Author|Weinika
Editor|Li Chunhui
Films of all genres and nationalities are being oversupplied in theaters, but audiences outside cinemas are mostly ignorant of them.
After the Spring Festival, the slightly out of the circle seems to be only one "Journey to the Bell Bud", and the other movies have collectively lost their voices. The box office market continued to be cold, only rushing to 200 million on the day of the Qingming Festival.
Obviously, no less than 5 new films are released every week, and there are even 11 films on April Fool's weekend in one go. Imported films, domestic films, and re-screenings are all on the lineup; Comedy, suspense, superhero, action, and family movies are also available; The older generation of Jackie Chan and Feng Xiaogang, Conan and Super Horsepower of the big IP, none of them can heat up the market and drive the market.
Is there quantity and quality, all bad films? Surprisingly, the released film has almost a good reputation. The domestic films "Loyal Dog Hachiko" and "Space Exploration Editorial Department" are all Douban with more than 8 points, and the imported films "Super Mario Brothers Movie", "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Detective Conan" are also above 7 points on Douban.
So, what exactly makes the movie market so cold? If people have evolved the habit of watching movies by the epidemic, it is clear that the Spring Festival file is still lively.
Hard Candy Jun randomly interviewed several ordinary viewers, most of whom said that they did not know what other films were on except for "Journey to the Bell Buds".
The general audience's closure of the news of the new film is in stark contrast to Hard Candy Jun's circle of friends in the industry. Looking at the various movie copywriting and roadshow activities in the circle of friends every day, Hard Candy Jun really wondered whether these publicity was just self-hi from the market, public relations and media. I thought that the film announcement would finally return to normal, but now it seems that the old method can no longer solve the new problem.
Outdated propaganda models
Almost all recent high-scoring domestic films have adopted a unified publicity model: open the screening early, and then the stars participate in the premiere, and then the army is divided into three ways to run the national roadshow, arrange several hot searches on major platforms, and the official account operation of each platform.
But strangely, no new film can achieve the effect of word-of-mouth pulling the film and box office through activities such as point screenings, premieres, and road shows.
"More than Endless", produced by Jia Zhangke and directed by new director Wang Jing (not the Hong Kong director Wang Jing we are familiar with), is a sensational high-reputation film at the 2020 Pingyao Film Festival, and many people regard it as "I Am Not the God of Medicine 2.0" and have high expectations for its box office. The film announcement also copied the route of "I Am Not the God of Medicine" that year, and opened a large-scale screening a week in advance, with 58 cities screened.
The film also has an unexpected joy, that is, one of the leading actors, Zhang Songwengang, became popular because of the TV series "Crazy". Zhang Songwen personally ran a national roadshow, and everyone thought that it would add to the box office. But in the end, the movie just allowed the scalper to earn high ticket prices for the roadshow, and the movie only sold less than 60 million at the box office. At this point, even Zhang Songwen himself couldn't help but question on Weibo - "What is the meaning of the movie roadshow?" ”
In the past, point screening and road shows were cost-effective marketing methods. Dian Ying can rely on the spontaneous word-of-mouth of the first audience, and the roadshow is carried out in the form of a theater charter, which is not only low cost, but also creates news topics. These offline announcements have been hindered in the three years of the epidemic, and now they have resumed again, but they seem to be just "doing for the sake of doing", new ideas, and lack of effect.
In fact, before the pandemic, the publicity effect of this model was increasingly questioned.
When these events first emerge, they not only attract the attention of insiders, but also outsiders. After all, spending a movie ticket to see stars is still a novelty at that time. But after three years of the epidemic, ordinary people's attention to movies has been greatly reduced. In particular, many movie roadshows were almost attacked by the industry chain of scalpers and fans, and finally became "rice circle self-hi" movies and movie announcements.
When the scalper of "Great Night" sold high-priced roadshow tickets to Fan Chengcheng fans, I am afraid that this comedy film with small fresh meat could not even sell the literary film "Space Exploration Editorial Department".
In addition, the short video publicity that the film has relied on highly on over the years has also entered a burnout period. After experiencing waves of sensational short video marketing, short video users seem to be immune to "crying", and the box office conversion rate is extremely low.
"Dragon Horse Spirit" and "Loyal Dog Hachiko" are both animal themes, the stories are all sensational routes, and many million-like videos have been made on Douyin, and the number of views of Douyin movie topics is much higher than "Journey to Lingya", reaching 3.4 billion and 2.9 billion times respectively. But the combined box office of the two is less than half of "Journey to the Bell Buds".
And "Journey to Lingya" is probably due to its own two-dimensional attributes, this time the marketing focus is not on short videos, but on B station and Xiaohongshu, and Xinhai Cheng has successively settled on these two platforms. Especially on Xiaohongshu, the "Lingbud Journey" film element chair and the viral marketing sticker of Vermia have achieved effective circle spread.
Moreover, "Journey to the Bell Bud" can maintain the box office crown in the later stage, and it should be a gradual break of the circle and reaching the sinking audience. Only this time, the channel to reach the sinking audience is no longer a short video.
Movies need new topics
During this period, the box office of word-of-mouth films was lower than expected, we can say that it is because the publicity is "lazy" and blindly follows the old model, but it must not be said that they do not "work hard". Because many main creators have come out to write small essays, and even staged "crazy literature". All parties are obviously dissatisfied with the current box office results, and want to rely on hype to fight again.
For example, Wang Jing, the director of "More Than Ending", returned money on Weibo to "audiences who think it is not good-looking". When "Steel Cannon" Feng Xiaogang promoted "Loyal Dog Bagong", he repeatedly made surprising remarks - "I can't tell the difference between Di Li Gerba and Guli Naza", "Public figures can only scold and fight back", and even responded to his previous immigration controversy, saying that "my people are in Beijing".
"Big brother" Jackie Chan also "slipped the tongue" and said "saying that he is happy to cooperate with bad actors" during the roadshow of "Dragon Horse Spirit", pushing the two young leading actors Liu Haocun and Guo Qilin to the public opinion.
The two bigwigs in the film industry have worked so hard to create topics. This is to be in the past, whether it is the topic of bundling traffic, discussing the acting skills of young actors, or the topic of the relationship between creators and the public, it can cause a lot of heated debate or verbal criticism. Now it is just "fried cold rice", which is a bit boring as gossip, let alone transformed into an actual box office.
In contrast, Shinkai Makoto compared the food gap between working in China and South Korea, "Keep You Safe" allows stars who debunk yellow rumors to promote movies by the way, and "Space Exploration Editorial Department" does offline pop-up activities and listing ceremonies, etc., are all interesting new operations.
Although these topics do not necessarily bring box office conversion, at least they can first make the audience curious and notice that "such a film has been released recently".
To put it bluntly, the topic of the film industry can no longer be self-hidden, and needs to be more landed and related to the lives of ordinary people. Over the years, everyone has strayed into the wrong path of traffic star marketing, but the controversial topics of "pulling heads" with each other and topics that are too "in the circle" can only attract the attention of the girls in the rice circle, and the ordinary audience is not interested, and they don't understand or bother to understand what you are fighting for.
Movies need new topics and new pop culture. The reason why the previous publicity model and topic hype, like superhero movies, once worked and could "call the wind and rain" in the film market was because it did set off a wave of pop culture and attracted a lot of passers-by who came to join in the excitement. But with the passing of these models and topics, the film publicity is bound to innovate and give the audience a new reason to watch the movie.
The audience is iterating
In fact, after three years of the epidemic, many people's consumption habits have been changed. The box office climax of the Spring Festival file is to catch up with the retaliatory consumption in the early days of the end of the epidemic. In the current cold period, you can really see the change in the audience's attitude and attention to film consumption.
Fans and friends around Hard Candy Jun said that in the past, the attendance rate of cheap morning movies was not high, and now cheap morning movies are almost full. The fan circle of habitual consumption of movies is still downgrading consumption, let alone ordinary audiences.
Before the epidemic, movie ticket prices were rising year by year, which had caused many consumers to be dissatisfied, and after the epidemic, it rose again. The friends in the industry around Hard Candy Jun are said to have some small benefits, but even if they hold a free ticket with a 70 yuan coupon, they can only go to Beijing's old or remote cinemas.
"Journey to the Bell Buds" can stand out from the cold schedule, in addition to effective marketing, it is not unrelated to its strong distribution and ticket supplementation. The average ticket price of 33.9 yuan on the first day of release of "Lingya's Journey" is much lower than that of films in the same period - such as 42.2 yuan for "Keep You Safe", 37.1 yuan for "Loyal Dog Hachiko", and 41.5 yuan for "Dragon Horse Spirit". Until now, the average ticket price of "Journey to the Bell Buds" has been lower than that of many films of the same period.
What's more, judging from the 12.6% refund rate on the first day of "Journey to the Bell Bud", there is likely to be capital behind the high box office on the first day and the pre-sale of more than 100 million. You know, the protagonist of the "refund gate" incident "Later Us" that year, that was only 9% of the refund rate.
In addition to changes in film consumption, audiences are also undergoing iterations. College students, as the main group of moviegoers, have now iterated to the post-05 generation, and people in 00 years have entered society or gone to graduate school.
Among the recently released movies, more than 50% of the people under the age of 24 who "want to see" the movie, only "Suzuya Journey", "Loyal Dog Hachiko" and "Keep You Safe". In particular, "Journey to the Bell Bud", its proportion is as high as 68%, and the proportion under the age of 18 is as high as 35%, proving that the film's high box office does not come from Shinkai Makoto old fans, but from a younger new viewing group.
And it is obvious that this new generation of young Chinese audiences is very different from the aesthetics of foreign audiences. Not only do they not like super-British movies, but even "Super Mario Bros. Movie", which broke the box office record in the first weekend of animation in global film history and became the world's highest-grossing film in the first weekend since 2023, they are not welcome. "Super Mario Bros. Movie" was released 11 days ago, the domestic box office has just exceeded 100 million, and its global box office has exceeded 3.2 billion yuan.
Of course, the overall high reputation and low sense of existence of films in the current film market also have a lot to do with the small size of the film itself and the low publicity cost of bets. "The Cloister Pavilion" starring Ren Suxi and Liu Mintao cost 30 million yuan and broke 200 million at the box office, so they began to beat the gong and beat the drum to celebrate making money. It proves that many imported films and domestic films originally did not have high expectations for their box office, and they only wanted to run a box office of 100 million or 200 million in the cold schedule through the "long-distance running" sales model, and they were satisfied.
But there are more small films with the same mentality, more than 5 new films are released every week, and more than 40 movies on the market are crowded in one track, and it is difficult to "run" out of the dark horse again - because soon there will be no films. Therefore, even if the publicity budget is small, it is necessary to spend the knife on the blade, and if you can't do routine actions, you feel that you have "exhausted personnel". The user psychology, market consumption environment and movie-watching groups of various platforms are changing, and the publicity mode of the film should also be iterated.