The movie "Charlotte's Troubles" made Happy Twist taste the sweetness of the movie's return.
"Annual Comedy Competition" has sent a group of young comedians to domestic entertainment.
Entertainment Label Watch ❸
From variety shows to dramas and movies, comedy can be said to be everywhere in the entertainment pastime of the public.
In the process of domestic comedy development, many excellent labels have also emerged, such as Benshan Media of comedy master Zhao Benshan, Dawan Entertainment of the new famous director Jia Ling, Deyun Club led by Guo Degang, and Xiaoguo Culture featuring talk shows, etc. Among them, Happy Twist, founded in 2003, made a fortune from stage plays, and the pace of performance has moved from Beijing to the whole country, and has successively opened up the film territory, becoming a 10 billion producer and one of the top comedy labels in China.
In this issue, Nandu Entertainment exclusively planned the "Entertainment Label Observation Topic", which focuses on comedy, and invites Zhang Chen, chairman and founder of Happy Twist, to have a dialogue, using Happy Twist as an incision to discuss the development path of the comedy label. Written by: Nandu reporter Yu Xiaoyu Zhu Wenyi
01
The revenue formula of the comedy label is offline performance + film and television variety products + artist brokerage
When discussing the development of any company, revenue is inseparable. According to Nandu Entertainment's observation, the business models of most domestic comedy labels can be summarized into three categories: offline performances, film and television variety products and artist brokerage. Happy Twist is no exception, in more than 20 years of history, this comedy label that started from stage plays has gone from theater to screen and screen, and has gradually formed a set of business combination models composed of performances and derivatives, film and television and derivatives and artist management.
In 2004, Happy Twist, which was established not long ago, created the Chinese New Year stage play "I Want to Eat Twist and Twist It for You", and since then it has produced many classic stage plays represented by "The Earl of Oolong Mountain", and has gradually grown into one of the leading labels of domestic comedy performances. In 2012, Happy Twist made its debut at the Spring Festival Gala with the sketch "Today's Happiness", becoming a frequent visitor to the Spring Festival Gala for more than ten years, and also greatly improving the brand's national popularity. If the CCTV Spring Festival Gala is a "springboard" for Happy Twist to move from Beijing to the whole country, then "electrocuting" the big screen and entering the film industry is a "leap" in its development process. In 2013, Happy Twist began to try to adapt the mature stage play content into a movie, and two years later, the film "Charlotte Troubles" produced by Happy Twist and adapted from the stage play of the same name was released, and became the 2015 National Day box office champion and the domestic box office dark horse of the year with a box office of 1.441 billion yuan.
Compared with the box office, what excites Zhang Chen more is the "number of 50 million moviegoers". He once said, "This number shook our whole company. What is this concept? Before making a movie, we mainly focused on making stage plays, but in the 12 years from 2003 to 2015, the number of viewers of our stage plays was far less than the number of moviegoers brought by this movie. From the perspective of economic returns, stage plays are also far less rewarding than movies. ”
While the work is very popular, the actors under Happy Twist also frequently brush their faces in front of the national audience, and their popularity has soared, Shen Teng and Ma Li have become among the most popular comedians, and actors such as Allen and Chang Yuan have also become familiar faces to the public, and variety shows and film appointments continue. This directly promoted the business expansion of Happy Twist in artist management. In 2017, in the income composition of Happy Twist, artist brokerage income was added on the basis of the original two categories of "performance and derivation" and "film and television and derivation", accounting for 10.82%, and in 2018, the artist brokerage business grew rapidly, with an increase of 213.83% over the previous year, accounting for 28.92%.
At present, content production is still the core business of Happy Twist. Zhang Chen revealed in an interview with Nandu Entertainment that at present, stage dramas and movies are the dual main businesses of Happy Twist, but the development path is different.
With the content production of "offline performances + film and television variety" as the core business, and the use of comedy to "make stars" and realize auxiliary income through artist operation, such a revenue strategy has become the choice of most comedy labels that can be named. Deyun Club's "Deyun Douxiao Club", Benshan Media's "Country Love" and "The Legend of Magpie Knife Gate", Xiaoguo Culture's "Talk Show Conference" and "Tucao Conference", etc., basically follow the law of this revenue formula.
It is true that offline performances are the unshakable foundation of comedy performances, but now that the Internet is highly developed and digital entertainment methods are becoming more and more abundant, offline performances also have the shortcomings of not being widely oriented, which puts forward certain requirements for the audience's stickiness and economic ability. In contrast, although the production cost of film and television variety products with a low threshold for the audience may be higher than that of offline performances, they play a strong role in terms of economic benefits, mass communication and star-making functions.
02
The key idea of content development is to convert and create, providing a diversified comedy product
In the final analysis, a comedy label is a content producer, and how to continue to develop high-quality content is an important challenge for the long-term development of a label.
Labels have different ways of tackling challenges. Benshan Media operates Liu Laogen's big stage with one hand, produces the rural comedy "Country Love" series and "Liu Laogen" series with one hand, and also innovates and integrates martial arts themes last year, and cooperates with Tencent Video to create "The Legend of Magpie Knife Gate"; In addition to offline performances, Deyun Club has integrated cross talk and talk shows, and cooperated with Jiangsu Satellite TV to produce the American-style talk show "Guo's Show". Xiaoguo culture extends from online to offline, using talk shows and variety shows to attract the audience to watch performances offline; The big bowl entertainment, which mainly focuses on sketches, lacks advantages in offline performances, and focuses on movies, and uses the two works "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Hot and Hot" to achieve the female director with the highest commercial value in China.
The "transformation" of "offline performance + film and television variety" has become a dexterous way. Most of the film and television variety products created by comedy labels have similarities with the form or temperament of their offline performances, such as Deyun Club and Xiaoguo Culture, which still use cross talk and talk shows as the core elements in online variety shows.
Happy Twist, who is good at stage plays, has also handed over a lot of excellent homework in the conversion of stage plays and film works. In addition to the first work "Charlotte's Troubles", works such as "Donkey Gets Water" and "Iron Fist of Shame" are also adapted from the drama of the same name, and they have performed well at the box office and word of mouth. In the interview, Zhang Chen told Nandu Entertainment that Happy Twist's stage drama experience is of great significance to film creation. "The stage play has a huge help to the creation of comedy, that is, it can help to 'press the burden'. The core expression of language comedy is language baggage. The stage play can see the real feedback from the audience, and we can judge the effectiveness of this baggage. ”
But on the other hand, the transition from stage play to film is not a mechanical shortcut. Zhang Chen admits that stage plays and movies cannot be equated in expression, "It's quite difficult, it's not that it's a movie." A striking example is that the movie "Li Cha's Aunt" has a Douban score of only 4.6 points, and the box office is less than one-third of "The Richest Man in Xihong City", which was released in the same year.
In addition, relying on stage adaptations can also cause spoilers or the audience's aesthetic fatigue of routines. Therefore, in the creation of film, it is also crucial to create outside the framework of the stage play. However, judging from the existing works, Happy Twist does not produce completely original film works in terms of film content, but more uses localized adaptation as a means of ingenious conversion and combination of two creations. For example, "The Richest Man in Xihong City" is adapted from the American movie "Brewster's Million-Dollar Windfall", and "Lonely on the Moon" is adapted from the comic of the same name created by Korean cartoonist Cho Seok.
In terms of movie content, Happy Twist has produced excellent works, and there are also some works with unsatisfactory reputation, but in offline performances, Happy Twist, which has been deeply involved in the performance market for many years, still plays a stable role in the old industry, and is committed to creating diversified comedy products with diverse content and changeable forms in the offline space.
In terms of performance form, Happy Twist has also followed the trend of interaction in recent years, and has developed different products such as the thrilling and hilarious environmental drama "Happy Chat Zhai: Three Lives Immersive Version" and the immersive food comedy "Golden Dinner", turning the previous simple performance into a more entertaining experience.
03
Necessary awareness for long-term development Competition is fierce, and fresh blood is very important
The comedy market has a lot of promise, but it's also highly competitive. Zhang Chen said that the core competitiveness of Happy Twist lies in a set of "systems" formed by their perennial stage performances. "I think this system is the core competitiveness, including the creation, production, and operation of comedy content, and most importantly, the training system for actors, which actually has a high threshold."
This is indeed the case - in the performance market, Happy Twist is the head label of comedy and even drama, according to the 2022 China Performance Market Box Office List released by the China Performance Industry Association, Happy Twist dramas currently account for three out of five; In less than 10 years since expanding the film and television business, the total box office of the films it produces has exceeded 10 billion yuan; On the resume of "star-making", "Shen Ma Combination" has both reached the top and become the highest-grossing male and female leading actors.
But competitive pressures are always there. Over the years, various platforms have also been laying out joint labels to seize the comedy market, with "Talk Show Conference" in front of it, and "Annual Comedy Competition" in the back, almost all the passers-by in the comedy variety show track have been completely bagged, and the few remaining Deyun Club girls who have been fandomized have contributed to "Deyun Douxiao Club", and "Twist is Happy" jointly created by Happy Twist and Youku has the blessing of Shen Ma Combination, but the response is not as expected.
Zhang Chen said frankly that the weakness of Happy Twist is online, and various platforms have indeed caused impact and pressure on Happy Twist in terms of the layout of self-made comedy content and signed talents.
From the perspective of comedy development, the urgent problem to be solved by Happy Twist and even the entire industry is to cultivate more young talents who can take charge of themselves. Talent is scarce and extremely dependent on top actors is a common problem for comedy labels. Benshan Media's new work "The Legend of Magpie Knife Gate" is still led by Zhao Benshan, who is over the age of sixties; Big Bowl Entertainment is served by Jia Ling and Zhang Xiaofei as the "double heroines"; The signboards of Deyun Club are Guo Degang and Yu Qian, who cannot be shaken; Although Xiaoguo culture has become popular with many talk show artists, most people still think of Li Dan; In Happy Twist, Shen Teng Ma Li has become the "touchstone" for testing quality.
There is a joke in the market, to the effect of: "Happy twist movies should be divided into those with Shen Teng and those without Shen Teng." "In 2018, Happy Twist has realized this problem and focused on systematic construction, Zhang Chen told Nandu Entertainment that Happy Twist has a comedy training class." It's kind of like an induction training [before a graduate is hired]. He admitted that there are still deficiencies in this training, "I think this can be more systematic and applied, we have not done enough, but this must be deeply cultivated." ”
The training system is not built to replicate existing success stories. "It must not be copied, Shen Teng and Ma Li are unique." Zhang Chen emphasized, "We are now cultivating actors who are as good as them, but with different styles and personalities, with their blessings and help." ”
This sentence is not an empty slogan. Various labels are also consciously strengthening the construction of talent training systems, trying to attract more fresh blood. Deyun Club embraces the culture of the fan circle, plays with traffic and vigorously creates stars, and builds the potential stocks among the four generations of disciples of its "Yunhe Jiuxiao" into the "Deyun Men's Group"; Xiaoguo Culture's offline open mic, training camp and other projects have allowed many people to join talk show performances, and familiar faces in variety shows such as Pang Bo, Wang Mian, Yang Li, and Xu Zhisheng have all come out through "Talk Show Conference"; Miwei Media, which has joined the comedy track in recent years, has used two seasons of "Annual Comedy Competition" to send a group of outstanding young comedians such as Jiang Long, Zhang Chi, "Hao Shi Chengshuang" and "Young Master and I" to domestic entertainment.
Comedians and comedy labels may change in competition and time, but as long as the public needs to be happy, comedy will not disappear.