"Two months of good films no one asked, once bad films known to the world."
18 new films were released in a pile (a total of 12 with a box office of more than one million), as the first May Day file after the Spring Festival, it was originally placed on high hopes by the film market. However, the final result of 1.518 billion can only rank third in the May 1st bracket of previous years, lower than 1.674 billion in 2021 and 1.527 billion in 2019.
However, the May Day holiday is only five consecutive days from 2020, and if converted into an average daily box office, this year's results are actually lower than in 2018. The total number of moviegoers in the schedule is 37.62 million, which is lower than in 2017 if converted into a daily average. Compared with the "hot sky" of the Spring Festival stall, the May 1st stall is obviously far from the market performance and the public's discussion.
Although the tide of tourism and returning people on May Day this year is particularly turbulent, the more critical reason that affects the performance of the schedule is that there is still room for continued optimization of its own supply.
The difference between the pre-sales results and the final results in the first echelon makes the supply of cinemas more vigilant against the "pre-sale trap"; A large number of irrational piles in the waist echelon, in the "28 effect" constant schedule law in vain increase "cannon fodder"; There is not a single film that can form a word-of-mouth effect during the entire schedule, which further depletes the impression and confidence of incremental audiences in the film market, while high-quality films are submerged in the quiet cold period.
The problems exposed by the May Day file do not only apply to May Day.
Beware of "pre-sale traps"
"Life is Unfamiliar" and "The King of the Long Sky" ranked the top two in the schedule with 513 million and 465 million respectively, accounting for 64.3% of the box office of the entire schedule. The double-strong pattern is not new, and the classic double-strong combination of "one main theme + one comedy" is also a very common situation in the hot schedule in the past two years.
The slight difference is that the appeal of the main theme film "King of the Long Sky" this time does not come entirely from the genre or word of mouth, but a large part comes from the starring Wang Yibo.
Poison Eye (ID: Domoredumou) analyzed in the article before the schedule (click here to read: "Actors Please Take Position" is being staged on May 1st Stall) that Wang Yibo's fans have "made great contributions" in the pre-sales performance of the two films "Nameless" and "King of the Long Sky" in the May Festival file, and through chartering, media resource investment, etc., they have shown the purchasing power far beyond the other film traffic stars in the same schedule. According to Lighthouse Professional Edition, as of the evening of April 27, the pre-sale box office of "King of the Long Sky" reached 114 million, while "Life is Unfamiliar" with the same traffic star Fan Chengcheng was only 20.7 million.
However, this purchasing power is difficult to provide continuous support after the pre-sale stage. The "two-level reversal" of pre-sale performance and post-screening performance has also brought a lot of trouble to the theater's scheduling strategy.
Poison Eye sorted out the performance of the proportion of films, box office proportion and attendance of the two films from April 28 before May 1st. It is not difficult to find that due to the positive impact of pre-sales, on the first day of release, the arrangement and box office of "The King of the Long Sky" were significantly ahead of "Life is Unfamiliar". After officially entering the schedule, "Life is Unfamiliar" grew rapidly, and the box office on the second day of the schedule was basically flat, and from the third day to achieve a reversal of the arrangement and box office. In terms of attendance performance, "King of the Long Sky" hovers between 7% and 15%, while "Life is Unfamiliar" continues to remain above 18% except for the last day.
The situation of "Nameless" in the Spring Festival file is similar. From 12.9% on the first day of release, it quickly dropped to 8.6% on the third day of release, and the attendance rate continued to maintain a gap of 10%-20% per day compared to the head of the schedule.
For theaters, in films with traffic stars, it is necessary to maintain more vigilance against this kind of pre-sale data with the meaning of "trap", including reference values such as want to see data and pre-screening media popularity. The purchasing power of fans may be able to provide considerable increments on the first day of the painting, but when it really comes to the schedule, there is a great possibility of a big contrast with the real willingness of passers-by, and too much inclination is not conducive to box office revenue.
On the other hand, it has always been regarded as a comedy that is just needed in the schedule, even if its pre-sales are no longer satisfactory, in all "temporary" viewing decisions, the priority of "going to see a comedy" is always not to be underestimated, even if its starring cast and reputation are not outstanding.
The May 1st gear has a rare reversal for two consecutive days, and its main increment comes from "The Road of Life is Unfamiliar". Coincidentally, the reverse decline on the third day of this year's Spring Festival is also inseparable from "Manjiang Red" as a comedy. Both outperformed the market increment in the single-piece box office increment on the corresponding date, and the attendance rate far exceeded that of their peers. Needless to say, "This Killer Is Not Too Calm" in the 2022 Spring Festival file is even more needless to say, and the box office proportion has counterattacked from 14.7% on the first day of the schedule to 28.1% on the last day of the schedule.
It is worth thinking about it, if at the beginning of the schedule, comedy can get rid of the "pre-sale trap" and have a larger proportion of films, will the market in these days have had a better performance?
More ≠ good
In addition to the head echelon, it is worth affirming that the film supply of this year's May Day file is very rich in genre, basically covering the needs of all mainstream audiences in the film market, unlike last year's National Day file that only had the main theme type supply. But its problems are equally prominent, too many new films are piled up, and only a few are destined to reap the expected results.
From the perspective of genre, romance, action, suspense, adult or low-child animation are complete. It can also be seen in the figure below that the portraits of users who want to see the film are evenly distributed regardless of gender, age or region, which can meet the needs of different groups of people.
Outside the head echelon of the May 1st file, the film Maoyan wants to see the user portrait
(Note: "Pigman" as a low-grade animation, movie-watching decision-makers are often mothers, but the core user group should be children)
One of the relatively surprising performances is "So Many Years". The youth romance film produced by Light continues its accurate placement of fixed groups of people, and it can be seen from the user portrait that it is different from most films in the same schedule except "Countdown to Say Love You". It is worth mentioning that the film was originally scheduled for 520, but this year's 520 has 7 new films in place. After Chen Feiyu, the star of "Countdown to Say Love You", was affected by the "collapse" storm, "So Many Years" was promoted to May Day, successfully eating the gap in the romance film in the big schedule, and has now received 217 million box office, ranking third in the schedule, which is a successful strategic adjustment.
But other films, it can be said that almost none of them have received the expected box office. In fourth place is "Slam Dunk", which has been released for a week, and the new films ranked after it have not even reached 50 million box office.
The important reason is that in almost all schedules, most viewers choose only one film to watch. According to Maoyan's "2023 May 1st Data Insight", from only 3 days of May 1st in 2018 to 5 days of May 1st in 2023, the proportion of viewers watching only one film has remained above 94%, and the per capita number of movies has only increased from 1.03 to 1.06.
For audiences who only choose one film to watch, the scope of choice is still dominated by head echelon films, and will not give more opportunities to films outside the head echelon due to the extension of the holiday.
In addition, the congestion of the May 1st gear is not only reflected during the stall period. A week ago there was "Slam Dunk", immediately after the end of the schedule on May 5, there was the Marvel blockbuster "Guardians of the Galaxy 3", and two weeks later there was "Fast and Furious 10", these are the "heavyweights" in the introduction film. For the new domestic films released on May 1st, the market space after getting out of the schedule is also very tight, not like the Spring Festival film, at least there is more room for force after the schedule.
On the surface, a small 5-day long holiday makes May Day have a larger capacity than the 3-day schedule, but in fact, whether it is 3 days, 5 days or 7 days, a single schedule must try to avoid excessive bunching, and maintaining 5 to 6 films of different types may already be the limit of the current market capacity.
Mixed word of mouth
If in the past, waist films with large schedules can achieve a breakthrough, then the greater possibility is - with high-quality word of mouth, more films will be released after the end of the schedule, so as to walk out of the beautiful long-term. But that possibility is also slim on May 1st this year.
Not counting "Slam Dunk", among the new films released on May Day, only one "Changsha Nightlife" reached 7.1 points on Douban, and the rest of the films were between 5.2-6.8 points, and compared to the scores when they opened the score, the possibility of further decline is not ruled out. As of the release of Poison Eyes, "Shocking Rescue" has not even been scored on Douban.
At a time when word-of-mouth increasingly affects the audience's decision-making on watching movies, it is not surprising that the average word-of-mouth level of May 1st films has failed to undertake the enthusiasm of the public to watch movies mobilized by the Spring Festival file. But this does not represent the true level of the current supply side of domestic films.
Just in March and April of this year, there was a rare "domestic high-scoring film fixing tide" at the same time in previous years. In March and April of previous years, except for the Qingming file, most of them relied on the support of imported blockbusters or digested the residual heat of the Spring Festival films. And this year, including "Keep You Safe", "More Than End", "Space Exploration Editorial Department", "Loyal Dog Hachiko", "Love is Delicious", and many other films are all excellent works with more than 7 points on Douban, and they are set in March and April without schedule. Among them, except for "Keep You Safe", which received nearly 700 million box office, most of them did not achieve ideal results, and "Love is Delicious" failed to reach 15 million at the box office with the blessing of drama IP.
The reason is that the "too crowded" positioning strategy is also the culprit. Although several films seem to have different types and do not seem to compete in the same track, as a high-reputation film, in fact, the basic disc is radiated outward by the fan group, and the audience has a certain commonality.
Maoyan's "2023 May Day Data Insights" presents the change in the number of movie views per capita from previous years after the Spring Festival to before the May 1st file. It is not difficult to see that the proportion of viewers watching 3 or more films during this period this year has increased significantly compared with previous years, indicating that high-reputation films have indeed strengthened the stickiness of watching movies to a certain extent. But even so, the proportion of people with more than 3 films does not exceed 6.8%, let alone face the competition of the imported film "Journey to the Bell Bud" with the same excellent reputation.
High-reputation domestic films are piled up in the cold period, but they are almost missing when they reach the holiday period, and the end is a double failure of the box office and audience evaluation. You know, the holiday schedule is the only opportunity for incremental audiences in many film markets to enter theaters, and in 2022, 50% of audiences who only watch one film choose holiday movies. If this phenomenon persists for a long time, the image of the film market in the eyes of incremental audiences will become more and more precarious.
Of course, it is impossible to require the quality of all films to be improved in a short period of time, and the problem that should be paid more attention to at the moment is actually the adjustment of the finalization strategy. In the holiday schedule, in addition to the differentiation of guarantee types that have been achieved so far, a further requirement is that some films with unsatisfactory reputations and high-reputation films should be allowed to exist intersectingly, and each should perform its own duties.
The 2021 May 1st file, which is the best box office in history, is an excellent example. It is also a double-strong pattern, consisting of "Your Wedding" with 4.7 points on Douban and "Above the Cliff" with 7.4 points on Douban. The flipped score is like a wonderful intertext, the former portrait is more youthful, female, and sinking market, the latter is the complete opposite. It not only jointly supports 60% of the box office of the best May 1st in history, but also leaves a better impression on the audience who rarely enter the theater, which can be described as fame and fortune.
Benchmarking the best May 1st gear in history is actually looking for a definite template for all future small and long holiday schedules. It has a differentiated type supply, stars with fan purchasing power, films with outstanding word-of-mouth effects to break the circle, and more films left, it is best to go to other schedules to find opportunities. This is the ideal structure for a 3-5 day holiday.
Behind the rationalization of the supply of the hot schedule, the greater hope is to push back the rationalization of the supply of the cold period. We have advocated more than once that we cultivate the audience's movie-watching habits, starting with treating movies as daily "rice", and our efforts in March and April this year have also begun to bear fruit. However, the mobilization of movie-watching enthusiasm is a long-term process, and it should not be rushed, let alone at the "sacrifice" of the single revenue of high-reputation films.
If the fish and the bear's paw are destined to have both, then the films of "good quality and poor quality" and "good quality selling difference" should alternate as much as possible, and do not crash cars in a concentrated manner.
Text | Liu Nandou
Editor|Sui Yi