The online movie industry, which had been dormant for a whole year, finally briefly returned to the public eye during the Spring Festival. Various platforms have released their Spring Festival film lists, and many surprises have emerged.
The 2022 popular work " Defiant " has launched a sequel "Defiant 2". The box office was about 13 million in the first two weeks. The Douban score of 7.2 successfully surpassed the previous work, and it is also the highest-scoring online movie in the past year. It was originally planned to "see you on the big screen", but in the end it was decided to switch networks based on risk considerations, which also brought a rare rising narrative to online movies.
On the other side, "Black and White", a Hong Kong film broadcast exclusively on Youku, has a strong flavor and has won more than 28 million box office shares; Tencent Video's " Painting Jianghu: Tiangang " has IP blessing, although it is not a traditional online movie, but 6,000 The box office revenue of 10,000 yuan also inspired the industry.
After the overall decline in data in all dimensions in 2023, the online movie industry relied on holiday consumption to revive, but the industry is still far from optimistic. The process of "improving quality" is blocked and "reducing" is plummeting. Industry practitioners and audiences are being diverted by emerging categories. Online movies have reached a moment when they urgently need to reorganize their own value.
Returning to the Internet from Theaters
Originally, "Defiant 2" was headed to theaters. However, on January 19, "Defiant 2" issued an announcement on its official Weibo, stating that it decided to return to iQiyi Cloud Cinema. The core reason is that "martial arts movies today are showing a decline in creation and a rare market."
Wei Junzi, the producer of "Defiant 2", told Poisonous Eyes that the decision to transfer the theater to a new network was made only one month before the announcement. The entire production cycle of "Defiant 2" is fully based on the standard production of theatrical movies. of.
In the theater market, the ceiling of martial arts movies is visible to the naked eye. The martial arts film with the highest box office in domestic film history is " Flying Swords of Dragon Gate ", with only 680 million. Moreover, this is already a movie in 2011, and there are very few creators who still choose this genre in recent years. It is inevitable that people are worried about the box office prospects of new martial arts movies.
However, with Tsui Hark's upcoming new film "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" and Yuen Woo-Ping's "The Wind Rises in the Desert" currently being prepared, gradually released, driven by large-scale productions, Wei Junzi is optimistic about the future of martial arts movies in theaters. The film has become popular again, and it has not given up the possibility that the follow-up to "Defiant" will land in theaters again.
Another reason for transferring to a major theater is actor Xie Miao. As the "face" of the new generation in the online film industry, he has also received many filming invitations for theater film projects, and his management contract has also been signed by "Defiant" and " The producer and producer of the "Northeast Police Story" series is Qingdao Kuaima Pictures. In Wei Junzi's view, Xie Miao's plan needs to be considered in the long term, and there is no need to take unnecessary risks at this stage.
Poisonous Eyes once conducted a detailed case review of the first part of "Defiant" the year before last (click here to read: "How a 7-minute online movie was born | Dialogue with the main creator"), using low costs to create a high reputation, To achieve a demonstration effect is the most valuable experience of "Defiant" to the industry.
As for the second part, although it is based on theater production standards, its advantages in cost control have not been discarded. Wei Junzi revealed that the cost of "Defiant 2" is controlled at the minimum standard for theater-level martial arts films, so that even if it eventually switches to a network, the cost recovery pressure will not be high for the creative team.
At present, "Defiant 2" has reached a box office of approximately 13 million in its first two weeks, while the first part of "Defiant" has received a total of more than 9 million in the 35-day on-demand period, and "Northeast Police Story 2" has received more than 15 million. Despite the industry downturn, Qingdao Kuaima has maintained its gradually improving performance.
As far as Qingdao Kuaima is concerned, the entire team has also moved from the first stage of entrepreneurship to the second stage. "In the first stage, we were barefoot and not afraid of wearing shoes, and everything we did was a struggle. So at this stage, we have a certain amount of capital and can have a certain ability to avoid risks, so why not?" Wei Junzi said .
At the creative level, a prominent feature is that "Defiant 2" adds more emotionally delicate literary and dramatic parts than its predecessor.The issue of the ratio between literary and martial arts dramas has been a long-standing creative problem in the martial arts or action genres. There is no absolute standard answer, and it depends on the creator's weighing of pros and cons. In Douban reviews, some users said they were pleasantly surprised by the changes in character creation in the second film, while others said the fighting scenes were "relatively frustrating."
Wei Junzi explained, "The preparations for "Defiant 2" started after "Defiant" was finalized, that is, in June 2021, and "Defiant" was actually not officially launched for everyone until June 2022. In other words, the creation of "Defiant 2" was not actually done after receiving feedback from the audience of "Defiant", but started from the understanding of theatrical movies. If subsequent works decide to go to theaters, they will still Work more on drama and character relationships, but if you are targeting the online movie market, it is more suitable to strengthen action scenes."
It can be seen that for online movies and their fixed audiences, action scenes or other stimulating elements are more obvious comfort zone, and the addition of delicate literary drama this time is an unexpected breakthrough. However, it can also be seen from the current reputation and box office performance that there is no way out for good literary dramas, and stepping out of the comfort zone is not necessarily a bad thing for online film practitioners.
Make a brand in online movies
When you open "Defiant 2", you can see many comments debating whether this is a prequel or a postquel to the first film, and after the final battle, the blind man fell to the ground exhausted, does that mean? There is no third part.
In the imagination of the main creative team, the "Defiant" series will not be a continuation of the previous and second episodes, but a series of character movies. Wei Junzi mentioned, "Just like the 'Once Upon a Time Series' and the '007 Series', every episode is about this character, but every episode is a new journey and you will meet new characters."
Light Knife and Fast Horse There is a sense of making the two IPs "Defiant" and "Northeast Police Story" into some kind of "universe". Wei Junzi revealed the upcoming works of Qingdao Kuaima this year, which are a spin-off movie "Violence" based on "Northeast Police Story" and a spin-off movie "Knife Catcher" based on "Defiant". Both are branches extending outward in their respective IP worldviews.
In the film industry, there are very few IPs born from original scripts, and it is even more difficult to have the opportunity to create an "IP universe". In the theater market, the IP that is still active is none other than "Bear Bears". The unmatched attendance rate every year demonstrates the strong appeal of the IP itself. And this kind of appeal is based on the superposition of stable word-of-mouth output every year.
In the online movie market, there are also some original IP movie series cases, such as the "Orochi" series, "Running God of Wealth" series, "Erlong Lake" series, etc. However, due to word-of-mouth factors, these series failed to break through the circle, and box office performance continued to weaken in line with the performance of the market, and the brand effect was ineffective. Take the "Orochi" series as an example. From 2018 to now, 4 movies have been updated, with box office splits of 50.784 million, 32.567 million, 37.422 million, and 20.774 million respectively. The Douban score is stable below 5 points.
This shows that series of movies with insufficient reputation have not actually established real barriers, making it difficult to extend the audience base of the previous movie to the next one. The foundation for the IP serialization of "Defiant" and "Northeast Police Story" is the stability of word-of-mouth. Whether the next step is to go to theaters or continue online, they can reap the support of the fan effect accumulated by the previous works.
Going to theaters will always be a key step in the IP construction of "Defiant", because it means a breakthrough in the original audience circle. When the audience base of IP expands, more cross-media products derived from IP, such as drama-film linkage, film-game linkage, etc., or commercialization paths such as brand licensing, will become possible.
There is no schedule for online movies
In the comments of many users, "defiant 2" was also highly praised for "beating other Spring Festival movies". However, as an online movie, the concept of schedule is actually not as strong as that of theaters. Unlike the product quality of theater chains that are "specially designed for the Spring Festival", online movies often "just happen to be released during the Spring Festival."
Yang Haitao, senior vice president of iQiyi, once mentioned, "We are a streaming media, and we are not particularly strong in the concept of schedules. But because we launched 'Action Master Season' as a label, after the launch of this label, we chose the Spring Festival , I just feel that more people watch movies during the Spring Festival, and we want to make this label a hit, in fact, it is to serve these movies."
hit the nail on the head. Whether the first part of "Defiant" chooses to be released in the summer, or "Defiant 2" chooses to be released during the Spring Festival, essentially it is because these two time periods are the peak period of the year for the number of movie viewers in the online movie market, and the platform chooses to take them. The most popular works are released online, without forming the so-called scheduled consumption habits among the audience.
Since the industry-wide promotion of the "Online Movie Spring Festival" in 2021, in addition to the first year of " Fortune Diary " and " Shaolin Temple: The Legend of Treasures ", due to its theater-level production, it briefly ignited the industry's excitement. Apart from the excitement, every subsequent year has been in an embarrassing state of "big thunder but little rain".
Until this year, each platform had different priorities and formed differentiated development. iQiyi launched the "Action Master Season" label, focusing on action movies; Tencent Video launched the "Goose Movies Online Spring Festival", highlighting a number of comedy films that fit the Spring Festival atmosphere; Youku called "one-stop blockbuster movies" "The slogan is divided into four categories: "hilarious", "super cool", "furious" and "heartwarming", with everything you need. Some of
's masterpieces are also worthy of analysis: "Black and White", which has exceeded 28 million in box office, is currently the box office champion in 2024, and its results have surpassed the second place in 2023. This is Youku's full use of its advantages in Hong Kong films. The product of "Hua Jiang Hu Zhi Tiangang" launched by Tencent Video has been released since New Year's Day. After the Spring Festival, the box office exceeded 60 million. This is also the continuation of Tencent's dominant position in the animation industry. Although online film practitioners have difficulty breaking through the production barriers of animation, But a similar "live-action comic adaptation" track is not out of reach.
In addition, there are three platforms co-broadcasting " Rampage God of Wealth 5". The series ran for five years and was released every year on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year to welcome the God of Wealth, becoming a kind of "mascot movie" produced in conjunction with the festival. There is no shame in emphasizing the practical value of film products. Many of the hits in theaters last year also emphasized the practical value of films at the marketing level to attract audiences. As a mass entertainment consumer product, this is of course a reasonable direction for sales strategy. However, the film's box office was too restricted by festivals, which limited its long tail. The box office performance of the five films was not stable, none of them exceeded 10 million, and their reputation was not satisfactory.
But no matter what, the current performance during the Spring Festival has brought a little light to the gloom that shrouded the industry throughout last year. According to Beacon Professional Edition data, there will be only one film with a box office of over 30 million in 2023, compared with 4 in 2022 and 9 in 2021. There will be only 31 films with a box office of over 10 million in 2023, compared with 43 films in 2022 and 70 films in 2021. Both the overall data and the top hit data show a comprehensive shrinkage.
Improving quality and reducing quantity cannot be an excuse for the industry. Although the quantity and total box office are declining, there is only one "Northeast Police Story 2" that scored 7 points on Douban, which is also not as good as 2022 and 2021.
The loss of viewers is only one aspect, the loss of practitioners is equally serious. With the sudden rise of short drama products in 2023, a large number of former online film practitioners have flocked to short dramas and become one of the effective forces in "turning Hengdian into a vertical store". Some platform executives said at an internal sharing meeting at the end of the year, "Original production talents have been lost, there are bottlenecks in the construction of talent echelons, and the industry seems to be less lively."
The more fatal problem is that the short drama has completed the iteration of the business model . When mini-program dramas appeared, it meant that the To C channel had been opened first, and only then did the myth of daily revenue exceeding 100 million appear, despite the high purchase cost. However, most practitioners of online movies are still stuck in the old model of relying on platforms to share accounts. The number of films that can be paid separately every year is very limited, which means that their commercial ceiling is visible to the naked eye, especially in the context of the general trend of platforms to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Growth is hard to find.
Ways to break the game
But online movies are not without their ways to break the game. Judging from the performance of Spring Festival films, a relatively clear path can be seen - differentiation.
Wei Junzi has not studied the short drama track, but after discussing with the team, he decisively gave up. On the one hand, the short form of vertical screen is difficult to be compatible with martial arts action. It may be feasible as an embellishment, but it is difficult to present as the main type; on the other hand, the cost of the action type has always been relatively high, compared with other drama films. Bi has a huge disadvantage in cost control.
Thinking about it the other way around, the categories that are difficult to be compatible with short drama products are precisely the categories where online movies can still maintain a moat. Including horizontal comparison with theater movies, classic Hong Kong movies are severely cliched, and their box office appeal has gradually weakened. In 2022, " Detective vs. " can still earn a box office of 712 million. By 2023, films such as " stealth " and " Anti-Drug 3: People at the End of the World" can only stay in the range of 200-400 million.
However, in the field of online movies, action movies have always been a strong genre, and many fixed audiences who have feelings for ancient Hong Kong movies have always been the inherent movie-watching group of online movies.
According to data released by iQiyi, action-type films accounted for 40% of the top 20 film member playtime rankings within 30 days of being online on the platform, and the number of subscriptions in cloud cinemas in 2023 accounted for 91% of all films. According to Beacon Professional, among the 29 films with revenue exceeding 10 million in 2023, there are also 15 action films.
Vice President of iQiyi Song Jia once mentioned, "The reduced supply of action movies in theaters has left a gap in the market. We want to take over this knife and see if we can recreate something and recreate China." The light of action movies."
In addition to action movies, the previously mentioned areas of animation or live-action comic adaptations are also emerging categories that need to be broken through. The two-dimensional crowd has strong user stickiness and willingness to pay, and this category is also not good at short plays or theatrical movie products. It may become a sharp knife for online movies to explore toc payment.
In short, embracing change is the only choice to solve problems, and online movies have reached a point where changes are necessary. Only by seizing the only upward narratives and stepping out of the comfort zone of the past can the naysayers stop.
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