Author|Jianjiao
Today, Wanda Film issued an announcement announcing that Chen Zhixi, a former director of China Ruyi, will take over as chairman and president of Wanda Film.
The news didn't come suddenly. Half a month ago, China Ruyi issued an announcement saying that CEO Chen Xi (stage name "Chen Zhixi") resigned due to other businesses. On the other hand, Wanda Film also nominated Chen Xi as one of the non-independent directors.
Now that the dust has settled, Ruyi has officially dispatched Chen Zhixi to become the new helmsman of Wanda Films.
At the end of last year, the news of Ruyi's acquisition of Wanda became the most concerned news in the film and television industry, and it was also a rare large-scale investment and financing event in the industry since the cold winter of film and television, releasing a positive signal for the industry. As soon as the news of Ruyi's takeover of Wanda came out, Wanda Films ushered in a price limit for the first time in nearly eight months.
However, unlike the "snake swallowing elephant" seen from the outside, Wanda cutting meat to save the emergency, from the internal perspective of the film and television industry, Confucianism, which has risen strongly in recent years, is the protagonist of this incident, relying on Confucian's ability to produce and integrate upstream and downstream, coupled with Wanda's strong cinema distribution and projection cinema resources, the new combination of Confucianism + Wanda will unprecedentedly complete the integration of the whole industrial chain of the Chinese film industry from content development to publicity and screening, and subsequent IP derivative development.
More importantly, from the first domestic film "Thai Embarrassment" with a box office of more than one billion yuan to the investment and production of the hit "Hello, Li Huanying", Chen Zhixi has strong content control and keen market perception, and her helm has given Wanda Films a "new head" driven by content, which may also indicate a new turning point in the film industry: after the ebb of non-professional capital, the content-led professional logic has returned.
A new inflection point in the film industry: the ebb of non-professional capital, and the return of content-led professional logic
Why does an acquisition and personnel change bring a new inflection point to the industry? Everything starts from the era when film and capital "love and kill each other".
In 2015, the total box office of Chinese films reached 44.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 48.7%, becoming the second largest box office market in the world. The rapid development of the film industry has attracted a continuous influx of hot money and capital from outside the industry. According to the statistics of WIND data queried by the media, in the film and entertainment industry, a total of 125 mergers and acquisitions occurred by Chinese enterprises throughout the year, with a total amount of 92.7 billion, becoming one of the most active areas of investment and mergers and acquisitions in the domestic capital market.
In that year, Wanda Film had relied on strong downstream resources to firmly occupy the "first share of the cinema chain", at that time, Wuzhou Distribution was initially established, and at its peak, a quarter of China's annual film box office was distributed by Wuzhou. Wanda Film and Television has won a box office of 6.3 billion yuan and 580 million yuan in a year with films such as "Detective Chinatown", "Looking for the Dragon" and "Pancake Man", becoming the first private enterprise in China, and Wanda Film has become a well-deserved leader in the film industry.
The Wanda model is also a benchmark for real estate capital to enter the film industry: the combination of cinemas and shopping malls has become the biggest advantage of Wanda Cinemas, and the traffic of shopping malls and cinema brands leverage each other's strength to seize the right to speak with the scale expansion of the downstream, extending to the production link.
However, in the highly inflated and bubble stage of the film industry, the industry that relies on non-professional capital to mature has also buried many hidden dangers, the most typical of which is the box office fraud scandal of "Ip Man 3" that year, and the movie has become a financial fraud product. After the tax earthquake in 2018, external capital gradually left, and it became more and more difficult for movies to raise money. The three-year black swan of the epidemic has intensified the cold winter of film and television, investment and financing actions have almost disappeared, and the most important proposition in the film industry has become "survival". At the same time, the head film and television companies are facing a reshuffle, Internet film companies have sprung up, and traditional film companies without content genes are gradually falling behind.
Wanda Films also stepped on the brakes sharply, the most obvious manifestation is that in the past five years, except for "Manslaughter 2" and "Tang Detective 3" in which Chen Sicheng participated, none of the films controlled by Wanda exceeded one billion.
Last year, "Disappearing Her" became a summer hit, and to the surprise of the outside world, Wanda did not invest in this film produced by Chen Sicheng. People close to Wanda Films told Entertainment Capital that Wanda had deeply regretted the incident. It stands to reason that Wanda has cooperated with Chen Sicheng for many years, and is also an investor in Yitong, and all the scripts of Yitong were handed to Wanda first, but in the end they did not invest in "She Who Disappeared". Perhaps fate has already laid the groundwork, and later "Disappearing Her" was voted by Confucianism.
Behind the misplaced control of content is a series of chain reactions caused by the contradiction between Wanda's pursuit of certainty in real estate thinking and the laws of the film and television creation cycle.
At the beginning of 2020, Wanda Film and Television laid off employees, and Zheng Jianfeng, a veteran who had served five general managers in six years, was also forced to resign. In an interview with the "first director", he said that his biggest feeling is helplessness, powerlessness and passivity, "the worst thing is the frequent change of leadership", each new leader has to look at the previous project, and then make some changes accordingly, which is extremely inconsistent with the production cycle of the project.
Since 2011, Wanda Film has replaced no less than 8 general managers in 12 years, with an average of less than two years on average. From Song Ge's creation and foundation laying to Ye Ning's peak, both of them only stayed for two years before changing jobs, and then Zhao Fang took over a year before jumping to Warner, and in 2018, Jiang Defu of China Film also left to go to Bona after taking over for a year, and the next few general managers did not stay long.
The lack of content genes in the management, the assessment cycle is not in line with the content cycle, and the contradiction of excessive KPI pressure will appear at the same time with frequent changes, and the ultimate impact is that Wanda's upstream production investment business has become more and more cautious and conservative. Zeng Maojun once admitted in an interview with the media that "Wanda Film is reducing the risk of the main control film to reduce the impact of film and television performance on listed companies." "What the outside world has seen is that Wanda's main investment in large-scale projects has been rapidly reduced, or co-production methods have been adopted to reduce risks. Without the source of living water, Wanda Film and Television's hematopoietic ability has been further weakened.
Zheng Jianfeng revealed that Wanda Management Pictures has a set of internal "mechanisms", and everyone is just a "small screw" in this system. To some extent, this is also the reason why Wanda can keep up with Hollywood and constantly change professional managers to manage the film industry. However, the mechanism of pursuing stability has also made the creative side lose its original vitality and novelty, the most obvious manifestation is that Wanda's management of directors is very strong, and there is a strict internal meeting process, according to Zheng Jianfeng, this contradiction has been further intensified during the epidemic.
Contrary to the gradual withdrawal of Wanda Film and Television, Confucian Films, which is dominated by production and production, has risen strongly in recent years.
In 2020, Ruyi Pictures went public, and the following year delivered two high-quality works with a double harvest at the box office. "Send You a Little Red Flower" became the top box office on New Year's Day in 2021, known as the ceiling of family films, and soon after, "Hello, Li Huanying" topped the box office list of the Spring Festival stalls in the same year, receiving a super high box office of 5.413 billion, creating a new record for domestic comedies. In the past 5 years, the owners of Ruyi Film have produced 13 films, 10 of which are stable at more than 7 points on Douban, and the yield rate is close to 80%, which is difficult for any large production company to surpass.
In 2022, the cold winter of film and television has not passed. Not only Wanda, but also major film and television companies tend to be conservative and cautious in their investment strategies. Ruyi Pictures showed advanced market judgment at this time. Before the summer file approached, Chen Zhixi made a decisive decision to win the movie "Lonely on the Moon" with Alibaba Pictures, becoming a big producer, and then the film won the 2022 summer file championship with a box office score of 3.103 billion.
In the past 2023, Ruyi has accelerated its layout under the recovery of the industry, and participated in the production of as many as eight films, the main production of "Keep You Safe" and "Warm" are deeply bound to director Dapeng, with diverse genres and good reputation, and also participated in the summer hit "Disappearing Her" with an accurate vision, the first word-of-mouth "Volunteers: Heroes Attack" and the first high-scoring comedy "Annual Meeting Can't Stop!" in the past five years.
This dynamic pattern of "one drop and one rise" shows why Ruyi has the strength to take over Wanda Films. To some extent, this is also the result of "survival of the fittest, natural selection" in the film industry.
After experiencing a complete cycle of capital injection and exit from outside the industry, Ruyi Pictures, which is dominated by content genes, took the position and sent Chen Zhixi, who understands both content and the market, to serve as the chairman of Wanda Films, which officially released a positive signal to the industry: after the ebb of non-professional capital, the underlying logic of the content-led industry has returned.
Why Chan Tsz Hei?
Chen Zhixi, who has been an actor for 13 years, has been a producer. From creating the first domestic billion-dollar box office movie "Thai Embarrassment" with director Xu Zheng in 2012, to decisively joining Ruyi Pictures in 2015, and now becoming Wanda, Chen Zhixi has always responded to changes in himself and the industry with strong control of content and high sensitivity to the market.
Before Chen Zhixi invested his first angel money in "Thai Embarrassment", the project was aborted twice. But Chen Zhixi is keenly aware of its inherent potential: the previous work "People in Embarrassment" has a good reputation, and it has also inspired the chemistry of Xu Zheng and Wang Baoqiang, the golden pair, and will become a big IP like Feng's comedy in the future. At the same time, "Thai Embarrassment" will join Huang Bo and gather the three best comedians in the Chinese film industry at that time, which can already escort the film's blockbuster.
In an early interview, Chen Zhixi once said that he was "more important than script". When starring with Xu Zheng in "Li Wei as an Official Sanzhi Da Nei Low Hand", Chen Zhixi found that Xu Zheng was also controlling and controlling in a director's way when he was an actor. Similarly, she invested in "Pancake Man" because she fancied that Dapeng could support three seasons of "Dick Silk Man" on Sohu alone, and believed that Dapeng understood the market and the preferences of netizens.
According to public information, Chen Zhixi graduated from the EMBA of PBC School of Finance of Tsinghua University and has accurate financial investment thinking. In addition to the exploration of the potential of new directors and the accurate judgment of the appeal of the cast, she can also calculate the stop-loss point of the movie with rational data: the click-through rate of "People in Embarrassment" is 120 million, and the box office is at least 300 million based on a 10% conversion rate and a 30 yuan ticket price. The same is true for "Pancake Man", at that time, the click-through rate of "Dick Silk Man" was already 2 billion, and the stop loss point was calculated, the cost was controlled, and the movie was profitable.
In the era when the annual box office of Chinese films is growing by double digits every year, Chen Zhixi has created many commercial films that are "small and big", and has also cultivated new directors who are both commercial and artistic for the Chinese film market.
Around 2015, it was the time when hot money poured into the film and television industry the fastest, but Chen Zhixi's thinking about capital outside the industry was very clear.
At that time, she was working with Chen Sicheng on "Detective Chinatown". According to "China Film News", Chen Zhixi determined that the thinking of the nine investors behind "Tang Detective" is: pure capital investment is meaningless, and more importantly, the integration of resources behind it. "Wanda is the largest shareholder, responsible for the future promotion and distribution of the film, binding to Oneness Pictures, valuing the Internet resources behind them, binding Mango, valuing the TV media resources behind them, and establishing the high-quality ...... of the film at the level of print media" At the same time, Chen Sicheng, Wang Baoqiang and Chen Zhixi's companies are among the producers.
In addition to the integration of external resources, Chen Zhixi himself also has absolute sensitivity and control over the content quality of his works.
In 2021, Chen Zhixi participated in a variety show "Director, Please Advise", one of which was Bi Zhifei's work "Spring in a New Town" caused on-site controversy due to improper adaptation of the classic.
In the forties and fifties of the last century, this kind of innovation implied that women had regained the right to speak for thousands of years, but with the changes of the times, outdated values and emotional views are no longer applicable to contemporary times. She pointed out that Bi Zhifei's works failed to implement the "new" to the thinking change in line with the times, and her sharp views are not only based on the historical view of film, but also have an accurate grasp of the current social mood and forward-looking feedback from the market.
When it comes to the role of a producer, Chen Zhixi mentions the word "balance" the most: producers have been helping new directors find a balance between the artistic and commercial aspects of filmmaking. It is necessary not only to accompany the creator to complete the work, but also to think from the perspective of investors, and seek a balance between film investment and creator expression. "This is also another kind of protection for new directors, if the work of new directors loses too badly, who will have the confidence to invest in the future?" Chen Zhixi explained.
In terms of the ratio of the genre of the film with the actors' resource disks and the size of the investment, she has extremely accurate and fast judgment. When the innovative attempts of director Liang Long in "Director, Please Advise" were questioned by professional film critics, Chen Zhixi said with great certainty that she was willing to spend 300,000 to 500,000 yuan to invest Liang Long to make this short film. She hopes that there will be more unconventional innovations in the film industry, but at the same time, she rationally understands that the cost of such innovation needs to be controlled.
Chen Zhixi also analyzed the success of the "Detective Chinatown" series, showing that the composite genre is the key to breaking through the box office bottleneck, but the "balance" between comedy rhythm and suspense rhythm has also become a difficulty. "Tang Detective 2" amplifies the comedy elements, which is more in line with the atmosphere of the Spring Festival, and the box office has also jumped to 3.397 billion. Later, Chen Zhixi served as the chief producer of "Hello, Li Huanying", which once again proved the box office potential of the "composite genre" in her mouth with the superimposed elements of comedy + family affection and super high box office.
At the same time, this "balance" is also reflected in her ability to protect the director's desire to express. After the earliest rough cut of "Detective Chinatown" was completed, it was suggested that Chen Zhixi persuade Chen Sicheng to cut the current ending, on the grounds that the length of the film was too long, which was not conducive to film scheduling. Chen Zhixi replied, "I understand my director, and the last minute is the expression of the movie." Facts have proved that it is this final reversal that drives the film's word-of-mouth fermentation and achieves a long tail at the box office.
Helping directors complete their creations with the mentality of companionship and protection, setting the direction for the project with market-oriented production thinking, introducing the best investment in an appropriate way, and finally connecting the works to the public with full-link services, Chen Zhixi's "balance" of respecting creators, the market and the audience has created her production and production of more than 10 billion box office.
Obviously, on the content side of production and production, Chen Zhixi and Ruyi Pictures have achieved the apex, and the new increment in the future lies in the integration of resources on the distribution and screening of cinemas and IP derivatives.
On the other hand, using content as a "new head" is the most critical step for Wanda Films. After the epidemic, the closure of small and medium-sized theaters has accelerated, and the integration of head cinemas has accelerated, which requires a stable supply of content in the upstream of the industry.
Judging from the IP value-added business of Time.com to the industrialization attempt of Oriental Film Metropolis, Wanda Film has long had the idea of integrating the whole industry chain, but due to the lack of strong IP and content brands, the upstream and downstream have not been connected, resulting in limited profits from IP derivative business, and Oriental Film Metropolis has long changed hands.
Therefore, letting Chen Zhixi take the helm of Wanda Film has become the best solution given by Ruyi Pictures. The new combination of Ruyi's resource reserves and Chen Zhixi's content control, Ruyi + Wanda, will make the content production end the main controller of the industrial chain and dredge the links from top to bottom, which is also more in line with the production logic of the industry.
Since the era of commercial blockbusters, the integrated development of the whole film industry chain has always been the dream of Chinese film companies, and perhaps Confucianism + Wanda is the first combination to eat crabs.
Looking back at 2015, Chen Zhixi collaborated with Wanda on "Detective Chinatown" and "Pancake Man", and the gears of fate began to turn. At that time, Wanda's Wuzhou accounted for a quarter of the country's annual box office, and these two films contributed 30% of it. After that, the "Tang Detective" series developed by Chen Zhixi became an absolute trump card, helping Wanda Film and Television to become a head production company.
It was also at that time that Chen Zhixi, who had just emerged in the field of filmmaking, clearly felt that there was a shortage of professionals in the industry and that the industry order was not perfect, "because the cultural market and entertainment market are good, many people want to rush in and get a piece of the pie." But at that time, she firmly believed that with the gradual withdrawal of irrational and non-professional capital and talents, the market would gradually become orderly, and there would be more and more professional talents and professional projects.
Today, nearly ten years later, with Chen Zhixi's entry into Wanda, the old order has come to an end, and a new turning point has begun.
New helmsman, new atmosphere
Prior to today's official announcement, Chen Zhixi had already gradually taken over Wanda at the business level. The outside world has always been curious about the future integration form and business development model of Ruyi and Wanda, and Entertainment Capital has interpreted a lot of information from the two recent new actions of Ruyi and Wanda, and can also see the new trend of Wanda under the leadership of Chen Zhixi.
On January 11, "White Snake: Floating Life" was officially announced to be scheduled for this year's Qixi Festival, becoming the first commercial blockbuster to be set in 2024, even earlier than the Spring Festival movie. This film is produced and promoted by Ruyi Pictures, and it can be set half a year in advance, which shows Ruyi's extremely high certainty about content production and industry environment perception.
In the three years of the epidemic, the rhythm of industry publicity and distribution has been extremely unstable, and short-term finalization and extreme release have occurred from time to time. However, the normal publicity cycle of a blockbuster film takes at least half a year, and it can even release the film list and concept art one or two years in advance, and then infiltrate it in a planned manner in the long cycle, take a longer time to ferment, and do advanced marketing to reach the audience's mind.
"White Snake: Floating Life" is set in advance to release a positive signal to the industry: after a year of recovery, the film should also return to the normal rhythm of publicity. With the blessing of Confucianism, Wanda has the stability of upstream production, and will become a leader in the reshaping of the publicity and distribution cycle in the future.
The other is the super layout of Ruyi + Wanda in the upcoming Spring Festival.
In the past, during the Spring Festival, Ruyi invested in one at most and publicized one, but this year, Ruyi + Wanda participated in and released four head films: "Article 20" is produced by Ruyi and co-distributed by Wuzhou, "Flying Life" has Ruyi as the producer behind it, and Ruyi also co-produced "Hot and Hot". Judging from the early popularity of the current Spring Festival file, there is a high probability that the schedule champion will be born in these three. In addition, Ruyi and Wanda both invested in the production of "Bear Infested: Reversing Time and Space", which is undoubtedly a high-net-worth product in the capital market, only making money and not losing money. No matter what changes occur in this year's Spring Festival stalls, Ruyi has almost locked in the victory in advance.
The various combinations of Confucianism + Wanda in the Spring Festival films are also the Spring Festival meeting gifts given to Wanda Films by Chen Zhixi with his ability to integrate industry resources.
The obvious expansive layout of the Spring Festival stalls reveals Ruyi + Wanda's super ability to serve the whole industry chain, from upstream production investment to downstream publicity and screening, this full-process service capability not only gives more confidence to senior creators in the industry, but also is likely to reshape the current industry pattern: the connection between content and cinemas has become closer, and it will become the mainstream direction of choice under the current industry trend of improving quality and efficiency.
It is worth noting that the light pictures behind "Article 20" and the light-chasing animation behind "White Snake: Floating Life" are both senior content players in the industry and rarely seek external cooperation. Senior content players in this industry are also willing to extend an olive branch, which shows that Ruyi + Wanda's service capabilities of the whole industry chain are recognized by the industry.
Entertainment Capital believes that part of the future production capacity changes of Ruyi + Wanda will come from the steady growth of production strength, and the other part will come from new opportunities to get more investment through issuance. In the case that the industry is generally worried about the lack of projects this year and the lack of elements in the Spring Festival stalls, the obvious investment and capacity expansion of Ruyi can also give confidence and hope to the industry.
In the past 2023, the content preferences, publicity strategies and audience structure of the film industry have changed significantly, and the most discussed question in industry forums throughout the year is: the serious loss of young audiences, where will the film go in the future. In Ruyi's list of films to be screened, the head Chinese comics and new science fiction themes are all works aimed at developing the young market. What's more, Guoman and science fiction are also the categories in the current film industry that are most likely to achieve follow-up IP value-added.
Starting with Chen Zhixi's entry into Wanda, we expect that the new combination of Ruyi and Wanda will bring a new atmosphere to the film industry, and we also look forward to the return of professional capital and talents after the ebb of non-professional capital represented by the real estate department can become the beginning of a new story for Chinese films.