Original title: New Year’s Day box office 554 million yuan, recovered but not recovered (quote)
What conditions are needed for the recovery of the film market? (theme)
Yangcheng Evening News reporter Li Li
According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, the total box office for the three days of New Year’s Day in 2023 is 554 million yuan. Although the market is still far from reaching the level of “full blood resurrection”, it has seen a significant recovery compared to December 2022.
In the past three years, the recurrence of the epidemic has become the main reason affecting the film market. However, as the epidemic prevention and control has entered a new stage, the most difficult period has passed, and the Chinese film market is gradually recovering. But to completely reach the level of “full blood resurrection”, it still requires the joint persistence and efforts of audiences, creators and theater managers.
The 100th billion-dollar film in film history was born
In the past New Year’s Day file, “Avatar: The Way of Water” (also known as “Avatar 2”) became the box office champion of the schedule, with a three-day box office of 280 million yuan, accounting for more than 50% of the box office. As Cameron’s latest visual effects blockbuster, which was highly anticipated, “Avatar 2” had a box office of more than 100 million yuan in the first two days of its release, and its daily box office once fell to more than 20 million yuan. Affected by this, the predicted box office of the film has also been “half discounted” from the original more than 2 billion yuan. However, since the first day of the New Year’s Day file on December 31 last year, the daily box office of “Avatar 2” has returned to more than 100 million yuan.
The recovery of movie theaters is synchronized with the recovery of consumption in all sectors of society. Take the average attendance of the schedule champion “Avatar 2” as an example. On New Year’s Day, the average attendance per game exceeded 20. For a long time before that, the number of viewers per game did not exceed 10.
As the audience of “Yangkang” returned to the theater one following another, “Avatar 2” started a counterattack at the box office half a month following its release. After the end of the New Year’s Day file, “Avatar 2” broke through 1 billion yuan at the box office, officially becoming the 100th film in Chinese film history to break 1 billion yuan at the box office. It is worth mentioning that the first “Avatar” released in 2010 was the first film in Chinese film history to break 1 billion at the box office. After 12 years, Cameron has completed a complete reincarnation in the Chinese film market.
Domestic films supported more than 80% of the box office last year
According to the data of the National Film Administration, the total box office of movies nationwide in 2022 will be 30.067 billion yuan, and the number of moviegoers in urban theaters will be 712 million throughout the year. According to data from the Guangdong Provincial Film Bureau, in 2022 Guangdong will produce a box office of 3.79 billion yuan, continuing to lead the country.
Compared with 2020 and 2021, the film market in 2022 is particularly bumpy, and repeated epidemics have become an important reason hindering the accelerated operation of the industry. Popular schedules such as May 1st, summer, and National Day failed to give full play to their due advantages.
Despite this, there are still many important films, especially domestic films, that will gain both word of mouth and box office in 2022. Among them, the new theme blockbuster “Shuimen Bridge of Changjin Lake”, “Miracle Stupid Kid”, “Sniper”, “The Way Back Thousand Miles” and “Ordinary Heroes”, and the realistic works “Life Events” and “Mom! “, “The Grassland at the End of the Sea”, as well as the science fiction film “Lonely Walking on the Moon”, “Tomorrow’s War”, comedy “This Killer Is Not So Calm”, the action film “Detective War”, the cartoon “Bear Infested·Return to Earth” ” New God List: Yang Jian” and so on, met the diverse needs of the audience.
The annual income of the major studios is less than 5 million yuan
In 2021, the total number of screens in the mainland film market will exceed 80,000, ranking first in the world. However, in terms of growth rate, compared with the annual increase of 1,000 screens before the epidemic, it has slowed down significantly. Since 2020, relief and support policies for theaters have been successively introduced across the country, but the living environment of many theaters is still difficult.
According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, there has been a shortage of cinemas with an annual box office of more than 30 million yuan since 2020. The main movie theaters that contributed to the annual box office have shifted from the range of 10 million to 20 million yuan to the range of 1 million to 5 million yuan. Especially in 2022, theaters with an annual box office of 1 million to 5 million yuan will contribute half of the annual box office of the movie market.
Although the total box office of Chinese movies will exceed 30 billion yuan in 2022, this figure is still far from the annual box office output of the mainland film market as high as 60 billion yuan three years ago. Due to the decline in both overall output value and average performance per game, coupled with the increase in operating costs over the past three years due to the epidemic, film studios and theaters have unanimously adopted a strategy of raising ticket prices for popular schedules. Starting from the New Year’s Day file in 2022, the minimum settlement price of some domestic films in non-special halls has been raised to 35 to 40 yuan, and the prices of popular movies have also increased to a certain extent. For example, the price of some domestic screenings of “Avatar 2” even exceeded 300 yuan. But the ticket price is ultimately the result of the game between the theater and the audience – because the early box office of “Avatar 2” did not appear as popular as expected, and now the national average ticket price has dropped to 43 yuan.
The new film lacks the cultivation of unfavorable viewing habits
The difficulties in the downstream are obvious to all, but the severe production situation in the upstream in the past three years is not so easy to see. As of August 2022, the number of filings for feature films has dropped by 30% compared with the same period in 2019-2021, resulting in a total of only 80% of the total number of domestic films in the past three years compared to 2017-2019.
The “cutoff” of new films will have a significant and continuous impact on the market. On the surface, the box office revenue of theaters has decreased, but the deeper industry logic is that this will be extremely detrimental to the cultivation of audiences’ viewing habits. “Avatar 2” did not achieve the expected blockbuster effect, or it was one of the consequences-in the past, it was difficult for this blockbuster with visual effects not to cause a movie-watching frenzy, but now even though the impact of the epidemic is gradually dissipating, The so-called “retaliatory viewing” phenomenon has not appeared in theaters around the world. This makes some people in the industry worry: In the past three years, have audiences gotten used to not watching movies?
The performances of the top three films on New Year’s Day this year are not too different. Except for “Avatar 2”, the runner-up and third runner-up are “Want to See You” and “Desperate Husband”. The romance film “Want to See You” is the movie version of the hit drama of the same name in 2019. The IP effect has attracted many viewers, but the story has disappointed them. On Douban, the drama version “Want to See You” scored 9.2 points, but the movie version is not. Only a mere 6.5 points. The comedy “The Desperate Husband”, which gathered Chang Yuan, Wei Xiang and others, scored only 6.1 points on Douban, and was rated as “the last bad movie to watch in 2022” by some viewers.
Long-term benefits can only be achieved by making efforts on the production side
According to Maoyan data, the proportion of viewers who only watch a movie once will rise to 60% in 2022, and the number of movies watched per capita will fall below 2. Under such circumstances, both theaters and audiences are focusing on blockbuster movies-only at the top of the industry can they attract incremental users. But in the long run, the number and frequency of high-quality film releases are the ultimate driving force for increasing the number and frequency of movie viewing per capita.
The good news is that during the three years of the epidemic, the sinking process of the national film market is still advancing steadily, and the proportion of moviegoers in third- and fourth-tier cities has increased from 43% in 2019 to 49% in 2022, which continues to be an important factor for the film market. bring regarding an increase in the number of people. Movie watching in theaters with social attributes is still one of the important choices for people’s cultural and entertainment consumption methods. As the epidemic prevention and control enters a new stage, movies can still glow with vigorous vitality.
On the production side, the prosperity of various domestic types of films such as “Operation Red Sea”, “The Wandering Earth” and “Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World” has broken through the limitations of the subject matter and industrial development of Chinese films. Today, the audience’s praise for domestic big-budget films has gradually surpassed that of Hollywood blockbusters. In particular, the popularity of new mainstream blockbusters combined with family and country feelings has gradually formed a new national trend sought following by young people, which also points out the creative direction for the future recovery of the film market.
This year’s Spring Festival, 5 blockbuster films have officially settled in, including the sequel sci-fi film “The Wandering Earth 2”, the costume film “Manjianghong”, the suspense film “Unknown”, and two cartoons “Bear Infested: Be with me “Bear Core”” “deep sea”. Famous IP, famous director, and famous actors, the Chinese film market ushered in a long-lost “blockbuster party”. The industry is optimistic that the Chinese film market will usher in a further recovery as the Spring Festival film kicks off the first shot of the annual schedule.
