The highest box office for the Spring Festival
"In the past, there was no Spring Festival file (from the first day to the seventh day of the day) where two movies with a box office of more than 3 billion yuan were born at the same time!" A person in the film and television industry could not hide his excitement facing the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter.
The 2021 movie Spring Festival file closed with a total box office of 7.822 billion yuan, setting a record. The top two films "Detective Chinatown 3" (3.55 billion) and "Hello, Li Huanying" (2.72 billion) will win 80% of the box office. Into the bag.
The two films also broke into the top ten box office movie history in China, and the former reached a total box office of 3 billion yuan on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, and the latter also broke this number on the seventh day of the first month.
At the same time, in the context of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, the local Chinese New Year has further released the audience's demand for watching movies, and the total number of movie viewers of 160 million has also set a record for the Spring Festival.
"Many people stay in different places to celebrate the New Year, and there are no other entertainment activities, which objectively increases the base of the movie watching group. At the same time, the Lunar New Year stalls have a lot of propaganda efforts, and other industries are also promoting the recovery of the film industry. "Senior film distributor Yuan Haibin told the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter.
In his opinion, the pace of development of the Chinese film industry has returned to normal since the Lunar New Year file last year.
Film makers, theaters, and ticketing platforms prepare for the Spring Festival
Whether there is a hot or double hot style in the Spring Festival stalls, the film party's choice is very critical.
According to a senior distributor who has participated in the finalization of "Hello, Li Huanying", Beijing Culture hopes that "Hello, Li Huanying" and "The King of Bathing" will have two films, one of which won one billion box office and the other ( Spring Festival file) "Gamble". At that time, the high hope was "The Bathing King", because some people thought that the performance of Qiao Shan was more suitable for the Spring Festival file, and "Hello, Li Huanying" was more suitable for the New Year file.
"My suggestion to them was to go to the Lunar New Year file for "The King of Bathing" and to gamble on the Spring Festival file for "Hello, Li Huanying". "Before Qiao Shan's "Call Mania" was also on the Lunar New Year file. Not bad, but "Hello, Li Huanying" is more suitable for the Spring Festival with laughter and tears."
"This year the audience needs laughter and tears too much, including the Chinese New Year in place. Everyone needs emotional vent. This is the key to the victory of "Hello, Li Huanying". Young people want their parents to be happy, and middle-aged people want their parents to live long and old. People reminisce about their parents, it can be said that three generations of people have been pinched to death by "Hello, Li Huanying". This is a "take-all" film like "Wolf Warrior 2"," the publisher said.
"To put it bluntly, there are two or even three films that can be released during the Spring Festival every year. Cartoons are definitely profitable each year. These films, "The Crowd", "The Order of the Samurai", and "Assassination of Novelists" are at the end of the cinema. It shouldn't make any money," said the issuer.
It is also understood that "Detective Chinatown 3" has already achieved a payback when the box office reached 2.5 billion.
Before the 2021 movie Spring Festival, people in the movie industry chain such as theaters and ticketing platforms are also preparing in advance.
"Because of last year's Spring Festival, all theaters were suffocated early this year." Zhou Weicheng, manager of Beijing Wangjing Kylin Xintiandi Theater of Dadi Cinema, told reporters, "At the end of January, we have prepared sufficient epidemic prevention materials and formulated epidemic prevention measures. The emergency response plan was controlled, an isolation observation area was set up, and the employees were trained before the Spring Festival (February 8)."
Zhou Weicheng introduced that the Wangjing Kylin Xintiandi Cinema is full of members to celebrate the New Year, and 70% of them are outsiders.
"Everyone mainly considers the uncertainty of returning home, which may affect the subsequent resumption of work. Dadi Cinemas also improved the treatment of employees during the Spring Festival."
A small episode is that on January 29, theaters across the country have already been pre-sold at a 75% attendance rate, but then the relevant departments issued anti-epidemic measures to control the attendance rate of Beijing theaters at 50%, which caused many theaters to experience a "refund." ".
"Based on the background data, we judge the chronological order of users' orders, and coordinate the extra users one by one to change to other sessions, or to refund tickets."
What is gratifying is that Wangjing Kylin Xintiandi Cinema has exceeded the new target set by Dadi Cinema after the resumption of work based on the actual situation.
As a ticketing platform that directly contacts users, customer service has become the focus of pressure on the Spring Festival.
According to Hui Xin, the person in charge of customer service experience for Taoticket, “This year is the first Spring Festival after the epidemic, and it is still full of uncertainties. We deployed a customer service team of more than 150 people in two shifts and prepared an additional 300 Human mobile cloud customer service team, the service time of online manual customer service during the Spring Festival has also been extended from 12 hours to 15 hours. In terms of emergency protection, we have launched a standardized process of "movie withdrawal, user refund, automatic refund". We also The smart customer service "Ticket Xiaomi" was launched, mainly to deal with some standardized user problems and reduce the pressure of manual customer service."
Due to Ali’s “Double Eleven” experience, Taopiao’s customer service adopts a “staggered Chinese New Year” mechanism for the Spring Festival stalls. Some employees go home for the New Year and some stay at work. About 75% of employees stay on their posts to prepare for the Spring Festival this year. files.
Huixin, who has been working in Taopiao for four years, said, “We are also film-related workers and entertainment-related jobs. We are the busiest when everyone is resting. Not only the Spring Festival stalls, but also usually like this. Real life Many positions in China are the same as ours, and the family members are also very understanding and supportive."
High ticket prices and high demand for viewing movies have resulted in high box office
Many spectators who contributed to the box office during the Spring Festival this year were interviewed by reporters from the Beijing News that the ticket prices for the Spring Festival this year were very high.
The data from the organization also corroborated the audience's feelings.
According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, the average ticket prices of the top three Chinese New Year box office box office "Chinatown Detective 3", "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Assassination Novelist" are 49 yuan, 47 yuan and 49 yuan respectively, and in 2019 The average ticket prices of the top three "Wandering Earth", "Crazy Alien" and "Flying Life" in the box office of the Spring Festival stall are 44 yuan, 41 yuan and 41 yuan.
According to data from the Beacon Professional Edition, the national average ticket price for the Spring Festival this year is 48.9 yuan, which is 4.2 yuan higher than that for the 2019 Spring Festival. The increase is even more pronounced in first-tier cities.
Some netizens ridiculed that they bought a movie ticket for "Detective Chinatown 3" at a high price, "I thought I was sitting on Liu Haoran's lap to watch."
Regarding the high ticket prices reported by the audience, a cinema line manager told reporters that during the pre-sale stage, there were still many low-priced tickets due to the investment in film ticket replacement. The average ticket price of most film companies in the Spring Festival stalls was around 20 million.
But during the Spring Festival, if the audience buys tickets for nearby shows, the price will indeed be higher than usual. This is mainly due to the epidemic. The attendance rate of theaters is controlled at 75% (50% in Beijing), and many theaters also hope Recovered a little bit of last year's loss and adopted a price increase strategy.
Many viewers understand the high ticket price, and the high ticket price does not prevent people from entering the cinema.
According to data from the Beacon Professional Edition, the total number of movie viewers during the Spring Festival this year is 160 million, 30 million more than in 2019.
Last year, the movie Spring Festival file was "rejected" due to the epidemic, and the demand for watching movies was released this year. Offline theaters are also "hard to get a ticket."
Ms. Liu from Beijing said, "I planned to watch "Detective Chinatown 3" and "Hello, Li Huanying" on New Year's Eve, but the movie theaters near Shuangjing were full. Excluding the shows before ten o'clock in the morning, night shows and daytime movies Tickets are almost impossible to book. In the end, only two movie tickets for the afternoon of the fourth day of the day were booked. The seats were still in the front and rear rows, and the seats next to each other in the same row were gone." Mr. Zhang, who celebrated the New Year in a second-tier city in Jiangsu, said that before and after dinner. Popular movies and popular shows are very tight, and other shows can be selected for a good movie viewing position; Mr. Li from Daxing District in Beijing also expressed the same view.
The person in charge of the aforementioned cinema line said that the main ticket warehouses of its cinemas this year are concentrated in first-, second-, and third-tier cities. The fourth- and fifth-tier cities are full in the first and second grades, and they begin to fall after the third grade.
Song Yuxiang, the chief analyst of the Northeast Securities media industry, told the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter that under the influence of the "New Year's Day" policy, the box office performance of the first-tier cities during the Spring Festival filed exceeded expectations, an increase of nearly 50%.
In the five days before the Spring Festival, the first-tier cities accounted for 13.49% of the box office, an increase of 1.37 percentage points year-on-year. The second to fifth-tier cities accounted for 32.39%, 23.26%, 21.41%, and 9.45%, respectively.
The high ticket prices and high attendance together pushed up the box office of this year's Spring Festival stalls.
Producer Wang Lei told the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter, "I am very happy that the box office of the Spring Festival stall has achieved such good results, but we should also see that the unreleased entertainment just needs a large stock, even if the Spring Festival stall releases 1.6 There are hundreds of millions of people watching movies, but there are still many people who have not watched a movie during the Spring Festival", "Many people don’t think that watching movies during the Spring Festival is a daily need, so filmmakers still have to create different types of movies to satisfy people’s watching. demand."
The film industry sees light again
The unusually popular Spring Festival this year has injected a boost for filmmakers. Wang Lei said that this is the return of the film industry, especially the return of the theater industry.
From the financial reports of listed film and television companies, it is not difficult to see that theater chains have suffered heavy losses, which has also led to the lack of motivation for the performance of listed film and television companies. Wang Zhonglei, vice chairman and CEO of Huayi Brothers, said in an exclusive interview with the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter, After the outbreak, in the interim statements of various film companies, most companies lost money because of their cinemas.
But every crisis is a turning point, and the theater industry is reshuffled, and the stronger the stronger the 28th effect is more obvious.
Song Yuxiang said that in the five days before the Spring Festival in 2021, the Top 10 cinemas achieved a total box office of 4.199 billion yuan excluding service fees, with a market share of 66.25%, which was 0.62 percentage points lower than that of the Spring Festival in 2019, of which Wanda Cinemas achieved a box office of 837 million. Yuan, an increase of 36.95% compared to the same period in 2019, and a market share of 13.21%, an increase of 0.32 percentage points compared to the same period in 2019.
In addition to offline distribution, there have also begun to test water online distribution of films. The three head video platforms of iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku jointly launched the "New Year's Day Movie Home" 2021 online movie Spring Festival file, directed by Tang Jili "The Legend of Shaolin Temple" and Song Xiaobao's first film "Fortune Diary" appeared on three platforms on the first day of the new year.
Returning blood is very important for film companies that have gone through 2020.
As a "explosive money engine", Beijing culture once again bet on the dark horse of "Hello, Li Huanying", but the situation of Beijing culture, which has suffered losses and defaulted on loans for two consecutive years, is not optimistic. In the face of high short-term loans, Beijing Culture urgently needs blood transfusion cash flow.
As the producer and co-distributor of the film "Hello, Li Huanying", Beijing Cultural Announcement shows that "Hello, Li Huanying" has been commissioned by a third-party company for guaranteed distribution, with guaranteed box office revenue of 1.5 billion yuan.
Beijing Culture’s operating income for the film will be calculated in accordance with the agreement signed by the company and other partners.
Industry insiders told the Beijing News Shell Finance reporter that from the perspective of film and television production companies, when the year is not good, the capital turnover rate is more important. Online distribution is a way to shorten the capital turnover cycle. Capital turnover rate After the increase, the immediate benefits can be used to further increase productivity. For this reason, I would rather give up the expected more benefits.
From the perspective of capital, guaranteed issuance can also withdraw funds as soon as possible.
Beijing News reporter Zhang Yan, Bai Jinlei