences are willing to enter the theater. Faced with the question of whether the box office miracle of the 2021 Spring Festival file can be reproduced, film creators, distributors, and theater managers have all given us more conservative judgments.
Lin Yuan, the theater manager, was keeping an eye on the pre-sale box office almost in real time. On the evening of the Chinese New Year's Eve, less than 24 hours before the Spring Festival stall, Lin Yuan understood that the picture of the 2021 Spring Festival stall was difficult to reproduce. The pre-sale of 7 movies was only 700 million, and in 2021, the pre-sale of Chen Sicheng's "Detective Chinatown 3" alone exceeded 1.05 billion. It was an extremely lively Spring Festival stall, and the audience was packed into the auditorium, "It's like waiting for someone to wait for a full year to finally meet." "Everyone is anxious, no matter what film is scheduled, the attendance is high.
This year, the film's distributors are "tighter than before." In order to get more and better scheduling in theaters, film distributors will invest a "scheduling fee" in theaters, and the more money is thrown, the more opportunities the film has to get a higher proportion of films. In the past, people in the industry tacitly agreed that the threshold for the publicity of the Spring Festival file was at least about 100 million, and specifically for a theater where Lin Yuan was located, he could get four or five thousand yuan, but this year, Lin Yuan received a film arrangement fee of three thousand, down by one-third from last year.
The upstream company is tight, Lin Yuan naturally does not dare to invest too much, can only choose to recruit part-time college students to the front stage and field affairs, the contract is only signed for 7 days. This Spring Festival stall, he plans to wait and see.
How many audiences are willing to enter the theater is also the most curious question for Wang Yao, who has worked in a head distribution company for 7 years. The epidemic, which has lasted for 3 years, has completely changed people's lifestyle and consumption habits, and fewer and fewer people are willing to go out of their homes and spend time running to the cinema to watch movies. "It's really not good, there are Xiaoshuai and Xiaomei in the short video to tell you the previous paragraph." Wang Yao said.
Wang Yao also found that people who only watch one movie a year are becoming mainstream. The "2022 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report" supports her judgment. According to statistics, the proportion of viewers who only watch one movie a year has increased to 60%.
There are many reasons for this. The first is the lack of film supply. As of August 2022, the number of feature films filed in 2022 decreased by 30% compared with the same period from 2019 to 2021, and the production of the filing link was reduced, resulting in the total number of domestic films in the past three years, only eighty percent of 2017~2019.
This is not just a special phenomenon in the Chinese market, according to surging news reports, in 2022, the total number of films released in the North American market is less than 450, far lower than the 792 films in 2019. Of the more than 400 films, 18 grossed more than $100 million, far less than the 29 in 2019.
The head movie occupies the prime time, the fight is serious, and the supply of waist movies is insufficient, which gradually shrinks the once high consumer enthusiasm. The more straightforward reason is that after the epidemic, the first thing audiences save is non-essential expenses such as movie tickets. The cold is gradually transmitted from upstream film production to the theater, taking Lin Yuan, the theater's box office last year was just enough to pay employees' salaries, up to 50,000 a month, and even could only be financed by loans.
Of course, Wang Yao also really felt that the film industry is recovering after liberalization. She hasn't heard the news of so many films being finalized at the same time for a long time, and what is even more exciting is that after three years, audiences will see the Marvel series in theaters again. "Black Panther 2" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp" are scheduled for February, director Mak Zhaohui's "Prosecutor's Wind and Cloud", Kong Dashan's "Space Exploration Editorial Department" is scheduled for April, and "The King of the Long Sky" directed by Liu Xiaoshi is scheduled for May Day.
Perhaps, this Spring Festival file cannot reproduce the grandeur of 2021, but for the entire film industry, hope is more important than anything else. Wang Yao believes that when filmmakers "have no holidays and only schedules", they will come back one day.
▲ Photo / Zhang Yun (Shanxi Branch) / China News Agency / Visual China
Resources:
"Director Cheng Er: After the Demise of Romance", GQ reports
"The capital lineup behind the Spring Festival file is all crazy", Houlang Movie
"Tian Xiaopeng's Return: 7 Years Ago It Was the Return of the Great Sage, This Time It Was the Deep Sea", China Newsweek
"Dong Ping, a master of behind-the-scenes capital: If I fail every time, who dares to invest in me", Time Magazine
Three Male Directors Almost Heroic Moments: Is Contemporary Sisyphus Optimistic? , T Chinese edition
"The Way to Film", International Finance News
The article is original by Daily People, and infringement must be investigated.
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