laitimes

The "hidden business" of "The Wandering Earth 2": derivatives sold out, with an income of more than 200 million

After 20 days of release, the long-tail effect of "The Wandering Earth 2" gradually became apparent - the single-day box office surpassed "Manjiang Red" for six consecutive days to rank first, and the current cumulative box office exceeded 3.4 billion yuan, ranking second in the total box office list of movies in 2023.

In addition to the box office data, the premium brought by "Little Broken Ball 2" has also extended everywhere. Science fiction fans are discussing the Chinese science fiction industry as a step forward, believing that film and television industrialization has a clearer goal, and the support of ordinary audiences is simpler - "buying" the related derivatives of "The Wandering Earth 2".

Open Taobao and Jingdong Mall, enter "Wandering Earth" to see many film-related derivatives, from dozens of yuan pendants to nearly 1,000 models, covering more than a dozen categories, and the number of payers is up to more than 30,000; The "Wandering Earth 2" derivative crowdfunding campaign launched by Taobao "Make New Products" has a completion rate of more than 1,000%, and the order of Saifan Sci-Fi, one of the developers, has been scheduled to November this year, conservatively estimated that the derivative income of "The Wandering Earth 2" exceeds 200 million yuan.

The Wandering Earth 2 officially licensed derivative product

Derivatives have always been a business that domestic film and television practitioners want to do. In 2002, the starting point for the exploration of film derivatives, "Heroes" directed by Zhang Yimou tested the development of derivatives for the first time, and the audio-visual copyright set a transaction record of 17.8 million yuan; 2015 and 2016 are the "first year" of the film and television derivatives industry, and the derivatives trading amount of "The Return of the Great Saint", "Warcraft" and "Big Fish and Begonia" made many people in the industry sigh that "spring is coming", but after the fluctuations of the film industry, derivatives closely related to movies have also been bumpy and slow to develop.

Now the derivatives business of "The Wandering Earth 2" has once again triggered a consumer boom and rekindled the hope of the industry. But behind the heat, we still have to think rationally: Is the derivatives business of "The Wandering Earth 2" accidental or inevitable? How are the head sci-fi IP derivatives of "explosive orders" made? Where has China's derivatives business come in?

"The Wandering Earth 2 derivatives are the result of diversification, one is the charm bonus of the IP itself, and the other is the transformation of the entire environment, and the public's retaliatory consumption is particularly strong, so a collective carnival of movie fans, science fiction fans, and toy fans has been formed." Wang Yin, senior product director of 52TOYS, who is in charge of the Wandering Earth 2 stupid transformation mecha derivative project, told "Deep Sound".

Challenges and opportunities in extreme cycles

In the 2019 Spring Festival, after the release of "The Wandering Earth", more than 30 brands have reached authorized cooperation with the film party, and among the types of derivatives launched, most of them are co-branded and OEM cooperation.

In the 2023 Spring Festival file, the official authorized cooperation with "The Wandering Earth 2" is Saifan Science Fiction Space, 52TOYS, Bruco Building Blocks, SenseTime's sheep are large, XCMG Group "special appearance" in the film, its XCMG Cultural and Creative launched a joint cultural and creative model, overall, the output types around the second season are basically based on customization, and the authorized brands form differentiation.

The customized gameplay and unique peripheral products instantly ignited the enthusiasm of fans. Saifan Sci-Fi Space's derivative crowdfunding link completed the goal of 100,000 yuan in one minute of Taobao's launch, and by the time of February 1, more than 530,000 people had subscribed, raising 120 million; the second place in terms of crowdfunding amount was the Wandering Earth 2 stupid deformation toy developed by 52TOYS, with more than 50,000 transactions and more than 10 million raised, exceeding the target amount by 100 times.

This achievement also exceeded Wang Yin's expectations. In 2022, the entire film and television industry is in a huge uncertainty, the final box office effect of "The Wandering Earth 2" is not guaranteed, plus the cooperation between 52TOYS and the film is a half-way intervention, and has experienced various difficulties and challenges under a limited operation cycle.

Wang Yin mentioned that according to the usual derivative development experience, it takes about six months or even longer, but 52TOYS first contacted the film party in April 2022, only nine months before the planned release time, and the characters given at that time were "stupid" only thick lines of modeling framework, details and duration were not finalized, only for the framework to do the deformation logic, and then fill in synchronously with the rhythm of the film. In addition, the release time coincided with the Spring Festival, and it was necessary to prepare the design draft and put it into rush production before the factory holiday, and the team staged the "life and death speed" in real time during the development period.

In the limit cycle, the test is not only the degree of completion, but also the uniqueness and interest of the product. The derivatives of "The Wandering Earth 2" are all non-exclusive licensing cooperation models, which require licensors to distinguish between authorized objects and authorized categories to avoid vicious competition between each other, and licensees need to integrate their own technology and characteristics into products to form differentiation.

We can see that the authorized parties Saifan Sci-Fi, 52TOYS, and Sheep have all developed derivatives of the character of the star military dog "stupid", but there are differences from the final form of the product, such as Saifan Sci-Fi is mainly assembled, 52TOYS is its good at deformation mecha series, sheep are large are smart building blocks, the price, size, and function are not the same, so fans or players can choose according to their spending power and preferences.

Specific to the design process, unlike assembled bricks and Lego, deformation toys need to consider the balance of difficulty and fun, which correspondingly increases the time cost of debugging. Wang Yin said frankly that he originally wanted to add some alloy and electronic parts to the stupid, but he was worried that if the effect was not good, it might slow down the development progress, and he could only give up.

Different forms of clumsiness

The tight development rhythm increases the difficulty of production, but "lack of time" also brings new opportunities - it is impossible to stock up in large quantities in a short cycle, and can only use crowdfunding as a means of pre-sale promotion, which just allows the brand to reasonably judge the shipment output, avoid backlog problems, and effectively control costs; At the same time, crowdfunding belongs to the C2M sales model, and brands can also keep abreast of user feedback and make stock adjustments.

During the crowdfunding period of stupid derivatives, Wang Yin and his team also paid attention to Weibo, Taobao and other comment areas in real time, and also made timely updates and adjustments to the feedback and opinions with high demand, such as the newly upgraded magnetic emoji component, which users can replace at will in electrostatic stickers and magnetic components; After paying attention to the popularity of the door frame robot, the team first simultaneously unlocked the acrylic brand of the door frame robot as a benefit, and then included the door frame robot in the subsequent product development plan.

At a time when derivatives planning and production cannot be laid out in advance, crowdfunding pre-sale has become the mainstream sales model, and Modian crowdfunding, B station, and Aliyu are the main crowdfunding cooperation channels. For example, during the Spring Festival this year, "Deep Sea" launched a crowdfunding push tower plan at Station B, and the amount raised has also exceeded the target amount; "The Wandering Earth 2" has carried out in-depth cooperation with Aliyu this time, and all derivatives have been concentrated on the Aliyu platform, which has also effectively promoted the explosion of sound.

From the perspective of sales, the derivatives of "The Wandering Earth 2" have set a new trading record, and are also regarded as "milestones" of Chinese film and television derivatives in the industry, which is inseparable from a good IP base, the ingenuity and intentions of the main creative team, and of course, it is closely related to the product quality and design concept of the licensee. However, in Wang Yin's view, there is still a lot to be improved from design to promotion and operation under the extreme operation, "If we have the opportunity to cooperate with "The Wandering Earth 3", we hope to be in sync with the film shooting, and participate in the character image and design of the character in advance, with more time and experience, sales and effects may be better." ”

Where have film and television derivatives come in?

In fact, to observe the production of derivatives with industrial thinking as a whole, the mature chain is to intervene in all subsequent derivative links from the beginning of content creation, and integrate derivatives into the content, for example, European and American countries will set up a "production committee" in the film and television development process, that is, all stakeholder companies from upstream to downstream of film and television production are gathered together, and synchronous development and production are carried out at the same time. When the movie is released, the related derivatives are also online.

However, in China, the authorized party's "half-way intervention" has been regarded as a breakthrough, before it was more common to delay the layout, the movie was popular before thinking of doing derivative authorization, from development to design to production and production It takes half a year, derivatives out of the street, the popularity of the film is difficult to support consumption. In 2019, "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends" became the biggest dark horse in the summer season, with a box office of more than 5 billion, but the official authorized peripheral layout failed to keep up in time and missed the best sales opportunity, and the derivatives market was swallowed up by a large number of pirated copies.

From the overall revenue ratio, the current largest revenue of the film is still the box office, followed by product placement, and finally film and television derivatives income, the public bought the Wandering Earth 2 peripheral, its derivative income is still several times the gap with the box office, but like overseas, film and television derivatives are much higher than box office revenue, taking Star Wars IP as an example, as of last August, "Star Wars" derivative revenue reached $42.2 billion, four times the box office.

Star Wars

The domestic film and television derivatives business is still in its infancy, and in the final analysis, the current film and television industry chain is immature, and the upstream and downstream links are scattered and separated for a long time.

IP remains the source and core problem. First of all, most IPs do not have the conditions for derivatives development, in Wang Yin's view, the main role of derivatives is to allow the audience to have an emotional projection of the characters in it within a limited viewing time, which will be transformed into a desire to buy for a long time. The first condition for the IP to be met is that the characters are divorced from reality, and the scarce and unique attributes can make the audience empathize, so science fiction, anime and even monster films are often easier to develop into derivatives, and this happens to be the short board of domestic movies.

Secondly, with the space and conditions for derivatives development, but the performance of IP is uncertain, derivative licensing and development is more like a "big bet". To a certain extent, this is also related to the judgment and strategic power of the content producer, after "Nezha" missed the opportunity, Light Media learned a lesson on "Jiang Ziya" and laid out derivatives in advance, but the box office and popularity were not as good as the former; After the "Warcraft" derivative attracted a lot of money, Wanda invested a lot of money and resources in "The Great Wall", but in the end it was not able to replicate. This is also why derivatives are delayed in layout, because most producers do not dare to make affirmative guarantees about the box office and effect.

The uncertainty and limited nature of IP also caused the lack of space for IP to extend and continue, and everything was fine when the film was released, and there was little continuous operation and operation. "Sometimes even if we think the film is very good, we can only give up, because it has no back, and what derivatives do we do without the back? But like the Wandering Earth has become a continuous IP, the sales results of the first two also provide us with a reference for judging the third part. Wang Yin said.

The essence of film derivatives is still based on high-quality IP and content production, good content will make people have the urge to consume, and continue to do a good job of content, will continue to attract new participants and consumers, and the consumption value of IP will continue to be released.

When it comes to the development of derivatives in the midstream, the content creation and product production of domestic film and television are separated. At present, derivative developers are divided into two categories, one is that film companies have incubated derivative teams, such as Wanda, China Film, and Guangguang have all set up derivative teams in the form of acquisition or formation, but they are also limited to IP problems and immature industrial chains, either dissolved or directly dismantled; The other is third-party partners, which have to face the problem of non-exclusive cooperation when cooperating with films to develop peripherals, and the other is that most partners do not have IP and content support, so it is difficult to build differentiation barriers.

On the downstream consumer side, paying for derivatives is more based on the mentality of fans or "following the flow". Wang Yin revealed that among the consumers who participated in the stupid crowdfunding, seven or eight of the 10 people who paid were moviegoers or people who followed the crowd, and the real core - the power of toy fans is still less. In addition, some voices believe that a movie ticket is tens of yuan, but the derivative peripheral model costs hundreds of yuan, and the consumption concept has not changed.

In this context, the sales results of "The Wandering Earth 2" are indeed milestones, but in order to truly leverage the derivatives market, a Wandering Earth is far from enough, and at present, we also see that many content creators stick to their original intention to "open up territory", such as the picture flashback of the third part in "The Wandering Earth 2"; "The Three-Body Problem" has achieved various forms of IP linkage, continued to tap the value of IP, etc., which is a small step forward for film and television derivatives.

Entertainment is an industry that has been observed for a long time, and film and television derivatives are also a matter that requires long-term investment, and making money is never at the moment, but in continuous operation. From Zhang Yimou's "Hero" in 2002 to the present, derivatives have developed for 20 years, but they still need to be continuously explored by the upstream and downstream - upstream to do a good job of content, midstream to do a good job of quality control, consumers are willing to pay to give positive feedback, so that Chinese film derivatives will grow healthily. In a sense, "The Wandering Earth 2" may just be the beginning.

Deep Sound Original · Author|Zu Yang

Read on