In the past few days, there has been a hot search on social media#Yu Shi Movie Hitting the Street#, which makes people very confused.
First, there are so many new films hitting the streets every week, why is "Yu Shi Movie" crowned as "epic"?
Second, if the movie hits the street, it is said that the movie hits the street, why is the hot search not the name of the movie, but Yu Shi?
It all stems from a word that people love and hate – traffic. Of course, you can also see the tricky and ruthless words used when the rice circle tears each other.
The box office trend of "Welcome to Me" after its national release on July 5 has forced people to re-examine the actual driving effect of traffic stars on the box office of the movie.
01
Before the start of this year's summer file, Phoenix Entertainment gathered a number of theater managers to comment on and predict the box office of the new films in the summer file.
Although these theater managers generally believe that "Welcome to Me" is a "three-no product with no famous actors, no famous directors, and no famous IP, and the quality is questionable", they still gave a box office forecast of 120 million yuan.
There is only one basis for such a high prediction - starring Yu Shi is popular and has traffic.
The screening results of the film are indeed quite good, although there are not many screenings, but the attendance rate can reach about 60%. As a result, even if the word-of-mouth of the screening is average, the proportion of the film's schedule on the first day of release is still as high as 20%. The total box office prediction given by Maoyan and Lighthouse Pro also reached 150 million.
However, reality slapped you in the face.
The box office of "Welcome to Me" was only 14.81 million on the first day, accounting for 11.7%. The attendance rate was 3.6% and the average number of people per game was 4.3, both of which were less than half of the day's champion "Silent Kill".
The next day, the film accounted for 20.3% of the film schedule, and only gained 5.7% of the box office, completely collapsed.
The total box office projections for Maoyan and Lighthouse Pro also quickly "collapsed" to less than 60 million. On the third day, the proportion of the film's schedule was halved to 10.4%, and it was declining day by day.
It is precisely because of the strong gap between reality and expectations that Yu Shi's new film involves the statement of "epic street fighting".
02
Yu Shi is a rising star who became popular last year with the summer file "Fengshen Part 1: Chao Song Fengyun", and it has been less than a year. It's really a bit difficult for him to carry the original fashion romance film that removes all the buffs so early.
Unlike other traffic stars, Yu Shi is a rare new star who debuted in movies. Lu Han, Zhang Yixing, Yi Yang Qianxi, Wang Junkai and others all made their debuts as singing and dancing idols; Xiao Zhan, Zhu Yilong, Wang Yibo, Huang Jingyu and others all acted in popular online dramas before switching to movies.
Compared with the coverage of stages, variety shows, and dramas, movies are still too narrow. Relying on the traffic and attention gained by "Fengshen Part 1: Chao Song Fengyun", "King of the Sky", and the recent short drama "My Altay", it is difficult to carry an ordinary romance film alone.
In recent years, there is almost only one male star who is mainly engaged in movies and can form a certain traffic effect, Liu Haoran. But even Liu Haoran didn't try to carry a fashion romance film alone.
Movies are more comprehensive than other film and television products, especially the blockbuster blockbusters, which can only help actors increase their popularity, but it is difficult to help actors build fan stickiness.
In other words, the audience is very clear about who makes a movie.
03
The reason why the industry feels that Yu Shi can drive the box office of "Welcome to Me" to exceed 100 million is because domestic films have indeed had cases of increasing box office after the blessing of traffic stars.
For example, Han Geng's traffic helped "Ex" become a blockbuster series, Yi Yang Qianxi's traffic made "Miracle Stupid Child", which was originally quite the main theme, commercially competitive, Wang Yibo's traffic made "No Name" break the market inertia of director Cheng Er's applause to a certain extent, and Zhu Yilong's traffic helped Wenyi Fan's "Mistake by the River" to successfully break the circle.
Joining traffic stars seems to have become a kind of operation that can be guaranteed and can break the circle. In addition, in recent years, even traffic stars who were born as singing and dancing singers have made visible progress in their acting skills, and the attitude of famous directors towards traffic stars has become more open.
For example, the "Changjin Lake" series and "Man Jianghong" reuse Yi Yang Qianxi; "Ten Thousand Miles Home" formed Wang Junkai and Zhang Yi into a protagonist group; "All or Nothing" let Zhang Yixing play the male lead; "Flying Life 2" uses Fan Chengcheng and Shen Teng to play master and apprentice, which are both successful cases of achieving 1+1>2.
It's just that these movies have at least a "1". The role of traffic stars is the icing on the cake, not a send-off. When the movie itself lacks selling points and the quality is not good, traffic stars often can't move.
For example, "Changsha Nightlife" starring Zhang Yixing finally had a box office of 20.68 million, and "Worry Relief Grocery Store" and "Broken Bridge" starring Wang Junkai also failed to be a big hit.
04
Because blockbusters tend to have multiple selling points, it's hard to figure down how much traffic plays a role.
Romance films, especially fashion romances, have few other selling points, and can only focus on stories and actors.
Therefore, it is the most intuitive traffic discriminator.
The core of fashion romance films is to create dreams, and whether they sell well or not depends largely on whether the audience is willing to substitute themselves for the hero and heroine to fall in love with the heroine and heroine.
Some time ago, "Stop and Go" starring Hu Ge and Gao Yuanyuan was complained by some audiences. They think that since the film has a combination of male gods and goddesses, why not let the two of them fall in love in the film?
If you don't let the two of them fall in love, the male audience can't substitute for Wu Di (played by Hu Ge) and Gao Yuanyuan, and the female audience can't substitute for Feng Liuliu (played by Gao Yuanyuan) and Hu Ge to flirt, it's just a tyrannical thing!
It can be seen that substituting a role is a very important function of fashion romances. The temptation of the actor to the audience is where the potential of the film to sell is located.
A more representative case is "Your Wedding", which will reach 789 million at the mainland box office in 2021 (the box office of the re-release in 2023 will be 33.54 million, and the current cumulative amount is 822 million).
At the end of 2019, the love suspense fantasy drama "I Want to See You" exploded after the launch of iQiyi and Tencent Video. The actor Xu Guanghan has added countless fans in the mainland and quickly accumulated a huge amount of traffic. "Your Wedding" is equivalent to his first meeting with mainland audiences after "I Want to See You", and the potential of traffic has been completely detonated.
Even if this film only has a score of 4.7 on Douban, which is only 27% higher than that of romance films, it can't stop fans from buying tickets to enter the theater.
Another interesting substitution phenomenon comes from Zhu Yilong. When "Disappearing Her" starring him was first released last year, many female viewers watched it with the purpose of "falling in love with Zhu Yilong after substitution", and they were all beaten out of their love brains by the extreme scumbag played by Zhu Yilong.
Recently, the romance film "Negative and Positive" starring Zhu Yilong was set for August 10, and the trailer was announced. Seeing his blue hair style in the film, fans immediately said, "The love brain that was knocked out by Zhu Yilong last year has grown back".
With this hot search, how can people not be confident in the pre-sale of "Negative Positive"?
05
Some young actors who have proven their acting skills and established themselves in the field of film are often reluctant to appear in fashion romances. Because domestic romance films have little to do in terms of word-of-mouth, if you are not careful in acting in fashion romance films, you may encounter an overturn.
For example, "Burning Winter", which made Zhou Dongyu, Liu Haoran, and Qu Chuxiao's fans break the defense together.
In the past ten years, there have been only 5 romance films with a Douban score of more than 8 points, "Young You", "Love Myth", "Return", "Shouting Mountain" and "Let's Shake the Sun Together", all of which are not normalized fashion romance films.
Some of the popular fashion romance films we are familiar with, such as "Predecessor Series" and "Small Times Series", "Later Us", "Embracing You Through the Cold Winter", "Living Together in Time and Space", "Passing by Your World", "To Our Dying Youth", "Twinkle and Twinkle Star", "The Year in a Hurry", etc., are all 7 points, or even below 6 points.
Among the blockbuster factors of fashion romance films, word-of-mouth no longer seems to be the first, but the appeal of IP and actors is.
This is why the industry sees fashion romance films as a discriminator of traffic - not only the traffic of actors, but also the original book, director, original series, etc.
This strong discrimination function brings the effect of "no contrast, no harm".
On March 8 this year, "You Who Were Lost by Me" starring Tan Jianci was released, with a Douban score of 5.9 and a cumulative box office of 211 million.
On May 17, "You Are by My Side" starring Li Wenhan was released, and Douban has not scored so far, with a cumulative box office of 3.06 million.
Both films are adapted from best-selling novels, and both are starring traffic actors. Their premieres were attended by a large number of fans.
However, the results of the two films after they were officially introduced to the market were far apart. This result is likely to affect the industry's judgment of the main creative traffic.
06
Fashion romance films, because they often give birth to 2-500 million small hits, are often regarded as the king of small and large cost performance.
Many people think that as long as it is adapted from a well-known novel or derived from a hit series, and coupled with a traffic star, a large number of fans will definitely buy it.
However, this is not the case, many fashion romance films that seem to have traffic guarantees, and the box office performance is not satisfactory.
Domestic romance films still need to put more effort into writing love. Especially in the face of a very lethal opponent like "Silent Killing", it is still too risky to bet on traffic with one mind.
[Text/Full Hoard]