During the Spring Festival holiday, the movie market is very hot. Data released by the National Film Administration shows that the box office of movies during the Spring Festival in 2024 reached 8.016 billion yuan. This is the first time that the box office of a Spring Festival movie in my country has exceeded 8 billion yuan, setting a new Spring Festival box office record. Such results once again demonstrate the huge potential of the Chinese film market and make people full of expectations for the market in the new year.
In recent years, watching movies has become a New Year custom. If I don’t watch a movie during the New Year, I always feel that it is missing some flavor. On the one hand, there are a lot of good films in the Spring Festival period. Big IP sequels, new themes, well-known directors, and powerful actors are competing to appear in the Spring Festival period. The reputation of the period has been basically stable. For example, during this year's Spring Festival, " hot " and " speeding life 2" relied on the driving effect of topics to raise the audience's expectations. " Bears Infested·Reverse Time and Space " maintained the consistent level of this series of cartoons, and "" Article 20 》Rely on good stories to release the long tail effect. These high-quality contents attract viewers to consume multiple times, driving the market to continue to rise.
On the other hand, there is plenty of time during the holidays, and watching movies with the elderly and children can be regarded as a cost-effective cultural consumption. During this year’s Spring Festival, movie-watching with the whole family has become a new trend, driving the number of movie-goers during the period to increase by 26.36% compared with the same period last year. Affected by this, in recent years, the Spring Festival schedule has mostly focused on "family fun" themes, and this year, comedy has taken the lead. This is the result of the film market's in-depth study of demand-side changes, and the content and schedule characteristics are accurately matched, adding another fire to the film market.
The Spring Festival is a good start for the 2024 film market. Whether the film market can continue to be hot after the holiday depends on the following things.
Deeply cultivate content. This year's top films during the Spring Festival have a common feature, which is that they pay more attention to the life experiences and growth of ordinary people, and rely on true feelings to resonate with the audience. "Hot" hits the simple emotion of pursuing the true self in every audience. "Article 20" turns abstract legal provisions into a warm story around them, triggering people's thinking about fairness and justice. This also shows that holding the box office banner does not necessarily require large investments and large productions. Success can also be achieved by telling good stories in a small way and reflecting the current concerns of the people. The eyes of the audience are sharp. As long as you are down-to-earth and meet the consumer needs of the audience with heart and soul, you will definitely be seen.
Find the correct positioning. This year's Spring Festival, four films were announced to be withdrawn, and almost all of the reasons involved "major errors in schedule selection." For example, " Let's Shake the Sun Together ", the theme and content are not suitable for the happy atmosphere of the whole family during the Spring Festival. Looking for a more suitable release time may have better market performance. In recent years, the film market has become unevenly hot and cold, with more and more blockbusters clustering together in big schedules, leading to increasingly fierce competition in popular schedules such as the Spring Festival, while other time periods have become increasingly deserted, creating a significant "Matthew Effect" in schedules.
In fact, the market capacity of big time periods is relatively stable, and the growth of the market is relatively limited. Good films do not have to squeeze into the "one-plank bridge". It may be better to fully tap the market resources in other time periods and form differentiated competition with big time periods. For example, the 2022 " Life Events " will be released during the Qingming Festival and become the annual box office dark horse; this year's New Year's Eve movie " will not stop!" "" also achieved good box office results. More importantly, there are more good films released daily, which is conducive to the long-term cultivation of audience groups.
Reasonable pricing. The average ticket price during the Spring Festival this year is less than 50 yuan, which is lower than last year’s Spring Festival ticket price of 52.3 yuan, which has become a major driver of box office growth. The rationality of ticket prices requires a comprehensive consideration of multiple factors such as movie-watching experience, movie production costs, and market supply and demand balance. While the supply side is constantly improving the level of movie production and enhancing the movie-watching experience, it must also use real money to stimulate movie-watching demand. . If there are more high-quality and low-priced movies, the movie market will continue to be hot. (Source of this article: Economic Daily Author: Jiang Tianjiao)
