Popcorn has two poles at the box office at home and abroad, and the imported films that can make money in China will become more and more limited
Text/Pang Hongbo
"If the Chinese public is quitting Hollywood movies..."
In the past three years, the decline of Hollywood films in China has reached a very serious point. If the box office of the past three years has been poor, you can dump the epidemic, then this year's Hollywood films' defeat in China is the beginning of anxiety.
Up to now, the box office champion of the imported film is Japan's "Journey to the Bell Bud", Hollywood's most "high-grossing" "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Frenzy" has a cumulative box office of only 272 million, and only "Ant-Man 3" and "Black Panther 2" have exceeded 100 million in Hollywood imported films released in China.
Recently, the global box office has accumulated 439 million US dollars and broke the record of the highest box office of animated films in film history, and "Super Mario Brothers Movie" has only received less than 90 million box office in China. And judging from the rating, the film's performance in China is acceptable, but such a cold is probably not just a single question of whether a film is well received or not.
If the failure of superhero blockbusters in China is attributed to the "de-powdering" of domestic audiences in the past three years, then the polarity of the domestic and foreign box office of Hollywood popcorn movies may indicate that Chinese audiences are "desensitized" to Hollywood. Once this "desensitization" spreads, then the range of imported films that sell in China is quite narrow.
1
—"Popcorn" is a manifestation of desensitization—
Representative of the anti-cinematic adaptation.
"Super Mario Bros. Movie", which was released simultaneously in China and the United States on April 5, performed very differently in the two markets. In North America, the film broke the record for the highest grossing opening weekend of an animated film in film history. At present, the film's global box office has accumulated 439 million, and Deadline estimates that the final global box office may exceed 1 billion US dollars.
In the domestic market, the film won 32.3779 million box office on the first day of release, which was not as good as "Journey to the Ringbud" on the 13th day of release and "Loyal Dog Hachiko" on the 6th day of release. The next day, it was surpassed by "Keep You Safe" on the 28th day of release, and the single-day box office only reported 3.611 million. At present, the cumulative box office is 88.41 million, and the predicted box office landing point is about 130 million.
For such a popcorn-oriented movie, it is not surprising that it must be polar in word-of-mouth evaluation. The Super Mario Movie has a freshness rating of only 57% on Rotten Tomatoes, but a popcorn index of 96%. From the point of view of the film, the hollowness of the narrative of the film is obvious, but from the perspective of the general public's "popcorn", the film is full of fun and feelings.
And in terms of production and development, in fact, the main creator has already made a trade-off. In terms of production, Miyamoto Shigeru clearly put forward requirements for the filmmaker, Lighting Entertainment Animation Film Company's CEO Meler Dandry: "Mario" filmization, the plot is not important, the character is not important, "who Mario is" is not important, the core issue to be dealt with in the film is how to evoke the player's experience of playing the game on the screen of "greater than life", and let the audience see everything they have seen in the game on the enlarged screen.
Judging from the feedback of the results, the popcorn index and box office results illustrate that this "original intention" has been fulfilled. It can also be seen from this film that the core of the film adaptation is an anti-cinematic adaptation, hoping to make it a pure "popcorn" movie.
But in the domestic market, popcorn movies are often prone to box office and word-of-mouth upside down. However, the scores of the two major ticketing platforms of "Super Mario Bros. Movie" have reached 9 points, and the Douban score is also as high as 8.1 points. A "998" word-of-mouth film failed to get corresponding feedback on box office results.
If the audience's "de-powdering" of superhero blockbusters is that its mediocre narrative drags down the reputation of the entire movie, then the audience's "desensitization" of popcorn movies is a reflection of the audience's loss of interest in some imported films.
2
—Hollywood "can't attack" the Chinese market—
The world's largest box office cannot contribute to the corresponding proportion of the box office.
This year, benefiting from the recovery of the Spring Festival file and the recovery of normalized content supply, the Chinese mainland film market has now reported a cumulative closing of 25. With a box office of 1.3 billion US dollars, it surpassed North America's 2.162 billion and occupied the world's largest box office. Chinese mainland film market has been "sitting on two sides and looking at one" for many years, and this year it has regained its vitality after the impact of the epidemic has subsided.
Up to now, among the top ten global box office, 3 are domestic films released during the Spring Festival. Among the remaining 7 films, "Fast Pursuit 4" has not yet been finalized in China, and the remaining 6 films account for an average of 11.2% of its global box office, of which "Lingbud Journey" is its largest box office, accounting for 42.3% of its global box office.
Among the top ten global box office in 2022, 3 have not been released in China, and 2 domestic films have entered the top ten, ranking ninth and tenth. Among the remaining 5 films, the Chinese market accounted for an average of 6.84% of its global box office.
In 2018 and 2019, among the top five imported films released in the mainland box office, two mainland box office films were the world's largest box office every year, and the mainland box office accounted for an average of 22.12% of these 10 films.
For example, "Ant-Man 3" was released simultaneously in China and the United States, and the current global box office is 474 million, but the mainland box office is less than 40 million US dollars, and the mainland box office accounts for less than 8.4%. The first two parts of the series won the mainland box office of 670 million yuan and 831 million yuan in 2015 and 2018 respectively, accounting for 18.9% and 19.4% of the global box office respectively.
If we say that the stagnation of the past three years has led to the audience "losing powder" of superhero blockbusters. And the popcorn that exploded in North America was cold at the domestic box office. Then Hollywood and the Chinese market are in a very delicate relationship. Although the Chinese market is still competing for the world's largest box office, the box office contribution to a single film is weakening in the global commercial film system.
Once this situation scales, the consequences may be more serious than expected. 、
3
—Buyout films cannot "replace" Hollywood, and no one in China and the United States can do without anyone—
Buyout films can't go mainstream.
Although "Journey to the Bell Bud" was released this year, it broke the domestic box office record for Japanese films, and the Chinese market accounted for nearly half of its global box office. However, buyout films and Hollywood global blockbusters cannot achieve "equal replacement", believing that "there are still new imported films selling in the mainland, so it is okay for the Chinese box office to decline in the global box office of Hollywood films" is a very arrogant behavior.
In 2017, Let's Wrestle! "Daddy" slashed 1.299 billion yuan in the mainland film market, becoming the third place in the box office of imported films that year. Subsequently, there was a boom in buy-out films, especially in the Indian buy-off market. But from 2018 to today, a total of 6 Indian films have exceeded 100 million at the box office in the mainland market, and all of them are pre-epidemic. If compressed to 2020 to the present, in the past three years, the highest box office in the mainland market of Indian films is "Manslaughter", with a box office of only 31.494 million.
In contrast, Japanese anime has a significantly larger market space in the country. Up to now, a total of 22 imported Japanese films have exceeded 100 million at the box office in the mainland market, and 7 films have exceeded 100 million at the box office in the past three years, all of which are animated films. Although Rimanga has a relatively stable audience base in China, Rimanga is a smaller branch after all. And except for a few hits, most of the daily comic box office volume is concentrated between 100 million and 300 million.
For the Chinese film market, which hopes to return to 55 billion or even 60 billion, the box office contribution of imported films cannot be ignored, and the biggest force is still Hollywood. However, from the perspective of the first quarter, the total box office of mainland films in the first quarter of 2023 was 15.858 billion, a year-on-year increase of 13.45%, achieving the first year-on-year increase since 2019. However, the sum of the box office of the two films "Manjiang Hong" and "The Wandering Earth 2" exceeded 8.5 billion, and the sum of the box office of the films ranked 1-3 at the box office in Q1 2023 exceeded 10 billion, accounting for 63.4%, 2 percentage points higher than the peak of the same period in history in 2021.
That is to say, the high growth of the box office of the Chinese film market is more due to the head blockbuster that benefits from the centralization of the box office, to be precise, it benefits from the further mining of the market dividend of the Spring Festival.
In terms of imported films, "Avatar 2" still contributed 743 million this year, which is still the best imported film at the box office so far this year. In addition, only 2 Hollywood films have exceeded 100 million at the box office.
Although Hollywood does not sell well in the mainland, it can be attributed to the poor content of Hollywood films themselves and their reduced attractiveness in the mainland market. But once Hollywood's attention to the Chinese market declines or the long-term box office accounts for a very low proportion of its global box office system, there will inevitably be great hidden dangers.
Previously, IMAX China CEO Meng Danqing claimed that he "does not believe Chinese the argument that they never want to watch Hollywood movies again", because Chinese audiences are becoming more and more proficient, paying more and more attention to the quality of the storyline, and if the quality of Hollywood movies is good enough, it can still attract Chinese audiences.
This sentence says that "dripping water" is indeed Hollywood movies that can attract Chinese audiences if they are of acceptable quality. However, the development of superheroic blockbusters to this stage, the domestic core audience "de-powdered" for three years, there is a trend of weakening attention. For ordinary audiences, the threshold for watching superhero blockbusters is getting higher and higher. For simple popcorn movies, even if it is a global hit, the response is still mediocre in China.
Even a masterpiece like "Avatar 2" has two polar voices in China, whether inside or outside the industry. But how many Hollywood movies are comparable to "Avatar 2"? Therefore, once only a few old IP series such as the "Avengers" series and the "Fast and Furious" series sell well in China, the balance between Hollywood and the Chinese market will be broken.
For the Chinese market, Hollywood's cold and serious "ice" has an irreversible impact on its box office growth. Then for Hollywood, in addition to the short-term global box office losses, what is more important is that the "cinematic universe" constructed by Hollywood has lost a window to cultivate a new generation of audiences in 1.4 billion supermarkets.