The Spring Festival webcast of "囧Mom" was boycotted by theaters, which earned traffic and lost word of mouth; "Fat Dragon Crossing the River" webcast, the voice of accountability disappeared without a trace. Behind the big movie "Treachery", the sensitive nerves of an industry are touched or the interest chain is reorganized. Article by
丨Editor by Gu Xiaobai丨Du Hai Source丨Zhengjing Society
According to the original plan, the 2020 Spring Festival file is a lively season of gathering explosive IPs such as Detective Chinatown 3, Winning the Championship, and Jiang Ziya. The sudden outbreak of the epidemic made the 7 Spring Festival films helpless to withdraw. At the darkest hour, "囧Mom" found a way out-terminated the guarantee agreement with Hengdian Films, and sold the byte beating to the front line. This move was sued by some theaters to the National Film Bureau for harming the interests of theaters.
The changes in the environment always make the stakeholders in the business chain become anxious. It is not new for theaters to resist online advance on-demand. In the early years, LeEco and Netflix both met with resistance due to the short on-demand time and offline on-demand window.
Outside the film and television industry, department stores have also aggressively boycotted e-commerce platforms. The strain of "囧Mom" may bring new enlightenment to the film and television industry.
1
Helpless "囧 Mom"
"We will rest on New Year’s Thirty in a year. Doesn’t this make us feel better?"
On January 20, "囧 Ma" announced that it would be filed until New Year’s 30. To the front-line staff to complain. But they may not have thought that compared to the busy New Year's Eve, a deserted Spring Festival stall will make them more unbearable.
Three days later, Huanxi Media, the producer of "囧Mom," announced that it had entered into a cooperation agreement with ByteDance. The latter will pay the former at least 630 million yuan to purchase the film rights. At the same time, Huanxi Media will terminate the guaranteed release agreement between the movie "囧Mom" and Hengdian Pictures. Once the
news was sent, Huanxi Media’s stock price closed at HK$1.96 per share with a 43% increase on the same day, and the total market value rose from HK$4.3 billion to nearly HK$6.2 billion.
Huanxi Media and Hengdian Films signed a guaranteed release agreement for "囧Mo" in November 2019. The two parties agreed that the guaranteed total box office is RMB 2.4 billion, and Hengdian Films needs to pay at least Huanxi Media’s guaranteed release price of 600 million yuan. Prior to this, another film "Crazy Aliens" produced by Huanxi Media Investment was also released in the form of guaranteed release, and was fought for the Spring Festival in 2019.
Around 2016, the film and television industry capital surged, and guaranteed release has become an important means for investors to seize the source of high-quality films. In the early days, many films such as "Heart Flower Road", "One Step Away", "Legend of Gods", "Three Lives III and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms" and "Wolf Warriors 2" were released on a guaranteed basis.
However, with the tightening of supervision and the ebb of capital, the risk of guaranteed issuance has gradually become prominent. For example, "To Youth 2" with a guarantee of 400 million yuan has a box office of only 300 million yuan; "Legend of the Gods" with a guarantee of 1 billion yuan has a box office of only 283 million yuan; "Escape from the Jedi" with a guarantee of 1 billion yuan has a box office of 883 million. Yuan... The "Crazy Aliens" mentioned above only earned 2.2 billion yuan in the box office, not reaching the guaranteed box office of 2.8 billion yuan.
Guaranteed issuance is like a gamble for the guarantee party. If you bet on the right treasure, you will earn money, and you will lose money when you encounter bad movies. Today, guaranteed release is still an important way to seize the source of high-quality films, but capital has become more rational in this game of luck.
In this case, Hengdian Pictures chose to guarantee "囧Mom" with 2.4 billion yuan, which shows the trust in Huanxi Media's production ability.
However, in just two months, Huanxi Media had to "treacherous" for survival. According to the previous two transactions, it can be seen that under the framework of the guarantee agreement with Hengdian Films, Huanxi Media can obtain at least 600 million yuan in revenue, and in the cooperation with ByteDance, Huanxi Media can receive at least 630 million yuan. Of real money.
The difference of 30 million yuan will betray the partners that used to work together? For "囧Mo", perhaps not choosing to sell Xinyi at a price of 30 million yuan, it may usher in more losses. An industry insider told Zheng Jing that from the content of "囧 Ma", this is a film that actually caters to the Spring Festival file. Once the Spring Festival file is missed, the audience's willingness to pay will be greatly reduced. At the same time, in terms of content quality, "囧Mom" is not a solid content. The current rating of 5.9 on Douban is lower than the rating of 6.4 for "Crazy Alien" last year. The box office is no better than "Crazy Alien"."How much better.
In addition, a large number of advertisements have been implanted in "囧Mom", and the quality of the film is not resistant to hits. It will be delayed in theaters. Without the Spring Festival halo protection, it is likely to arouse further disgust from the audience and the advertising effect It will be greatly reduced.
At present, Huanxi Media has no courage to continue to lose money. Since 2016, Huanxi Media has invested huge sums of money to build a content production team. It has signed a series of well-known directors such as Wang Jiawei, Chen Kexin, Zhang Yibai, Gu Changwei, and Zhang Yimou. They have spent a total of more than 1 billion Hong Kong dollars, which directly led to the company’s success in 2016 and 2018. The annual losses were HK$1.252 billion and HK$445 million respectively.
Although the free online release of "囧Mom" was boycotted by theaters, for now, the audience and ByteDance are welcome with applause.
made money and the audience bought it. Huanxi Media really made a fortune this time.
2
The embarrassing theater
first raised the file on New Year’s Eve, and then gave up the guarantee to release the "remarriage" online broadcast. "囧Mom" broke the "industry rules" again and again. Is it tolerable?
has suffered, and the theater always has to jump around a few times to express grievances.
On January 24, practitioners in the film industry from 23 theaters, involving 8 provinces and cities, issued an application to the National Film Bureau, hoping to stop the Internet screening of "囧Mom" on the grounds that Huanxi Media broke industry regulations.
However, the request was not accepted. A legal practitioner told Zheng Jing that "囧 Ma" terminated the guarantee agreement within the framework of the contract. According to the guarantee agreement between Huanxi Media and Hengdian Pictures, under the influence of a series of force majeure factors such as the epidemic and war, Huanxi Media has the right to terminate the agreement and find another way. However, this seems a bit inhumane for Hengdian Films, which invested a lot of money and energy in the early stage of publicity. The truth of
is simple and easy to understand, don't the 23 theaters know it?
is not, just a cry from the bottom of the valley.
takes Hengdian Film and Television, the sister company of Hengdian Films, as an example. The financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2019, Hengdian Film and Television's revenue and net profit attributable to the mother were 2.131 billion yuan and 260 million yuan, down 3.43% and 19.40% year-on-year, respectively.
, also another leader in cinema stocks, also recently released its 2019 performance forecast, with an estimated loss of 3.3 billion to 4.5 billion yuan in 2019 and a profit of 2.1 billion yuan in the same period last year; Guangguang Media affected by the Spring Festival stall withdrawal It is estimated that the profit in 2019 will be 900 million yuan-11.5 billion yuan, compared with the profit of 1.373 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year, which is an estimated decline of 16.26%-34.46%. Everyone knows that the
cinema is not doing well. According to data released by the National Film Administration, the total box office of Chinese films in 2019 was 64.266 billion yuan, which was less than the 65 billion yuan expected, a year-on-year increase of 5.4%, the lowest in the past three years. While
's box office growth is weak, the number of cinema screens is still increasing. According to data from the National Film Special Fund Office, there were 9708 new screens nationwide in 2019, and the total number of screens reached 69,787, an increase of 14.7% compared to 2018.
In other words, when the overall box office growth is sluggish, one more screen represents a decline in attendance. Data show that since 2015, the online attendance rate of theaters has dropped from 17.4% to 11.1%.
Since 2019, a series of popular film and television works such as "Nezha" have appeared in China to help box office growth. For this reason, the 2020 Spring Festival file called "Fight of the Immortals" will undoubtedly be an important time node for the box office outbreak.
Now, "囧Mom" has abandoned Hengdian Film and Television, in a sense, forcing Hengdian Film and Television to miss the opportunity to hang out with the explosion.
3
New changes
But in any case, the special Spring Festival gear created by the partner of "囧Mom" and ByteDance has achieved good results. According to the data released by ByteDance a few days ago, as of 0:00 on January 27, the movie "囧Mom" has been viewed more than 600 million times on Toutiao channels, with a total of 180 million viewers. If
is calculated at the price of 30 yuan per movie ticket in theaters, the box office of "囧Mom" has exceeded 5 billion. In 2019, "Nezha", which became popular in 2019, had a final box office of more than 4.9 billion yuan, and it has been extended for several times.
can be seen, the online release of "囧Mom" is not only for HuanxiThe media made money and also made enough exposure for the film industry.
After "囧Mom", "Fatty Dragon Crossing the River" starring Donnie Yen also withdrew from the Spring Festival file and extended the Valentine's Day file, and then switched to the webcast on February 1. In "Fat Dragon Crossing the River" where the conflict of interest is not so obvious, the resistance of the theaters has almost disappeared.
In fact, before "囧Mom", LeEco and Netflix also had conflicts due to the short on-demand time and offline channel window.
In 2015, the film "The Vanishing Murderer" controlled by LeTV was the first to be screened on the Internet, but was eventually forced to give up after being collectively boycotted by theaters. But at the moment when the video website is gradually becoming stronger, Huanxi Media is a bit harder.
Just as Donnie Yen said on the social platform during the webcast of "Fat Dragon Crossing the River": "At the current development of the Internet, the mobile network of movie content is also an inevitable trend. In the future, within the scope of my personal ability, I will try my best to do so. After my movie was released in the cinema, the Internet playback is still overwhelming!”
However, the gap between cinema screening and online on-demand broadcasting is not easily resolved. As a practitioner of "Synchronization of Internet and Academy", Netflix's persistence is still resisted by major domestic theaters.
But compared to the passiveness in China, Netflix's strength in content has begun to shake the unspoken rules of the "window period" in the film and television industry. The two films "The Irishman" and "Marriage Story" produced by Netflix were nominated for 10 and 6 respectively, and both were shortlisted for Best Picture Oscars in 2020. In addition, Netflix also selectively distributes some films to offline theaters for a certain period of time.
The emergence of a new business model will inevitably affect the interests of the original business model. Just as after the rise of e-commerce in 2012, the performance of offline department stores began to decline. Many department stores attribute their losses to e-commerce disruptions and launched industry boycotts. But a few years later, online and offline, people, goods, and markets have formed new business models.
Whether the "treachery" of "囧母" will become the fuse of an industry change is still inconclusive, but any "accident" that breaks the original business model is worthy of the entire industry to think about: How should we face it? A "囧Mom". [Produced by "Zheng Jing She"]
[Disclaimer: The views in the article are for reference only and do not make investment advice. Investment is risky, you need to be cautious when entering the market]
Editor | Tang Weiping·Editor|Du Hai·Proofreading|However, if you reprint any original article of Zhengjing Society, please keep the copyright information at the beginning and end of the article in full, otherwise it will be regarded as infringement
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