interface news reporter | Huang Wenbin
interface news editor | Jiang Yan
The 2024 Spring Festival stalls ended with frequent reports of good results. According to preliminary statistics from the National Film Administration, the national movie box office during the 2024 Spring Festival holiday (February 10 to February 17) was 8.016 billion yuan, with 163 million moviegoers and a total of 3.954 million screenings. Compared with the same period in 2023 They increased by 18.47%, 26.36% and 48.31% respectively, setting new highs in box office, number of moviegoers and total number of screenings during the Spring Festival in Chinese film history.
Image source: Maoyan Professional Edition
In addition to the data, this year’s Spring Festival box office is full of controversy. " is hot and hot " leads the Spring Festival schedule with unparalleled popularity, but it has also been criticized as "excessive marketing"; the waist movies " Let's Rock the Sun Together " and " Mr. Red Carpet " have not Relying on its word-of-mouth "counterattack", the movie was withdrawn one after another even as the box office continued to decline; before the end of the Spring Festival, singer Xue Zhiqian posted footage of the movie shot in the theater on social media, triggering a "stealing" controversy. During this Spring Festival season, which has hit new highs, the events outside the theater are more exciting than the movie itself.
Top movies account for more than 97% of the box office, and the market concentration is too high
From the perspective of specific movies, the pattern of the 2024 Spring Festival movies is stable, and there are no box office "counterattack" movies during the period. "Hot and Furious" and " Flying Life 2" have overwhelmingly occupied the top two positions at the box office since the first day of their release. The box office of "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" and "Article 20" has also steadily increased. "Flying Life 2" became the box office champion on the first day of the Spring Festival season with 423 million yuan, and "Hot and Spicy" overtook it the next day and continued to top the box office until the end of the period. With the blessing of the Spring Festival, as of 9:30 on February 18, the box office for the whole year of 2024 has exceeded 11.081 billion yuan, and domestic films accounted for 96.75% of the box office.
The 2024 Spring Festival is also the year with the best average reputation in the past five years. According to Maoyan Professional Edition, as of February 19, "Hot", "Flying Life 2", "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" and "Article 20" have an average Douban score of 7.6 points, and the top four box office films in the 2023 Spring Festival The average Douban score is 7.3 points, and from 2019 to 2022, it was 6.9 points, 6.5 points and 6.8 points respectively.
While the box office, number of moviegoers, screenings, and word-of-mouth hit new highs, the average ticket price for the Spring Festival period dropped. According to Beacon Professional Edition, the average ticket price during the Spring Festival in 2024 is 49.2 yuan. After 52.8 yuan in 2022 and 52.3 yuan in 2023, the average ticket price in this period has returned to less than 50 yuan. Ticket price is an important factor affecting the decision-making of price-sensitive consumers in the sinking market. Low ticket prices have driven an increase in the number of moviegoers to a certain extent. According to data from Beacon Professional Edition, the box office share of third- and fourth-tier cities during this year’s Spring Festival Reaching 53.4%, the Spring Festival stall has a new high since statistics.
Changes in average ticket prices and attendance during the Spring Festival period from 2018 to 2024. Image source: Lighthouse Professional Edition
However, there are still hidden worries under the good data.
First of all, this year’s Spring Festival period lasts from February 10 to February 17, which is one day longer than the seven-day period in previous years. The box office has increased by 1.251 billion compared with 2023, which is only the same as the single-day average during the Spring Festival period. The box office is comparable. In other words, part of the reason for the box office increase during the 2024 Spring Festival is the longer schedule.
Secondly, the average number of visitors and attendance during the Spring Festival this year dropped significantly. Tuopu data shows that the average number of visitors per game during the Spring Festival in 2024 is about 42.0, and the attendance rate is 32.52%, while the figures in 2023 are 48.5 and 38.44% respectively. In 2021, the average number of visitors per game is 55.8, and the attendance rate is 43.71%. The average attendance and attendance rate during the 2024 Spring Festival period dropped by 13.4% and 11.19% respectively from two years ago. At the same time, young viewers are leaving. According to Beacon Professional Edition, this year’s Spring Festival ticket purchasers are older, with 58.1% of ticket purchasers over 30 years old, while the proportion of ticket purchasers in the same age group in 2023 will be 52.2%.
The Matthew effect of the Spring Festival stalls has also been further strengthened. In 2024, the Spring Festival period produced four movies with box office sales exceeding 1 billion yuan for the first time. Among them, the box office of "Hot and Furious" and "Flying Life 2" during the period exceeded 2 billion yuan, 2.718 billion yuan and 2.398 billion yuan respectively; the box office of "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" and "Article 20" during the period were 1.389 billion yuan yuan and 1.342 billion yuan. But other than that, none of the new films released during the Spring Festival exceeded 100 million in box office.
The movie "Hot Hot" is the box office champion during the Spring Festival. Image source: stills from the movie "Hot and Spicy"
Among the total box office of 8.016 billion yuan, the total box office of "Hot and Spicy" and "Flying Life 2" alone exceeded 5.116 billion yuan, accounting for 63.8% of the overall box office. %; and the total box office of the four films "Hot", "Flying Life 2", "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" and "Article 20" was 7.847 billion yuan, accounting for 97.7% of the box office.
The pattern of "two strong competition" is not uncommon during the Spring Festival, but the decline of waist films will intensify during the 2024 Spring Festival. In the Spring Festival of 2023, "Man Jiang Hong" and "The Wandering Earth 2" jointly harvested 70.5% of the box office during the period, but there are still four other films with box office exceeding 100 million; in the Spring Festival of 2022, between "Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake" and " Even though "The Killer Is Not Calm" accounts for 64.9% of the total box office, there are still four films with box office exceeding 100 million, including "Miracle: Stupid Kid", "Bear Bears: Return to Earth", "Sea" and "Sniper"; during the Spring Festival of Film History In 2021, which ranks second at the box office, "Detective Chinatown 3" and "Hello, Li Huanying" accounted for 81.2% of the box office during the period, but there are still "Assassination of Novelists", "Bear Infested: Wild Continent" and "New God List": "The Rebirth of Nezha", "Order of the Samurai God" and "The Crowd" are five films that have exceeded 100 million in box office.
film arrangement is also further tilted towards the head film. According to Maoyan Professional Edition data, during the Spring Festival period, "Hot and Spicy" accounted for 30.7% of the film schedule, "Flying Life 2" accounted for 27.8%, "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" and "Article 20" accounted for 15.8% and 15.8% respectively. 17.6%, and four films accounted for more than 91.9%. In the previous three years, the top four box office films accounted for 75.3%, 72.8% and 79.5% respectively. The top four films will have a relatively more relaxed market environment in 2024, which also means that the remaining films will need to compete for the remaining 8% of the film schedule. Therefore, the 2024 Spring Festival schedule is a paradise for top films and a hell for other films. This also shows that market concentration has reached a new high during this period.
In the first year of its withdrawal, the Spring Festival schedule only accommodates 4 films.
Excessive market concentration means that for other films, the competitive environment in the Spring Festival schedule has further deteriorated. Top movies have squeezed the living space, and withdrawal has become an inevitable choice.
On the evening of February 14, the movie "Let's Shake the Sun Together" was the first to announce that it would withdraw from the Spring Festival schedule and be postponed to March 30. On February 16, the movie "Mr. Red Carpet" directed by Ning Hao and starring Andy Lau and the animated film "Huang Pi: The God of Wealth Cat" announced their withdrawal from the Spring Festival schedule and rescheduled their schedules to meet the audience. The animated film "Bajie: Under the Canopy" also decided to withdraw from the Spring Festival schedule on February 17. As of the end of the Spring Festival, the cumulative box office of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" were 93.364 million and 84.243 million respectively. The cumulative box office of "Bajie: Lower World of the Canopy" was only 3.420 million yuan. "Huang Pi: God of Wealth from Heaven" Cat" is 887,000 yuan.
"Mr. Red Carpet" and "Let's Shake the Sun Together" have successively announced their withdrawal
Under fierce competition, other films have lost the possibility of "counterattack", and it is even difficult to recover the cost from box office revenue. Taking "Mr. Red Carpet" as an example, the main producer Huanxi Media revealed in an announcement released in January 2022 that the group paid about 261 million yuan for the production cost of "Mr. Red Carpet", of which the protagonist's remuneration was about 60 million yuan. , the director’s fee is approximately 24.6 million yuan. The box office split of "Mr. Red Carpet" was only 76.598 million yuan, which could not even cover the expenses of the protagonist and director.
Fang Lianrui Pictures, the main producer of the movie "Let's Shake the Sun Together," blamed the film's box office failure on expectations on the film's scheduling errors. The tragic theme of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" goes against the family-friendly atmosphere of the Spring Festival. The reason for the failure of "Mr. Red Carpet" at the box office is that it does not meet the sinking attribute of the Spring Festival movie. According to Maoyan Professional Edition, the ticket-buying audiences of "Mr. Red Carpet" mainly come from first- and second-tier cities, and this year's Spring Festival period, third- and fourth-tier cities accounted for 58.9% of the box office.
In fact, before 2024, films with medium-sized lineups, literary and artistic colors, and good reputations, such as "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. And a period of time after the end of the schedule to harvest high box office that cannot be obtained during the unpopular schedule."The Crowd" in 2021, "Sniper" in 2022, and "Unknown" and "The Deep" in 2023 are all examples of this type of movie. Take "The Crowd" as an example. The film only received a single-day box office of more than 40 million yuan on the first day of the 2021 Spring Festival. In subsequent periods, the single-day box office was less than 30 million yuan. Until the end of the schedule, the single-day box office of "The Crowd" reversed the decline, and the single-day box office of the film returned to more than 30 million yuan in the first weekend after the Spring Festival. The cumulative box office of "The Crowd" exceeded 762 million yuan, and the box office generated during the Spring Festival was only 151 million yuan.
Stills from the movie "Mr. Red Carpet"
Small but beautiful films can also rely on large schedules to obtain better box office, perhaps because "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" are scheduled for the Spring Festival. But the rules of previous years have failed this year. As of the withdrawal, the cumulative box office forecasts for the two films on both Maoyan and Beacon platforms are below 100 million yuan.
After making mistakes in scheduling decisions, timely withdrawal can be regarded as a way to make up for the situation, especially for "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" with good reputations. "Let's Shake the Sun Together", which involves issues of life and death, is indeed more suitable for the Qingming Festival schedule atmosphere. "Mr. Red Carpet" needs to think about how to capture the audience in first- and second-tier cities.
However, the prospects for films that are withdrawn and re-released after release are not optimistic. During the 2023 Spring Festival, the movie "China Ping Pong: The Last Strike" was released on the third day of the first lunar month and was rescheduled to February 17 due to box office sluggishness. The film's final cumulative box office was only 100 million yuan.
All in all, this year’s Spring Festival schedule only accommodated 4 films. The capacity of the Spring Festival stalls still needs repeated market trials before we can draw a conclusion. However, the experiences of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" will inevitably affect the entry of films of the same size into the Spring Festival stalls to a certain extent. It seems that the diversity of content in the Spring Festival stalls will be reduced. It is a foreseeable trend. In addition, comedies dominate this year’s Spring Festival, and the lack of big-budget and other types of movies is also unreasonable in this year’s Spring Festival. High concentration and low diversity are problems that must be solved for the healthy development of the film market.
Marketing and "Stolen Photography" Controversy
"Hot and Spicy" directed by Jia Ling is undoubtedly the biggest winner of this year's Spring Festival. The film was originally scheduled to feature Jia Ling, who lost 100 pounds, as the suspense, sparking heated discussions on social media and igniting pre-sale box office. After the film was released, topics related to Jia Ling's weight loss have been trending on Weibo and Douyin many times. Jia Ling herself has also published articles related to weight loss and even released a new song showing her personal mood. The intertextuality of the stories on and off the screen helped the film gain the highest popularity and box office during the Spring Festival. Then came the “over-marketing” controversy. Some viewers believe that Jia Ling's own experience has nothing to do with the content of the film itself, and that Jia Ling's inspirational process of weight loss is overly exaggerated and takes away from the main focus of the movie.
In fact, the purpose of marketing is to make the movie known to more people. From this perspective, methods that can expand the popularity and are legal and ethical are the proper meaning of marketing. Jia Ling's personal experience happens to be a rare marketing topic to expand the popularity of movies. "Hot and Spicy" is not the only one that uses star power to create buzz. "Flying Life 2" also uses the gimmick of "100% content". "Article 20" also used a mute girl played by Zhao Liying in the early stages of its release. as a marketing focus.
Under the leadership of "Hot", the importance of marketing to movies has once again been highlighted. The popularity of movie-related topics has become an important factor affecting the movie box office, and topical stars have also become a blessing for the movie box office. No matter how the Spring Festival schedule changes, movies that want to create high box office must find out which stars the audience wants to see, and also need to learn to create topics.
"Joker Xue's screen photo" is another controversial incident during the Spring Festival. On February 15, singer Xue Zhiqian posted an article on Weibo to promote "Flying Life 2". The article was interspersed with several pictures of the movie shot in the theater.Xue Zhiqian's behavior of filming in the theater and posting it on a public platform was subsequently criticized by movie fans. Joker Xue himself posted on Weibo the next day, mocking the accusation of "stealing" as a marketing account chasing traffic. His fans also posted pictures taken on the screen in the theater on public platforms to express their support.
As of now, "Flying Life 2" has not expressed any attitude on this matter, but the controversy caused by Xue Zhiqian has brought the behavior of "screen photography" into the public eye. Screen photography is not only a matter of morality, but also a matter of law. Article 31 of the "Film Industry Promotion Law" states: "No one is allowed to record or videotape a movie being shown without the permission of the rights holder." The National Copyright Administration also made it clear in the public service announcement on film copyright protection issued in July 2023 It is suggested that "when watching the process, put down your mobile phone and do not take pictures with the screen." There is still room for improvement in the audience’s movie-watching literacy.
The Spring Festival season has come to an end, but the competition in the 2024 film market has just begun. While the Spring Festival stalls create a good start, the changes and chaos in all aspects of the film are also brought to the table. The development of the film industry requires practitioners and audiences to make changes together.
