How long will the film market remain bleak?

Rhino Entertainment's original

article｜Edited by Xiaofu｜Piao Fang

This year's National Day file, played back eight years ago overnight.

On the premise that the total number of screenings has increased by 250,000+ compared with last year, only 2 of the 7 National Day new films have exceeded 100 million at the box office, the total box office of the schedule has dropped by more than 65% year-on-year, and the number of moviegoers has halved...every One piece of data is a heavy blow to the film industry.

Maybe just looking at the depression in this period does not mean anything, but since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020, the film industry has been exhausted by the continuous impact. The epidemic prevented theaters from opening, affected the audience's enthusiasm for watching movies, and reduced the industry's production capacity. All aspects of the entire film industry were not spared from this long confrontation.

reversed all the way and drove back to

8 years ago. The various performances of the market this year are more like a concentrated outbreak after a long internal friction.

has the strongest Spring Festival season in the box office every year, ending the nearly ten-year continuous rise in 2022. At that time, we could also attribute that the frenzied revenge viewing of last year's Spring Festival stalls raised the threshold excessively, making it difficult to surpass this year's Spring Festival stalls. As everyone knows, the Spring Festival is already one of the few highlights in the film market this year.

After the Spring Festival, with the rebound of local epidemics in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing and other ticket warehouse cities since March, the national film market has once again entered a semi-shutdown state, making the market that is already a traditional cold period even worse. The scheduled new films were collectively withdrawn, the market was sluggish, and the three small schedules of Qingming, May 1, and Dragon Boat Festival were cancelled one after another, and the entire first half of the year came to an end.

However, the summer season did not become a real turning point. Although there was a strong leading dark horse like " Life Events " at the beginning of June, the ever-increasing limit setting and limit publicity situation have seriously affected more Project finalization and release process.

was the industry's long-awaited number one seed in the summer vacation titled "Walking to the Moon", and finally only a ten-day announcement cycle was left. It is almost impossible to miss the domestic animation blockbuster in every summer file. This year, there is almost only "New God List Yang Jian", the only seedling left, and only got the regrettable schedule like mid-August.

And this situation continues to this day. The Mid-Autumn Festival's "Hello, Brother", and several new films in the National Day file, whether large-scale head projects or small and medium-sized films, are forced to adapt to new schedules and announcements. rhythm.

Due to the superimposed influence of the cold winter of film and television and the epidemic in the past few years, the production capacity of the entire film industry is slowly declining. This situation has become more and more obvious in the market this year, and the unpredictable rhythm of setting files has made the grouping of the previous two years a good vision. As for the introduction of blockbusters and overseas batches that were responsible for filling the cold period, this year's film market has also become a minority.

, coupled with the local epidemic that will make a comeback at an unknown time, makes practitioners and ordinary audiences have to worry all the time. Therefore, the decline of the National Day file and the regression of the market seem to be doomed.

One prosper, one loss

These cold figures may not arouse the audience's interest in watching and discussing, but what we are concerned about is that after the market has been declining, downstream theaters, midstream publicity and even upstream film producers, producers, Investors, how long can they hold on?

theaters may be the industry component that has suffered the most in the past three years.

On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2020, due to the sudden epidemic situation, theaters across the country were forced to "suspend" for 175 days. However, this is only the beginning. In the following two years, the random rebound of the local epidemic, the long partial suspension of business, and various occupancy restrictions have all impacted the theater.

After entering this year, the increasingly serious phenomenon of no movies to play and no good movies to play has greatly reduced the audience's willingness to watch movies, and the attendance rate has also declined. The three major periods of Spring Festival, Summer, and National Day have been losing ground, and the most direct impact is on the box office revenue of theaters.

to know that for non-For many small and medium-sized theaters in ticket warehouse cities, the box-office revenue in the big season may constitute more than half of the theater's annual revenue, and undertake the heavy task of making up for losses in the off-season. But a long-term depression like this year, even in a big season, cannot help theaters increase their revenue.

, not to mention the local epidemic that may come back at any time, makes every theater enter a state of constant vigilance. Survival has become the primary goal of cinema people.

In contrast, publicity workers who are not easy to stand in front of the stage are often deeply tied to the movies scheduled for release. Now the problems encountered in the announcement are the overall decline in production capacity after the epidemic, as well as the more frequent limit-setting and limit announcements recently.

especially the latter. If it is in a normal market environment, most of the announcements can be carried out in an orderly manner according to the film plan. Now that the announcement cycle has been greatly reduced, the scale of announcements will inevitably decline.

Then the most direct consequence of this to the publicity staff is that the working hours are tighter and the work requirements are higher, and even some projects that do not have time to publicize may directly cut off most of the publicity budget and directly use the image to publicize. There are also a few projects that may encounter some uncertain events on the eve of their release, and many of these losses need to be shared in the publicity and distribution process. The market side of

was difficult to advance, and the pressure finally fell back to the film side.

For those projects written in the financial report release plan, some of them have been postponed indefinitely and become unseen stocks; Some projects have reached the stage of finalization, and even the premiere has been put on the schedule, but they still cannot be released smoothly.

It is difficult to set up a project, shoot, schedule, and release every step of the way. Many filmmakers are trapped in the process by this problem. The project cannot go on, the box office can't go on, the filmmaker can't repay the audience and the production company, and it can't explain it to the majority of investors.

So how can investors gain confidence in these film projects, theater assets and more film-derived commercial products? You know, compared to many physical industries, movies themselves are commodities with strong uncertainty. Even at the most prosperous moment of the market, half of the projects that can make a return on the cost of new films released every year are sad.

Now we are in such a sluggish environment, facing more unpredictable uncertainties, coupled with the uncontrollable quality of movie content, movies are no longer a high-quality asset worth investing in.

And these layers of problems eventually lead to only the continued downturn of the entire film industry.

From upstream to downstream, all aspects of the film industry are interlinked. If the film cannot achieve a high box office, the filmmaker will not have enough funds and confidence to develop new projects, and the investors will not be able to raise their confidence in the film. As for the theaters that lost box office revenue, and the publicity staff who could not complete their work according to the normal cycle, every link in the production chain was gritting their teeth and bearing these bleak consequences.

Where is the road ahead?

The Chinese have always been optimistic. Even in such a situation, practitioners are still willing to believe that a turnaround is coming in the near future. But hope may still be there, and some practitioners may not be able to hold on to their hopes.

So, when will the time we waited for come? If

can ease after November this year, perhaps this year's market will have a turnaround. The one-month Lunar New Year stall still has enough space to accommodate a large number of new films. And then it will usher in the Spring Festival in January next year. With the domestic blockbuster led by " Wandering Earth 2", I believe that the audience can quickly regain their enthusiasm for movies.

If the turning point occurs after March next year, then practitioners will continue to carry through this year's Lunar New Year and next year's Spring Festival. Although it is difficult, it is not unbearable.

And one of the worst possibilities is that the turnaround we've been waiting for is still a long way off.

The form lasts for several years, then the depression of the market will have no lower limit, and the pessimism of the industry will continue. You must know that the former industry leader, Huayi , has not released its main control project for 10 months this year. Not only that, the leading Wanda Movies , Enlight Media, and Hengdian and Jinyi, represented by theater stocks , looking around, not many of the first film companies have had a better time this year.

This state of internal friction is ultimately limited, and not all practitioners have enough wealth to wait for the haze to dissipate. Just like those small and medium-sized theaters that have closed down one after another, there may be more people who will follow this road in the future.

made it through year after year. After three years of hard work, how long can the majority of film practitioners endure it?