Reporter | Eyun Deng
Edit | Ye Yuchen
The introduction of films is once again "cold".
In mid-April, "Under the White Sun" and "Young Diary" were released in the mainland, both of which are the top five grossing films in the Hong Kong domestic market in 2023, and have achieved a lot at the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards just past, "Under the White Sun" won the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards, and "Young Diary" director Cheuk Yiqian won the New Director Award.
Er Dongsheng and Lin Baoyi, Yu Xiangning and other leading actors attended the Hong Kong premiere of "Under the White Sun".
However, although both films have won many awards, received praise from fans through film festival screenings, received high scores on Douban before their release, and chose the most talked-about release time before and after the Hong Kong Film Awards, they still failed to make much splash in the mainland market. As of 13 o'clock on April 27, "Under the White Sun", which has been in theaters for half a month, only received 11.57 million yuan at the mainland box office, and "Youth Diary", which has been released for 9 days, has received 11.44 million yuan at the box office, which is in stark contrast to the popularity of "Removing Three Evils Around the Week" last month.
Why did Hong Kong-made films that have both box office and word-of-mouth in Hong Kong's home market fail in the mainland?
"Under the White Sun" and "Diary of a Youth" are both social reality themes. "Under the White Sun" is based on a series of elderly abuse and sexual assault incidents in nursing homes and disabled homes in Hong Kong between 2015 and 2016, while "Youth Diary" focuses on teenage suicide. In the past few years, realistic movies such as "I Am Not the God of Medicine", "All or Nothing", "Young You" and "Life Events" have repeatedly become dark horses. After "Under the White Sun" and "Diary of a Youth" were finalized in the mainland, they also attracted the attention of the media and fans because of their profound themes and bold sharpness.
However, how to balance the commercial attributes of the film and the profound social proposition has always been the key to whether the reality film can break the circle.
From the perspective of the main creative lineup, "Under the White Sun" is the second film directed by Jian Junjin, and "Youth Diary" is the first feature film directed and written by Zhuo Yiqian. The heroine Yu Xiangning and the actor Lin Baoyi of "Under the White Sun" do not have strong appeal in the mainland, and among the actors of "Young Diary", except for Zheng Zhongji, the popularity of other actors in the mainland is almost zero. With such a cast lineup, it is difficult to boost the box office and film scheduling in the mainland market.
In terms of film marketing, the introducers and distributors of "Under the White Sun" and "Young Diary" have not invested too much in the promotion and distribution of the mainland, and in today's film market, whether the marketing is in place has become an important factor affecting the box office. "Removing the Three Evils Around the World" did a lot of screenings before the release of the movie, laying a solid foundation for word-of-mouth, and using Douyin and Xiaohongshu as the main marketing front, constantly combining the theme of the film with Internet hotspots to spark discussions. In comparison, the main creator roadshow of "Under the White Sun" and "Young Diary" did not produce any highly discussed materials.
On April 17, 2024, Shanghai, the film "Young Diary", which just won the Best New Director Award at the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards, held a roadshow at Shanghai Film City.
The weak cast and unpopular marketing make the scheduling of the two movies not dominant. According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, "Under the White Sun" only had 4.3% of the films scheduled on the first day of release, and the film scheduling rate only ranked eighth on the day, and the situation of "Youth Diary" was slightly better, with 12% of the films scheduled on the first day of release. At present, the top films in theaters are still "Godzilla vs. King Kong 2: Rise of the Empire", "What kind of life do you want to live", "Let's Shake the Sun Together", "Grass and Trees in the World" and other films released at the end of March and Qingming files.
In addition, the aging dilemma of "Under the White Sun" is far away from the young audience who are the main moviegoers, and the audience has less sense of substitution, and the welfare mechanism between Hong Kong and the mainland is quite different, and it is difficult to arouse discussion in the mainland market. In the presentation of the film, the cramped living space and rough treatment of the welfare home are shocking, the ending of the film is too heavy, and justice is finally absent, which is not the finale of the victory of justice over evil that mainland audiences are used to, and to a certain extent, it also limits the audience's enthusiasm for watching the movie.
On the other hand, "I Am Not the God of Medicine" and "All or Nothing", two high-grossing movies with realistic themes, "I Am Not the God of Medicine" chose to add elements of comedy to reconcile the cruelty of reality, while "All or Nothing" chose a cool narrative to meet the audience's emotional value. Although these techniques weaken the intensity of criticism, they also increase the entertainment and commercial attributes of the film.
However, although "Under the White Sun" and "Diary of a Youth" did not do well at the box office in the mainland, the production cost of the two films themselves is not high, about HK$10 million and HK$3.25 million respectively, and the box office of more than HK$20 million in Hong Kong is enough to recover the cost, and the box office harvest after its release in the mainland is already regarded as additional income.
Compared with the box office, what is more noteworthy is that this kind of low-cost reality film represents a turn in Hong Kong films.
According to the definition in the "Hong Kong Film Industry Information Compilation", all production companies of Hong Kong-made films must be registered in Hong Kong, and if at least one of them is a Hong Kong registered company, or at least half of the five main positions of producer (or producer), director, screenwriter and main actor and actress are Hong Kong residents, the film is a co-production.
"Under the White Sun" and "Diary of a Youth" are also Hong Kong films, "Under the White Sun" is invested by Louis Koo's company, and "Diary of a Youth" is the winning work of the 5th Hong Kong "First Feature Film Initiative" in 2019, funded by the Film Development Fund of the Hong Kong Film Development Council.
Over the past 20 years, the development of Hong Kong films has largely relied on co-production projects between Hong Kong and the Mainland, and entered the Mainland market through co-productions. The Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) signed between the Mainland and Hong Kong in 2003 stipulates that co-productions may be regarded as domestic films for distribution in the Mainland. In 2019, a total of 21 Hong Kong films were released in the mainland, with a cumulative box office of 9.128 billion yuan, which has far exceeded the total annual box office of 1.89 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the box office of 20 co-produced films was 9.127 billion yuan, and the only Hong Kong-made film had a box office of less than one million yuan.
In terms of the composition of Hong Kong's local box office, nearly 85% of Hong Kong's domestic box office revenue in 2019 came from foreign language films dominated by Hollywood films, and only 13.5% of the box office came from Hong Kong films, of which 10.3% was contributed by co-productions, and Hong Kong-made films accounted for only 3.2%, and the top 10 Hong Kong box office in Hong Kong this year were all non-Hong Kong films.
After Jackie Chan, John Woo and others entered Hollywood, another group of Hong Kong directors "went north" to the mainland with the advanced experience of Hong Kong genre films at that time. Although Chen Kexin, who is known for his urban reality themes in Hong Kong, experienced difficult explorations of various genres such as costume martial arts, urban love, and reality in the mainland in his early years, he also handed over such word-of-mouth box office win-win masterpieces as "Chinese Partner", "Dear", and "Winning the Championship", and is known as the Hong Kong director who has integrated into the mainland market most thoroughly; Lin Chaoxian, who is deeply involved in police and gangster action films, has successively made blockbusters with major themes such as "Operation Mekong", "Operation Red Sea" and "Changjin Lake" in the mainland, and has become one of the highest-grossing Hong Kong directors in the mainland. Correspondingly, for a long time, the output of local Hong Kong-made films was less than that of co-productions, with only 17 Hong Kong-made films in 2013, one-fifth of the number in 1997.
But as the growth rate of the mainland film market has slowed, co-productions have also begun to encounter bottlenecks. In an interview with Hong Kong media, Ho Juetian, the new director winner of the 41st Hong Kong Film Awards and a former co-producer, admitted frankly that the mainland has already learned everything from Hong Kong filmmakers. Since 2016, the output of co-productions has been decreasing year by year, and in 2020, after the impact of the new crown epidemic, it was further halved, and in recent years, there are only about 10 films per year, and most of the same themes are piled up and the genre is duplicated.
In contrast, in recent years, the proportion of Hong Kong-made films in Hong Kong films has begun to increase, and Hong Kong-made films have been re-emphasized, and returning to the mainland has become a new way out for Hong Kong films.
Compared with co-productions, it is difficult for Hong Kong-made films to find large investments, so they will hardly get involved in high-cost films such as action films, and small-cost production and de-genreization have become the new characteristics of this generation of Hong Kong-made films, such as "Ignorance" starring Zeng Zhiwei and describing the living conditions of the mentally ill, as well as "Falling Flowers" with the theme of foster family and letting Sammi Cheng finally win the Hong Kong Film Awards, and "Outdated and Holiday" with a family theme. Most of the directors who created these films were newcomers from the academy, and many of them were their first feature films.
On the one hand, the emergence of Hong Kong-made films with social reality themes is due to the creators' concern and expression of related issues, and on the other hand, it is also a helpless choice for the poor environment and lack of investment in the Hong Kong film industry. However, "lack of money" is not a bad thing, Er Dongsheng has previously said that if the Hong Kong film industry has always had sufficient funds, this batch of new directors may be "indulged". Today's new directors face the harshest environment in the Hong Kong film industry, but they have also trained the ability to make films for very little money.
In order to support the development of Hong Kong films, the Hong Kong SAR Government has also launched a series of support measures to support young Hong Kong directors in creating local themes through low-cost productions, including the "First Feature Film Scheme", which subsidizes newcomers with millions of dollars to shoot their first films, the "Passing on the Torch Scheme" to encourage veteran directors to collaborate with new directors, and the "Asian Cultural Exchange Film Production Funding Scheme" to promote Hong Kong films to enter overseas markets. As of November 2023, 13 films under the "First Feature Film Project" have been released in Hong Kong theaters, including "Youth Diary", "Ignorance" and "Falling Flowers".
The 2023 Academy Awards has been described as the "Little Yang Chun" of Hong Kong films, and realistic works created by new directors such as "The Corridor of Justice", "Narrow Road Dust", and "Falling Flowers" have been shortlisted. It is difficult to introduce works with these themes to the mainland, and even if they can be released, they are easy to be as "popular as "Under the White Sun" and "Young Diary", but compared with those Hong Kong police films that have entered the comfort zone and have no new ideas, these movies may represent the revival of Hong Kong films.
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