In 2023, the Chinese film market ended with a box office of 54.915 billion yuan, and 1.299 billion moviegoers hit a four-year high. For this reason, "strong recovery" is a keyword often used to summarize the film market in 2023, and comparison with the same period in 2019 has become one of the standards for measuring recovery. However, even if the data returns to the level of 2019, after three years of epidemic, the film industry is still different from that of back then. On January 10, Maoyan Entertainment held the 2023 year-end media communication meeting in Beijing. Relevant persons in charge of Maoyan Films and Maoyan Research Institute analyzed the new trends of the film industry in 2023 from multiple dimensions such as marketing, cases, and data, and looked forward to the industry in 2024. develop.
On January 10, Maoyan Entertainment held the 2023 year-end media communication conference in Beijing.
In 2023, the importance of marketing was highlighted in the film industry. From the Spring Festival to the summer to the Lunar New Year, new marketing methods are frequently introduced, which to a certain extent contribute to the popularity and box office of movies.
Some movies are marketed as "solving problems." The Spring Festival movie "Man Jiang Hong" is a costume suspense film directed by Zhang Yimou. According to Zhang Bo, vice president of Maoyan Entertainment and president of Maoyan Pictures, since Shen Teng, the star of the film, is classified as a "comedy" actor, the first problem Maoyan Entertainment solved when promoting and marketing the film was how to make the film popular. The first type, the suspense attribute, is clear enough. The film ultimately adopted "suspense marketing", that is, releasing materials around suspense elements, and arousing the curiosity of the audience through actions such as sound trailers, interactive trailers, the development of product function character cards on the Maoyan website, and guiding the people to recite "Man Jiang Hong". And help the film accumulate popularity. In the end, the box office of "Man Jiang Hong" reached 4.544 billion yuan, becoming the Spring Festival and annual box office champion.
The summer movie "The Octagon" focuses on word-of-mouth communication in its marketing strategy. In 2017, Wang Baoqiang, the director of "The Octagon", became the most disappointing director at the 9th China Golden Broom Awards for his work "Havoc in Tianzhu". "Wang Baoqiang's works" were once equated with "bad movies". For "The Octagon", the primary goal of marketing is to convince the audience that it is a good work. The audience's judgment of the quality of a work comes from the fermentation of word-of-mouth. Therefore, "The Octagon" was screened for a long time before its official release. Word-of-mouth helped the film's box office fall several times in a single day. The cumulative box office of "The Octagon" reached 2.207 billion.
Zhang Bo, Vice President of Maoyan Entertainment and President of Maoyan Films
Some film marketing is the first of its kind.
"The era of co-creation with users has arrived." Zhang Bo said when summarizing the marketing experience of the movie "Fengshen Part 1". The movie "Fengshen Part 1" is a mythological epic film directed by Wu Ershan and starring Fei Xiang, Yu Shi and others. According to Zhang Bo, after the film was released, the film studio received a lot of feedback from the audience, including suggestions for the publicity team. The audience's discussion around the characters in the film generated a number of hot topics, and an entry for "Business Slang" was created based on the accent of the lead actor Fei Xiang. The creative team not only interacted with the audience on these topics spontaneously created by users, but also participated in It held 5 city premieres, 24 road shows, and live broadcasts to meet the audience's demand for interaction. "Audiences who liked this movie eventually became the disseminators of this movie." The cumulative box office of "Fengshen Part 1" reached 2.634 billion yuan, and the key was extended to January 19, 2024.
’s New Year’s Day movie “Twinkle Twinkle Star” will highlight the power of ritual marketing. "Snow Field", which was born out of the classic line "Zhang Wansen, it's snowing" in the online drama of the same name, made the film the first-day box office champion among Chinese-language films in pre-sales. In the past, movie marketing mostly focused on the dissemination of the movie's own content, but "Snowfield" makes cinemas, a place that truly connects movies and audiences, become the protagonist of marketing. "Twinkle Twinkle Star" finally grossed 609 million at the box office during the three-day New Year's Day period.
In addition to marketing, Liu Peng, president of Maoyan Research Institute, believes that the fundamental reason for the recovery of the film market in 2023 lies in policy and supply. In terms of
policy, the Ministry of Finance and the National Film Administration issued an announcement in May stating that in order to support the development of the film industry, special funds for the development of the national film industry will be exempted from May 1, 2023 to October 31, 2023.Liu Peng pointed out that this policy has benefited the film industry by nearly 1.4 billion yuan, allowing more film studios to release their backlog of inventory. The release of
inventory enriches the supply of movies. On the one hand, the continuous release of new films is conducive to re-cultivating the audience's movie-watching habits, which is especially obvious during the summer season. Although the 2023 Spring Festival stall received a box office of 6.765 billion yuan and became the second-largest Spring Festival stall in film history, the industry cooled down rapidly in February, March and April after the end of the period. Liu Peng, president of the Maoyan Research Institute, believes that the fundamental reason is that the audience’s daily movie-watching habits have not recovered. Liu Peng said that under normal circumstances, it takes 2 to 3 years to cultivate the audience's movie-watching habits again after the epidemic, but in 2023, both box office data and the number of movie-goers will grow rapidly, largely due to the continuous increase in summer movies. New movies with great reputation and popularity are released. This summer’s summer box office not only broke the summer box office record in film history with a box office of 20.62 billion yuan, but also achieved a single-day box office of over 100 million yuan for the first time for 72 consecutive days. Data from the Maoyan Research Institute shows that the box office contribution rate of the top ten films in 2023 will be 48.5%. This is the first time since 2019 that this data has returned below 50%. This means that more movies are released, which shows that box office concentration has eased, and it also means that movie-watching habits have returned. It is the movie-watching habits cultivated by the successive releases of new summer movies that hold up this year's box office.
On the other hand, the continuous supply of new films has maintained the popularity of the market to a certain extent, and there are fewer "airborne" releases in 2023 than in the previous two years. Setting the schedule in advance means there is more time for pre-screening promotion, thereby attracting more viewers to pay attention to the movie. From this perspective, abundant supply and the cultivation of audience viewing habits are a virtuous cycle, both of which jointly contribute to the recovery of the film industry.
The recovering movie market is also showing new trends.
Liu Peng, Director of Maoyan Research Institute
In terms of content, the rise of female power has become the most significant feature, and audiences are increasingly paying attention to the three-dimensionality and diversity of female characters. Whether it is "Barbie", "Her" or "Rescue", from imported films to domestic films, "women" and "gender issues" have attracted much attention, and "her stories" have become the general trend of film content.
What is equally attracting attention as the rise of women's power is the frequent emergence of "topical movies", with realistic themes becoming hot spots. The top and runner-up box office hits of the summer season, "All or Nothing" and "The Lost Girl" are both based on hot social news, and the New Year's Day dark horse "The Annual Party Can't Stop!" " focuses on the workplace life of "big factory employees". The themes of these films are closely related to the daily life of the audience.
Whether it is the rise of female themes or the emergence of topical movies, it reflects that audiences are more concerned about the connection between movie content and themselves. Regardless of the genre, the character's "ordinary person" perspective is more favored by the audience.
The new trend in film content also calls for iteration on the creative side. Liu Pengcheng, the box office and reputation of traditional theme films, Hollywood blockbusters, and Hong Kong-style police and gangster films have all declined this year. This is closely related to changes in audience preferences and value demands. For creators, in the future creation process, they need to pay more attention to whether the story content, character setting, and values fit with the value demands of the broad audience. And "immediacy" has become an important link between movies and audiences, which also puts forward higher requirements for future commercial film creation, that is, it requires not only keen observation of society, but also universal value expression and sufficient commercial elements.
