The author of this article is @NorthS of the Xiaowan family
Find everyone's spiritual nook in the movie
The 2023 Spring Festival can be said to have ended successfully with surprising results.
As of January 27, the total box office of this year's Spring Festival file (January 22-January 27) exceeded 6.7 billion yuan, surpassing last year's 6 billion yuan and jumping to the second place in the history of the Chinese Spring Festival box office.
Although there is still a certain distance from the 7.8 billion box office record set by "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Detective Chinatown 3" in 2021, as the first Spring Festival file after the end of the epidemic in three years, the record of 6.7 billion+ still strongly announces that the film market is rebounding rapidly.
Among them, "Manjiang Hong" directed by Zhang Yimou led strongly with a box office of 2.6 billion, and the sci-fi masterpiece "The Wandering Earth 2" followed closely with 2.1 billion, and the two films are veritable leaders, dividing up nearly 70% of the box office;
The cartoon "Bear Haunted, Accompany Me "Bear Core" has risen steadily, becoming the third in the schedule with 750 million, and is expected to catch up with last year's "Bear Haunted, Return to Earth" to become the highest in the series;
The second echelon of "Nameless" and "Deep Sea" ranked fourth and fifth respectively, and these two works are still actively roadshow, hoping to attract a new batch of audiences and walk out of a beautiful long line;
"Chinese Table Tennis: Jedi Strikes Back", released in the third day of junior high school, announced that it would be changed to February 17 on the day of its release, and as a traditional dominant genre of comedy "Exchange Life", the current box office has just exceeded 300 million.
The Spring Festival holiday has ended, but the Spring Festival movie has not ended.
So in this box office outbreak of the 2023 Spring Festival file, what are the details and phenomena worth paying attention to, let Xiaowan take you back today.
The most "long" Spring Festival stall in history
A major feature of this year's Spring Festival films is the long length of the film.
"The Wandering Earth 2" is 173 minutes, setting the first length in the history of the Spring Festival file; "Man Jiang Hong" is 159 minutes, which also breaks the length record of Zhang Yimou's film.
"Nameless" is 128 minutes long, and the comedy "Exchange of Life" and the animated film "The Deep" also have nearly two hours.
Generally speaking, in the highly competitive important schedule, the longer the length of the film, the more unfavorable the film, but "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red" have won the support of the audience through excellent content, and the attendance rate has been rising.
In the end, the two films with the longest duration of the 2023 Spring Festival broke the "law" and won the most films with a super stable trend.
For example, on the seventh day of the first year, "Manjiang Red" accounted for 34.6%, "The Wandering Earth 2" accounted for 26.8%, and the two blockbusters accounted for nearly 60% of the schedule.
Fares are gradually falling
Last year's Spring Festival, the average ticket price of 56 yuan scared off many ordinary viewers, and the topic of "high ticket price" also attracted media coverage, which once became a hot search on social media.
This year's ticket price has fallen compared with last year, the price of the ticket price is relatively reasonable, the average price of 7 days of the holiday is 52 yuan, which means that the market and the audience have returned to calm.
Most of the films in this year's Spring Festival are longer, so compared with the previous two years, the total number of performances this year has dropped a lot.
For example, on the first day of the Lunar New Year this year, only 449,000 performances were opened nationwide, less than the 564,000 on the first day of last year, and finally won 1.357 billion box office on the first day of the new year, lower than 1.454 billion in 2022 and 1.692 billion in 2021.
So on another level, although the size of this year's film is large enough and the quality is good enough, the ticket price and the number of performances also limit the height of the total box office to a certain extent.
The best Spring Festival file with a good reputation
This year's Spring Festival movie is the best year for the overall reputation in the past 5 years.
"The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red" both broke 8 points when they opened the score on Douban, and until today, these two works also have good scores of 8.2 and 7.5 points on Douban, respectively.
The rest of the films, "Bear Haunted, Accompany Me "Bear Core" Douban 7.0; "Deep Sea" Douban 7.3; "Nameless" Douban 6.7, are all medium performance, basically no bad films.
It can be said that this year's Spring Festival file got rid of the embarrassing dilemma that the Douban score of the head film in previous years was often less than 6 points, allowing our audience to see that Chinese films are developing in the direction of big production and good reputation.
Rich in types, break through the shackles
In addition to the steady rise in overall word of mouth, this year's Spring Festival movies have diversified themes, and many films have broken the ceiling of such movies.
"Manjiang Hong" broke the box office record of domestic costume films, and the historical suspense of costume showed great energy beyond traditional comedy and action genres for the first time, and also set a new box office high for Zhang Yimou's directorial career (previously 1.2 billion for "Above the Cliff").
"The Wandering Earth 2" directed by Guo Fan has raised the quality of domestic sci-fi movies to a higher level, and while the film continues to make the big scenes, it also makes the more ambitious "Wandering Earth World View" and the story core of the community of human destiny deeply rooted in the hearts of the people
Nowadays, many audiences have spontaneously urged to change "The Wandering Earth 3", which is enough to prove that the seeds of Chinese science fiction have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
"Nameless", which has a strong director's personal label and "cinematic sense", currently has a box office of more than 500 million.
Subject to non-linear narrative and cold style, the film has not exploded at the box office, but in the current market, such a large-scale and detailed spy war suspense film is very rare, and I hope that "Nameless" can go a long way next.
and the two animated films "Bear Haunted, Accompany Me "Bear Core" and "Deep Sea", one continues to play steadily in the IP genre, and the total box office is about to create a new record in the series; A courage that broke the shackles of national comics on IP myths and stories and dared to be original is also commendable.
There are no dark horses in the 2023 Spring Festival file
In the past Spring Festival, counterattack was a key word that could not be ignored.
2018's "Operation Red Sea", 2019's "The Wandering Earth", and 2022's "This Killer Is Not Too Calm" are all in the first unpromising situation, and later prevailed, achieving a counterattack in word of mouth and box office.
"This killer is not very calm" made a strong effort in the market and finally counterattacked to second place
In this year's Spring Festival file, second-tier live-action movies such as "Nameless", "Deep Sea" and "Exchange Life" have not been able to reverse.
The two head blockbusters "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Hong", which attracted the most attention and the highest hopes in the early stage, have firmly dominated the list from beginning to end and controlled the trend of the box office (but "Manjiang Red" has achieved a reverse of "The Wandering Earth 2"), so that the 2023 Spring Festival file has "lost its suspense" early.
Therefore, the Spring Festival file in 2023 is a Spring Festival file without a real dark horse
From the gradual formation of the Spring Festival file in 2013 to the cultivation of the habit of watching movies on the first day of the new year, the Spring Festival file has accompanied us for 11 years.
As the largest period in China's film market, the Spring Festival is not only the period with the largest number of moviegoers and the largest amount of discussion throughout the year, but also carries everyone's ardent expectations for the film market in the new year.
We embraced the cinema once again and made the film once again an important link between us and the Spring Festival.
The opening of the Spring Festival file has made a good start for the recovery of the film market in 2023, and I hope that in the new year, there will be more good movies of rich genres to meet our big screen!