The two film works of "Journey to the Bell Bud" and "Slam Dunk" themselves are actually of high quality, and there are also a lot of controversy - but the different direction of the controversy may also lead to changes in the subsequent box office trend.
Text | Zhao two knives
Before its release, many voices believed that the box office of the movie version of "Slam Dunk" was finally possible to surpass "Journey to the Bell Bud" and break the title of "No. 1 Japanese animated film box office in Chinese film history" that had just been won by the latter; But judging from the final results of the market, the final box office of "Slam Dunk" is still not a small gap from the box office of "Journey to the Bell Buds".
Why didn't feelings and popularity translate into high box office? Also a Japanese animated film, what is the difference between "Slam Dunk" and "Suzuya Journey"? Read Entertainment Jun here to analyze one or two from multiple data dimensions, and can also use this to provide a little idea for the publicity of domestic animated films.
1
From the overall performance of the two films after their release: "Journey to the Bell Buds", which was released in China on March 24, as of May 17, the global box office was 287 million US dollars, of which the Chinese market was its largest box office, with a cumulative box office of 803 million yuan, a local box office of 104 million US dollars in Japan, and a market of 4107.6 US dollars in South Korea.
"Slam Dunk", released in China on April 20, as of May 17, the global box office was 236 million US dollars, of which the Japanese local market was its largest box office, with a box office of 103 million US dollars, the box office of the Chinese market accumulated 636 million yuan, and the box office of the Korean market also had 36.272 million US dollars.
From the box office data, it can be seen that "Journey to the Bell Buds" and "Slam Dunk" are both focusing on the Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets, and in these three markets, the box office performance of "The Journey of the Bell Buds" is stronger than that of "Slam Dunk".
Specifically, from the perspective of the box office performance of various regions, China is the largest box office of "Suzuya Journey", which shows that Shinkai Makoto's strong appeal in China is truly the "first person" of Japanese animated films; Although "Slam Dunk" has its own IP halo, it still has more appeal in the Japanese local market.
In addition, the US market of "Journey to the Bell Bud" also has more than ten million dollars in box office revenue, and the performance of the Western market is also significantly stronger than that of "Slam Dunk".
From the above data alone, it can be seen that although IP is very important and even occupies an absolute advantage in the Japanese domestic animation market, the competitiveness of original animated films is still quite high in terms of the market competitiveness of individual films.
2
On the basis of the excellent quality of both films, the promotion of two Japanese animated films "Suzuya Journey" and "Slam Dunk" in the domestic market is quite excellent.
In the warm-up stage of "Lingbud Journey", Xinhai Cheng was invited to meet with fans in China, and the response to the premiere held at Peking University was also very warm, the Chinese theme song sung by Zhou Shen was also widely spread, and the early viewing activities organized by Station B and other stations were also fiercely brushed on social media, the film was hot before it was released, and the on-demand screening and pre-sale box office before the release exceeded 100 million.
The publicity of "Slam Dunk" is also full, focusing on "feelings" and "memory killing", and the popularity can be said to be higher than "Journey to the Bell Buds".
As of 22 o'clock on April 19, the total pre-sale box office of the film "Slam Dunk" exceeded 115 million (including zero point field), surpassing "Journey to Lingya" to become the pre-sale box office champion of imported animation in Chinese film history; At the zero point field on the day of the premiere on April 20, the box office of "Slam Dunk" exceeded 20 million yuan, and the number of moviegoers exceeded 500,000, becoming the runner-up at the zero point field in the Chinese market in the past three years.
The popularity of the warm-up stage and the box office performance on the first day of release also made many practitioners once think that the box office of "Slam Dunk" is likely to surpass "Journey to the Bell Buds", and even have the opportunity to impact the goal of 1 billion + - in fact, at least in the first week after its release, "Slam Dunk" maintained such a possibility.
Box office data shows that in the first 7 days after the release of their respective films, almost neck and neck, "Slam Dunk" even has a slight advantage:
Through the box office trend chart, it can be clearly seen that the box office began to diverge after 7 days of release, and "Journey to the Bell Bud" took the advantage:
Why the box office began to diverge after the first week of release, resulting in the slowdown in the box office growth of "Slam Dunk", you can analyze one or two from the following data dimensions.
As of noon on May 18, the total number of moviegoers of "Slam Dunk" was 17.624 million, and the total number of viewers of "Journey to the Bell Bud" was 24.17 million, a difference of nearly 7 million.
According to Lighthouse Professional Edition, the gender ratio of the two films is close, and the male audience is more than 50%, but the age distribution is hugely different, "Journey to the Bell Bud" occupies an absolute advantage in young users, and the audience of "Slam Dunk" is mostly over 30 years old. In addition, according to Maoyan Professional Edition, "Slam Dunk" accounts for 60% of the male audience, which is also a clear feature.
From the perspective of regional distribution, "Lingbud Journey" also occupies considerable advantages in third- and fourth-tier cities, that is, the user base of "Lingbud Journey" is more widely distributed and more reasonable.
So the question is, why did the publicity go very well, the pre-sale results were good, and even better "Slam Dunk" didn't have the last laugh? It's worth pondering.
3
Reading Entertainment Jun believes that the above problems should return to the two films' own positioning and publicity strategies, "Journey to the Bell Bud" and "Slam Dunk" The two film works themselves are actually of high quality, and there are also a lot of controversy - but the different directions of the controversy may also lead to changes in the subsequent box office trend.
The publicity of "Slam Dunk" in the domestic market is mainly "feelings", and from the final result, it is indeed quite successful, attracting many users over 30 years old to buy tickets to watch.
At the same time, "feelings" also make "Slam Dunk" fail to break the circle, which will make many potential viewers without "feelings" have some psychological burdens, will it be bad to watch movies if they have not read comics or anime?
In addition, the quarrel between comic fans and anime fans of "Slam Dunk" on the Internet also affected the reputation of this film in the market: in November 2022, it was written by Yomiyujun
The theatrical version of "Slam Dunk" has caused controversy, will "Lifetime" come true or end?
, the controversy that may be caused by the movie version of "Slam Dunk" has been carefully described, and after the film version was released in China, the fan perception of the manga version of the film's style and plot was significantly better than that of the anime version, and some fans of the anime version were "verbally criticized".
Looking at "Journey to the Bell Buds", there is no shackles of the original IP, the main thing is that it is the third part of the Shinkai Makoto disaster trilogy, which maintains a high quality overall, but the plot is also considered by many audiences to be unnew, but relatively speaking, the volume of controversy is much lower than "Slam Dunk", and it also attracts more non-two-dimensional users to buy tickets to watch - after all, aside from the aura of the so-called disaster trilogy, "Journey to the Bell Buds" is also a movie with rich emotions.
Of course, the fact that "Journey to the Bell Bud" can achieve such box office results is also the result of the "accumulation" of two-dimensional culture, especially Japanese comic culture, in the past 20 years. As mentioned earlier, the proportion of ticket users of "Lingbud Journey" in third- and fourth-tier cities is very high, which is directly related to the popularity of the Internet, especially the two-dimensional culture gathering place dominated by B stations, which also allows the two-dimensional culture to more directly reach the youth population and the population in third- and fourth-tier cities.
There is also word of mouth, many domestic film and television industry commentators must say word of mouth, probably the first is "Douban score", but word of mouth is a lot of meta and individualized experience, although the Douban score is very representative, but does not represent absolute - the Douban score of "Slam Dunk" once broke 9, and now it is as high as 8.9. Much higher than the 7.3 of "Journey to the Bell Bud", but this only represents that netizens who like the movie version of "Slam Dunk" prefer to score on Douban, which does not represent the recognition of the two films in a wider audience.
Not only in the field of animated films, taking the box office champion "Manjiang Red" of the Spring Festival file as an example, the Douban score is 7.1, and the evaluation on station B can be said to be miserable, but its box office has rushed out of the sky. Therefore, the Douban score, the evaluation of the B station up, etc., can only be used as a reference for word of mouth, not word of mouth itself, which may also be a little inspiration for the industry brought by the objective performance of the film market since 2023.
Brief summary:
Why didn't the box office of "Slam Dunk" do "Journey to the Bell Buds"? The answer may be very entangled, that is, its main "feelings", feelings may have pulled the enthusiasm of former fans, but may also make this enthusiasm unable to spill out, forming a broken circle; "Journey to Lingya" actually has feelings, the story and characters are original, although it is difficult to have a breaking point in publicity, but Shinkai Makoto's good reputation does have "road popularity", making the film more widely available.
In addition, it must also be seen that Japan's two-dimensional culture has indeed entered the harvest season in China, in addition to the introduction of a lot of Japanese comic movies, the two-dimensional Mei Yili bud is also very sought after in Sister Lang 4, it is foreseeable that for a long time in the future, as long as the two countries maintain smooth exchanges in the entertainment field, similar high-box office and high-popularity two-dimensional hotspots will appear. At the same time, we must also see that the future of national comics can be expected, after all, the main focus of the second dimension is companionship, and the companionship of national comics is gradually blossoming and bearing fruit, and it is also expected that national comic movies can form a movie-watching boom similar to "Slam Dunk" and "Journey to the Bell Bud" as soon as possible.