Author|Reed Notes, Didi
1.527 billion box office, 37.775 million moviegoers, 5 films exceeded 100 million, this year's May Day performance is stable, there are not too many surprises, but it is not as "tragic" as everyone expected before, the box office and the number of moviegoers have maintained the same level as last year, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team", "The End of the Road", "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" and other films The total box office prediction has exceeded the pre-screening prediction.
There are also worries under "stability". The most criticized thing about this year's May Day file is that there is no head film and the overall quality is poor, which makes the industry worry that the "film shortage" will intensify, and the follow-up schedule is still weak.
However, judging from the performance of the schedule, the average daily box office of 305 million is stable. "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" got off the fastest, with 136 million on the first day, "Spending Money at the End of the Road" seized the just need for comedy, "Lao Tie Comedy" spread from the Northeast to northern cities, and counterattacked on the third day to become the first box office, "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" continued to decline, with an obvious long-tail effect, and the three first-echelon films contributed nearly seventy percent of the box office during the period. "Spy Playing Home" has obvious fan attributes and a majority of young audiences, "Howl's Moving Castle" has the blessing of Hayao Miyazaki, and the two Japanese cartoons have played steadily, while "There is nothing that can't be solved by a hot pot" and "Journey Through the Moon" have quickly fallen behind after the first day.
The poor average quality affects the long-tail box office after the schedule, the box office trend of "Spending Money at the End of the Road" may not be as good as "Unfamiliar with Life", which can get out of 1 billion last year, and "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" Although the reputation can be played and the film schedule has grown all the way, it will also face the breakthrough of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes: New World" a week later. "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" has a polar reputation, due to the plot is too watery, changing actors and making up for filming, etc., the box office forecast is only 600 million.
In addition, the Maoyan Professional Edition report shows that the average number of movies watched per capita on May Day this year is 1.07, the highest in the past three years. The portrait of the moviegoers is even older, and the average age of ticket buyers is the highest in the past three years. The evenly matched landscape and the supply of diverse genres have led to an increase in the number of movies per capita, but the loss of young audiences still exists.
"Withdrawal" also continued from before the screening to after the schedule, and at 1 pm yesterday (May 5), "There is No Thing That Can't Be Solved by a Hot Pot" was officially announced, saying that "due to various environmental factors, the film did not meet more audiences". As of press time, the box office of "A Hot Pot" has just exceeded 50 million, except for the first day of release, the average daily box office does not exceed 10 million, and the film schedule has also dropped from 7.9% on the first day to 3.5%.
During this year's May Day, 23 music festivals, Phoenix Legend, Hua Chenyu, Deng Ziqi and other nearly 50 concerts stole the attention of the movie.
However, as an entertainment rigid demand, the May Day movie is still stable, as a mid-waist schedule, although there is no super-head blockbuster, but the diversified genre still meets the entertainment demand. The May Day file is not as long as the Spring Festival, summer, and National Day files, and it is not as obvious as the Valentine's Day file and the New Year's Eve file, which is more suitable for diversified supply, as well as a publicity strategy with clear attributes and accurate focus.
Overall, this year's May Day performance is stable, and the market is still returning to normal order.
The main theme blockbuster has a chassis, and comedy is still in demand
The pattern of the first two films in this year's May Day stall is similar to last year, with the main theme blockbuster and comedy fighting, and even the box office trend is similar: comedy films have expanded from the northeast to northern cities, and the box office schedule has grown all the way, and on the third day, it counterattacked, surpassing the main theme blockbuster to become the first box office on the day.
On the first day of May Day, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" topped the box office with 136 million. Although there are fewer pre-sales before the screening, the first day of the film is 26% of the faults. The film was released by Taopiao, and Entertainment Capital learned that the film was tied to "Spy Player" and "Moon" to talk about film scheduling, and this one had 28% of the film schedule.
"Peacekeeping Anti-riot Squad" focuses on Chinese peacekeepers carrying out peacekeeping missions abroad, and director Li Dachao was previously a martial arts instructor in Hong Kong, focusing more on the action and visual effects of the film. In the setting of the plot of the film, the film does not break away from the traditional shackles of emergency order-accident-everyone is happy, which makes the audience feel aesthetic fatigue after watching new mainstream movies for several years. The short video platform announced that traffic stars such as Huang Jingyu, Ou Hao, and Wang Yibo were used as gimmicks to attract their inherent fans, making the film slow to break the circle.
It is worth noting that this film was filmed in 2021, due to the accident of the main actors, and the subsequent difficulties of re-shooting and re-editing, after many years of backlog, the audience's mood has been different, and the craze of themes such as "police" and "anti-terrorism" has gradually lost its own suitable market environment with the change of aesthetics. Douban scored 5.6, which was not as good as the passing score of last year's "King of the Sky", and the follow-up long tail was difficult to sustain.
In the early pre-sale of May Day, "The End of the Road", which only sold 9.9805 million, just needed to become a dark horse because of the comedy in the schedule. Before the screening, the volume of the film was not too high, the publicity strategy was relatively sinking, basically gave up the Weibo position, focused on Douyin, and the roadshow was also concentrated in the Northeast region, and the premiere was held in Beijing only three days before the release.
Due to the tonality of comedy and the demand for comedy atmosphere during the May Day holiday, coupled with the participation of comedians such as Jia Bing, Xiao Shenyang, and Tan Zhuo, the actors also showed off their Northeast dialect and interacted with the Internet celebrity "Northeast Sister Yu" in the roadshow, firmly grasping the Northeast audience. Maoyan Professional Edition shows that the proportion of films scheduled in the northeast region of "Spending Money at the End of the Road" is generally higher than that in other regions, with 24% on the first day of release, and then increasing day after day, accounting for 33.9% on the last day of the schedule. The film schedule and box office advantage have also expanded from the northeast to the northern region, and the box office forecast has increased all the way to nearly 800 million.
The publicity strategy and box office trend of "Spending Money at the End of the Road" are similar to last year's "Unfamiliar with Life", starting from the northeast and gradually occupying the northern region, but also because of the quality of word-of-mouth and the advantages of "Kowloon Walled City" in the south, it is difficult for the follow-up long tail to reach more than 1 billion of "Unfamiliar Life".
Japanese animation is stable, word-of-mouth Hong Kong films counterattack, Yang Mi's new film runs away, and the long tail of May 1st is limited
Compared with the number and type of new May Day films last year, this year's May Day films are obviously richer. The two Japanese cartoons "Spy Playing Home: White" and "Howl's Moving Castle" occupy a place, and the Hong Kong film "Kowloon Walled City" gradually started from Guangdong by word of mouth, with strong long-tail potential.
Compared with Hayao Miyazaki's "What kind of life do you want to live" occupy half of the country's achievements during the Qingming Dynasty, "Howl's Moving Castle", which also has Miyazaki's feelings, has a general response in the re-screening, due to the lack of fan stickiness of the film itself, coupled with the close release date of Hayao Miyazaki's new film, the audience is diverted, resulting in the overall performance of the film and eating too much of the schedule bonus of the May 1st file, and the box office of Hayao Miyazaki's other classic films re-released before is also about 200 million, which is difficult to achieve the 488 million box office of "Spirited Away".
Also as a Japanese film, "Spy Playing House Codename: White" far surpassed "Howl's Moving Castle" at the box office, this film successfully won 228 million box office during the May Day period with comedy and farce, in addition to the merits of the technique, this film is obviously more attractive to Chinese audiences in terms of universal values and character building, narrative structure, confrontational spies and non-confrontational families constitute a series of jokes under the dislocation of the arrangement, outdoor premiere, The publicity strategy of the movie viewing special and other features has attracted the attention of the fan group, but the strength to break the circle is limited, and the box office forecast after the screening has not increased much, and the landing point is about 300 million.
"The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" released by Lianrui was screened on a large scale before the screening and topped the pre-sale list on April 28, but due to the disadvantage of the first-day film schedule and the audience's aesthetic fatigue of traditional Hong Kong films in recent years, the daily box office has been stable at about 50 million. However, "Kowloon Walled City" has also fallen day after day because of its excellent quality and reputation, and on May 5, it has surpassed "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" to become the second in the daily box office, and Maotao predicts that the box office will fall above 700 million.
As a classic theme, "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" has burst into new creative vitality. If traditional gangster films are different dilemmas faced in social development, "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City" shows the solution of traditional dilemmas and the subversion of the old order, and the characters shown are often more complex and diverse, struggling between brotherhood, humanity and human sociality.
"Kowloon Walled City" reiterates the dilemma faced by people in the current society, the film is not just like the early Hong Kong films to show us brotherhood, morality and social reality and other aspects of the real problems, but each character as an individual in the traditional proposition, with the current perspective for a calm and in-depth examination, Chen Luojun, Tornado and others in the film seem to have different circumstances, in fact, everyone is struggling in the dark reality.
According to the statistics of Maoyan Professional Edition, "Kowloon Walled City" is the highest-reputation Hong Kong-made action movie in the past five years, and Maotao and Douban scores are the first. Actors such as Louis Koo, Sammo Hung, and Ren Xianqi have witnessed the glorious era of Hong Kong-made action movies, and the new generation of Hong Kong circles represented by Liu Junqian has also emerged. On the first day after the schedule, "Kowloon Walled City" has formed an equal trend with "The End of the Road", firmly occupying the box office in the southern region.
Audience evaluation of "Kowloon Walled City".
"There is nothing that can't be solved by a hot pot" produced by Baina Qiancheng and its subsidiary Dongfang Meizhi announced that it would be withdrawn on May 6 on the last day of the schedule, saying that "due to various environmental factors, the film has not met with more audiences". As of press time, the box office of "A Hot Pot" has just exceeded 50 million, except for the first day of release, the average daily box office does not exceed 10 million, and the film schedule has also dropped from 7.9% on the first day to 3.5%.
The film was set for the cold schedule in January after New Year's Day and before the Spring Festival, and then changed to May Day, seemingly hoping to "fight" for a higher box office. However, the "sinking" screening strategy of avoiding first-tier cities before the screening failed to work, and word-of-mouth gradually appeared polarized after the expansion of the scale of screenings, with only 7.9% of the films scheduled on the first day, ranking second to last among new films, and the final five-day box office just exceeded 50 million.
And "Journey Through the Moon", also produced by Baina Qiancheng, failed to reproduce the outstanding performance of the past May Day romance films. "So Many Years" in 2023, "Your Wedding" in 2021, and even "Next: Ex" starring Guo Caijie in 2019 all occupy the top three positions on May Day. "Your Wedding" is a big hit and has become the No. 1 schedule.
Before the screening, as the only romance film with clear attributes during the schedule, the industry predicted that the film would attract a fixed group of couples, but the film also faced the disadvantages of insufficient actor traffic, insufficient publicity and distribution in the early stage, and no more prominent ritual "selling point", although the Douban score of 6.8 points is already the middle and upper results of domestic romance films, but the current box office is less than 40 million.
Judging from the overall performance of this year's May 1st file, the diversity of genres provides the audience with more choices, but the inability to open the echelon gap also increases the pressure on the film's box office and film scheduling competition, although the total box office of the schedule is still 1.5 billion, but there is still a lack of high-quality films that cause a wider range of discussions. This May 1st gear finally landed smoothly, but there were not too many surprises.