author | Li Xunhuan
editor | mia
" Mr. Red Carpet ", which was withdrawn from this year's Spring Festival, was released again on March 15.
had an 11.6% first-day film schedule, but only earned 2.45 million at the box office. This result is not only inferior to new films such as "Brilliant Her" and "Dune 2", but also inferior to its old rivals " speeding life 2" and "Article 20" whose film schedule is lower than that of the Spring Festival.
predicts based on data from Maoyan Professional Edition that including the box office performance during the Spring Festival, the total box office of "Mr. Red Carpet" will not exceed 100 million yuan.
Counting last year's " China Ping Pong: Jedi Counterattack ", this year's "Mr. Red Carpet", " Let's Shake the Sun Together " and two animated movies, five Spring Festival movies have been withdrawn due to poor box office.
When the winner-take-all gambling effect of the Spring Festival movies becomes more and more obvious, more and more films choose to be withdrawn and re-released, and even become a "withdrawal wave", how should we treat it calmly?
"Mr. Red Carpet" lost 200 million, a foregone conclusion
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the box office of "Mr. Red Carpet" was less than 50 million, ranking fifth on the day.
But in the competition during the Spring Festival, the lower box office on the first day of the Lunar New Year is not terrible.
If it has a good reputation and a high attendance rate, it can still have a good headwind as word of mouth spreads. This is the case with films such as "The Wandering Earth" and "Hello, Li Huanying", but "Mr. Red Carpet" did not show this show this characteristic. The attendance rate of
"Mr. Red Carpet" on the first day of the new year was 20.7%, which was less than half of " Hot and Spicy " and "Flying Life 2", and only 30% of that of "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space".
What needs to be emphasized is that when the film schedule is not good, there will be morning and early morning screenings in a large number of theaters, which will affect the normal release of the film's box office.
However, with 8.5% of scheduled films, the film only received 3.1% of the box office share. The ratio of box office share to scheduled film share is 0.36. Facing films with a ratio greater than 1 such as "Flying Life 2", there is no Not the slightest bit competitive.
At this time, the biggest hope left for "Mr. Red Carpet" to counterattack is word-of-mouth.
On Douban, "Mr. Red Carpet" scored 6.9 points, which is definitely not bad for a Spring Festival movie.
However, new films by Zhang Yimou, Han Han, and Jia Ling have all scored around 8 points on Douban. Although the unbeatable "Bear Bears" scored late, its own parent-child buff and super high attendance rate made the film favorable. Invincible, the top four pattern is locked. After
, theaters quickly adjusted their film schedules. Although the film schedule of "Mr. Red Carpet" will still be about 5% in the following days, many theaters are "making up the numbers" and only have two shows in the morning and early morning. It is very unfriendly to the audience who have to buy tickets to enter, which affects the attendance rate. Among the 3.3% prime screenings, the attendance rate of "Mr. Red Carpet" was also lower than that of films of the same period such as "Hot and Furious".
According to the box office trend predicted by professional media, the total box office of "Mr. Red Carpet" could not exceed 100 million, so it followed the footsteps of "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and withdrew from the Spring Festival schedule.
There are many reasons for this situation, but there are only two biggest reasons.
First, "Mr. Red Carpet" is not a first-tier film in the minds of most viewers.
As the period with the largest number of movie-goers throughout the year and the easiest time to leverage the box office, the Spring Festival period has always been popular in the eyes of film producers, but the fact before us is that a large number of viewers in sinking markets will choose to watch only one movie.
For them, the choice is nothing more than comedies starring the top national comedy stars, the urgent need to "take children to the movies" and big-budget movies worth the price of admission.
"Bear Bears" easily caters to the parent-child group. It is normal for two parents to watch the movie with one child; Jia Ling's "losing 100 pounds" gimmick has its own explosive attributes on social media, and has been featured in media such as "People's Daily" The exclusive interview broke the internet, and there is no threshold for discussion; Shen Teng ’s box office appeal in the field of comedy films can be called the top brother in domestic entertainment, and Han Han’s racing scenes are crazy and cool; " Article 20 " is not only With the blessing of "Director Zhang Yimou", there is also a luxurious cast such as Lei Jiayin , Ma Li , Zhao Liying, etc.
"Mr. Red Carpet" has the combination of director Ning Hao and starring Andy Lau. It is undoubtedly the top film in the ordinary schedule, but in the fiercely competitive Spring Festival schedule, it seems a bit weak.
The weak gap in the main creative lineup is not enough to cause "Mr. Red Carpet" to fail at the box office, but coupled with the threshold literary and artistic creation techniques and the subject matter that does not match the Spring Festival atmosphere, it will be quite fatal.
The external theme of the film is the showbiz competition, but the real theme is communication between people, and there are a lot of cinephile memes, such as "The Revenant" starring Jia Zhangke, Bong Joon-ho and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Just take these cinephile memes as an example. When the media were invited to watch the film internally, most of their feedback was "interesting". However, to ordinary third- and fourth-tier audiences, this cinephilia is like having no code meter. Morse code. No matter which time it is released, it is not a big-selling commercial film. It is more deadly if it is placed during the Spring Festival, and the cost of publicity and distribution is higher. The "2024 Spring Festival Film Market Insight Report" issued by
Lighthouse Professional Edition shows that "Mr. Red Carpet" accounted for 63.8% of the box office in first- and second-tier cities, ranking first among all films in the Spring Festival and leading by a cliff. .
Judging from the age of ticket-buying users, the audience of "Mr. Red Carpet" is mainly older people. From the perspective of the viewing frequency of ticket-buying users, more than 40% of the audience of "Mr. Red Carpet" belongs to the 6 High-frequency users who are more than twice that time are senior movie fans.
However, the consensus in the industry is that the number of senior movie fans is small, which is far from enough to support the box office of a commercial blockbuster.
The superposition of the above data shows that the audience of "Mr. Red Carpet" is still the existing senior movie fans, and has not effectively spread to the general audience group.
As a result, the film had to cry out "it's a big loss".
According to data released by Huanxi Media, the filming cost of "Mr. Red Carpet" was as high as 260 million. Judging from the current box office of the film, which is less than 100 million, the box office share belonging to the film studio is less than 35 million. Even if it can rely on the video platform to make a slight recovery, a huge loss of 200 million is a foregone conclusion.
If you include the high cost of publicity and distribution, you will undoubtedly lose more.
The fatality of wrong scheduling: the second and third tiers will hardly survive this year's Spring Festival
"Let's Shake the Sun Together", which was withdrawn at the same time as "Mr. Red Carpet", is also not a first-tier film.
Li Gengxi, the heroine of the film, once said in a live broadcast: "I understand that this is our movie. It may not be everyone's first choice during the Spring Festival, (but) I really hope that everyone can come over after watching other movies. Look at our "Let's Shake the Sun Together"."
From the feedback from industry media after watching the film in advance, to a series of viewing surveys conducted by the film studio, to the pre-sale situation and the audience's acceptance of the main creator, "Who is The results of the game of "who is the head, who is the waist, and who is the dark horse", even if the major producers are not completely aware of it, they have a certain understanding.
insisted on being released on the Spring Festival release, essentially betting on its own success. However, both films failed during the Spring Festival release and had to announce their withdrawal one after another.
In previous Spring Festival movies, no matter how strong your head is, you can still drink soup as long as the movie quality is good.
"Hello, Li Huanying" and "Detective Chinatown 3" sold 4 to 5 billion yuan, which did not affect the box office of "Assassination of Novelists" to exceed 1 billion; "Man Jiang Hong" competes with "The Wandering Earth 2", and does not affect "Unknown" and "Unknown". "The Deep" grossed nearly 1 billion at the box office.
But this year's battle was extremely fierce. After the winner was determined, the loser could not even go on stage to drink soup. He could only be kicked out of the gambling game to quench his thirst.
The reason why the reputation of "Four Seas" plummeted two years ago was that apart from the fact that Shen Teng's role was only ten minutes and was considered a "fraud" by the audience, there were also multiple reasons such as not being funny enough and not fitting the atmosphere of the Spring Festival show. On Douban, the No. 1 short review for the film was "Watching a car accident on New Year's Day is unlucky."
Last year, Douban's " Keep You Safe " with a score of 7.7 on Douban earned RMB 700 million in box office in March during the unpopular period, while "Unfamiliar Life" (a score of 5.8 on Douban), which was of relatively low quality, achieved a box office of 700 million in the May Day slot. Nearly 1.2 billion box office.
These countless examples show that schedule selection does determine the success or failure of a film to a certain extent.
Junfeng (pseudonym), who has worked in a film marketing company for many years, told Entertainment Unicorn that if "Mr. Red Carpet" had not been moved to the Spring Festival, but had been released in November last year, the box office might have been higher in the first weekend. Before the New Year's Day release, there were only a few decent competitors such as "Walking Through the Angry Sea", which were enough to survive in the long run.
Junfeng said that the strategy of choosing "Let's Shake the Sun Together" to be released during the Spring Festival is more risky than "Mr. Red Carpet" because it is more in line with the audience's definition of "unlucky" and tells the story of the love of a pair of cancer patients. If Lian Rui had chosen to release the film during the Qingming Festival this year, even if the publicity and distribution costs invested were far lower than now, the quality of the film would have given it a box office performance that far exceeded the current one.
Today, "Mr. Red Carpet", which was released again after being rescheduled, once again failed at the box office. It will soon be clear whether "Let's Shake the Sun Together", which will be released ten days later, will follow in its footsteps or survive.
Will it be more difficult for videos that have been withdrawn and re-uploaded to win the favor of the audience?
took a closer look at the movies that have been withdrawn and released again in recent years, and they can actually be divided into two categories. The first category of
has not been released because the schedule had to be modified due to factors such as the epidemic.
such as "Keeping You Safe". The film was initially targeted for a New Year's Day release in 2022. For this reason, the film crew also debuted as the opening film of the 4th Hainan Island International Film Festival on December 18 of that year, hoping to spread its reputation among the media and senior movie fans.
However, with the changes in epidemic control policies, "Keeping You Safe" was announced to be withdrawn on December 21, 2022. When the epidemic prevention and control situation became clear, it was announced that it would be rescheduled to March 2023.
Although the audience has some criticisms of this type of film that was changed before it was released, and may wonder "why it was withdrawn again", on the whole it is relatively friendly, and most of them will choose to continue to buy tickets in the new schedule to support it.
The film studio will also carry out certain publicity actions in the new schedule to interact well with the audience on major platforms.
Another category is those that have already been released, but due to factors such as poor box office performance, they chose to withdraw them and re-release them at a later date. In addition to "Mr. Red Carpet", the most typical example of
is "Chinese Ping Pong: The Last Strike" directed by Yu Baimei and Deng Chao.
The film was originally scheduled to be released on the first day of the Lunar New Year in 2023, but after the title was revised, it was postponed to the third day of the Lunar New Year.
With the poor box office, the film's promotion team publicly stated that "there were major mistakes and serious deficiencies in decision-making, preparation, and promotion work" and announced that it would be changed to small-scale screenings starting from the fifth day of the Lunar New Year in February 2023. It will be officially released again on the 17th.
Although there were controversial voices at the time, the film still received more than 20 million box office in the first weekend of its re-release, and relied on its long-term success to push the total box office to the 100 million mark.
html On March 30, "Let's Shake the Sun Together", which was withdrawn from this year's Spring Festival schedule, will be released again. The theme of themovie is more suitable for the atmosphere of the Qingming Festival. The Douban score of 7.9 is also good enough. However, there are Hollywood blockbusters such as "Kung Fu Panda 4" before it, and "How Do You Want to Live" with the title of "Miyazaki Hayao's new film". "The Life", this film will be the next "Mr. Red Carpet", the next "China Ping Pong: Jedi Counterattack", even higher than them, it is not certain yet.
Another point that needs to be emphasized is that the situation of the Spring Festival this year is very different from previous years. A total of 4 films, including "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet", have chosen to be withdrawn, which is called a "tide of withdrawal" by the media. . The pioneering approach of
filmmakers greatly stimulated the audience, and at the end of the Spring Festival holiday, they started to play the meme "I am also quitting the Spring Festival show" on Weibo, Douban and other platforms.
If you look at the comments section of the official accounts of these withdrawn and re-uploaded videos, you will find that many viewers, whether on Douyin or Weibo, expressed support and said, "I will watch them anytime."
However, in the comment area of relevant reports, a slightly higher proportion of viewers believe that these films that were withdrawn due to poor box office performance are "unaffordable", and the relevant comments have higher likes.
According to entertainment unicorn observation, as the "withdrawal tide" recedes, the voices of the latter will gradually lessen over time, allowing the former to gain the upper hand again.
But it is obvious that the method of "removing files and re-uploading them" will greatly affect the mystery of the film, its appeal to the audience and the audience's perception of it, and it can easily collapse.
Because the latter are not interested in a movie and will not pay attention to it for a long time, the poor box office of the recently released "Mr. Red Carpet" is a clear proof.
During the Spring Festival next year, major film studios will start another fierce competition. As for how many films will not perform well at the box office, and how many will be forced to be withdrawn, the audience will give their answers in due course.
