Cover news reporter Yang Fan
The competition in the 2021 Spring Festival file is particularly cruel, and the seven movies "Cold and Warm Self-Knowledge" that were launched on the same day: "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Tang Detective 3" made a lot of money, while "New God List: Nezha Reborn", "Samurai Order", "Surging Crowds" and other films were all bloody losses. Recently, Zhao Ji, director of "New God List: Nezha Reborn", and Li Weiran, director of "Samurai Shodown", have sent long articles to plead with the audience for support.
Prior to this, Rao Xiaozhi, the director of "Surging Crowds", pleaded with the theater to arrange more films on Weibo, and in his personal Weibo, he even used the rather poignant word "selling misery and seeking glory". Why can "Li Tang" enter the Doujin every day? While other films are struggling to "crawl" on the box office list? Facts have proved that choosing the wrong schedule is like marrying the wrong husband, even if you are beautiful as a flower, you can't exchange for a lifetime of happiness.
Spring Festival file past life and this life: "Avatar" once detonated the first Spring Festival file
I believe that no one denies that investing in a reliable movie can make money, but the film market is like the stock market, there is a risk in entering the market, and investment needs to be cautious. Before smashing the silver of the white flowers into it, investors must carry out macro and micro planning of the entire film project: from the control of the film theme, the choice of directors and actors; to the strategy and rhythm of publicity. One of the most important points is the release schedule of the film.
From the perspective of distributors, theaters and cinemas, the schedule is the time interval between the distributor, the theater and the screener according to the release date of the film to the next date. In 1997, Feng Xiaogang's "Party A and Party B" was the first film in mainland China to play the slogan of "New Year's Eve Film", which earned a high box office of 30 million yuan that year. Its popularity saved Feng Xiaogang's film career and also brought a new concept of schedule to Chinese films - the Lunar New Year file.
With the maturity and standardization of the Chinese film market, we have more schedules: Valentine's Day file, May Day file, summer file, National Day file... Each slot is a holiday that the people of the whole country like, and people have a lot of free time to watch movies in the cinema, so this has also become a festival for filmmakers. Before 2010, there was no Spring Festival stall in China, only a Lunar New Year stall. Taking 2008 as an example, the total box office for the whole year was 4.3 billion yuan, and the box office for the seven days of the Spring Festival was 110 million, accounting for only 2.6% of the annual box office.
Most filmmakers will choose to release new films around New Year's Day, and the popularity of many movies will continue from the New Year to after the Spring Festival, such as "Hero" released in 2002. In 2009, "Avatar", which was intended to be released in North America before New Year's Day in China, was forced to postpone its release until the Spring Festival of 2010 for various reasons. Unexpectedly, "Avatar" actually set off a movie-watching boom in the spring festival, which has always been unpopular, and it not only continued to be screened in China for more than a month, but also became the box office champion who won 1.328 billion yuan.
"Nezha Reborn" made the wrong multiple choice question, how much money is left to make up for the deficit?
Since then, Hollywood blockbusters have frequently saved movie theaters during the Spring Festival, and the concept of Spring Festival stalls has gradually taken shape. In 2012, the two Hollywood blockbusters "Sherlock Holmes 2" and "Mission Impossible 4" won 411 million yuan at the box office in the seven days of the Spring Festival, an increase of 24.9% over 2011, a record high.
In 2013, domestic films began to dominate the Spring Festival file, and the box office of the spring festival file of "Journey to the West and Descending Demons" reached 780 million yuan in 2013, an increase of 89.7% year-on-year, and finally the total box office of "Journey to the West and Descending Demons" reached 1.246 billion yuan. The "New Year file" has also faded out of people's vision, and it has refined three more streamlined slots: Christmas stalls, New Year's Day stalls and Spring Festival stalls.
What kind of film to choose what kind of schedule has become an important factor that filmmakers must carefully consider at the beginning of investment. In 2020, the investors of "I Am Waiting for You at the End of Time" made a lot of money, not because of how good the plot of the movie is (or even a bad film), but because it seized the Tanabata festival and did some appropriate publicity, which had the effect of doubling the work with half the effort. The production cost is only 20 million, the box office has broken 200 million on the day of release, and the film can be divided into 73.737 million on the same day, which can be said that the film and television investors are making a lot of money.
Choosing the wrong slot can have disastrous consequences. "New God List: Nezha Reborn" is another animated film launched by Chasing Light Animation after "White Snake: Origins", which took 4 years to create. In 2016, "White Snake: Origins" chose to be released on January 11 between the New Year's Day file and the Spring Festival file, and with the fact that there were not many competitors at the time, as well as the top production of the national comic, the film won 470 million box office, becoming the big dark horse in the domestic film that year.
The success of "White Snake: Origins" has made "New God List: Nezha Reborn" have greater ambitions, the film has a long production cycle and early publicity, making the total investment of the film as high as 350 million yuan. This means that the film must reach only 1 billion at the box office to recover its costs. As of February 23, the box office of "New God List: Nezha Reborn" was only 340 million. With the continuous hot screening of the two films "Li Tang" and the admission of new films such as the live-action version of "Tom and Jerry" this weekend, there is not much time left for director Zhao Ji.
Visual effects blockbusters are very easy to lose money, whether the schedule can choose the right "decide life and death"
Compared with "New God List: Nezha Reborn", the life of "Samurai Order" is even more difficult. Previously, lead actor Chen Kun revealed during the roadshow that the number of 2500 visual effects shots in the whole film of "Samurai Shodown" set a record for the domestic film market. The film's visual effects post-production time is as long as two years, and the investment is "huge and expensive".
Unfortunately, the film currently grosses 240 million yuan, ranking last in the Spring Festival file. The "Samurai Order" has caused serious losses to the investors, and even if the immortals are reincarnated, they cannot be rescued. However, the film has a place on the road of the maturity of Chinese film industrialization. Samurai Shodown is a successful attempt to adapt a Chinese game film. It is also a milestone in the maturity of China's film industrialization.
This year's Spring Festival file has another money-burning movie. "Assassination of a Novelist" also took four years to complete, but the film grossed 760 million yuan, the film invested 400 million, according to the 1:3 box office distribution ratio, the return is basically hopeless. The film's visual effects producer is MORE VFX, which has previously produced visual effects for "The Wandering Earth", and when the cover news reporter interviewed Xu Jian, CEO of MORE VFX, he revealed that the film spent nearly 100 million yuan on visual effects alone.
Although the cake of this year's Spring Festival stall is particularly huge, it is basically divided between the two movies of "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Tang Detective 3", and the remaining scraps are shared by the other five movies. The three films that lost the most money, "New God List: Nezha Reborn", "Samurai Order" and "Assassination of a Novelist", are all visual effects blockbusters, and netizen "Mr. Shuai" said: "The Spring Festival file is a hard bone, it is not so good to gnaw." The atmosphere of the New Year is vulgar, everyone likes to watch films with family feelings and festive colors, these three films can be independent in any slot except for the Spring Festival, but unfortunately they all jumped the wrong pit. ”
Film history "money-losing goods", "Once Upon a Time in America" and "Heroes" are among them
Some insiders have analyzed that most of the movies that are mostly prone to losing money are visual effects blockbusters and large card movies, the main reason is that in addition to the wrong timing of entry, the capital's analysis of the market is not accurate, and the audience's taste is not thorough, etc. Have caused huge investments to be lost. There are many classic cases in the history of Chinese and foreign films that have made film companies lose blood, and the movie "The Legend of the Demon Cat" directed by Chen Kaige, which was released in the Christmas file in 2017, had a box office of 530 million, and director Zhang Lijia once broke the news under his real name: "The film invested 250 million yuan, and he locked the field and smashed 170 million yuan, but the final box office exceeded 500 million." 250 million production costs, 500 million box office can return 200 million, but they bought 170 million box office, plus the network copyright sold 50 million, and finally lost 160 million. ”
Zhang Yimou, who is equally famous as Chen Kaige, has also been riding a "roller coaster" in the field of commercial films. His commercial blockbuster "Hero" grossed 6 times the investment, but his costume masterpiece "Hero" in the 2016 Christmas period also suffered box office Waterloo. The film invested 150 million US dollars, the global box office 330 million US dollars, box office revenue of 110 million US dollars, plus digital theater revenue and film and television base subsidies, "The Great Wall" lost at least hundreds of millions of yuan.
Jackie Chan's new film "Vanguard", released in the summer of 2020, only grossed 290 million yuan at the box office, while the film alone cost up to 60 million US dollars, which was converted into 400 million yuan, while the previous film estimated that the box office of the film was 1.5 billion yuan...
Foreign film industry "money-losing goods" also abound. In June 1963, Elizabeth Taylor starred in Cleopatra, which was once one of Hollywood's most money-losing films, and the reason for this was that the crew was too refined. At that time, the filmmakers built a "real" Roman city with real materials. In addition, Taylor alone used up makeup and clothing costs as much as $190,000. The film took 3 years to shoot and cost a total of $44 million, while the film grossed just $26 million.
In February 1984, the classic film Once Upon a Time in America, directed by Sergio Leon, was released, starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Tasty Wilder and other Hollywood celebrities. Unfortunately, after the release of the film, the work that cost $30 million only received $5.32 million at the box office. In recent years, Hollywood has seen a huge number of money-losing movies, such as "Twin Killers" and "Decisive Battle of Midway" in 2019, "Birds of Prey and Harley Quinn" in 2020, "Blood Warrior", "New Mutants" and so on.
Box office losses to save themselves? "Going global" can create more business value
There is no winning general in the film industry, who has not made a loss-making deal? And how to save the "money-losing goods"? This is actually a science. For example, like "New God List: Nezha Reborn", although the domestic box office is a big loss, but the film sold the global exclusive streaming media rights in other regions except China to Netflix, although the film has not yet announced how much the copyright fee has been sold, but according to the rich style of streaming media predator Netflix, how much can bring a certain degree of stop loss to the movie.
In addition, "Nezha Reborn" is also about to be released in overseas theaters in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and other overseas theaters, and overseas pre-sales have now opened.
Under the international situation of global economic integration and trade globalization, a key focus of the future development of Chinese films is "going out". For example, the recent Chinese animation film "The Legend of the Erect Elephant" was successfully shortlisted for the "93rd Academy Awards Animated Feature Film", and the film has been released in Russia, New Zealand, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Lithuania, South Africa and other countries. It was also broadcast online on Google Play and Apple TV in Australia. The overseas box office has exceeded 8 million yuan.
In the international context of the normalization of the epidemic, the popularity of the film market during the Spring Festival has also allowed foreign counterparts to see the development results of China's film industry, and has also injected impetus and confidence into the global film market deeply affected by the epidemic. Although some films have poor domestic box office, finding the right time to go abroad will undoubtedly create more commercial value, and it is also conducive to accelerating the pace of China's "cultural soft power export" to "Chinese film globalization strategy", helping China to move from a film power to a film power.
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