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On the evening of December 20, in a theater in Baoshan District, Shanghai, a theater with the popular new film "Aquaman 2: The Lost Kingdom" (hereinafter referred to as "Aquaman 2") sat less than 10 audiences. The box office of this film on the first day of release finally stayed at 35.74 million yuan.
Five years ago, on December 7, 2018, the predecessor of "Aquaman 2" "Aquaman" was also released in the Chinese New Year, and it achieved 15.7 billion yuan at the box office, with a final box office of more than 2 billion yuan, and broke the record of the number of viewers of Chinese New Year films in the past five years, and the word "Aquaman" has also become a hot word on the Internet.
In the past five years from "Aquaman" to "Aquaman 2", the domestic film market has undergone earth-shaking changes. The schedule division is getting more and more detailed, which is one of the obvious manifestations.
Shrinking Lunar New Year stalls.
At the end of December 1997, the movie "Party A and Party B" directed by the famous director Feng Xiaogang was released. This is considered to be the first film in China to be invested, produced and distributed entirely in line with the principle of commercialization, creating the concept of schedule in the domestic film industry, and "Party A and Party B" has also become the first Chinese New Year film.
As the pioneer of the Lunar New Year stalls, the films directed by Feng Xiaogang later won the box office championship of the Lunar New Year stalls many times. From 1997 to 2012, the Lunar New Year stalls contributed the most annual box office champions.
In 2005, "The Year of Wuji", "The Year of the Assembly", "Let the Bullets Fly", "The Year of the Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling", "Thai Embarrassment", ......These well-known box office champions are all released during the Chinese New Year. As a result, the Lunar New Year file in the early years is almost the only super schedule in the whole year, and it is a "must fight" for the filmmaker.
But in the past ten years, the changes in the Lunar New Year stalls have gradually occurred, first of all in the time span. Liu Zhengshan, executive deputy secretary-general and director of the office of the National Film Think Tank of the Beijing Film Academy, told a reporter from **Times E Company that the early New Year's Eve files mainly considered the New Year's Eve and the corresponding holidays, such as "Party A and Party B" was released on December 24, 1997, and the New Year files were counted from the end of December.
After several years of development, the academic community has gradually reached a consensus on the division of Chinese New Year stalls: generally from the last week of November or the beginning of December to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, spanning about 12 weeks. But then the situation changed, and the Lunar New Year stalls shrank significantly. Liu Zhengshan introduced.
In 2013, the concept of the Spring Festival file was officially established, and after the three-day holiday on New Year's Day in 2014 was established, the boundary of the New Year file no longer includes the Spring Festival file and the New Year's Day file. Taking 2023 as an example, the industry's division of the Lunar New Year stalls is from November 24 to December 31, a total of 38 days. The longest Chinese New Year stall spanned more than 90 days.
After the span has shrunk, the box office influence and appeal of the Lunar New Year stalls have also weakened significantly. Since the establishment of the Spring Festival stalls in 2013, the Lunar New Year stalls (subject to the time span of the Lunar New Year stalls on the Maoyan and Lighthouse platforms) have never given birth to the annual box office champions, and the schedules that produce the most box office champions have become the Spring Festival stalls and the National Day stalls.
According to this year's division standard, as of now, in nearly 30 days, the 2023 Chinese New Year stalls will only produce about 2.5 billion yuan at the box office. has the name of the Chinese New Year, but the box office does not seem to show the strength of the Chinese New Year.
This situation is not new to the pandemic. The peak of the box office of the Chinese New Year stalls appeared in 2017, with a box office of 5.6 billion yuan that year, and fell to 49 the following year300 million yuan, and in 2019, it dropped to 46300 million yuan. In those years, the box office has been growing, and the box office of the Chinese New Year stalls has not increased but declined.
The change in the proportion of the box office of the schedule also reflects the declining importance of the schedule. In the case of basically the same schedule length, in 2015, the box office of the Chinese New Year stalls accounted for 11% of the total box office of that year, about 10% in 2017, and only 72%。
There is no shortage of films, and there is no shortage of explosive models.
As a market-side practitioner, An Yugang, the founder of Beijing Film Bank World Cultural Communication, has obvious feelings about the changes in the Chinese New Year file. "When I first entered the industry, the Lunar New Year stalls began to be counted in mid-December, and then they started to be counted on December 1st, and then even at the end of November, some people said that this was the first part of the Lunar New Year stalls, and the Lunar New Year stalls were promoted as a gimmick. ”
I weigh the Lunar New Year stalls not according to specific dates, but according to the performance of the user base at the box office, to put it bluntly, how many people enter the cinema because of the so-called Lunar New Year stalls. According to this standard, the 'decline' of the Lunar New Year stalls is still quite obvious, and almost until Christmas Eve, there may be an obvious concept and atmosphere of the Lunar New Year stalls. An Yugang said.
Although the box office appeal of the Lunar New Year stalls has declined, judging from the number of films released, the Lunar New Year stalls are at least lively. This year's Lunar New Year stall lasted from November 24 to December 31, and it was full of more than 80 new films, with 10 new films released in one day at its peak.
From the released "I Am a Mountain", "The Three Teams", "Aquaman 2", to the upcoming "La La Land", "Twinkle Twinkle Twinkle" and "If You Are Honest Do Not Disturb 3", there is no shortage of players in the Chinese New Year file, but there is a significant lack of popular models.
Looking back on the past, the last annual box office champion produced in the Lunar New Year stalls was "Thai Embarrassment" in 2012. In the following years, the box office champion of the Lunar New Year stalls can usually squeeze into the top five at the annual box office. But in 2019, the box office champion "Manslaughter" of the Chinese New Year stalls ranked outside the top ten in the annual box office list.
As a schedule spanning more than a month, if the Lunar New Year stall does not bring a significant increase in box office and attendance, the industry needs to think about what is the meaning of its existence.
The first thing that needs to be considered in determining the schedule is to match the audience's viewing time. Mature schedules are all matched with mainstream audiences' holidays or specific time nodes. Liu Zhengshan bluntly said that the time period of the Chinese New Year stalls is more embarrassing.
From November 25th to December 31st, it is not a vacation period, and it is in the final stage of the mainstream movie-watching group - students, so the Chinese New Year file is not a good time to watch movies, and the market capacity is relatively limited. Therefore, I personally do not think that the Chinese New Year is a very important time. Liu Zhengshan said.
A practitioner who did not want to be named also told reporters that whether it is the Spring Festival, National Day or summer holidays, there are changes in the attributes of social groups in several relatively large periods. For example, the most typical summer file is that students are on vacation, and the Spring Festival file is also a holiday for the public, and they will bring their families to watch movies together.
From this point of view, to be honest, the Chinese New Year file does not have a strong practical significance, but more of the significance of the work of film and television practitioners, and now many films do not mention the concept of the New Year file. The above-mentioned person said.
The "sense of ceremony" brought by the schedule
The decline of the Lunar New Year file does not mean that the division of the movie schedule has lost its meaning.
Since "Party A and Party B", after more than 20 years of development, the concept of domestic film schedule has become more and more mature. Today, the one-year movie schedule has been subdivided into 15, including the Spring Festival, summer, National Day and New Year, and several small schedules such as Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and New Year's Day.
The division of schedules is becoming more and more detailed, which is a consideration of the industry based on realistic needs. "The division of schedules is very valuable to the film market. For example, the supply side can concentrate on marketing materials, so that the film can get more attention and achieve better results. Liu Zhengshan said.
Cheng Fei, CEO of Tuopu Consulting, also told reporters that schedule segmentation can drive the audience's desire to watch movies. At present, the ordinary schedule is sluggish, and the box office is closer to the small long holiday, Spring Festival file, and National Day file, and the attendance rate of ordinary schedule theaters is less than 5%, if you don't create schedules like 520 and Double 11, it will be more difficult for theater terminals to survive.
Back to the Lunar New Year. As an important schedule that was once "brilliant", although there have been some changes in the box office performance of the Lunar New Year stalls, many industry insiders believe that there is no need to worry too much about this.
The Lunar New Year file is more suitable for some comedy movies to be released in a centralized manner, but later because of the Spring Festival file, the concept of the New Year file was a little diluted. Judging from this year's situation, although the Lunar New Year stalls are not as prominent as the summer stalls as a whole, they will still develop slowly with the end of the epidemic. The Chinese New Year file still gives everyone an expectation of watching the movie. Zhu Yuqing, director of the investment and financing special project of the China Film Association and founder of Juyinghui, said.
Cheng Fei does not agree with the statement that the Lunar New Year stalls are declining. He said that the previous decline in the box office of the Lunar New Year stalls was mainly caused by the box office failure of imported films and the serious loss of audiences for imported films. "As of December 20, 2023, the box office is 20500 million yuan, and the final landing point is expected to be 2.8 billion yuan to 3.2 billion yuan, which is not much lower than before the epidemic. ”
With the passage of time, the Chinese New Year stalls have mainly become the market for domestic films, so for domestic films, especially films with a box office of 500 million to 1 billion, the Lunar New Year stalls are a 'hotbed' at the box office. Cheng Fei said.
Editor-in-charge: Liu Junyu.
Proofreading: Zhu Tianting.
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