On the one hand, the overall box office is booming. 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) alone reached 8.016 billion yuan, and the number of moviegoers was 163 million. Compared with the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, the box office and number of visitors increased respectively. It increased by 18.47% and 26.36%, both setting new records for the same period.
On the other hand, half of them were withdrawn. Also during the Spring Festival holiday (February 10th to February 17th), there were a total of eight Spring Festival films, four of which were officially announced to be withdrawn, which was jokingly called "the first year of withdrawal" by netizens.
1. Spring Festival box office: There is a serious shortage, some are happy and some are sad.
Although the box office is not the only criterion for determining the quality of a film, it is one of the important criteria.
As of February 23, the 14th day after the Spring Festival movie was released, " Hot Hot " has firmly won the first place in the box office. The box office has exceeded 3.1 billion, which is about one-third of the total Spring Festival box office.
" Flying Life 2" firmly ranks second at the box office, with a box office of more than 2.8 billion. Although it is difficult to surpass the first place "Hot and Spicy", it has opened a huge gap with the third place " Article 20 " gap.
"Article 20" was initially inferior to " Bears Reversal of Time and Space ", but it began to overtake it after the Spring Festival holiday. The current box office of the two is more than 1.8 billion and more than 1.7 billion respectively.
Then there are no more movies showing during the Spring Festival.
" Let's Shake the Sun Together ", " Huang Pi: The God of Wealth Cat from Heaven ", " Mr. Red Carpet ", " Bajie: Canopy Lower Realm " have successively announced their withdrawal. Although there are various official reasons given, it is no surprise that the core problem is well known to everyone: box office is too bad .
"Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" both had box office sales of less than 100 million before their cancellation, and the remaining two films did not even break the 10 million mark. The box office performance of
cannot even "recover the money".
Take "Mr. Red Carpet" as an example. It is said on the Internet that the production cost of this movie is 260 million yuan, including Andy Lau's salary of 60 million yuan and Ning Hao's director's fee of 24 million yuan. The current box office of more than RMB 80 million is not even enough to cover the expenses of Andy Lau and Ning Hao. According to media estimates, on this basis, "Mr. Red Carpet" will have to earn a total box office of at least 750 million yuan after the change of schedule to recover the production cost.
This seems to be an extremely difficult thing for the current "Mr. Red Carpet".
2. Cross-border or professional: "Cross-border directors" firmly occupy the top two, and "professional directors" become "deserters"
In addition, many people have noticed an interesting phenomenon.
The two movies that are firmly in the top two this time, "Hot" and "Flying Life 2", are directed by Jia Ling and Han Han, both of whom are "cross-border directors."
Jia Ling graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, majoring in cross talk performance. After entering the entertainment industry, he experienced the transformation from cross talk actor to sketch actor to director and film and television actor. The 21-year-old "Hello Li Huanying" is the beginning of his director career, which has only been four years.
Han Han dropped out of high school and became known to the public as a writer. He later became a racing driver. It was not until 2014 that he became a director of the movie " will never be released".
On the other hand, among the four films that have become "deserters", not to mention animated films, the directors of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" are all standard "professional directors" and are truly "professional directors".
Han Yan, the director of "Let's Shake the Sun Together", graduated from the Directing Department of the Film and Television Department of the Central Academy of Drama. In 2002, he directed his first film "Five Good, Bad and One Good", which launched his director career. In 2015, he starred in the romantic comedy film "Get Out!" "Tumor" represents Mainland China in the competition for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.
Ning Hao, the director of "Mr. Red Carpet", is one of the representatives of my country's sixth generation of directors. He graduated from the Art Department of Beijing Normal University and the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy. In 2006, he directed the film "Crazy Stone", which is well-known to the public.
On the one hand, the overall box office is booming. 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) alone reached 8.016 billion yuan, and the number of moviegoers was 163 million. Compared with the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, the box office and number of visitors increased respectively. It increased by 18.47% and 26.36%, both setting new records for the same period.
On the other hand, half of them were withdrawn. Also during the Spring Festival holiday (February 10th to February 17th), there were a total of eight Spring Festival films, four of which were officially announced to be withdrawn, which was jokingly called "the first year of withdrawal" by netizens.
1. Spring Festival box office: There is a serious shortage, some are happy and some are sad.
Although the box office is not the only criterion for determining the quality of a film, it is one of the important criteria.
As of February 23, the 14th day after the Spring Festival movie was released, " Hot Hot " has firmly won the first place in the box office. The box office has exceeded 3.1 billion, which is about one-third of the total Spring Festival box office.
" Flying Life 2" firmly ranks second at the box office, with a box office of more than 2.8 billion. Although it is difficult to surpass the first place "Hot and Spicy", it has opened a huge gap with the third place " Article 20 " gap.
"Article 20" was initially inferior to " Bears Reversal of Time and Space ", but it began to overtake it after the Spring Festival holiday. The current box office of the two is more than 1.8 billion and more than 1.7 billion respectively.
Then there are no more movies showing during the Spring Festival.
" Let's Shake the Sun Together ", " Huang Pi: The God of Wealth Cat from Heaven ", " Mr. Red Carpet ", " Bajie: Canopy Lower Realm " have successively announced their withdrawal. Although there are various official reasons given, it is no surprise that the core problem is well known to everyone: box office is too bad .
"Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" both had box office sales of less than 100 million before their cancellation, and the remaining two films did not even break the 10 million mark. The box office performance of
cannot even "recover the money".
Take "Mr. Red Carpet" as an example. It is said on the Internet that the production cost of this movie is 260 million yuan, including Andy Lau's salary of 60 million yuan and Ning Hao's director's fee of 24 million yuan. The current box office of more than RMB 80 million is not even enough to cover the expenses of Andy Lau and Ning Hao. According to media estimates, on this basis, "Mr. Red Carpet" will have to earn a total box office of at least 750 million yuan after the change of schedule to recover the production cost.
This seems to be an extremely difficult thing for the current "Mr. Red Carpet".
2. Cross-border or professional: "Cross-border directors" firmly occupy the top two, and "professional directors" become "deserters"
In addition, many people have noticed an interesting phenomenon.
The two movies that are firmly in the top two this time, "Hot" and "Flying Life 2", are directed by Jia Ling and Han Han, both of whom are "cross-border directors."
Jia Ling graduated from the Central Academy of Drama, majoring in cross talk performance. After entering the entertainment industry, he experienced the transformation from cross talk actor to sketch actor to director and film and television actor. The 21-year-old "Hello Li Huanying" is the beginning of his director career, which has only been four years.
Han Han dropped out of high school and became known to the public as a writer. He later became a racing driver. It was not until 2014 that he became a director of the movie " will never be released".
On the other hand, among the four films that have become "deserters", not to mention animated films, the directors of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" are all standard "professional directors" and are truly "professional directors".
Han Yan, the director of "Let's Shake the Sun Together", graduated from the Directing Department of the Film and Television Department of the Central Academy of Drama. In 2002, he directed his first film "Five Good, Bad and One Good", which launched his director career. In 2015, he starred in the romantic comedy film "Get Out!" "Tumor" represents Mainland China in the competition for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards.
Ning Hao, the director of "Mr. Red Carpet", is one of the representatives of my country's sixth generation of directors. He graduated from the Art Department of Beijing Normal University and the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy. In 2006, he directed the film "Crazy Stone", which is well-known to the public.
Not only this year’s Spring Festival movies, but looking at the top ten (independently directed) directors in mainland film history, the top three are all cross-border directors, one is a martial arts practitioner, one is a cross talk speaker, and the other is a medical student: Wu Jing, Jia Ling, Jiaozi .
This makes people wonder why "cross-border directors" achieve great results while "professional directors" become "deserters"? Is the "professional director" in decline?
would like to elaborate on this issue in a long way. I will only raise a new question here and invite viewers to think and express their opinions.
Can box office define whether a director is a good director?
3. Attribution of the tragedy: Is the box office poor because of the lack of “film schedule”? How will the "film arrangement" be affected?
Looking at the reasons for the withdrawal of movies, apart from factors such as not being suitable for the Spring Festival, there is another reason mentioned by many netizens, that is, the lack of "film schedule", resulting in poor box office.
Many netizens said that the movie theaters near their homes, such as "Mr. Red Carpet" and "Huang Pi: The God of Wealth Cat", have very few movie schedules, and almost all of them are in the morning and night. This kind of movie schedule makes it difficult for many people to go and watch them. .
According to data from Beacon Professional Edition, the ranking of these withdrawn films is indeed extremely low, some even less than 1%.
If it is determined that the poor box office is due to the lack of film schedule, then what determines the film schedule?
1, attendance rate
First of all, let’s make it clear that cinemas are not art galleries. Cinemas exist to make money. The quality of the film is not the most important. Cinemas will line up more movies that people like and are willing to watch. Therefore, the movies that are frequently scheduled are not only high-quality movies, but also those films with mixed reviews and praises have the opportunity to obtain high scheduling rates. Because this type of film is controversial, many people go to watch it.
How to judge whether this movie has many viewers? It all depends on attendance.
The attendance rate of a movie, that is, the ratio of the number of attendees to the total number of seats, is used to measure the quality and box office value of a film. The higher the attendance rate, it usually means that the film is more popular and the box office value is higher.
Therefore, movies with high attendance will be given more film schedules.
2, production team
In addition, the production team will actually affect the film arrangement to a large extent. The influence of the production team here can be replaced by the concept of "carrying the box office". Just like when companies talk about cooperation and strive for projects, it is natural that companies with previous experience and successful cases are more likely to win cooperation. The same is true for movies. Well-known movie stars and famous directors have a certain box office appeal, and theaters will also be based on the production. The team will consider arranging the film.
Like "Mr. Red Carpet", although it has been withdrawn, on the first day, the theater's schedule accounted for 8.5%.
3, promotion and publicity
The film studio’s own promotion and publicity will also be taken into consideration. Whether the movie tickets are sold well or not, whether there are many people watching the movie, the film producers themselves have to work hard. The early publicity of "Hot and Spicy" was very good, with hot searches and extremely high discussion. Such high discussion and popularity can arouse the expectations of the audience, and naturally also the expectations of the theaters.
In addition, in addition to the film producers, external publicity also plays a big role. For example, the proportion of films scheduled for "Article 20" was not high at first, and was below 20% for a long time. However, after the central media praised and recognized it, its film scheduling rate has been significantly improved. The proportion of films scheduled these days Both are around 26%.
4, post-screening effects
Film arrangement is not a matter of step-by-step preparation, but is flexible. Cinemas also need to look at the situation after the movie is released and make dynamic arrangements.
For example, "Hot and Furious" and "Flying Life 2" had excellent box office on the first day of release. They had good reputation, high topicality, and high ratings in certain categories. Therefore, theaters further increased the proportion of movies in their schedules, and films such as "Red Carpet" "Mr." and "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and others, the box office performance on the first day of release was only one-tenth of that of "Hot and Furious" and "Flying Life 2", so the film schedule will naturally be reduced.
5, gray space
Of course, theaters and film studios will also have some gray spaces, such as kickbacks, meals, and other sophistication. But no matter what kind of human relationship, the ultimate goal of the theater is still to make profits. The theater will not lose the watermelon for sesame seeds. Therefore, in the face of the direct benefits caused by the above factors, the influence of gray space is still much weaker.
To sum up, it is not rational to complain about the lack of film schedules because of low box office. There are many factors that affect the film schedule. These factors are like "invisible hands" that dynamically adjust the film schedule. From a certain perspective, box office and film schedule can even be said to influence and complement each other. Looking at it this way, blindly attributing the box office difference to the lack of film schedules would be a suspicion of shirking responsibility, if not ignorance.
Half of the films in the Spring Festival release have been withdrawn and postponed, and will be released after the postponement. Whether they can counterattack will depend on how they perform at that time. However, for now, it may be difficult to achieve great success.
5, gray space
Of course, theaters and film studios will also have some gray spaces, such as kickbacks, meals, and other sophistication. But no matter what kind of human relationship, the ultimate goal of the theater is still to make profits. The theater will not lose the watermelon for sesame seeds. Therefore, in the face of the direct benefits caused by the above factors, the influence of gray space is still much weaker.
To sum up, it is not rational to complain about the lack of film schedules because of low box office. There are many factors that affect the film schedule. These factors are like "invisible hands" that dynamically adjust the film schedule. From a certain perspective, box office and film schedule can even be said to influence and complement each other. Looking at it this way, blindly attributing the box office difference to the lack of film schedules would be a suspicion of shirking responsibility, if not ignorance.
Half of the films in the Spring Festival release have been withdrawn and postponed, and will be released after the postponement. Whether they can counterattack will depend on how they perform at that time. However, for now, it may be difficult to achieve great success.
