"Nameless", which broke 700 million at the box office, is worth more than just outperforming box office estimates

Whether the Spring Festival file can tap the real increment must rely on the continuous "severe pain cultivation" of diversified content

Text/bob

In the end, it wins in the long run.

On February 1, the live broadcast of "Nameless" director Cheng Er talking to the theater manager was launched. On the day of the live broadcast, the box office score of "Nameless" reached 679 million, and the box office of "Nameless" has exceeded 100 million US dollars at the current exchange rate. In the live broadcast, some film practitioners said: "Now this box office result, to 680 million, has exceeded 100 million US dollars, this kind of authorship of the film, such a box office, let alone in China, in other, such as European and American markets are very, very rare." ”

Before the start of the Spring Festival, "Nameless" ranked last among several box office forecasting agencies on Lighthouse Pro, with a box office volume of between 350 million and 650 million. After its release, under the unfavorable arrangement of films, the current box office of "Nameless" broke 7 to 9, and according to the data of Chinese films in previous years, "Nameless" is likely to become the top ten domestic films at the box office in 2023.

Therefore, the discussion of the true volume of "Nameless" is actually the question of whether the Spring Festival file should encourage thorough "heading" or continue to cultivate "diversified" industries in the future.

1

—Predicted 350 million before the screening to break 700 million 12 days after the screening, in fact, it has been successful—

It is necessary to distinguish between box office forecasts and box office expectations.

A theater practitioner connected with the director of Tongchenger said: "This type of film has not been on the Spring Festival file before, and I didn't think about it so much, and everyone didn't expect it to sell so well." It really worked. ”

The reason why theater practitioners express this is because according to the statistics of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the box office forecast of "Nameless" is 350 million to 650 million, and the final round is 492 million to 650 million. This data ranks first from the bottom among the 6 movies in the Spring Festival file.

The essence of the Spring Festival file is the "hand-to-hand combat" of the movie, so theater practitioners often use the real volume of the film as the main basis for arranging films. On the first day of arrangement, "Nameless" accounted for 12.9% of the films, ranking fourth. In the case that the Spring Festival file as a whole has not been released by word of mouth, the proportion of films on the first day of "Nameless" and the predicted box office of the penultimate are the "professional judgment" of the market prospects of this film.

However, from the results, the current cumulative box office of "Nameless" has exceeded 700 million, and according to the trend forecast of the real-time dynamic box office of Maoyan Professional Edition, the cumulative box office of "Nameless" will eventually reach 910 million. This has indeed outperformed the pre-screening box office predictions and surpassed the basic volume of the film.

The reason why there is a certain controversy about the market performance of "Nameless" lies in box office expectations. "Nameless" was once far ahead in the pre-screening pre-sale stage, and because of the drama bones such as Tony Leung and Zhou Xun and the blessing of top stars such as Wang Yibo, the box office expected to regard this film as the head of the Spring Festival file. However, box office expectations are not equivalent to box office predictions, so they cannot represent the true market volume of the film.

In the process of connecting with theater practitioners, talking about the public opinion and the arrangement of films after the release of the film, Cheng Er said: "For comments, I have always supported the freedom of commentary, I have not thought about this problem, I don't know much about it, but I think that the arrangement of films is also free." ”

The Spring Festival file is actually not a free schedule, especially in recent years, the Spring Festival file has shown a very obvious head-oriented tendency. As an intensive schedule with extremely cruel competition, the Spring Festival file is a "vicious battle" every year about the Spring Festival file, but every year there are also long-term films that are struggling to "change their lives".

In the 2021 Spring Festival file, "Assassination of a Novelist" directed by Lu Yang entered the station, but it was unable to obtain favorable scheduling conditions in the "head hand-to-hand battle" of "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Detective Chinatown 3", but with the out-of-file box office, it finally broke through the 1 billion mark many times "reverse fall".

Even more difficult than "Assassination of a Novelist" is "The Crowd", which only 8.5% of the film was scheduled on the first day, but the proportion of films in the second row of the new year fell to 3.8%, and the proportion of films in the file was once less than 3%. However, it jumped to the top three in a single day on the 12th day of release, and finally accumulated a total box office of 762 million. Including the release of the Spring Festival in 2022, "Sniper", which finally won 608 million box office, also relies on the off-file box office to make it stand tenth at the box office of Chinese films in 2022.

Long-term films often can't compete in the highly competitive Spring Festival file, but their own quality can actually keep the film from being completely buried, which is the first step that the market has proven its relative maturity. The "second step" of whether the market can develop more healthily lies in the fact that long-term films continue to adhere to the diversified supply of the market to activate more "increments" in the market, increase the frequency of viewing movies in the file while activating new incremental space as much as possible, so as to attract traffic to the film market throughout the year, which is what is really worth exploring during the Spring Festival.

At the same time, the box office good or bad hero has always been the habitual thinking of the film market. But in fact, whether it exceeds the basic volume of the box office, the return on investment ratio is the key to the success or failure of the film market.

2

—"Nameless" broke 700 million in the long run, relying on quality—

The "counteroffensive" of attendance is the only way for the Spring Festival stall to take a long line at this stage.

For a serious film with obvious stylization such as "Nameless", it is extremely difficult to publicize. There are mainly two "traps" in publicity, one is "too narrow", self-contraction with "literary films" as the axis, which will inevitably lead to the film facing a more severe market environment in the head-oriented Spring Festival file, and even completely lose opportunities; The second is "too wide", "inducing" the audience in the form of a completely commercial film, but the case of literary and art films "luring" small-town young people into theaters and eventually reacting by word of mouth has also appeared in the Chinese film market.

In the end, "Nameless" relatively explored its own publicity methods. First, all the promotional materials of "Nameless" have dug deep into the style of the film itself to match and attract the core audience. From the initial fixed poster to the trailer, in the pre-screening stage, "Nameless" is to amplify the texture advantages of the film itself. Like the previously released "eye killing" materials, it maximizes the interest of core users. At the same time, for fans and ordinary audiences, the "ear-style black humor" of the film in the publicity can also form a focusing effect. For example, the previously released "Thank you Nong" refuting rumors movie only has a poster in Shanghainese, this maverick material style is essentially consistent with the style of the film and the director, so while attracting attention to ordinary audiences, it does not encounter backlash because it goes against the movie.

Second, after the release, the publicity of the film was not excessively disturbed by external public opinion, and it still focused on "details" to seek steady progress. In view of the characteristics of the film's non-linear narrative, the official released a "positive sequence" poster after its release, which carefully sorted out the timeline of the film. This poster has also been recognized by many fans, and at the same time, it continues to enlarge the details of the movie, stimulating the audience's desire to "repeat the plate", and the subsequent roadshow is also maximized in the "details". The roadshow city arrangement of "Nameless" is the order of the cities that were bombed when the Japanese army invaded China, so the topic of #Nameless Roadshow City Order# appeared on the hot search.

According to statistics, "Nameless" is the movie with the highest repurchase ratio in the Spring Festival in 2023, with the second brush rate and multi-brush rate ranking first, which is obviously attractive to medium and high-frequency moviegoers. In terms of urban distribution, "Nameless" accounts for the proportion of moviegoers in first- and second-tier cities ahead of the Spring Festival file.

Because of the guarantee of the "basic plate" of the film, although "Nameless" dropped to the penultimate in the fourth row of films at the beginning of the new year, and was "stable" below 9%, the attendance rate of "Nameless" has increased significantly. On January 28, "Nameless" had an attendance rate of 31.6%, ranking fourth in a single day. But by January 30, "Nameless" attendance had risen to second place. The corresponding background is the gradual return of high-frequency movie-watching users in first- and second-tier cities that resumed work after the holiday. Relying on high audience stickiness, "Nameless" came out of the counteroffensive trend after the holiday.

3

—"Nameless" "boldly" set for the Spring Festival, movies are more than business—

A diversified market requires the continued success of "anti-schedule blockbusters".

"Nameless", as an author film with obvious stylization, entered the Spring Festival file, which is extremely bold from the perspective of business decisions. The lowest box office forecast of 350 million outside is actually the worst commercial outcome of this bold decision. But from the perspective of the actual box office, the box office of "Nameless" exceeded 700 million in 12 days, which is also worthy of recognition from the perspective of commercial investment, which cannot be drowned out by the war of words.

In terms of content, in fact, the audience's aesthetics need to be guided, not blindly accommodated. Although the narrative style of "Nameless" is difficult for the Spring Festival stall with a large number of incremental audiences. But judging by the end result, any innovation comes with pain. "Nameless"'s innovation in the narrative of spy war films is to enhance the "suspenseful" atmosphere of the film, thereby stimulating the audience's sense of participation. The second is to provide an effort perspective for the content innovation of future genre films from a long-term perspective.

For producers, whether it is schedule selection or content innovation, they need to be under pressure. Bona Films, the producer behind "Nameless", has won the championship twice in the Spring Festival file in the past five years, and in 2018, the family comedy "Double Heroes", "Detective Chinatown 2" and "Monster Hunt 2" occupied a favorable position in the Spring Festival file, but won the championship with its excellent quality "Operation Red Sea". In 2022, Bona made a "rescue of the market", and "Changjin Lake Water Gate Bridge" successfully "supported" the market with 4.067 billion yuan in the Spring Festival.

Therefore, whether it is mastering the "counterattack password" of the Spring Festival file or the "type password" supporting the market, Bona Film is currently the leader in the film industry. But movies are not just business, the Spring Festival file from the early family comedy "dominating the world", to "Operation Red Sea", "The Wandering Earth" counterattack to win the championship, and then to this year's 6 films and 6 genres, in fact, behind the courage to "do the opposite" and the drive of responsibility to promote market diversification.

The Spring Festival file in 2023 is the highest quality in recent years from the perspective of content supply. First of all, the overall reputation of the 6 main films is the best in recent years. Secondly, the 6 main films are more diversified in genre, including domestic science fiction, costume suspense, spy war, family animation, adult national comics, and comedy, covering the audience.

This year's Spring Festival stall, rare no type pile. In fact, this diversified content supply has paid off accordingly. Although watching only one movie in the Spring Festival file is still the mainstream, the average number of movie viewings in the Spring Festival file in 2023 is 1.34 times, exceeding that in 2021 and 2022, the proportion of users watching more than one movie increased by 2% compared with last year.

As early as 2018, China's film market entered the "peak space", and it is difficult to tap new increments by relying solely on theater sinking coverage. The existing industrial scale, the key to truly determining whether the film market can usher in "secondary growth" is the number of moviegoers and the frequency of moviegoing, especially the viewing frequency far below the level of developed countries, which is crucial to the recovery of the entire film market. Therefore, how the Spring Festival file changes from a high-risk schedule of "head is king" to a high-value schedule with diversified content and win-win is actually related to the future of the entire industry.

For now, the root cause of increasing movie frequency lies in the attractiveness of content. In addition to the word-of-mouth of the film, a richer content supply will inevitably maximize the frequency of watching movies.

In the Spring Festival file in 2023, "Nameless" outperformed box office estimates, surpassing the basic volume, and the value is not only the success or failure of a movie. The fundamental reason for respecting the audience from the level of content creation is not to underestimate the audience, and the essence of the market and creation is a relationship of mutual guidance, so cultivating a diversified market requires continuous exploration in creation. At the market level, the diversified market will inevitably need one film after another to "swim against the current", but only by tapping new incremental industries can we usher in a new round of rapid growth.