Sohu Entertainment Special (Hamai/Text) The other six movies in this year's Spring Festival have performed very well, some even far exceeding expectations, but "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" has become the biggest loser.
Speaking of the reasons, there are not only the confusion of publicity caused by uncontrollable unexpected factors, but also the limitations of the film's own subject matter, and the influence of the past credibility of the two directors.
Putting these factors aside, from the perspective of the work itself, "Chinese Table Tennis" is placed in the category of Chinese sports movies, or in the seven Spring Festival movies, which are worthy of affirmation, with a good reputation and a high score.
But the market is cruel, whether the box office is good or not, in the end, the audience has the final say. They need a reason to pay for a movie. There is also a reason why he or she does not choose a movie.
Fiasco -
For a movie to be good at the box office, it is necessary to talk about "the right time and place". These are not accounted for in "Chinese Table Tennis".
"Chinese Table Tennis" began preparations as early as five years ago and officially started in February 2022, with the planned release of the National Day file that year.
However, due to repeated revisions and other reasons, it was postponed to this year's Spring Festival file.
But ten days before the release, due to changing the name of the character and facing revision again, I missed the best time for promotion, pre-sale, and rush to arrange the film, and had to be postponed from the first day of the new year to the third day of the new year.
After the release on the third day of the Lunar New Year, in the face of six other films of the same file with their own characteristics and strong market performance, "Chinese Table Tennis" was uncompetitive, with attendance and box office far from the bottom, and the proportion of films in the first four rows fell sharply.
In this serious and unexpected situation, the distributor urgently announced that the film changed gears and postponed its release to February 17.
During this period, the film was screened to the audience on a small scale every day, and the main creator ran around to promote it hard, hoping to release some word-of-mouth for the film and exchange some space.
But after its official release on February 17, "China Table Tennis" still suffered a fiasco, with a box office of 8.2 million yuan on the first day, with an average of 5.1 people per game, which is not as good as the old films "The Wandering Earth 2", "Manjiang Red", "Deep Sea", "Nameless", "Bear Haunted, Bear Haunted, Accompany Me "Bear Core", only stronger than "Exchange Life".
The first day of the film was 11.8%, ranking fourth after "Ant-Man and the Wasp", "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Manjiang Red". On the second day, the platoon fell sharply to 7.0%, and on the third day it fell to 5.9%, and it was again coldly received.
According to this opening and trend, Maoyan Professional predicts that its final total box office may fall around 100 million yuan.
Manslaughter -
But in fact, the reputation of "Chinese Table Tennis" is not bad.
In Douban, where fans gather, "Chinese Table Tennis" has a score of 7.0 points, far exceeding "Nameless" and "Exchange Life", comparable to "Bear Haunted, Accompany Me "Bear Core", slightly lower than 7.2 points of "Manjiang Hong", and 8.2 points of "The Wandering Earth 2", ranking third in the Spring Festival movies.
On the public ticket purchase and scoring website Maoyan, "Chinese Table Tennis" has a score of 9.4 points, second only to "Manjiang Hong" with 9.5 points, which is a little higher than "The Wandering Earth 2" and "Bear Haunted, Bear Haunted" with Me "Bear Core" with 9.3 points, ranking second in the Spring Festival movies.
From this point of view, "Chinese Table Tennis" was obviously killed by the market.
In addition to the impact of frequent schedule changes, there are other reasons for the failure of "Chinese Table Tennis" that cannot be ignored.
In terms of theme, the main theme + ping pong has made many audiences lose interest.
In the past few years, the main theme has been very hot.
The period of project establishment and preparation of "China Table Tennis" is the year when "Me and My Motherland", "Captain China", "Heroes of Fire", "Climber", "Eight Hundred", "Me and My Hometown", "King Kong River", "Winning the Championship", "Changjin Lake", "My Fathers and Me", "Chinese Doctor" and "Above the Cliff" dominated the box office list.
But after several years of feeding, the audience's enthusiasm for the main theme film is obviously not as high as before, and some people have even felt tired.
The box office difference between "Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake" released in 2022 and "Changjin Lake" released in 2021 is 1.7 billion.
In 2022, the National Day file was the only one, and "Thousands of Miles Home", without any competitors, sold less than 1.6 billion.
From 2022 to 2023, Bona Film's three films "Ordinary Heroes", "The End of the Sea is a Grassland" and "Nameless" that have repeatedly won in the field of main theme commercial films have all performed mediocre, and the most watched "Nameless" sold 900 million in the Spring Festival file.
And sports-themed movies have not been very successful in China.
The limitations it faces behind it also make the audience lose their imagination of this genre.
Hong Kong famous director Chen Kexin spent many years and painstaking to shoot "Chinese Women's Volleyball" and "Li Na". "Chinese Women's Volleyball" was renamed "Winning the Championship" after experiencing many "tribulations" and was released, with a Douban score of 7.1 points and a box office of 836 million, which did not cause a sensation. "Li Na" was renamed "Playing Alone" and has not yet been released.
Later, Chen Kexin returned south to shoot pan-Asian dramas and sell them to overseas streaming platforms for global audiences.
Last year, the sports-themed movie "My Heart Soars" produced by Xu Zheng Company Zhenle Dao Culture and produced by Xu Zheng also underwent a change and was finally released on February 25, only selling more than 6 million yuan.
As a genre film that has not yet gained audience recognition in terms of quantity and quality, domestic sports films obviously have a long way to go.
Repaying debts -
Back to "Chinese Table Tennis", its directors are Deng Chao and Yu Baimei.
The combination of Deng Chao and Yu Baimei was held out when the Chinese film market was the hottest, and two comedies, "Breakup Master" and "Villain Angel", were released in 2014 and 2015 respectively, respectively, receiving 665 million yuan and 648 million yuan, which were considered a big sale that year, but the reputation collapsed one after another.
After that, the two put down comedy and made a feature film "Galaxy Cram School" that discussed parent-child education, which was released in the summer of 2019 and sold 878 million yuan. "Galaxy Cram School" has improved over the previous two comedies, but it is still far from excellent.
All three films made money and were commercially successful, but they were scolded a lot.
Especially "Villain Angel", Deng Chao, Sun Li, Yu Baimei, Dai Lele two couples went into battle, in exchange for a super low score of 4.4 points on Douban, not only made the credibility of Deng Yu's combination greatly overdrawn, but also lost Sun Li's reputation, Deng Chao and Yu Baimei were very concerned.
When "Chinese Table Tennis" came up, it just catered to the mood of the two at that time.
The film tells the story of a group of unpopular Jedi fighting back. On the road of directing, Deng Chao and Yu Baimei consider themselves to be people who are not optimistic, they hope to achieve Jedi counterattack through their own efforts, let the audience know that they are not playing tickets, not grabbing money, they are in awe of the profession of director, are willing to work hard, and want to make a career.
In the past few years, they have carefully written scripts, practiced hard, and formed a learning team to learn various categories of film, such as lighting, photography, and art, and constantly make up for shortcomings.
The result is obvious, the audience who has seen "Chinese Table Tennis" feels that this is their best movie, and even Li Shaohong and other industry insiders think that this is the best sports movie in China.
What is puzzling is that such a work that was shot with heart and has a good reputation has suffered a box office failure, which is not as good as their once fast food comedy. Deng Chao and Yu Baimei themselves had to admit that their former credit overdraft was one of the reasons.
"Chinese Table Tennis" took five years from preparation to filming to release, and due to epidemic prevention and control during filming, it moved to many places, and even used special effects, and the production cost will not be low. Combined with publicity expenses, the total cost is conservatively estimated to be about 200 million yuan.
If the final total box office is only 100 million yuan, the film side will divide about 37 million yuan, and the net loss will reach 163 million yuan. If the total cost is higher, the loss will be even greater.
Tianjin Orange Image Media, where Deng Chao and Yu Baimei are located, is the third largest producer of the film and will bear the investment loss together.
Tianjin Orange Image Media is controlled by Deng Chao's Shanghai Huixi Film and Television Culture Studio, with Huizhihuiying holding 28%. Yu Baimei's Wu Tao (Shanghai) Film and Television Culture Studio holds 25% of the shares, making it the third largest shareholder. Beijing Guangguang Media, the second largest shareholder, holds 27% of the shares. Light is the producer of "Breakup Master" and "Villain Angel", which has pushed the two on the road to directing.
Deng Chao understands investment and understands the market, starting from "Breakup Master", the four movies he directed Orange Image have participated in the investment, of which "Villain Angel" and "Galaxy Cram School" Orange Image is the first producer, and he made money with it.
Although "Chinese Table Tennis" faced losses this time, it had at least a good reputation and won back some credibility for Deng Chaoyu Baimei combination. If it's not just to make money, but to be a director as a long-term career, there will be more opportunities to fight back in the future.