If "Aquaman 2" is the end of the "old era" of super British blockbusters, then this year's National Day file may be the phased "farewell" of the head of China's main theme blockbusters.
In fact, in the past four years, the theme has been the absolute pillar of Chinese cinema. The cumulative box office of the three "Me and Mine" series is 7.476 billion, and the cumulative box office of the two "Chosin Lake" is 9.842 billion. In addition, a variety of gift films and commercial blockbusters with theme themes have actually carried a great deal of industrial responsibility during the most difficult period of Chinese films.
China's film industry has always been "self-funded", and after the withdrawal of capital in 2018, the film industry has actually been in trouble. Especially in the past three years, the epidemic completely made the entire industry become a "special poor industry", and the loss of box office is actually the reduction of cash flow of the entire industry. In this case, the relatively stable supply of theme films in the past three years has actually ensured the "basic operation" of the film industry to a certain extent.
However, the lack of adequate schedule management and marketing "lying flat" will eventually form a backbite. This year's National Day file, "Volunteer Army" and "Moscow Action" performance is difficult to say satisfactory. Although there are still two more "Volunteers" to come, it may not be so easy for the main theme film to get back to the head.
This year, genre films completely "took over" the market. This year's box office ranked the top 8 cumulative box office of 24.104 billion yuan, accounting for more than 40% of the total annual box office. These 8 films are all from the Spring Festival and summer, compared with the Spring Festival file "smooth", the summer can be said to be "evil fire".
"Gone She" took in $159 million on its first day, but its real peak came on Saturday, when it more than doubled its first-day gross by $335 million. The first day of the box office of "Feng God" 49.123 million, the real peak box office also appeared on Saturday, a single day box office of 160 million, more than three times the first day box office; "Chang 'an Thirty Thousand Miles" first day box office 88.509 million, the peak box office is the next Sunday, a single day box office of 142 million.
These films are certainly out of the long-term through word of mouth, but to be realistic, the final box office volume of many films actually exceeded market expectations. Many of the reasons for the film counterattack are because of "out of the circle", or because of gender issues, or because of the national anti-fraud, or because of the advance screening, or because of the Tang poetry parenting, which is the "era dividend" that occupies the market blank, and many outbreaks do not have replicability.
Like "Wandering Earth" has now become the first IP of Chinese movies, "Wandering Earth 3" has also been booked on the first day of 2027; The "Boonies of Bears" series is a fixed Spring Festival file every year, from the beginning of 247 million box office to today's 1.495 billion, 6 times behind is not a certain piece of inspiration, but the timing of cultivation, audience cultivation and content innovation "resultant" results.
However, IP movies like this are actually relatively few in domestic movies at present. Only the more stable the head, the higher the fault tolerance rate of the market. However, IP movies, series movies, commercial genre films, the entire industry not only has no level in the process of content development, but even there are many misunderstandings and biases.
The number of moviegoers may have passed, but the industry without "people" is difficult to last
Improving the number of moviegoers is still the main proposition of the industry.
In 2019, the total number of movie-going visits in the mainland market was 1.73 billion. Judging from the results, there is actually a lot of room for improvement, because the per capita viewing frequency and attendance rate actually have a very large room for increase.
According to the current total population of nearly 1.4 billion people, the per capita moviegoers in the peak period of the mainland market only broke 1. In 2023, the total number of moviegoers in the whole year was 1.299 billion, and the actual per capita moviegoers were less than 1 time. For comparison, South Korea's annual attendance in 2019 was 226 million times, but the total population of South Korea's official statistics in 2019 was 51.765 million, which is 4.4 times per capita. The same epidemic has hit the South Korean film industry hard for three years, and the number of moviegoers has declined sharply. However, in 2022, there will still be 112 million visits in South Korea, and the total population of South Korea is 51.628 million, so the average person will still go to the movie 2.19 times.
In addition, from 2020 to 2022, the average ticket price of the mainland film market is 37, 40.3, 42.1, and the average attendance rate is 8.1%, 7.0%, and 5.8%, respectively. From 2017 to 2019, the average ticket price was 34.43, 35.32, 37.12, and the attendance rate was 13%, 12%, and 11%, respectively. It can be seen that in the past six years, the average ticket price has risen year by year, but the attendance rate has declined year by year, and in fact, there is nearly 90% vacancy rate under the existing industry scale.
However, the current situation of the industry this year, on the one hand, the proportion of viewers watching a movie a year is still high. According to previous statistics, the proportion of viewers who watched one movie a year this year was 52.5%, which has decreased compared with the three-year average of 58.5% of the epidemic, but has increased by 8.3% compared with 44.2% in 2019.
On the other hand, the market is too uneven. Domestic head blockbusters in order to "capital" basically lock the Spring Festival file, in a intensive schedule of crazy volume, and small and medium-sized films in the absence of the help of the market is difficult to enhance the market heat, which has formed a vicious circle.
If movies want to completely shake off the "long tail" of the three-year epidemic, they need to pull audiences back into the cinema. But to answer this question, we actually need to answer three questions: whether the movie is attractive as an entertainment, whether the movie content itself is attractive, and whether the movie is attractive as a consumption method.
It can be seen from many "signals" that 2023 is particularly different in the time scale of the movie, and it may be that for many ordinary people, the movie is no longer so important. But for an industry, how to be good is still very important.
