It's Valentine's Day again. Last year's 2.8 points of "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ruyan" brought to the audience is still vividly remembered, #ugly# once appeared on Weibo hot search. This year, the hot search is no longer naked #ugly#, but #Jia Bingchen Qiaoen sister and brother love#, what has changed is curiosity, and what does not change is quality.
As of 8 o'clock tonight, Valentine's Day single-day box office has reached 181 million, down 66% from last year's box office. Among them, the Spring Festival films "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red" contributed 50%, and the new films only "The Sadness That Can't Shed Tears" and "Can You Don't Leave Me" won 30 million and 15 million box office respectively, and the rest of the new films have a single-day box office of only one million, no more repeats.
Last year's "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ruyan" Although its reputation fell to the center of the earth, it still got a single-day result of 140 million with the fixed audience of the original novel. And the new film released this year not only has no IP, but even the mature face actor of the right age is even only Xu Guanghan. In "Sadness That Can't Shed Tears", Xu Guanghan's actual shots add up to no more than 10 minutes, and the scene is not as good as Wang Yaoqingzhong. And the other "Can You Don't Leave Me" has a lot of familiar actors, but it's hard to imagine that such a group of people are here to make a romance film, which is called "paying attention to the love of groups over 30 years old", but Douban's one-star evaluation shows the degree of "thundering".
Jia Bing and Chen Qiaoen play a couple
You know, Valentine's Day is almost one of the oldest schedules in the Chinese film market, and it is also a very stable schedule in the big market until today, but why are the Valentine's Day movies that have emerged over the years often difficult to even pass? Under the influence of bad films, this schedule has become a well-known "word-of-mouth depression" in the Chinese film market. Not improving this dilemma will only push the audience farther and farther.
Romance movies can not be on Valentine's Day
On February 18, 1997, an event called "Romantic Valentine's Movie Night" was held in Guangzhou, and every male audience member could receive a rose for his girlfriend with a movie ticket. Since then, Valentine's Day has been noticed by the film market, and the event of watching movies has begun to be packaged as the head option for couples dating.
Watching movies on Valentine's Day is, of course, a very large demand in theory. But since the Spring Festival in 2013, the situation has begun to change.
Since February 14 is near the Spring Festival every year, and the supply of Spring Festival movies is increasing year by year, both in quantity and quality, it has grown into a pillar of the annual box office in just ten years. Therefore, in the years when Valentine's Day is particularly close to the Spring Festival, this schedule simply disappears, and only in the years when there is a certain distance from the Spring Festival, there is room for new romance films.
In the 11 years from 2013 to the present, Valentine's Day has "disappeared" five times. In years with space, it's not exactly bad movies that are released. For example, "Beijing Love Story", released on Valentine's Day in 2014, was 101 million in a single day, with a total box office of 406 million. The film is not the type of youth love that the public is accustomed to, but a group portrait of love throughout the three generations of old, middle-aged and young people, providing a more family-friendly element at the time point close to the Spring Festival, and can be regarded as one of the excellent solutions to the Valentine's Day schedule. In the case of passing the word-of-mouth, the film's box office has also gone out of the long-term, not only earning money for one day on Valentine's Day.
"Beijing Love Story" movie version
The imported film "La La Land" on Valentine's Day in 2017 is a classic romance film in film history, and it also received 247 million box office in China. In fact, there are many high-quality romance films introduced into the film, such as "Bouquet of Love" and "A Rainy Day in New York" released shortly after Valentine's Day last year. However, the fixed file of the imported film has limited room for independent choice, so if you want the supply of Valentine's Day files to improve, you mainly have to rely on domestic films.
In addition to February 14, other days of the year that are considered Valentine's Day, such as White Day (3.14), Tanabata, 520 and other schedules, also have their own limitations.
Qixi is basically wrapped in the summer file, just like before and after the Spring Festival, the new romance film will also face the situation of being surrounded by blockbusters, and the market space is limited. Choose the film to be released on this day, the genre is not limited to romance films. At the forefront of the historical box office of Qixi are "Apostle Walker 2: Spy Action", "Take My Brother Away", "Hotel Wizard 3: Crazy Vacation" and other various genre films.
Source: Lighthouse Pro
Some insiders told Poison Eye that because most of the romance films are small and medium-cost, the investment in distribution and marketing will be relatively cautious, and close to the Spring Festival and summer and other large schedules, the distribution and marketing expenses will rise, so the romance films that are scheduled for these two schedules will be more worried.
On the contrary, Valentine's Day, which is far away from the big schedule such as March 14 and May 20, has become the new favorite of romance films in recent years.
The more representative case of White Day is "Sad Story Than Sadness" in 2019, although the Douban score is only 4.8, it has accumulated 958 million box office, which is a result that breaks through the ceiling of the love genre. Its competitors in the same period are only "Captain Marvel" and "Green Book", which have huge differences in genre, and the advantages of the cold schedule are undoubtedly highlighted. The examples of the 520 schedule are "Living Together in Time and Space" in 2018 and "I Want Us Together" in 2021, both of which have exceeded 6 points, both of which are representatives of the long-term box office line by word of mouth.
In this year's 520 schedule, two romance films have been set, namely "Please Don't Trust Her" starring Zhang Ruonan and Wu Yuhan and "So Many Years" starring Zhang Xincheng and Sun Qian, and the starring lineup is obviously stronger than the two films on February 14. This is partly because May 20 this year coincides with the weekend, and the single-day box office is more guaranteed. The more important reason is that the investment volume of slightly larger love films will try to avoid Valentine's Day, which is surrounded by blockbusters, thereby releasing a larger box office long-term space.
So, on the other hand, although Valentine's Day is in great need of romance films, the choice of romance films is far more than Valentine's Day. For example, in the big schedule, the representative works of the May 1st file include "Later Us" and "Your Wedding", the New Year's Day file (New Year's Eve file) has "Predecessor 3: Goodbye Ex" and "Love in Years", etc., and the summer file has "Three Lives and Three Lives and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" and "A Slight Smile is Very Alluring" and so on. And films such as "The Best of Us", "Sadness Against the River", "If the Voice Don't Remember", "When a Man is in Love" and other films did not even choose to be released in the schedule. Industry insiders mentioned that the publicity budget matched by the volume of the film itself is the decisive element of the finalization, and whether the type is consistent with the temperament of the festival is secondary.
Therefore, although Valentine's Day is easy to make money, it also has its own limitations and does not have a strong irreplaceability.
Valentine's Day bad movies, was it intentional or careless?
Many people may not understand, how can people still watch such ugly films every year? In fact, when people open Douyin Kuaishou, there are also a large number of shoddy short videos and live broadcasts frantically harvesting wealth, and the principle is the same.
This type of product is aimed at a relatively sinking audience. According to Maoyan Professional Edition, "Sadness That Can't Shed Tears" accounted for 60% of the box office in third- and fourth-tier cities, the same as last year's "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ruyan". Compared with the single-day box office of "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" today, third- and fourth-tier cities account for only 51% and 45%.
Poison Eye has analyzed the development process of youth love movies in detail in past articles (click here to read: How long can light still be "young"?). Since "To Our Dying Youth" in 2013, youth love movies have ushered in its popular period. But since then, the quantitative blowout has not brought about qualitative evolution, and a large number of viewers are tired of the bloody plot in it, and have also entered a period of market performance trough. However, for the audience in the sinking market, due to the low frequency of watching movies, it is still in the last aesthetic stage, so this set is still popular for specific groups.
In particular, with a set of combination punches of "youth literature IP + high-value actors + short video marketing", you can basically carry out a simple harvest that guarantees the lower limit of the box office. Since the outbreak of "Predecessor 3: Goodbye Ex" on the short video platform in 2017 brought a huge box office increase, "tear jerking short video" has basically become the most core tool in the marketing of romance films. However, after so many years of remakes, the stock of youth literary IP has gradually decreased, and the salary after the actor's popularity has increased, and it is not convenient to control costs, so I saw these romance films with increasingly missing market elements in this year's Valentine's Day file.
The title "Stinky and Long" is also a profile of the romance film's sinking strategy. For example, "Sadness That Can't Shed Tears" and "Sadness Against the River" and "Sad Stories More Than Sadness"; "Can You Don't Leave Me" and "Can You Just Like Me" and "If One Day I Will Leave You" are almost rearrangements of fixed words, which are very easy for ordinary audiences to confuse. For movie fans, it may be a movie that they don't want to watch as soon as they hear it, but for low-frequency audiences, perhaps the more straightforward the title, the easier it is to extract information and have a better communication effect.
But this is difficult to sustain, the audience's aesthetic ability is always in the process of continuous improvement, and the latecomers always have to pay for the negative evaluation of the predecessors. Last year's Valentine's Day file "Ten Years of One Pin Wen Ruyan", most viewers began to watch the first scene at 13:14, and by 16 pm #ugly# entry appeared, and at 17 o'clock it appeared on Weibo hot search. The next day, Douban scored 2.9, basically announcing the "death sentence" at the box office. This also directly affects the enthusiasm of this year's Valentine's Day file, before the release of the movie, many viewers have left a forward-looking short comment on Douban that "Valentine's Day movies are bad movies", and the negative impression of the entire schedule has been deeply rooted.
In the film market, where the speed of public feedback is getting faster and faster, it will be more and more difficult to "simply harvest". Therefore, the "Valentine's Day bad film" emerging at this stage is the product of the lack of upper limit of the schedule and the characteristics of the audience to keep the minimum limit of each other, and it will gradually pay the price with the change of the audience.
Make Valentine's Day stalls better
The natural consumption schedule should not be missed, and in order to make good use of the schedule resources of the Valentine's Day stall, the concept needs to be updated from upstream to downstream.
First of all, on the creative side, the huge audience of romance films has always called for better supply, but in addition to assembly line works in China, there are few excellent romance film creators, which is a great mismatch between demand and supply. Some practitioners said that it is actually particularly difficult for romance films to be filmed well, "because too simple stories can no longer meet the current audience, and it has no other grips such as special effects, scenes and other grips to make up for the lack of plot, and now in addition to young directors trying out, few big directors are willing to make pure romance films." ”
Even among excellent young creators, the genre of love is rarely mentioned, and it is not a common pursuit of young creators' artistic concepts. For example, in last year's FIRST Surprise Film Festival Genre Film Lab, only one of the twenty outstanding scripts shortlisted was a love genre, but crime genre films were more common.
It's not that we haven't seen the possibility of excellent domestic romance films. Even if you only cite examples from recent years, there are "The Myth of Love" and "Hidden in the Dust". They prove that no matter what life background is cut into, love can have more room for interpretation and extension, waiting for creators to explore, rather than only showing the audience "children's emotional" love.
Second, the market should abandon the fixed thinking of "only earning one day". Word-of-mouth romance films, choosing Valentine's Day to be released, may bring greater blessings. The reason is that the viewing of the movie on that day just needs users to help the good films with limited sales to achieve a cold start, and help the film form a wider first wave of word-of-mouth publicity after leaving the scene, so as to run out of the long term.
For example, "I Want Us Together" in 2021, which is 520 files, has no big IP foundation, the influence of the starring lineup is also limited, and the Douban score of 6.0 can only be considered decent, but it still won 320 million box office during the premiere in 2021, and the box office on the first day only accounted for 31% of the total box office of the premiere. This shows that even just passing the word of mouth is enough for romance films to earn after Valentine's Day, which shows the tolerance of the audience.
From the perspective of macro resource allocation, better quality romance films should also be adjusted to the Valentine's Day file as much as possible to break the stereotype of the new public about this schedule. After all, as a schedule closest to the Spring Festival, it is the moment of the year when public opinion pays more attention to the movie, once a negative impression is accumulated, the audience will lose trust in the entire love genre.
After all, Valentine's Day does need a romantic date, and watching movies has always been an important holiday choice for couples, but if the habit of watching movies is gradually lost, there will always be new entertainment methods born as substitutes, after all, nowadays, no movie is irreplaceable.