The Chinese mainland film market is always a highly anticipated time slot, creating huge box office revenue for film and television works. However, just this past weekend (December 15-17), 14 new Chinese and foreign films were released in Chinese mainland, including "The Three Teams", "Angry Tide", "Detective Conan: The Fish Shadow of Black Iron", "Dog God", etc., but the overall box office performance was not satisfactory. So far, no film has hit more than 1 billion yuan at the box office. This makes people wonder what has happened to the most popular Chinese New Year stalls in the past?
First of all, let's take a look at the highly anticipated new Chinese New Year film "The Three Teams". Produced by Chen Sicheng, directed by Dai Mo, written by Zhang Ji, and starring Zhang Yi, Wei Chen, Cao Bingkun, Wang Xiao, Zhang Zixian, etc., this domestic crime suspense film, adapted from real events, was screened at the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in early November and won wide acclaim. However, despite the excellent word-of-mouth, the opening weekend box office was only 24.5 billion yuan, which did not become a hit as expected.
In contrast, the crime suspense film "Disappearing Her", which was also produced by Chen Sicheng's team, reached a box office of 54.5 billion yuan, it can be seen that the performance of "The Three Teams" is not satisfactory. In addition, "Raging Tide" and "Detective Conan: The Fish Shadow of Black Iron", which were released last weekend, received 86.4 million yuan and 72.74 million yuan respectively in the first two days of the first weekend, and the box office performance was not bad.
However, Luc Besson's critically acclaimed new work "Dog God" only received a box office of 5.13 million yuan in three days after its release, compared with Douban 8A good 3 out of 3 is a stark contrast. On the whole, the box office of this year's Lunar New Year period has not been as hot as in previous years, and there has not yet been a film that can be called a hit. In this context, we can't help but think about why the box office of this year's Lunar New Year period failed to catch up?
On the one hand, although the highly anticipated "Three Teams" has an excellent reputation, it is not a cool film, and its emotional concentration is greater than the narrative density, which affects the box office to a certain extent. On the other hand, the extremely cold weather in the northern region also affected the number of moviegoers on weekends. What's more, the box office of this year's summer file is too hot, and the audience's willingness to consume movies may have been overdrawn. Based on the above reasons, this year's Chinese New Year film market seems tepid.
Still, we can look forward to the rest of this Chinese New Year file, because the upcoming "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle Star" has a pre-sale box office of 25.8 billion yuan may be expected to become a dark horse in China's film market this year.
The concept of the Lunar New Year slot** was first coined by Hong Kong filmmakers, and the Lunar New Year slot in the Chinese mainland film market originally referred to mid-to-late December to the end of the year, and gradually expanded to late November to December 31 every year as more and more films squeezed into this slot. However, in recent years, with the rise of the Spring Festival and summer stalls, as well as the increasing importance of the National Day stalls, the Lunar New Year stalls have gradually retreated to the second-tier schedule.
Comparing last year's (2017) Lunar New Year stalls and this year's Lunar New Year stalls, we will find that in last year's Lunar New Year stalls, the film market set a box office record of 5.6 billion yuan, while the box office of this year's Lunar New Year stalls is only 24 so far6.4 billion yuan, obviously not as good as last year. Especially during this year's Lunar New Year, although the box office is slightly higher than usual, it is far from reaching the level of popularity. This may also be related to the fact that the types of films released in this year's Lunar New Year are very rich, the quality is generally above the level line, and the quantity is also many.
However, this did not bring a more hot box office performance for the Lunar New Year. In this case, we will also usher in "Aquaman 2: The Lost Kingdom", "Stealth", and "The Year Will Not Stop!"."Goldfinger", "If You Are Honest, Do Not Disturb 3" and many other blockbuster films, perhaps a hit film can emerge among them, drawing a successful end to this year's Chinese film market. Let's wait and see!