Author/Green Island
Editor/Cao Lexi
In 2023, the box office of Chinese films will exceed the 10 billion mark, and the Spring Festival films that are still making great progress have contributed a lot.
"Manjiang Hong", which hit 3.5 billion +, because the official Bo's "unwarranted" self-defense plunged him into the abyss of doubt.
"Bear Haunted, Bear Core", which monopolizes the family market, easily broke 1 billion, and the reputation of "Nameless" and "Deep Sea" is polarized, the former around Wang Yibo set off a pink and black war, and the latter still makes people have some hope for the rise of national comics in the controversy over form.
"Wandering Ping-Pong" "Chinese Ping-Pong", which was moved from the first day of the new year to the third day of junior high school, retreated due to backward film arrangement, chose to be released on February 17, and returned to the public opinion field in the magic scolding battle of "stealing the box office", "ghost field", and political correctness.
When "Frenzy" and "The Three-Body Problem" set off a small-screen carnival, the 6.757 billion box office and the high reputation of the head film are naturally gratifying, and the broader profit space of the film market may be outside the box office.
Up to now, the crowdfunding amount around the officially licensed model of "The Wandering Earth 2", which has won 2.8 billion+ box office, has exceeded 120 million on the Aliyu platform, far exceeding the derivative pre-sale of the first part.
Marketing tricks, the normalization of online publicity, and the imagination of film + make us pick up confidence in the Chinese film market in 2023: to put aside the extreme emotional catharsis of the black miasma, the spring file war actually has many positive meanings that are enough to affect the industry.
The announcement of the war in the Spring Festival stall
This Spring Festival file, there are many accidents and reversals.
Just like the first-echelon "Manjiang Hong" began to counterattack from the third year of junior high school, surpassing "The Wandering Earth 2" to hold the box office champion; And "Nameless", which performed brilliantly in the early pre-sales, after overdrawing the purchasing power of fans in the early stage, began to take a sharp turn at the box office on the second day of the Lunar New Year, and was easily surpassed by "Bear Haunted, With Me Bear Core"...
Looking closely, these box office trends are not unrelated to the film's publicity strategy.
The announcement of "Manjiang Hong" has a steady rhythm and can be adjusted in real time according to the market trend.
The early publicity is mainly based on a luxurious lineup, with the script killing character card materials, and the suspense atmosphere is full; In the medium term, it strengthened the memory point of comedy, and absorbed more comedy audiences and sinking markets when the pure comedy "Exchange Life" did not perform well; In the later period, it focuses on the feelings of home and country, and historical science popularization and traditional culture go hand in hand.
From the perspective of the publicity strategy of "The Wandering Earth 2", one is to continue the emotional point of the upper "rise of domestic science fiction", and the other is the upgrading of the sense of technology triggered by shocking visual effects.
At present, the publicity content of popular science and analysis is the main selling point, and in the later stage, it focuses on the feelings of science fiction/the rise of a great power, as well as the personal charm of the main creator.
There are the main creative team behind the scene, there are also scientists, science and technology bloggers all-round interpretation, even Zhang Chaoyang in the physics class to nag, plus the linkage publicity with "The Three-Body Problem", all emphasize the film's sense of science and technology.
In recent days, director Guo Fan responded to the masters of Hua yuan, digital life tribute to the college entrance examination essay, and Liu Cixin's talk about the space elevator and other content on the hot search, which increased the interest of many social topics and formed a warm interaction with netizens.
The publicity of "Nameless" basically revolved around the starring Wang Yibo, but the fragmented non-linear narrative after its release and the director's strong personal style still dissuaded many audiences, and the film promotion that was not a "super commercial film" and the viewing group seeking the stimulation of spy warfare were misplaced to some extent.
Regardless of the box office, almost all of the "tear X" battles in this Spring Festival file are spared.
Cast fans fight each other to justify their idols. The fans of the film are not far behind, and the public opinion war caused by the double male fight is out of control, and it has also caused nonsense such as stealing the box office and manipulating the arrangement of films.
After the controversy, the fancy response of the film parties is also quite interesting.
After "Manjiang Hong" issued a statement to respond and sue the big V for rumors, Guan Bo's operation sent him to the hot search. Wrong sentence breaking, typo copywriting, quoting Qin Hui famous quotes, ignoring the day Yue Fei was killed... All put the film on the cusp.
After the box office failure of "Deep Sea", director Tian Xiaopeng opened a live broadcast with netizens for several days, revealing his decision-making mistakes in creation and the survival crisis facing the company, and said that the next film would be responsible for investors. Some people are impressed by the sincerity of the director, but some people classify it as "selling miserable marketing".
When "Chinese Ping-Pong" withdrew its file, it threw the pot on the wrong decision-making of publicity.
The word-of-mouth reputation of Deng Chao and Yu Baimei's previous work made this film not favored by the public before its release, and frequently jumped gears, which made the audience feel inexplicable: Since Douban has a good score, why not gradually fight back through word of mouth?
Of course, marketing companies' judgment of public opinion trends is not unimportant. "Little Broken Ball" knows how to market feelings, but several other films don't seem to understand what the audience wants to see. Some practitioners revealed to Nag that there are several marketing companies standing behind each film in the Spring Festival file, and some also promote multiple films at the same time, and there is no exclusivity.
Not to mention whether this involves the leakage of competing products, it is difficult to say whether it can be busy. Hundreds of millions of marketing expenses have been spent, but the effect is minimal, and the resentment of the film side is inevitable.
Generally speaking, there are high-opening and low-going publicity in the Spring Festival stalls, and there are publicity "frauds", but there are those who have no ability to turn the tide. Dark horses are hard to find, and the audience's eyes are getting brighter.
Shake B micro-knowledge to seize the new channel
This year's Spring Festival file has also reached a new height in the publicity channels of various platforms.
In the three years of the epidemic, the film market has completely shifted from traditional offline roadshows and advertising channels to online Internet publicity, and more and more platforms have joined the film marketing matrix in a new posture.
It can be seen that the main creator live broadcast has become an important means of publicity during the Spring Festival this year, and Weibo, Douyin, and B station have all participated in the main creative live broadcast activities of many films.
After all, the radiation range of offline roadshow is limited, and the live broadcast room crosses the boundaries of time and space to win higher exposure and topicality for the film. Among them, the number of viewers in the live broadcast room of the main creator of "Nameless" reached 12.28 million, receiving 72.05 million exposures, 100 million+ interactions, and all 330,000 movie coupons were sold out.
And the main creators also began to enter the head live broadcast room, taking advantage of the top anchors on various platforms.
"The Wandering Earth 2" and "Exchange Life" entered the live broadcast room of Dong Yuhui of Oriental Selection, and sold tickets in the form of interviews, with content promotion as the main and film promotion as the supplement;
"Nameless" joined hands with Taobao's top Li Jiaqi and exerted amazing traffic appeal, and the live broadcast room was watched online by 10 million people that night, and all 850,000 tickets were sold out.
It is worth noting that this year is the first time that Douyin movie tickets have participated in the Spring Festival file.
Unlike previous years, this year, Douyin did not open external links to Maoyan and Taobao tickets, and users can directly authorize and bind Douyin movie tickets through the Douyin interface for purchase. As an important publicity position in the short video platform, Douyin may become a major variable in the Maotao dispute.
In the young user market, everyone is unanimously looking at station B.
In addition to the live broadcast of the main creator, the cooperation between the main creative team and the UP owner, the release of materials and the encouragement of the second creative product all promote content dissemination and young market promotion.
For example, "The Wandering Earth 2" launched the "6 Questions Raised by Director Guo Fan to the UP Lord" activity at Station B, and interacted with the head UP masters such as "Film and Television Hurricane", "Admiral Wang Situ" and "Astrophysics Dr. Liu Boyang", and interpreted the film from the direction of machinery, biology, and AI.
"Deep Sea" exclusively launched a behind-the-scenes documentary on Station B, analyzing the film's "particle ink" technology and reaching the core user group of national comics; "Chinese Table Tennis" and "Brother Yu Running Around", the top 100 UP master in the living area of station B, produced a random challenge program to deeply cultivate the community culture of station B.
In Zhihu, an active and important position in the film industry, the main creative team personally went into battle to reach the audience with in-depth professional content, which became a new idea for film promotion.
This year, the main creators of "The Wandering Earth 2", "Manjiang Red" and "Nameless" all interacted with netizens and answered questions and answers through questions and answers on Zhihu, and Zhihu also launched the Year of the Rabbit New Year Film Criticism Contest to encourage users to spread spontaneously.
In addition, the satellite TV evening also played a huge role. Before Wang Yibo's finale Oriental Satellite TV crossed the Chinese New Year's Eve, the zero point official announcement was finalized, and then the main creator of "Nameless" entered the scene of the Oriental Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala for film promotion, and the sense of ceremony and atmosphere were full.
But after the hustle and bustle, it is generally believed that films with a certain viewing threshold such as "Nameless" and "Deep Sea" are not suitable for trying to get a piece of the pie in the crowded Spring Festival file, and the National Day file or summer file is more suitable for such personalized films to show their ambitions.
Who is the winner behind the film?
The Spring Festival file is nearing its end, and according to the return on investment ratio, the biggest winner may be Huaqiang Fantawild behind "Bear Haunted". Referring to the production cost of the previous work of the series of about 50 million, the box office of 1 billion is really muffled and rich.
Huanxi Media, which has been losing money for many years, as the main producer of "Manjiang Hong", is really a long drought.
Even if the news of the "cost of 500 million" on the Internet is true, "Manjiang Hong" has made a lot of money. Even Light Media, as one of the producers, earned nearly 70 million yuan in just 7 days with this film alone.
In addition, Yi Yangqianxi's Beijing Yangji Culture Media also appeared in the main producers, which is the company's second representative work after "Miracle Stupid Child".
China Film, which participated in the production and distribution of all the films in the Spring Festival file, Maoyan, which bet on 5 films, and Ali Pictures/Taobao Tickets, which participated in 4 films, also gained a lot under the overall high box office this year.
Although "The Wandering Earth 2" is good at the box office, compared to the huge investment, the profit may not be as good as "Manjiang Red".
According to China Film Financial Report, the planned investment amount of three films, including "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Walking on the Moon Alone", is 1.72 billion yuan, with an average investment of nearly 600 million yuan in one film. In comparison, the total investment of 17 films, including "Manjiang Red", is 1.69 billion yuan, and the average investment amount is 100 million.
And this is only the investment amount of the China Film family, and behind "The Wandering Earth 2" is Guo Fan Film and Wu Jing's Beijing Ascending International Culture. Recently, there have been news that "The Wandering Earth 2" was added to more than 1 billion in the later stage of production due to a shortage of funds.
According to Yu Dong, chairman of Bona, the investment amount of "Nameless" is about 300 million, and although "Deep Sea", which took 7 years, has not been able to replicate the glorious record of "Nezha's Demon Child Arrival", if it reaches the predicted box office of 800 million, and the investment amount of 200 million yuan is true, it should not be a loss-making business.
However, it should also be said that the claim that the revenue is 1/3 of the box office is only a very, very rough estimate of the film's profit, and the actual cost and final income of the film can only be shown in the financial reports of listed companies, and the rest are "legends" that marketing numbers relish.
After talking about the box office, let's finally talk about the business of movie +.
Joint marketing is never absent from the big schedule, this year Puxi, Yadi and other brands have carried out brand joint promotion with "Manjiang Red", and Galaxy Power Aerospace even printed "Manjiang Red" on the rocket.
Lang Shi and "The Wandering Earth 2" jointly launched a limited gift box, Hamilton, who has cooperated with major sci-fi movies, has become the exclusive watch partner of "The Wandering Earth 2", and the scattered network will also launch the Wandering Earth mobile game.
Gu Dong co-launched special events with "Manjiang Red" and "Nameless" respectively; Heytea chose "Deep Sea" as its first movie IP cooperation object, and launched a variety of benefits such as linkage limited stickers and free movie tickets.
But at present, no brand has really rubbed on the hot spot of the Spring Festival, but the derivatives have stirred up a lot of splashes.
The Wandering Earth 2 is dazzling with all kinds of technology products, who doesn't want to have the same high-tech? The film party has authorized 52toys, XCMG Cultural Creativity, Yangda, Killerbody, Bruco and other brands and stores to sell around, but the biggest movement is Saifan Science Fiction Space.
Previously, Saifan Science Fiction Space announced that it would launch the same mechanical dog stupid, artificial intelligence MOSS and digital life card physical model that appeared in the film, and launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Internet.
Under the "wild consumption" of fans, the original target amount of 100,000 yuan of the project is currently crowdfunding amount easily exceeded 120 million, all kinds of derivatives have exploded, and shipments are scheduled to the end of November...
In addition, "Deep Sea" co-branded peripherals with Bubble Mart and UHOU, and authorized B station members to purchase and sell the same picture books, replica figures of Nanhe and Sea Otter Jelly Beans, etc.; "Manjiang Red" cooperated with Meow Wu and Rua to officially do cotton dolls, and jointly launched the same sweatshirt of Yi Yang Qianxi and Shen Teng in collaboration with Big Wave Cat.
The lively Spring Festival stall ended, and the next Lantern Festival, Valentine's Day stall, and May Day stall three months later, have already lined up many potential stocks:
Hollywood blockbuster "Black Panther 2", "Ant-Man and the Wasp", the amazing "Space Exploration Editorial Department", Wang Yibo's main theme film "King of the Long Sky" on the screen again, who can have the last laugh?
But in any case, after a difficult year, the hot movie-watching boom at the beginning of the year has injected a new year of strength into the film market.
Nagging hopes that film practitioners can stand up, use good works to get rid of "special difficulties", let more audiences return to the theater, feel the charm of the big screen, and realize the rapid progress of "rabbit" in the Year of the Rabbit!