This year's Spring Festival, "Hello, Li Huanying" and "Chinatown Detective 3" and other theater-line movies hit new box office highs.
At the same time, Chinese audiences also ushered in the first "online movie Spring Festival file"-43 films were broadcast on iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku. People's enthusiasm for online viewing is no less than that of the big screen. .
Among them, "The Legend of Shaolin Temple" and "Fortune Diary" starring many first-line stars have landed on the video platform in a single-chip payment mode, attracting the most audiences to pay for their pockets.
After finishing the gold for the first "online movie Spring Festival file", some people are satisfied, and some people complain that the quality of the film needs to be improved.
Development: in just a few years, it has been "sparkled a prairie fire"
On February 5th, Wu Manfang, co-chairman of the Online Film Working Committee of the Chinese Film Association, put forward the concept of "online movie Spring Festival files" for the first time at the 2021 web movie Spring Festival file cloud conference.
Subsequently, the association, iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku jointly launched the "2021 Online Movies Spring Festival File Plan" and announced a list of 43 films.
In this film list, the three-platform simulcast pay-per-view movie "The Legend of Shaolin Temple" and "Fortune Diary" with a lineup of first-line stars have received the most attention.
Secondly, the film list includes some upcoming or already drawn theater movies, such as "The Bomb Disposer 2", "Big Red Envelope", "Auspicious Ruyi", "Emergency Rescue", and "Chinatown Detective 3", "Assassination of Novelists", and "Crowd." "Raging", "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" and other new movie documentaries for the Spring Festival of the theater.
The remaining 30-odd online movies cover many popular themes such as comedy, love, action, military, youth, fantasy, and fantasy.
In addition, the three major platforms of "Aiyouteng" all launched the "100-Film Free Time Plan" during the Spring Festival, making the 2021 online movie Spring Festival more lively.
Although the concept of "online movie Spring Festival files" formally took shape this year, as early as 2018, there were pioneers who lighted the "single fire".
That year, the costume comedy film "Jigong's Heroes Return" directed by Lin Zicong and starring Chen Haomin and Lin Zicong was launched on iQiyi on the first day of the Chinese New Year, and finally the film won 17.632 million yuan at the box office.
On the same day, there is also the "Longmen Post" series starring Zhang Zhilin and Wen Songxian.
In addition, nearly 10 online movies such as "Crazy Express", "A Thousand Kings" and "Rebirth of a Deserted Island" were all launched during the Spring Festival of the same year.
In 2019, the number of online movies tested in the Spring Festival file reached 15 and 7 of them exceeded 10 million yuan at the box office. The highest box office was "Tang Bohu Dian Qiuxiang 2019" starring Chen Haomin, Chen Baixiang, and Lin Zicong.
During the Spring Festival last year, the prosperity of online movies made up for people’s regrets that they couldn’t go to the cinema to watch movies: on the first day of the new year, five online movies including "I come from Beijing" and "The Big Canopy" focused on "Youth". "Aiteng" went online; during the Spring Festival, a total of nearly 30 online movies were online.
Among them, "Fat Dragon Crossing the River" starring Donnie Yen, Mao Shunyun, and Zhou Liqi was launched on iQiyi and Tencent Video under the PVOD high-end paid-on-demand model, attracting as much attention as the Spring Festival blockbusters of previous years.
Status: high heat but still lack of quality products
With the promotion of "Chinese New Year in situ" in various places, the "online movie Spring Festival file" will explode in 2021.
According to statistics from Yunhe, from New Year’s Eve to the sixth day of 2021, the cumulative effective broadcasts of mainland online movies reached 440 million, an increase of 33.3% year-on-year; the average daily effective broadcasts reached 62.81 million, an increase of 67.1% from the week before the Spring Festival. And the growth rate exceeds the same period in 2020.
Among them, the "head film", "Fortune Diary", and "The Legend of Shaolin Temple" are far ahead with 25.45% and 16.99% market share respectively.
"The Legend of Shaolin Temple" has "Tang Explorers" Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran, and "Fortune Diary" also gathers famous actors such as Song Xiaobao, Sha Yi, Ma Li, and Zhang Yishan.
Both films adopt a pay-on-demand model. In order to attract more viewers to spend money to watch the film, the film party and the broadcast platform invest much more in their announcement and distribution than other online movies of the same file.
Taking iQiyi's announcement as an example, the platform has set up a pre-sale page for two movies, launching pre-sale discounts, lucky draws, daily spikes and other activities.
Under high-intensity marketing, the popularity index of the two films remained high throughout the Spring Festival period.
However, the high popularity may not necessarily lead to a good reputation.
As of February 27, the Douban score of "The Legend of Shaolin Temple" was only 4.2 points. Many netizens criticized its script and production for its rough script and the audience left a message after paying for the film: "Refund me 6 yuan. "Fortune Diary" has a Douban score of 6. Someone named director Song Xiaobao: "He is very sincere, but the movie is extremely ordinary."
In recent years, my country's online film market has entered a "quality improvement period": the number of audiences and box office revenue have increased significantly. New directors, well-known screenwriters, and big screen actors have joined the creative team of online films, and the market has been developing positively.
At the same time, major video platforms are still increasing their investment in online movies.
At the end of last year, Tencent Video rewarded a group of online film teams with high box office. Among them, the creative team of "Ghost Blowing Lantern: Xiangxi Secret Collection" with a box office of more than 40 million yuan received 8 million yuan in incentives.
According to the information disclosed at the 2020 Tencent Video Content Ecology Conference, this year Tencent Video will continue to improve the accounting system and support mechanism to stimulate the initiative of content producers, boost the overall production capacity of content, and promote the innovative growth of content value.
In this regard, many people in the industry agree: "Only by continuously producing high-quality content can online movies be promoted to a new level, but now the reserve of high-quality online movies is far from enough."
Trend: More schedules may appear in the future
The prosperity of "Internet Movies for the Spring Festival" is inseparable from the overall rapid development of Chinese online movies.
According to the "Report on China's Online Film Industry in 2020", among the new online movies in 2020, a total of 79 films have a box office of 10 million yuan, an increase of 41 from the same period last year; the total box office of tens of millions of films reached 1.39 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase An increase of 125%.
The volume of online movies has increased, providing sufficient film reserves for the "Internet Movie Spring Festival Files".
Many people in the industry expect that with the formation of the "Internet movie Spring Festival file", in the future, the "Online Movie May 1st File", "Online Movie National Day File" and "Online Movie Summer File" will also become a reality.
Others in the industry pointed out that in the future, practitioners may be able to produce more "appropriate" online movies based on the attributes of a specific schedule.
With the exploration of payment models for films such as "Fat Dragon Crossing the River", "The Legend of Shaolin Temple", and "Fortune Diary", more online movies will be distributed online through the single-chip payment model in the future.
"The Legend of Shaolin Temple's Treasures" director Tang Jili believes: "If a single film can drive the consumption habits of the crowd, it will be very helpful to the future development of Chinese movies." Song Jia, general manager of iQiyi Film Center, also said: "We want to Using single-chip payment methods to drive audiences to form new online consumption habits, so as to feed back content creation and promote the sound development of the film industry."
Yangcheng Evening News reporter Gong Weifeng