Movie Summer Files: Is the Top Three Ranked Stable?
With the end of the National Cinema Recommendation Conference, most of the key films in this summer and the next half year have basically landed, not only domestic key films, but also many imported films that have attracted the attention of many practitioners and fans have also announced plans to introduce them, and the recovery of the mainland film market is unfolding step by step.
Of course, after the film "Fengshen Part 1" (newly named) that everyone paid the most attention to was set, the basic pattern of this year's summer file has been finalized, plus the previous summer file "Super Family" (scheduled on April 8) and "Megalodon 2" (scheduled on May 23), the top three summer files are basically finalized, although that sentence has been said countless times, but this year's summer file is undoubtedly "the strongest in history".
Different from the Spring Festival and National Day two new hot schedules, the history of the summer file is obviously longer, after all, the largest consumer group of movies, students, their spending power in the summer is the strongest, and the summer file will often release imported films that make fans pay more attention, especially the bottleneck of the introduction of imported films this year has basically been broken, and most of the imported films have entered the mainland without barriers, so this year's summer file is particularly concerning.
But every summer file is full of countless variables, so is the position of the top three in this summer file really stable?
From 3.7 billion to 18 billion
Summer is always the strongest
Before judging and predicting the trend of this year's summer file and the top three box office, it is still necessary to have a retrospective of past data, box office and films, of course, the mainland film market in the past three years has not been in a long-term stable situation, there are not too many data and films that can be referenced and accepted, but the time span is extended to a long enough time, or enough rules and information will be found during the period.
From 2011 to 2022, the total box office of the mainland summer file & the top three box office
Perhaps because the Spring Festival and National Day files have the strength to quickly increase the box office in the short term, often the summer file is not valued and optimistic by everyone, but for practitioners, the summer file has a stable output for three months, and it is embedded with the two small golden files of Dragon Boat Festival and Qixi, which has both long-term stable box office output and the ability to break out at a single point, and the types of films are rich and diversified enough.
Of course, from 2011 to 2014, the mainland summer file was still dominated by imported films, until 2015, "Monster Hunt" achieved a super explosion, and cooperated with "Pancake Man" to develop the dominance of domestic films in the summer file, and since then the domestic summer file has begun to show a trend of indifference as a whole.
From less than 4 billion to nearly 18 billion before the epidemic, the popularity of the summer file has amazed the industry, even when the film screening has just resumed in 2020, its starting point is the summer file, and in the subsequent 2021 and 2022, the summer file has a more serious film supply shortage, and imported films also have similar supply problems, and the explosiveness of the summer file is not as good as the Spring Festival and National Day files of this year.
But this year, the situation has greatly improved, first of all, the Spring Festival file has basically returned to the level of previous years (and the baseline of more than 6 billion), and several major films have also achieved profits, including "Nameless" and "Deep Sea" also rely on the later trend to have a box office of nearly one billion, which is enough to show that mainland audiences currently have good long-tail box office support for word-of-mouth films.
Of course, like the summer file, the film is scattered, the time is long enough, the content acceptance is rich enough, its inclusiveness is definitely better than the Spring Festival and National Day, the current three head white horse films "Fengshen Part 1", "Super Family" and "Megalodon 2" before the summer have corresponding to the extraordinary performance of the film, they are enough to make everyone have enough confidence in this summer.
The pattern of the top three is initially determined
The biggest variable is still "Feng Shen"
Despite facing huge doubts and controversies, no one will despise this summer's "Fengshen Part 1", after all, this film has a huge investment, a super star cast, and has accumulated enough topics before, so that the film's behavior of releasing materials every time it coincides with the solar term in the past few years has also been ridiculed by everyone.
But it cannot be ignored that magic (or fantasy) films are equivalent to Chinese science fiction blockbusters for a long time, at least before "The Wandering Earth", mainland audiences will generally regard "Journey to the West", "Fengsheng" and other films derived from classical mythological novels as mainland magic films, and will also regard such films as Chinese version of science fiction blockbusters.
"Painted Skin 2" was released in 2012 Chinese mainland and directed by Wu Ershan
It is worth mentioning that the director of the mainland's first summer-selling magic film "Painted Skin 2" happens to be Wu Ershan, who is "Fengshen Part 1", and even more coincidentally, Chen Kun and Fei Xiang in the film also participated in "Fengshen Part 1", presumably the two films will have a lot of the same production team.
In fact, 2015's "Monster Hunt", 2016's "Tomb Robbery Notes", 2019's "Nezha's Demon Child Descends" (including 2021 "White Snake 2: The Green Snake Robbery") can theoretically also be regarded as a kind of magic (or fantasy) film, and it is not objective to say "fantasy & fantasy movies are outdated" alone, at least one-sided, after all, most of the magic films that follow the trend in the mainland are relatively rough in production, and it is difficult to compare with "The First Part of Fengshen ".
But "The First Part of Fengsheng" is still full of variables, first of all, the film is a little restrained, everyone actually knows that the film will definitely be released this summer, after all, in April and May in the theater trailer patch has already indicated the schedule, and not long ago the newer trailer patch also showed that it will be released in July, but for many practitioners, everyone still hopes that the film can be finalized as soon as possible, and then carry out publicity work as soon as possible.
In addition, compared with other films, the control of public opinion of "Fengshen Part I" is also obviously warmer than other films, which may be inseparable from the film itself with higher traffic, such as "Super Family" and "Megalodon 2" Everyone can generally imagine the final color and box office space of the film, but the success or failure of "Fengshen Part 1" is more likely to arouse everyone's interest and enthusiasm.
Of course, "The First Part of Fengshen " is still a strong contender for the box office championship in this summer, and it is not ruled out that "Super Family" and "Megalodon 2" will have a muffled fortune, after all, like last year's "Walking on the Moon" with the double buff blessing of twist comedy and sci-fi themes to get nearly 3 billion box office results, the first part of "Megalodon" is also an unexpected quasi-hit, this sequel has the joining of Wolf Warrior Jing, which may double the possibility of doubling the box office.
The film that cannot be ignored is naturally directed by Dapeng, starring Huang Bo and Wang Yibo, the Spring Festival file "Nameless" and May Day's "Warm" all prove Wang Yibo's excellent traffic attributes, not long ago, the good reputation of "Keep You Safe" also proves the improvement of Dapeng's directorial level, the film may be the most stable film at the box office this summer, and it also has the possibility of impacting the top three at the box office.
Loosening restrictions on imported films
Will it have a practical impact on domestic films
At the just-concluded national theater promotion conference, it was rare to take half a day to recommend a number of imported films, especially "Oppenheimer" directed by Nolan is also among them, which is also the most anticipated imported film by fans this year, but the film is rated R in North America, and the R rated films successfully introduced to the mainland so far have all been abridged to varying degrees, but since the film has been promoted at the recommendation meeting, the possibility of introduction is almost "certain".
After the start of the epidemic, only four films such as "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Fast and Furious 9", "Godzilla vs. Kong" and "Jurassic World 3" have exceeded one billion at the box office of imported films in the mainland, and only five films with a box office of more than 500 million (less than one billion), including the two Japanese films "Journey to the Bell Bud" and "Slam Dunk" released this year.
But the problem that has to be considered is that the supply of imported films and domestic films after the beginning of the epidemic is also weak, although Hollywood's political correctness and the aesthetic fatigue of mainland audiences are important factors affecting the box office of imported films, but the "break" of audiences' viewing habits is also an important reason, once the frequency and quality of imported films gradually return to the pre-epidemic state, then the increase in the proportion of imported films at the box office is only a matter of time.
As far as the current trend is concerned, the June of this summer's season is basically dominated by imported films, such as "Transformers: The Rise of the Super Warriors" (produced by Paramount & Hasbro), "The Flash" (produced by Warner & DC), "Mad Element City" (produced by Pixar Studios) and "Indiana Jones: Wheel of Destiny" (jointly produced by Disney & Paramount) have achieved simultaneous release in China and the United States, which is very rare in the past summer files, at least multiple synchronizations are a rare phenomenon.
It's just that at present, many media and forecasting agencies of these films are not optimistic about it, the pre-sale of "Transformers: The Rise of Super Warriors" is not ideal, and the box office of "Fast and Furious 10" with a good audience base not long ago has not exceeded one billion, which makes the trend of imported films this summer not very clear.
But this year's mainland attitude towards imported films is very relaxed, which makes imported films this summer to achieve a mission of adjusting and firefighters, from the North American has been announced schedule, the number of imported films worth paying attention to in the future and released in July and August is not very much, if domestic films can not carry the banner in July and August, imported films airborne fire fighting may make one or two imported films have the possibility of impacting the top three at the summer box office, which may be that mainland producers do not want to see, But on the contrary, it is something that fans and terminal studios are happy about, after all, domestic films do not have much advantage over imported films in terms of settling ticket prices.
The three-month summer file has begun, the first cannon "Transformers: The Rise of the Super Warriors" has also been released, its performance will also indicate the overall trend of this summer, whether this year's summer file can return to the level of 2017-18 (that is, 163-17.3 billion), it is still very worthy of practitioners and hundreds of millions of fans to look forward to.