Entering 2023, the film market is obviously lively, the head domestic films are performing strongly, but the overall absence of 1 billion + films with a waist is absent, "waist and horse in one", head and waist health, and the 1 billion club of more films, may be the overall market to reach the box office performance before the epidemic.
Text | Zhao two knives
Entering 2023, the key word in the Chinese film market is recovery. According to data, the total box office of movies in the country in the first quarter of 2023 was 15.858 billion yuan, and the market is better than in 2022. Although the box office performance has rebounded, the overall performance is still quite far from before the epidemic. The data shows that the box office of Chinese films in the first quarter of 2019 was 18.614 billion yuan, and in 2018, the box office in the first quarter exceeded 20 billion yuan - at that time, China was generally considered to be the largest film market, but soon the situation changed and the film market began to usher in a trough...
So, in the post-epidemic era, the economy and life have been fully normalized, why has the box office not quickly recovered to the level of 2018 and 2019, and even compared with 2021, there is a gap of nearly 3 billion box office? Regardless of ticket prices, the number of screens, and the overall environment, just the movie itself, the box office gap is actually traceable.
1
Can't hit the introduction of blockbusters
Entering 2023, the number of domestic imported blockbusters is quite large, and superhero films that once had a strong appeal are also released in domestic theaters, but the box office results are unsatisfactory: DC's "Thunder Shazam 2" has a box office of only 41.192 million, Marvel's "Black Panther 2" and "Ant-Man 3" won 106 million and 272 million respectively - and in 2019, "Captain Marvel" has won more than 1 billion box office, Transformers series' "Bumblebee" 1.149 billion, Fox's "Alita: Battle Angel" The box office also had a score of 896 million.
4 years later, in 2023, the superheroes are collectively muted, not to mention 1 billion, even 500 million box office has also become the ceiling.
If the box office of DC or other companies is originally a nerve knife, and the market appeal is high and low, then the lack of box office appeal of the Marvel Universe that has entered the stage is greatly attenuated. In the past ten years, Marvel has taken "Iron Man" and "Captain America" as nodes, and superheroes have gathered in "The Avengers" to create the most successful IP universe in commercial film history. Not only trampled the old rival DC, but also went all the way to the box office in the global market...
But after 2019, after Marvel movies such as "Black Widow", "Spider-Man: Homeless", "Eternals", "Doctor Strange 2: Multiverse of Madness" and "Thor 4: Love and Thunder" failed to be introduced into China, the returned Marvel movies have indeed become less able to fight. The first is that the Marvel Universe has entered a new stage, and secondly, the needs of the domestic film market have also changed.
When superhero films that once played an important role in the rapid growth of the box office in the Chinese film market began to become less capable of fighting, the impact on the audience level was also obvious, and indeed affected the enthusiasm of many commercial blockbuster fans - this pit, at present, no genre film can be filled.
2
The 1 billion box office club is absent
You can compare the top 10 box office in the first quarter of 2023 and the top 10 box office in 2019, in fact, from the performance of the head movie, the performance in 2023 is quite excellent, with two films with a box office of more than 4 billion, but from the box office of about 1 billion, the performance in 2019 is better, and the tenth box office in the first quarter of 2023 is only 200 million...
The combined box office of "Manjiang Red" and "The Wandering Earth 2" exceeded 8.5 billion, much higher than the 6.8 billion+ of "The Wandering Earth 1" and "Crazy Alien", which revealed at least two signals. First of all, the market appeal of domestic blockbusters is indeed strong, and they have become the undoubted king of the domestic film market; But at the same time, there will be only one "Bear Haunted" in Q1 2023 of 1 billion+, indicating that the domestic film market has "collapsed" in this first quarter.
As mentioned earlier, superhero movies can't be played, and there are no films like "Bumblebee", "Captain Marvel" and "Alita";
"Flying Life" was considered to have collapsed at the box office when it was released, but compared with "Nameless", the gap between Wang Yibo and Tony Leung and Han Han's movie universe is also huge;
Of course, it must also be noted that the progress of the "Bear Haunted" series of movies, which has grown from 700 million+ to 1.488 billion, has become the benchmark for Chinese animated films.
Overall, after the Spring Festival, whether it is the domestic film "Keep You Safe" or the imported film "Journey to the Bell Bud", although it has performed well in their respective fields, the distance from the "1 billion" box office is still huge -
This should be the reason why although the top2 works in the 2023 Spring Festival file have achieved such high results, the overall box office revenue has not recovered to the level of 2019.
3
Stretch the timeline to April, and there are some good "hype" movies to talk about.
First of all, let's take a look at Jackie Chan's new film "Dragon Horse Spirit". The box office of 97.32 million in 5 days of release (as of 20 o'clock on April 11), from the current box office trend, the problem of breaking 100 million is not big, but it also makes many people sigh that the box office appeal of "big brother" is indeed not very good.
In the process of the film's announcement, Wu Jing and Guo Qilin were once highlighted, and after the official release, it was Jackie Chan as the mainstay, supplemented by Liu Haocun and Guo Qilin, but from the perspective of market performance, the box office appeal of the two young actors was average, mainly based on the 60th anniversary of Jackie Chan's film.
In the past 10 years, although Jackie Chan has passed its peak, the movies he starred in are actually good at the box office, 880 million in 2012 "Zodiac", 534 million in 2013 "Police Story 2013", 743 million in 2015, 1.753 billion in 2017 "Kung Fu Yoga", and the box office of "Detective Pu Songling" in 2019 is as low as 161 million, according to the current trend, the box office of "Dragon Horse Spirit" may not even reach 160 million.
Some analysts believe that after the kung fu superstar is older, it is indeed difficult to carry the box office, Donnie Yen and Jet Li are even inferior in box office performance in recent years, but they also hope that Jackie Chan can appear more on the screen, after all, we can't ask the big brother at this age to carry the box office.
Next, the thriller comedy "Great Night", which was considered to be a box office dark horse before its release.
After its release on March 31, it achieved a box office of 43.57 million as of the day. Its producer Yi Xiaoxing said in an interview that the film has returned to the book, and some netizens commented that the salary of the starring Fan Chengcheng and the popular artist in the comedy competition should not exceed 10 million - indeed, only with such a ratio can the film be repaid.
Ma Kai once made a good reputation "Zhongxie" before, he posted a long article a week after the movie was released, frankly saying that "the box office did not meet expectations", which revealed that "Great Night" was originally called "Stunned", filmed by the original team of "Zhongxie", and there was no money to do the post, after four years of delay, some investors were willing to invest money to let him remake, and found Yi Xiaoxing as a producer, bringing together a large group of actors from Fan Chengcheng and Jiang Long, so from the 70,000 yuan of "Zhongxie" to this "big production" "Great Night" - It's really not easy.
Some film critics analyzed that in addition to the way and rhythm of the story told by the film itself, the "popular" actors selected for this film are actually suspicious, in addition to acting skills, popularity and appeal are also debatable.
There is also a huge publicity of "More Than Endless". Zhang Songwen after "Crazy" put a lot of energy into the publicity of this movie, and even posted an article lamenting the significance of the "road show", but it was so hard that the box office of this movie did not reach 60 million - this film produced by Momo Pictures should be returned, after all, Zhang Songwen was not popular when he received this film shooting job.
The movie "More Than Ending" is actually to satisfy the "feelings" of investors, that is, the Internet tycoon who was a former media person turned "misses" of his feelings and the "echoes" of his career as an investigative journalist.
Here to sigh the hard power of the well-known director Chen Kexin, he can make the entrepreneurial history of the Internet tycoon into the box office "Chinese Partner", can also make a sports film into a box office of 836 million "Winning the Championship" - Deng Chao and Yu Baimei's "Chinese Table Tennis Jedi Strikes Back" should be said to be the biggest negative teaching material for commercial movies in 2023, although it is very hard and hard, but perhaps this movie should be shelved from the beginning.
Finally, I would like to mention that the box office performance of the domestic version of "Loyal Dog Bagong" is actually good, director Feng Xiaogang's achievements as an actor are remarkable, and the film label of a video platform can actually be regarded as having a unique vision to choose this project.
Brief summary:
Entering 2023, the film market is obviously lively, the head domestic films are strong, but the waist 1 billion + films are overall absent, of which super-British films can not directly affect the overall performance of the box office, more importantly, the Chinese film market seems to usher in a new generation moment - the new generation of commercial films represented by Guo Fan and others has begun to pick the beam, and the market is actually more looking forward to the continuous output of Han Han, Ning Hao, Xu Zheng, "waist and horse unity", head and waist health, when the 1 billion club films are more, Perhaps it is the box office performance of the overall market before the epidemic.
According to the current fixed information, "King of the Long Sky", which will be unveiled at the end of the month, will achieve 1 billion + in the May 1st schedule, which is worth looking forward to.