Text | Zero One
In 2024, the movie May 1st finally handed over a rather dazzling report card.
According to the statistics of "Sail Ahead, Continue to Move Forward - 2024 May Day Film Market Insight Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by the Lighthouse Research Institute, the May Day file in 2024 will end with a box office of 1.527 billion yuan, surpassing 2023, and ranking second in history on the same level as the May Day file in 2019 released by "Avengers 4", the total number of May Day shows in 2024 will reach 2.38 million, breaking the historical record of May Day, and the number of moviegoers will reach 37.77 million, ranking second in the history of the same schedule.
Among them, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" led May Day with a box office of 406 million yuan, followed by "Spending Money at the End of the Road" with 392 million, and "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City", "Spy Playing House Codename: White" and "Howl's Moving Castle" ranked third to fifth in the box office list respectively.
Before the start of the May 1st file, Reading Entertainment commented that this may be the most difficult to predict the box office results, but it will definitely not be a boring one. Sure enough, although the popularity of the pre-screening films was not concentrated, and the box office expectations of the industry were not high, the total box office of the final closing still reached a historical high in the same period, and the box office distribution of multi-theme head films was relatively even, with as many as five films exceeding 100 million at the box office.
The box office trend of this year's May Day stalls indicates that the film market has returned to the right track, and the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies and consumer confidence are picking up. From the perspective of industry trends, the box office distribution, content theme performance, pre-sale and first-day performance changes on May Day have all shown new phenomena, which may bring more industry challenges and opportunities in the future.
The top three competed, and "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" led the schedule
The box office pattern of the top films on May Day this time is led by "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" and "Spending Money at the End of the Road", followed by the strong follow-up of "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City".
Among them, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" is the champion of this year's May Day box office, first-day box office, and first-day pre-sale, and successfully achieved the lead in the May Day file where strong films gathered. "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" received more than 130 million yuan on the first day, and it is also the only film in this year's May Day with a single-day box office of more than 100 million. Judging from the first-day film schedule, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" received 33.1% of the box office with the highest film scheduling rate of 27%, and had a large first-day popularity lead among all the films in the May Day file.
It is reported that in the first 4 days of the schedule, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" ranked first in the proportion of films. Reading Entertainment believes that in addition to the well-known main creative lineup, the leading performance of "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" is also due to the advantages of high-burning content and a stable and effective publicity strategy. The content of the film focuses on the heroic deeds of Chinese peacekeepers in international peacekeeping missions, igniting patriotic feelings and heroic dreams in the hearts of the audience. "Peacekeeping theme" is a rare topic type in domestic films, and it is also a film with action and modern armed elements that is lacking in the 2024 film market, which just fills the gap in the theme type in the market.
In addition, the steady pre-publicity and distribution strategy also constitute the advantages of film scheduling after the launch of "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team". According to the "Data Report on the First Day of May Day" released by the Beacon Research Institute, "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" received 9 hot searches on Weibo on the first day, 12 Weibo entertainment hot searches, and 29 rising lists, and the number of Taobao tickets wanted to be seen increased by 28,707, with a total of 716,000 wants, and the data performance of these dimensions was the first in the same period.
As the only "pure comedy" in the schedule, "Spending Money at the End of the Road" has a clear audience and a clear selling point, and successfully uses the Northeast comedy style and life-oriented stories to form a differentiated content advantage during the schedule, and the unique sense of humor and down-to-earth story setting successfully anchored the film to the audience of "holiday family carnival".
The pure comedy positioning of "Spending Money at the End of the Road", as well as the participation of famous Northeast comedians such as Jia Bing and Xiao Shenyang, make the film present a typical family carnival and regional viewing advantages. According to the report, the proportion of single viewers of "Spending Money at the End of the Road" is the lowest in the schedule, while the proportion of double viewers and multi-person viewers is the first according to the schedule, and the preference in the Northeast region far exceeds that of other films in the same schedule.
As a live-action film with the best comprehensive word-of-mouth during the schedule, "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" also showed a hint of a counterattack on the first day, with the number of Douyin broadcasts tripling on the first day of release, and ranking first in the new and cumulative broadcasts on the Douyin topic list. Since then, the box office of the film has fallen slightly for three consecutive days, and the number of views on Douyin topics has also continued to maintain its advantage.
The counterattack of "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" is based on the content characteristics and quality advantages of the film, and excavates more potential audiences. In recent years, the performance of Hong Kong films has generally been poor, which means a very unfavorable situation for "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City": the label of Hong Kong films is no longer a quality assurance but a synonym for obsolescence, which will make emerging audiences ignore and Hong Kong film lovers hesitate.
In the end, word-of-mouth became the confidence for "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" to be screened in advance and counterattacked, and the "Report" showed that the proportion of positive reviews of "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" was almost stable at more than 90% after its release, and the Taopiao ticket score was as high as 9.5, which was also the highest among the live-action films in the same schedule.
The film not only reproduces the style of the walled city, but also uses it as a carrier, integrating multiple elements such as crime, action, and fantasy, and strives for excellence in scene design and cinematography. On this basis, through multi-channel precise positioning and cross-border communication, the audience base has been effectively expanded, which has also exceeded the inherent circle of traditional Hong Kong films, and the box office performance is expected to continue to exert force after the holiday.
Diversified outbreaks, the most "blooming" May Day file
In addition to the Spring Festival stalls, the previous key festival schedules often show the phenomenon of "head concentration", and in 2024, the box office of the top five films in the May 1st file will all exceed 100 million yuan, and the box office contribution of the third and fourth films "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" and "Spy Playing House Codename: White" have exceeded 10%, and the box office contribution has broken the record since 2018.
Although the number of May Day films is not as good as last year, the content themes cover action, comedy, animation, love, suspense, crime and other diverse themes, from the perspective of the more uniform box office distribution of the head films, the diversified theme selection of this May Day meets the needs of audiences of different ages and different interests and preferences, reflecting the importance of market segmentation and precise positioning, and also verifying the maturity and richness of the Chinese film market on the content supply side.
The "Report" shows that this year's May Day movies are very significant in satisfying the differentiated preferences of different audiences:
Female viewers love to watch "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team", while men love to watch "The Siege of Kowloon Walled City". "Peacekeeping Anti-riot Team" is also the film with the highest proportion of "second brushes" during the May Day period. In terms of city distribution, "Spy Playing House Codename: White", "Howl's Moving Castle" and "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City" are biased towards the first tier, with "The Siege of the Kowloon Walled City", which has the highest box office proportion in first-tier cities, reaching 19.7%, while "Journey Through the Moon" accounts for only 10.7% of the box office in first-tier cities and 27.2% in fourth-tier cities.
Another "surprise" "Spy Playing House Codename: White" brought a large number of new audiences to the film market. According to the report, the proportion of students among its ticket buyers is 1.3 times that of the market, the proportion of new ticket buyers is higher than the average of the market, and the conversion rate from "wanting to see" to buying tickets is also the highest.
Before the screening, many media predicted that the box office of "Spy Playing House Codename: White" was between 1-200 million, but the box office of the film has exceeded 200 million during the May Day holiday alone, and the total box office of Lighthouse AI has reached 353 million. The active participation of young people reflects the high fit and attraction of film IP, content and marketing strategies to the younger generation, and indicates the changes in the preferences and viewing habits of the new generation of consumers.
Compared with the "winner-takes-all" situation in the past, although the topic of May Day this year is scattered and less lively, it can be called a healthier phenomenon in the long run of the industry. Whether it is the exploration of innovative themes or the re-innovation of classic genres, high-quality content has always been the core driving force for box office growth.
The audience is more cautious in their decision-making on ticket purchases, and the content, publicity, and film scheduling all need to be followed
In the pre-screening analysis of the May 1st file, Reading Entertainment mentioned the phenomenon of backward pre-sales before the screening, and believed that the slow rise in pre-sales does not necessarily mean that the box office of the schedule is low, because the Spring Festival in 2024 also shows the same phenomenon, but the box office on the first day after the official release of the film can heat up rapidly. This is more to illustrate the change in the audience's ticket purchase decision, and now the audience is more and more inclined to make decisions after seeing the real word-of-mouth of the film after its release, especially when there are more films in the popular schedule and the advantages of content characteristics are not clear.
In the end, when the pre-sale performance before the schedule was not as good as in 2023, the box office on the first day of May Day in 2024 will receive 410 million yuan, surpassing that in 2023, it can be seen that the phenomenon of the audience's "post-viewing decision" is becoming more and more popular.
In the past, the star lineup and popular themes were often the two big bumpers of box office success, but in the May Day file in 2024, this rule seems to be being broken, the Japanese comic IP "Spy Playing House Codename: White" exceeded expectations at the box office in the fierce competition, "Spending Money at the End of the Road" starring Tan Zhuo and Jia Bing did not have a case of "carrying the box office alone" but were able to rank second in the schedule, and the star lineup is stronger "Journey Through the Moon" and "There is no hot pot that can't be solved" fell behind early, which shows that compared with the main creative lineup, the audience has higher requirements for the quality, novelty and emotional resonance of the film content itself.
Reading Entertainment believes that this trend requires film marketing strategies to pay more attention to word-of-mouth creation in the short term before and after release, as well as longer-term film promotion arrangements in line with the quality of film content.
First of all, the quality of the content should be guaranteed, and at the same time, the target audience should be accurately located, cost control should be maintained, and creativity and market orientation should be ensured.
From the perspective of the cinema chain, how to flexibly adjust the film scheduling strategy according to the latest and most accurate box office trend data will also become one of the follow-up compulsory courses, using big data and artificial intelligence technology to conduct more refined market analysis, predict audience behavior, and formulate personalized marketing strategies, which is likely to become the new normal of film promotion.
The May Day film market in 2024 presents a high degree of diversity in subject matter, a breakthrough in low-cost comedy dark horses, and broad prospects for animated films. The performance of the market indicates that the combination of content innovation, precise positioning and effective marketing is still the only way to promote the continued prosperity of the film market.
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