Picture source @Visual China
text | Rhino Entertainment, author | Xiaofu, editor | Pu Fang
As 2023 comes to an end, various film market data throughout the year have also begun to be released. However, in the "2023 China Film Market Data Insight Report" recently released by Maoyan Research Institute and the "2023 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report" released by Beacon Research Institute, there is a set of data that caught our attention. Both
reports show that in the five years from 2019 to 2023, the proportion of viewers with different viewing frequencies has fluctuated greatly. Taking the Maoyan report data as an example, from 2019 to 2023, the proportion of viewers who watched one movie per year increased from 44.8% to 51.3%, while the proportion of viewers who watched 6 or more movies fell from 12.9% to 7.5%.
2023 was originally called the year of film market recovery by the industry. Boosted by a number of high-quality works, the market in 2023 achieved the fourth best result in film history, a significant rebound from the previous three years. However, in such a market, the core group of movie fans who have watched 6 or more movies are still quietly leaving the market.
Compared with the general public group, highly sticky audiences such as core movie fan groups can actually better reflect the status of the film market and are directly related to the long-term growth space of movies. The departure phenomenon of the core fan group is undoubtedly worthy of our careful analysis.
0 million core movie fans have evaporated
Starting from the overall market level, it is not difficult to find that although the market data in 2023 has rebounded significantly compared with the past three years, there is still a big gap from 2019.
Taking the total number of moviegoers as an example, the gap in total moviegoers in 2023 compared with 2019 will be more than 400 million. In terms of per capita movie viewing data, the per capita number of movie viewings in 2023 was only 2.34, which was not only far lower than the 2.88 movies in 2019, but even lower than the 2.43 movies in 2021.
In such a general environment, the composition of the audience has also changed to a certain extent. Compared with 2019, the number of viewers who watched 1 and 2 movies in 2023 accounted for more, while the number of viewers who watched 3-5 movies and 6 or more movies declined to varying degrees.
In particular, the proportion of movie fans who have watched 6 or more movies has dropped from 12.9% in 2019 to 7.5% in 2023, a decrease of more than 5%. If converted into adults, the number of viewers who watched 6 or more movies in 2019 was approximately 22.29 million, which dropped sharply to 9.74 million in 2023, with the number of viewers shrinking by more than 10 million.
To a certain extent, for the movie market in 2023, the proportion of light movie-watching audiences that can better reflect the basic market has increased significantly, but at the same time, the overall frequency of movie-watching by the audience has also been much lower. The core number of movie fans in the Chinese film market is giving up frequent movie viewing and converting back to light movie-watching audiences. Where are the core fans of
?
So why do core movie fans give up watching movies frequently? In our opinion, the reasons behind
can be divided into three levels.
is first of all a change at the market level.
According to the "2023 China Film Market Annual Inventory Report" released by Beacon Professional Edition, the supply side of the industry has been greatly impacted since the epidemic. Although it has recovered to a large extent in 2023, the number of new films released throughout the year has rebounded significantly to 510, but it is still lower than the 551 in 2019.
The main gap in the release of new films comes from imported films.
The number of imported films has shrunk significantly since 2020. Comparing only two years, 2019 and 2023, there is a gap of as many as 46 imported films. At the same time, the mainland box office output capacity of these imported movies has also seriously declined. From a starting point of 23.091 billion yuan in 2019, the annual box office once dropped to 3.324 billion yuan. However, the recovery in 23 years only reached the level of 8.91 billion yuan, and the production capacity was only 8.91 billion yuan. Less than half of 2019 is left.
Corresponding to this, the box office output capacity of domestic films continues to increase, soaring from 41.18 billion in 2019 to 46.01 billion in 2023. This makes the box office ratio of domestic films and imported films even more unbalanced, completely forming a 28-8 pattern.
As we all know, the positioning of imported films in the domestic market is an important supplement to the box office. Firstly, it can well support the market revenue during the period or weekdays when domestic films are missing. Secondly, imported films are also irreplaceable for many audiences in high-tier cities. Movie of choice.
Among them, Hollywood blockbusters have a particularly high influence in the domestic market and once had a large and stable audience with high stickiness. "Transformers", "Fast and Furious" and superhero movies such as Marvel and DC used to be the tried and tested rescue codes of the mainland film market. In the most glorious year of 2019, "Avengers 4" earned more than 4.2 billion in box office, ranking among the top 10 box office in domestic film history.
However, in recent years, on the one hand, force majeure has affected the number of projects introduced, and on the other hand, due to the decline in the content level of Hollywood movies themselves, Hollywood blockbusters have experienced audience lag in the country, and the market performance is not as good as before. Even in 2023, when imported films have fully recovered, Hollywood blockbusters still failed one after another in China, making this year the first year of the collapse of Hollywood in China.
For many people in this audience group, even if there are no Hollywood movies released that are enough to attract them to the theater, they may not settle for domestic movies. In our opinion, perhaps it is the frequent absence of this part of the Hollywood blockbuster audience that ultimately became the main factor affecting the loss of core movie fans in terms of data.
Secondly, there is the impact of other entertainment products.
short videos may never become the enemy of theatrical movies, but they will indirectly take away the audience of theatrical movies.
In recent years, the rapidly developing short video and other online entertainment methods have gradually replaced other traditional offline entertainment and become the first choice for users. Compared with physical entertainment consumption forms such as movies, scripted movies, escape rooms, and KTV, online entertainment products represented by short videos are cheaper and more convenient, and their fragmented product features are more acceptable to the public and can be consumed at any time. Entertainment anywhere.
Even for theater movies, it is difficult to escape the communication bonus of short video platforms. This change in priority will inevitably lead to a decrease in the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies.
Finally, there are changes in the social environment.
In the past few years, people's consumption desires have continued to shrink, and in this environment, non-essential entertainment consumption like movies will be the first to be abandoned by people.
In this environment, the popularity of last year’s summer season was more like a flash in the pan. In fact, except for the vigorous and large-scale schedules such as the Spring Festival, summer, and National Day, the film market is still shrouded in a sluggish atmosphere. The phenomena of schedule involution and overcooling on weekdays that have occurred frequently in the past three years have not been resolved in 2023.
Of course, objective reasons still exist. For example, in terms of facilities, theater construction has continued to slow down in recent years. The number of theaters nationwide has been declining for two consecutive years. The current number of theaters is significantly lower than in 2019. Rising movie ticket prices will also lead to strong reactions from price-sensitive audiences.
Among the 10 million core movie fans who have disappeared, perhaps some are no longer keen on going to and from theaters because of the failure of Hollywood movies, and some have reduced the frequency of entertainment consumption because of financial constraints, or because some viewers think that theaters are popular The domestic films are not good enough to attract them to take the initiative to buy tickets. Of course, it may also be just because the movie theater near home is closed and they lose convenient viewing conditions.
But no matter what the real reason is, core movie fans, as the backbone of the film market, will inevitably be the first to be exposed in market fluctuations. And their departure will indeed bring a huge sense of crisis to film practitioners.
In the year 2024 that has already started, as practitioners continue to bring good works to the market, perhaps they should also think more deeply about how to better meet the viewing needs of core movie fans and make this group of the most popular Groups that are expected to support the market will regain their stickiness.
