The box office of the movie controlled by Chen Sicheng reached 17 billion, and the Chen style suspense wealth password is here!

According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, the total box office of the films directed by Chen Sicheng was 12.2 billion, ranking second among all Chinese directors. If you include the "Manslaughter" series produced by him and the "Disappearing Her" that is being released, the total box office of the films controlled by Chen Sicheng will reach 17 billion levels, climbing to the first place in the fault. Why can the movie controlled by Chen Sicheng explode again and again? Cultural Industry Review (ID: whcypl) will summarize Chen Sicheng's wealth code for you.

Author | Qaqake (Author of Cultural Industry Review, Researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Tourism Research Institute)

Editorial | time

Edit | peninsula

Source | Cultural Industry Review

Chen Sicheng + suspense = box office explosion

There are three movies in the "Detective Chinatown" series, and the box office results are better than the other.

The best "Tang Detective 3" box office is 4.5 billion + levels, and the single-day box office has exceeded 1 billion, a record that is nearly three years after its release, and no film can be matched.

△The picture comes from Maoyan Professional Edition

Due to the impact of the epidemic, the film market has not fully recovered, and it is difficult for any film to reach such a level in the foreseeable future.

The name of "the first in film history", it can still bear for a long time.

The two "Manslaughter" starring Xiao Yang both broke 1 billion at the box office.

Not to mention the popular "Disappearing Her", the box office will steadily enter the 3 billion level, and the final box office of 3.5 billion + is not impossible.

Their good box office does not mean that Chen Sicheng has not missed a shot.

For example, "Mozart in Outer Space". It is also claimed to be made into a series, followed by "Monet in Outer Space" and "Chopin in Outer Space", but after only getting a Douban score of 4.3 and just breaking 200 million at the box office, it has been "buried".

Can come to the field of suspense films, the above six "suspense films" controlled by Chen Sicheng, whether they are suspense + comedy, or suspense + crime, the box office is surprisingly good.

Cultural Industry Review (ID: whcypl) would like to name it the "Chen Sicheng phenomenon".

That is, regardless of the good or bad reputation, the number of Douban scores, and what kind of sliding curve it shows, the "suspense film" controlled by Chen Sicheng is very good at the box office.

△ The total box office of the film directed by Chen Sicheng is 12.2 billion, including 17 billion for the producer

Take this "Disappearing Her".

A cold knowledge is that Chen Sicheng is not the director of the film.

But in terms of creation, he is the screenwriter of the first sequence of the film and is responsible for controlling the script; In terms of selling points, he is the "gold medal producer", which is the main marketing point of the film before and after the screening, and the public's impression of it is "scumbag but talented"; In terms of investment, his Yitong production is both the main producer and the publicity party of the film, and the two directors of the film and Wen Yongshan are also his "artists".

Taken together, Chen Sicheng has almost absolute right to speak on the set.

Yes, although Chen Sicheng is not the director of the film, he is much more important than the two "unknown directors" of the film, both in the eyes of the general audience and in the eyes of the industry.

"Disappearing Her" can be regarded as a "Chen Sicheng-style suspense film".

As the number one seed of the Dragon Boat Festival, the film sold 500 million in 3 days, according to the box office curve of ordinary films, the total box office is expected to be about 1.2 billion, but with the "word-of-mouth fermentation", the box office has repeatedly reversed.

A week after its release, the film had a feat of breaking 300 million at the box office in a single day.

You know, the last time a domestic film had such a good box office performance on non-holidays, it was "Walking on the Moon Alone" a year ago, and its gimmick was Happy Twist Production + Shen Teng Ma Li reunited seven years later, whether it was the scale of investment or the appeal of the actors, it was far more than "Disappearing Her".

△ The rank of "Disappearing Her" is constantly climbing

But now, "Disappearing Her" will cut "Alone on the Moon" under the horse and enter the top 15 in film history.

The question also arises - why are Chen Sicheng-style suspense films so sellable?

Chen Sicheng's wealth code

Chen Sicheng-style suspense film, the first wealth code, is a star blessing.

Whether there are enough stars, whether there are enough big names, and whether there is box office appeal is the primary reason why audiences enter the theater.

On New Year's Day 2015, "Detective Chinatown" was released.

The leading actors are Wang Baoqiang, who has a high national reputation, and Liu Haoran, who has just exploded with his idol drama.

In terms of comedy effects, in addition to Wang Baoqiang, there are also a number of comedians such as Chen He, Xiao Yang, Xiao Shenyang and so on.

Regarding handsome guys and beauties, there are the sunny and handsome Liu Haoran and the Xinjiang beauty Tong Liya.

In "Disappearing Her", the lineup is also good, Zhu Yilong, who just won the Golden Rooster Award for "Life Events", and Ni Ni + Wen Yongshan, who has always been famous for her beauty.

In the early stage of the film's release, you can use these stars and the characters they play to create topics and promotional copy to attract more potential audiences.

But there are many stars, and handsome guys and beauties are not enough, after all, the most important thing in your circle is stars.

Chen Sicheng-style suspense film, the second largest wealth code, is a strong type narrative.

After arriving at the theater, the audience can appreciate Chen Sicheng's understanding and shaping of strong genre narratives, that is, suspense + comedy + crime + appearance impact + various dazzling exciting scenes.

The most typical is the closed space scene in the "Detective Chinatown" series.

Intimidating characters enter the enclosed space again and again, looking for evidence, while detectives Tang Ren or other characters in the downwind have to evade so as not to expose themselves.

Regardless of whether the character arc is excellent, whether the plot starts and turns is true, anyway, with one fast-paced reversal after another, let the audience hold their breath and concentrate, temporarily forget to think even if it is victorious.

But there are more suspense films with star blessing + strong type narrative, why can only Chen Sicheng-style suspense films explode every time?

This has to mention the third major wealth code of Chen Sicheng-style suspense films, that is, the background setting.

After watching these movies, the audience should know that their background settings are not in China.

The "Manslaughter" series is in Thailand, and "Disappearing Her" is in Southeast Asian islands dominated by tourism economy.

The "Detective Chinatown" series is in Chinatown, Thailand and Japan, and "Tang Detective 4&5" is still unknown, but the "Tang Detective 1900" that is already advancing is obviously set in the late Qing Dynasty and early People's Dynasty, which is not a dimension with New China.

The advantages of this setting are, first, that the scale of creation is relatively large, which is convenient for the film party to make a big fuss in the fields of violence, pornography, murder, thriller, etc., so that the audience can perceive a stronger visual impact.

Second, compared to suspense films that set the scene in China, it is safer. For example, some of Cao Baoping's suspense films have a high risk of review, involving some deletions and even whether they can be released normally.

But while setting the background abroad, the main characters of these films are all Chinese.

Most of them live in Chinese areas, and although they also speak English, Thai, Japanese and other foreign Chinese languages, they still speak more Chinese.

The biggest advantage of this setting is that while having the above two advantages, it also has a natural sense of cultural closeness to the domestic audience.

After all, no matter what country the characters in the film are in, they all have the same cultural context as the Chinese people, and their behavior is in line with the perception of the Chinese people.

After seeing the popularity of Chen Sicheng-style suspense films, many film parties want to get a piece of the pie in related fields.

For example, "All or Nothing", which has attracted widespread attention in the industry, is highly similar to the wealth code of Chen Sicheng-style suspense films.

Ning Hao executive producer + newcomer director Shen Olympics (relatively speaking) + Bad Monkey production, starring Zhang Yixing + Jin Chen + Yongmei + Wang Chuanjun, focusing on overseas fraud factory traps.

There are big-name directors sitting in town, traffic star blessings, acting guarantees, and strong visual impact such as "sexy dealers, online dealers" and so on.

In fact, since the film was scheduled for August 11, many of the materials released have made the audience addicted, with a good number of people who want to watch it in Maoyan and Taobao, and super popularity in Douyin and Weibo, the two largest film marketing locations.

Having those wealth codes does not mean having a box-office must-hit suspense film.

But at least it means that it conforms to the laws of the market and has a higher probability of becoming a box office dark horse.

Yes, in the future, we are likely to see more domestic suspense similar to overhead settings.

Excellent marketing, so that the audience cannot escape

The wealth code of Chen Sicheng-style suspense films is not only the above three points.

Star blessings, strong genre narratives and background settings are all fixed content, and it is impossible to tear it down and start over after filming.

But how much box office space a movie has does not depend solely on what has already been filmed, but also largely on publicity.

Especially at a time when short videos are becoming more and more popular, the box office space of movies mainly depends on whether the film party dares to invest enough publicity expenses and whether it can provide more and more eye-catching high-quality short video materials.

Chen Sicheng has always known how to "attract attention", and the content and topics of the film are naturally convenient for the production of promotional materials.

"Disappearing Her" is on Douyin, with a number of videos with millions of likes, dozens of videos with hundreds of thousands of likes, involving interesting shooting tidbits and actors' acting highlights and other fields.

Although some materials are not all satisfactory to the audience, such as Chen Sicheng's "blood effect" full of requirements, the comment area has overturned, and the audience is full of voices questioning the untruth and hating Chen Sicheng's words.

But let the audience see, participate in the discussion, contribute the heat, the purpose of the film side has been achieved.

Not to mention, many netizens have obviously seen the film, and in such a discussion of content and details, it is also convenient for them to brush the second or even the third brush.

In addition, the film is produced by Taobao Ticket Owner, Maoyan Co-production, Taotao Ticket and Ali Pictures, Maoyan and China Film Co-distribution, all of which are top film companies, always at the forefront of online ticket purchase pages, and even open screen display.

Two days before the release, the main character of Zhu Yilong + Ni Ni and Wen Yongshan's beauty was announced, but after sensing the audience's general criticism of "love brain", there was soon a strategic adjustment, and terrier marketing such as "Qin Hao takes you to climb the mountain and Zhu Yilong takes you to see the sea" began to appear.

Fueled by the audience, Xuanfa carried out reverse marketing such as "Disappearing Her Peerless Sweet Drama", uniting female users to "deceive" their plastic girlfriends, which is really a two-way rush.

This is also why the female users of the film account for 76.8%, far exceeding ordinary suspense films and even romance films.

The first 500 million box office posters of the film are 5 leading actors appearing in turn, 6-900 million are double photos, and 1 billion directly appear in the crew group photo.

And the box office poster of 1 billion so far, most of the audience complained that it was the "cutout" of the previous stills, obviously did not expect the box office to be so good, did not let the artist prepare the box office poster after 1 billion to publicize.

It can be said that "Disappearing Her" relied on marketing to fight a beautiful turnaround battle, and became the biggest dark horse in this summer.

This kind of "deception" is not only aimed at the audience and potential audiences, but also for the theater line.

The most typical is the predicted total box office of "Disappearing Her". It rose from just over a billion to 1.6 billion, and four days later it soared directly to 3.3 billion, so much so that the audience thought "Cat's eye is crazy".

△Maoyan Professional released on June 25 predicted total box office

But this is a clever propaganda strategy.

In predicting this chaotic system, there is generally a difference between the first and second levels.

First-level chaotic systems, common such as weather, should rain and rain, should be high temperature and high temperature, do not change with changes in weather forecasts.

However, second-level chaotic systems, which are highly unpredictable, will change with changes in predictions, especially when such predictions are widely known.

For example, if a company has major positive news in two days, the stock price is about to soar, this kind of "insider information" will greatly attract the attention of investors, so that the stock will fluctuate greatly on the same day.

△ The jokes of stand-up comedians once made the stock soar

Box office prediction also belongs to this secondary chaos system.

That is, according to the favorable data, directly raise the box office expectations, so that the theater party realizes how popular "Disappearing Her" is, and if you don't arrange more films, you will earn a lot less money.

It is not surprising that the publicity fee is increased, and with a meal of continuous consumption, the box office explodes.

epilogue

Before the release of "Disappearing Her", the publicity strategy was relatively conservative, and the industry did not pay much attention to it, and even many people thought that Chen Sicheng had exhausted his reputation because of films such as "Manslaughter 2" and "Mozart in Outer Space".

After all, another feature of Chen Sicheng-style suspense films that cannot be ignored is that the box office and Douban scores are negatively correlated, and the score decline is large.

△The Douban score of the film has dropped by a full point

Douban users scolded Chen Sicheng for shooting badly, and the media scolded him for being a chicken thief and male staring, not a day or two.

But it turns out that viewers will always pay for content that's good enough.

Especially other groups than veteran fans, they are the widest audience for commercial films.

You laughed at Chen Sicheng's bad shooting and continued to watch the film. Chen Sicheng laughs at you to repay the mortgage and continue to make money.

In this tacit understanding, everyone is happy, and the film market is becoming more and more prosperous.

Chen Sicheng's next blockbuster film is on the way.

The next blockbuster Chen Sicheng-style film is also on the way.