905 Movie Network Special Article There are still 11 days from today to the Spring Festival, and during this half-month period, there are almost no new films of a larger size scheduled, and the film market will usher in a full two-week "empty window" Expect".
Looking back at the film market in January, the overall box office performance was mediocre. There were no high-quality new films released, and the market still relied on old films in the Lunar New Year and New Year's Day films to support it. In fact, this is not a good phenomenon for the overall market's revenue generation. So how should we correctly "open" the movie market in the first month of the year?
New films are not strong and the market is tepid
As of today, the overall box office performance in January has reached 2.5 billion yuan. Compared with previous years, it is actually on the average. However, it is undeniable that there are indeed no impressive films in January. New and released films have not made much of a splash in terms of word-of-mouth or box office.
Among the new films released in January, "The Temporary Heist" became the box office champion among the new films with a score of 170 million, but the predicted final box office score was only about 200 million, with the second and third place respectively being "The Beekeeper" ” and “What’s in the Zoo?” ”, these two films have not yet exceeded 100 million in box office, and their predicted box office results are both around 100 million.
Fortunately, the New Year’s Day and Lunar New Year movies barely supported the film market in January. Comedy movie "The Annual Party Can't Stop!" " has a box office of 800 million; the Hong Kong crime film "Goldfinger" has a box office of 300 million; the reality-themed "The Third" and the superhero blockbuster "Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom" also have a box office of 100 million. , their results show that there is still a lot of space in the entire film market in January, but it has not been taken seriously.
There are wolves before and tigers behind, and the January schedule has been ignored.
Throughout the past years, January has been regarded as a cold period and has not been taken seriously. Because it has "a wolf in front and a tiger in the back", the "wolf" in the front refers to the New Year's Eve period, and the "tiger" in the back refers to the Spring Festival period. This period in the middle constitutes a relatively embarrassing period.
Judging from this year's situation, the saying "there is a tiger in front and a wolf behind" is not groundless. The New Year's Day movies are still going strong, including the workplace comedy movie "The Annual Party Can't Stop!" " relied on word-of-mouth fermentation to create a beautiful long-tail effect in January; the concert documentary film "Taylor Swift: Time Tour" relied on its viewing experience that is different from traditional movies and the influence of Taylor Swift herself It is still attracting a large number of fans to book the movie.
This year’s Spring Festival release has also whetted people’s appetites. There are currently 7 films scheduled. Among them, the movie "Hot and Spicy" is the second comedy feature film directed by Jia Ling. It attracted countless audiences as soon as it was officially announced. attention; "Flying Life 2" relied on the foundation of its previous work, as well as comedians with high national popularity such as Shen Teng, to attract a lot of attention; "Article 20" directed by Zhang Yimou is also star-studded and exciting. It can be said that this year The competition for the Spring Festival stalls is also unprecedentedly fierce.
At the same time, the Spring Festival travel rush began to return home, and people began to prepare for the New Year. Therefore, very few films would take the initiative to choose a time at such a time that seemed not to be taken seriously.
The potential of the schedule should not be underestimated.
Will a good schedule definitely bring good results? In fact, this is not the case. Many films released during the so-called "cold period" have also achieved both word-of-mouth and box office success.
For example, "The Unknown", which was released on November 16, 2018, received a box office of 794 million yuan; "Young You", which was released on October 25, 2019, finally received a box office of 1.558 billion yuan; and "Ip Man 3" Films released during off-schedule periods such as "Cohabitation in Time and Space" have achieved very good results. The reason is that the quality of the film itself is excellent.
So in the "cold period" of January, how should we "arrange our troops" for the film? Film critic Song Fangjin gave his opinion. First of all, with the gradual failure and absence of Hollywood films, our market needs some domestic films to stand up, such as "Antarctic Love" in 2018 and "Big Red Envelope" in 2021. 》, in fact, they all had a very good box office curve in the January schedule;
Finally, animated movies are also a force that cannot be ignored. In this less competitive schedule, large-scale live-action movies generally do not take the initiative to choose this schedule, which provides a space for many cartoons. Movies such as 2017's "David Bacon: The Unlucky Agent Bear" and "The Legend of the Strings", 2018's "My Little Pony: The Movie" and 2019's "White Snake: Origin" all received relatively good results during this period. An achievement.
The winter vacation schedule before the Spring Festival is indeed not very popular, but the cold period does not mean that it should be abandoned directly. If our filmmakers can take the initiative to explore these schedules and find some differentiated works, perhaps they can be used in this colder period. Stand out during the schedule!
