WeChat*** Yiyu Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha), a big entertainer.
If you ask ordinary audiences when was the last time they watched an action movie during the Spring Festival, probably many people's memories are still stuck in "Operation Red Sea" in 2018. After that, it is almost difficult to see action movies in the Spring Festival stalls.
And counting forward, action movies can be said to be a frequent visitor to the Spring Festival stalls. 2013's "Journey to the West: Demon Suppression" single-handedly opened the door to the Spring Festival box office of one billion, and then, Jackie Chan walked into the Spring Festival with action movies, and 2015's "Heavenly Lion" ended with 74.3 billion became the second in the schedule, and in 2017, "Kung Fu Yoga" won more than 1.7 billion box office in the Spring Festival and won the schedule crown, the combination of Jackie Chan and Tang Jili has always been a box office guarantee.
However, ten years later, everything has changed dramatically, such as this year's Spring Festival file, in addition to the stable basic plate of the New Year's goods "Bear Infested", from the box office No. 1 "Hot and Hot" to Ning Hao's new film "Mr. Red Carpet", which is currently accompanying the last seat, and even "Article 20", which was originally thought to be a serious and realistic theme, took comedy as the biggest selling point in the early stage, and the Spring Festival file became the main battlefield of the comedy genre. This trend did not start this year, and there is no place for action movies in the box office hits of the Spring Festival stalls in the past six years.
In fact, not only the Spring Festival file, looking at the domestic film market, there are only a handful of movies that focus on action genre elements in the past few years, and the last time a Chinese action movie with a box office of more than one billion was "Rage: Serious Case" in 2021.
Although action movies are becoming more and more scarce these days, and even difficult to find in important schedules such as the Spring Festival in recent years, fans of the genre have always existed, and they can still find good works in the past two years.
For example, the "Shocking Rescue" series produced by Netflix, "No One in Sight" and "Northeast Police Story" launched through iQiyi Cloud Cinema, hardcore action movies are still there, but they meet the audience through a new channel.
It is precisely aware of such a demand gap, following the suspenseful "Fog Theater", iQIYI officially launched a new label "Action Master Season" this year, which focuses on action movies.
At present, the "Action Master Season" has three works, "Blocking the Horse and Capturing the Knife", "No One in the Eyes 2" and "Fighting Evil", which have been launched on iQiyi Cloud Cinema.
Among them, the martial arts action film "No One in My Eyes 2" starring Xie Miao and Yang Enyou achieved a box office result of 2.79 million and Douban 7 on the first day after it was launched3 has a good reputation, and the highest popularity in iQiyi station exceeds 7000; On the first day of the launch of "Fighting Evil", which was launched on the third day of the Lunar New Year, the box office of iQiyi Cloud Cinema was nearly 2 million, and the total paid box office of a single film on the dual platform reached ...... 3.09 million"No One in My Eyes 2" and "Hunting Evil" have successively topped the iQIYI movie hit list TOP3 and iQIYI site-wide hit list TOP4, proving the strong attraction of this genre to the audience, and the next "Action Master Season" will also have Zhang Jin, Xia Meng, Geng Le, Jiang Luxia and other starring "Strange Knife" will continue to bring different action movie experiences to the audience.
Today's film and television creation is being profoundly affected by the long **, whether it is the change of viewing methods, distribution channels, or the trend of content quality. Because of this, more and more creators choose to enter the "network" to complete their creative concepts and artistic aesthetics, and online movies have also been iteratively upgraded to form market influence. This is also why, more and more action genre films have begun to use the form of online movies to meet the audience, and continue to explore more genre changes from them.
And when core channels and genre labels like iQIYI Cloud Cinema and "Action Master Season" continue to give more support to creators, that is, when the platform begins to be willing to continue to invest in diversification, more pure good content will also be born.
After Jackie Chan and Tang Jili no longer participated in the Spring Festival, the audience had almost no chance to go to the cinema to watch a movie with traditional action elements during the Spring Festival. It's no exaggeration to say that even if it's stretched to a year-round dimension, it's hard to see traditional action movies that work fighting in today's movie theaters.
On the one hand, kung fu stars such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li are getting old, and there is no successor, on the other hand, it is the change in the audience's interest in watching movies.
Jackie Chan and Jet Li starred in "The King of Kung Fu".
This year's Spring Festival file is even more like comedy films, but are action movies really completely reduced to no one's attention? Is there no value in a good action movie?
iQIYI gave a positive answer in this year's Spring Festival with the new label "Action Master Season" of action movies.
In fact, according to relevant data, in the long-term film business, male users contribute the most** time, more than 60%, and these users are also loyal fans of action movies.
The good box office and high reputation of "No One in My Eyes 2", which was launched on the first day of the Lunar New Year, also proves that the audience's demand is still there, and the two movies in three years can be said to make this series the most surprising work of martial arts action movies in recent years.
The film takes the "God of War" played by Semyon Cheng Blind as the protagonist, and different partners build independent stories, which can be called the Chinese martial arts version of "Fast Pursuit", and has achieved amazing big effects through small productions.
The two consecutive works in the past three years have adhered to the concise plot, solid martial arts, and exquisite pictures. has scored more than 7 points on Douban in a row, even if it is placed in the current Spring Festival stalls, it can be said to be a very outstanding word-of-mouth performance.
Looking back on the past two years, among the movies launched by iQiyi in cloud cinema mode, the annual box office champions are all action movies, and "Blind War" in 2022 won the annual box office champion of cloud cinema and Douban 7 with a total box office of nearly 40 millionThe total box office of "No One in My Eyes" with 1 point is nearly 30 million, ranking second on the annual list. Ren Dahua's first producer of "Zero Pursuit" became the annual box office champion of cloud cinemas with a total box office of nearly 50 million last year, even if it has been online for more than 200 days, there is still a box office every day.
Therefore, it is not that action movies have no market demand as a major genre, but that cinema movies are often more willing to get together to do less risky genre works because of the changes in the audience and the extreme thirst for the box office, which is why crime genres and comedy genres have emerged in an endless stream in the past few years, and there has even been a situation where all comedies like this year's Spring Festival file occupy the big screen.
Stills from "Chase Zero".
However, judging from the audience's feedback, action movies always have a specific group of people who appreciate and love them. The reason why "Blind War", "No One in Sight" and "Pursuit Zero" can be applauded and popular in the online movie market is actually because it can amplify its genre elements to the greatest extent and amplify them to the extreme, and just right to fill the demand for action movies in the market.
In fact, from the perspective of the global market, hardcore action movies as a whole are indeed on a downward trend. However, when Keanu Reeves and "Fast and Furious" appeared, we can still see the audience's pursuit of this kind of genre works full of hardcore action elements. This is also why Netflix subsequently found "Thor" to create the "Shocking Rescue" series, and the two works in succession became popular on the platform. In China, it is not difficult to see the efforts of traditional action stars, and last year's online movie "The Legend of Qiao Feng", directed and acted by Donnie Yen, is also based on traditional martial arts, integrating the popular "lonely hero" action movie elements in Hollywood in the past two years, and then strengthening its action type. The film finally entered the top five on the 2023 Cloud Cinema annual box office list, earning more than 30 million box office.
High-quality action movies and martial arts movies will always have a group of loyal consumers, and when it is difficult to find this genre on the big screen, more inclusive and diverse online movies are the best platform for their traditional works to show their talents.
This is also why, compared with the previous sporadic attacks, iQiyi chose to directly take out four hardcore action movies in a row before this year's Spring Festival to form the "Action Master Season", in fact, the core is also to see the indispensability of action genre films in the online movie market, and the audience of this Spring Festival file is bound to find more diverse genre elements from the long** platform to meet their viewing needs in addition to a single theater type.
As Song Jia, vice president of iQiyi, said, "The decrease in the supply of theatrical action movies has caused a gap in the market, and we want to take over this knife to see if we can recreate something and reproduce the glory of Chinese action movies." ”
After years of development, today's online movies have shown a pattern of content being king and diversified presentation, and the core driving force of market growth is no longer quantity, but more depends on the quality of the work itself and whether it can respond to the needs of the audience in a timely manner.
And it is not difficult to see from the sequence of popular works of online movies in the past two years that strong genre has become a major advantage of today's online movies, and even in many dimensions, because there is no need to worry too much about it like cinema movies, but it can push genre elements to the extreme. However, just relying on genre elements to strengthen does not mean success, for the platform, how to further rely on efficient operations to let the audience know that these works are equally important, and this is also the value of theatrical and label operations.
On the one hand, judging from the world's film trends, the positioning of genre films has gradually blurred, and more and more "genre +" has become the key to breaking the game; On the other hand, with the advent of the era of focus, the aesthetic differentiation of personal content is highlighted, and compared with theatrical movies, online movies can allow more audiences to get the opportunity to watch the content they want.
Judging from the four works that appeared in the first wave of the "Action Master Season" - "No One in My Eyes 2", "Evil Hunting", "Strange Knife" and "Blocking the Horse and Snatching the Knife", in addition to the action genre, there is actually a clear distinction between types, such as "Blocking the Horse and Snatching the Knife", "No One in the Eyes 2" and "Strange Knife" are more inclined to the moral responsibility of traditional Chinese chivalry, and "Fighting Evil" is a fusion of classic crime elements and action genres.
Of course, using the action genre as the core selling point to create an independent online movie label is actually a combination of iQiyi's very successful experience in operating genre content in the past to the greatest extent, the most typical is the well-known "Fog Theater".
Yang Haitao, senior vice president of iQIYI, also analyzed the success of the previous "Fog Theater" when communicating with **: the first is stylization, choosing a suspense track with a large audience, ensuring a large scale and attention of the user base; The second is high-quality content, from screenwriters, directors, to actors, the platform joins hands with outstanding creative talents in the industry to produce high-quality content; The third is serialization, in order to build a brand, the selected content will be released more intensively to form a series of content.
Action Master Season".
In the operation of online movies, iQIYI also borrowed the model of "Fog Theater" and launched the "Action Master Season" label. Yang Haitao said that he hopes to focus on the launch of the "Action Master Season" label model, so that users can have a strong perception of action movies. And then through the operation of the brand perspective, the audience is deeply impressed.
In addition to the innovation of the operation model, iQIYI is still giving new thinking about the box office sharing model of online movies.
In April 2022, iQIYI superimposed member account sharing on the basis of on-demand account sharing, and further expanded the account sharing mode and account sharing cycle for online movie producers. From January 1 this year, iQIYI will change the online movie account sharing model from "according to the length of the account" to "according to the length of the ladder".
After the adjustment, the online movies that are exclusively launched on the iQiyi platform will have more than 10 million, more than 6 million and less than 6 million hours of member** in the account sharing cycle, and the corresponding 10,000-hour ladder bill prices are 3 yuan, 2 yuan and 1 yuan respectively, and the final total account box office is the sum of the income of each ladder.
Since January 1, 2024, iQIYI changed the online movie account sharing model to "account sharing according to the time ladder", and on January 18, the online movie "Suit**", which was launched exclusively on January 18 and has action elements, broke through the ** duration of the first ladder on the 9th day of its launch, and is currently sharing accounts according to the unit price of the second ladder, and the overall box office has exceeded 10 million, and it is expected that the 180-day sharing time can exceed 10 million hours, reaching a sharing ladder of 3 yuan.
Suit**" stills.
After online movies have entered the fast track of "reducing quantity and improving quality", the primary goal of today's online movies is not to share the overall scale of the box office, but to find their own differentiated advantages in the current multi-form content market to meet the needs of users that cannot be replaced. This Spring Festival "Action Master Season" is just the beginning, Song Jia revealed that iQiyi still has many action type projects in preparation, including military action themes, "iQiyi hopes to solve the problem with the creator, for example, can military action movies only take place in the rainforest or the sea?" Neither is it. We're going to break some of the usual patterns. Another example is Mr. Jin Yong's "Heaven and Dragon Slayer", we also hope to reinterpret it in a new way. ”
The public's aesthetic taste is changing, investment hotspots are also continuing to shift, and the rapid change of special effects technology seems to make the general trend of martial arts and action films recede, but the change in the viewing medium also means that the classic genre will still have a new turn.
Stills from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
With the continuous investment and careful operation of action movies on the long** platform led by iQiyi, and more and more filmmakers have begun to devote their enthusiasm to this genre again, perhaps the future market will usher in a batch of more pure action movies, and the new generation of audiences will also re-possess their own action classics such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Kung Fu", "Slaying the Wolf", from the big screen to the long**, heroes will never be useless.