Author| clearly
Edit| Put blue
"Due to major mistakes and serious deficiencies in the decision-making, preparation and promotion of the publicity and distribution team, the film fell into a particularly passive situation in the Spring Festival file... The film was changed from the fifth day of junior high to a small-scale screening, and on February 17, 'Jedi Strikes Back'. ”
In the reconfiguration statement during the Spring Festival, "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" (hereinafter referred to as "Chinese Table Tennis") announced. Its release process can be described as full of ups and downs, but also reflects the inevitable market difficulties of sports themes at present, as well as a series of problems caused by passive publicity. Frequent file changes, early publicity investment has been lost, and the popularity has repeatedly declined, and this big IP that is not low in popularity has finally been cold.
Unfortunately, "Jedi Strikes Back" did not come. Today, the film was released on the same day as the Marvel blockbuster "Ant-Man 3", Marvel has experienced more than three years of silence, and its appeal has dropped a lot, but it still easily beat "Chinese Table Tennis" and topped today's ticket with a first-day box office of 40 million. As of press time, the film's box office on the first day was less than 10 million, and it was even inferior to the old Spring Festival films "The Wandering Earth" and "Man Jiang Hong", which had been released for 27 days, and fell to the fourth position.
This year's Spring Festival file, which has the strongest reputation and "the second in box office film history", has an unprecedented fierce competition, not all of them are winners, and there are frustrated people such as "Chinese Table Tennis". Beyond force majeure, what lessons does it draw?
The helplessness of Deng Chao + Yu Baimei's "best reputation": the subject matter is limited, and the publicity is passive
It should be fair to say that the word-of-mouth quality of "Chinese Table Tennis" is the best in the series in the "Deng Chao + Yu Baimei" director's film, which exceeds expectations. The scores of Douban and Maotao reached 7 points, 9.4 points and 9.3 points respectively.
The film is based on the story of the national table tennis men's team counterattacking from the lowest point in the early nineties. At that time, the Swedish team sprang up and repeatedly lost the national table tennis championships, which failed to win the championship for three consecutive World Table Tennis Championships. The coaching team headed by the iron-fisted young marshal Cai Zhenhua was determined to reform, bringing together the questionable "Men's Table Tennis New Five Tigers" such as the injured main player Ma Wenge, the frustrated veteran Wang Tao, the "secret weapon" chipper Ding Song who was myopic in Qiandu, and the twin star Kong Linghui X Liu Guoliang who lacked competition experience, and finally recaptured the 1995 World Table Tennis Championships.
This story has the elements that a successful sports film must have: inspirational blood, team spirit, trough counterattack, popularity. In addition, as a "national ball" of table tennis, the more famous work is only the Japanese anime of the same name, and there has not been a domestic film dedicated to it before, and "Chinese Table Tennis" occupies a gap in the market.
So, its expected box office has been repeatedly lowered, from 500 million+ to the current 100 million+, what is the problem?
Passive frequent gear changes bear the brunt. Yu Baimei said in the campus trial two days ago, "Our friends Guo Fan and Wu Jing filmed a film "The Wandering Earth", and we joked that we made a movie called 'The Wandering Ball', and we have been wandering. ”
On August 14 last year, at the Beijing Film Festival Film Forum, Gong Yu, CEO of iQiyi, one of the producers, revealed that "Chinese Table Tennis" was planned to be released on National Day. But the film fell silent after releasing some materials on the eve of the National Day, and last year's National Day was relatively empty, and there was only one "Ten Thousand Miles Homecoming" for a large number of players, and the main theme color of the film matched the atmosphere of the National Day, it should be said that if it is set on the National Day, it is more favorable than this year's Spring Festival.
"Chinese Table Tennis" restarted its publicity work at the end of last year, and was renamed "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" at the beginning of this year, announcing that it was scheduled for the first day of the Chinese New Year, and entered the publicity period together with the other six films, when the popularity of the seven films in the Spring Festival file and the number of people who wanted to watch it were at the bottom.
Subsequently, because of the involvement of relevant departments, it was rumored to change the name to "Counterattack" a few years ago, and fine-tuning the content such as character name changes was carried out, so that it missed the opportunity to be released simultaneously on the first day of the new year, and the film fermented part of the reputation through premieres, point screenings, etc., and announced on January 16 that it would be postponed to January 24 (the third day of the new year), when the situation of "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red" double-strong confrontation has been formed, so its 10.2% on the first day and 4.7% on the next day are not too optimistic, on the evening of the 25th, "Chinese Table Tennis" Announced its withdrawal from the Spring Festival stall and moved to February 17. The rare twists and turns reflect the regret and helplessness, strange phenomena and fate of sports films in the market.
Due to the particularity of the sports theme adapted from real events, the film party does not occupy complete dominance. The same fate once happened to "Winning the Championship", the original name of the film was "Chinese Women's Volleyball", due to the epidemic withdrawal to the National Day file, and then due to the boycott of the volleyball association and prototype characters, it was close to release and encountered a change of name and dubbing, and then announced the promotion. "Alone, Playing Field" ("Li Na") has not been heard from so far.
In addition, "Chinese Table Tennis" itself also has certain content dissemination disadvantages: most of the parents who are familiar with the history of the "New Five Tigers of Men's Table Tennis" are parents, and the post-90s and post-00s groups do not know this history; Sports films themselves have limited appeal, and small balls are not as good as big balls, and table tennis fans belong to the niche circle and tend to watch games directly rather than movies; Compared with the women's volleyball team, the legend, sense of feelings, and popularity of national table tennis are relatively limited; The name change further weakened the sense of substitution and ease of understanding, and netizens said that "only by memorizing the comparison table of the names of the characters can we understand the history of the new five tigers of men's table tennis in the film."
In the case of being one step behind and bearing multiple pressures from funds and the market, the preparation for the publicity of "China Table Tennis" was already insufficient, and the frequent file changes and deletions of content were even more impacted, and even theater practitioners said that the materials were not given. In the case of passive publicity, whether it is playing the emotional card, or playing the star card or even selling badly, it is more necessary to win surprisingly in order to break through the pendant circle and hit the public group.
actor Deng Chao VS "persuaded director" Deng Chao
In Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room a few days ago, Deng Jiao stood up for the sale of "Chinese Table Tennis" and more movie tickets, and once shouted until his face was red. "Niangniang" Sun Li wrote distressedly on Weibo: "He really, be an anchor, this enthusiastic look, I still want to buy and buy." However, I shouted for half an hour the day before yesterday, and today I will drink astragalus water. ”
As the film's starring and director, and the main publicity force, Deng Chao is undoubtedly the soul of "Chinese Table Tennis". At the same time, his good popularity in the entertainment industry also triggered a group of stars to collectively call, on February 1, six Spring Festival films collectively issued a message to thank the audience and support "Chinese Table Tennis" that failed to stand on the same starting line.
At the same time, the names of Deng Chao and Yu Baimei do not seem to have been regarded as "quality control guarantees" for a long time. Before the film's word-of-mouth was officially released, some viewers were skeptical about the quality of "Chinese Table Tennis". And Deng Chao also responded positively to the problem of "word-of-mouth overdraft" a few days ago, "Some people say that we are a dissuasive group, but I hope that audiences with this idea will come and see this movie." When they were live yesterday, they all said that the director is sorry, what I want to say is that Bai Mei and I are sorry, there were some problems with our work before, we failed as directors, it is we who have to say sorry. ”
Actors, directors, variety artists and other identity labels, unified on Deng Chao at the same time, acting, appearance, box office appeal, everything is not bad, but it has not reached the peak. As an actor, Deng Chao has a serious and stubborn energy, and after being admitted to Chinese opera, he was once called a "drama maniac". In his junior year, he cooperated with his classmates to perform the New Year drama drama "Sauerkraut on Cuihua". After graduation, he started as an actor of the National Theatre of China, cooperated with his predecessor Feng Yuanzheng in the drama "Football Club", and then first entered the TV drama circle, starring in the first Qing Palace drama "Young Tianzi", and then starred with Sun Li in the love work "Happiness Like a Flower", and the relationship between the two model husband and wife has also attracted a lot of fans for each other over the years.
"Rally" won the 29th Hundred Flowers Award for Best Supporting Actor, in his career, "Scorching Sun" directed by Cao Baoping and "achieving three actors" undoubtedly has a very important position, and the interpretation of Xin Xiaofeng made Deng Chao win the Golden Rooster actor. Subsequent "Mermaid" and "Riding the Wind and Waves" have confirmed its ability to control commercial films. "Shadow" made him nominated for the Golden Horse actor, in order to play two roles for one person, Deng Chao gained 10 kilograms in 3 months, and lost 40 pounds in 2 months.
Deng Chao said in an interview: "The roles I have played, in fact, I keep a room, and each character has its own room. Xiaofeng has his room, and Fang Mu also has his room... I can't get out (the character), it turns out that I often try to think about how long I came out of that character, and then found that I couldn't come out at all, we have been together, he has lived in my heart. ”
The performance in the national variety show has greatly enhanced its public popularity and favorability, but on the other hand, it has also distracted the possibility of concentration and acting refinement to some extent. He joined the running man in 2014, and then joined the "Wuha" series, laying the image of Deng Chao's comedian.
In 2013, Deng Chao co-director Yu Baimei established the content company Orange Image, and Deng Chao's wholly-owned Shanghai Comet Hui Film and Television Culture Studio and Light Media were one of the shareholders, which also opened the deep binding between Deng Chao + Yu Baimei and light, and his wife Sun Li also appeared in many Deng films.
As a director, Deng Chao is frequently tied to "bad films". Douban's "Villain Angel" with 4.4 points, and "Breakup Master" with 5.1 points, still bring negative sequelae to it, and "Galaxy Cram School" with 6.2 points is already a relatively good reputation. This means that "Chinese Table Tennis" needs to put in more effort to reverse the previous stereotype. ——In fact, the film's reputation has indeed improved, but for Deng Chao to be widely recognized as a good director, it is not enough to rely on a "Chinese Table Tennis".
The paradox of "good actor" and "second-rate director" makes the outside world look forward to Deng Chao's "more acting and less directing". In addition, in recent years, the film market has been hit hard by the epidemic, and most male stars of the same age have chosen to switch to TV series, but Deng Chao has rarely appeared in TV series, which cannot but be said to be a pity. When referring to the non-greasy overlord literature, Deng Chao's "The Difficult Love of the Diamond King Lao Wu" is a frequently mentioned one, and it is also favored by the second creation of the short video, which reflects Deng Chao's ability to shape characters from the side.
The regret faced by "Chinese Table Tennis" comes from the natural limitations of sports themes and the recognition of the commercial market; The regret faced by Deng Chao comes from the game of actor and director's identity. Will the actor continue to fight behind the director's monitor?