Visual China.
Text |Leap Curtain, Author |Pang Hongbo.The Spring Festival stalls are "high".
According to the preliminary statistics of the National Film Administration, the national box office during the Spring Festival holiday in 2024 (February 10 to February 17, 2024) will be 801.6 billion yuan, and the number of moviegoers was 16.3 billion, an increase of 18 percent at the box office and number of people during the Spring Festival holiday in 202347% and 2636%, all of which set a new record in the same period.
But the 2024 Spring Festival stalls will have one more day, and the national box office will be 7 on February 171.3 billion; In addition to the total box office of the schedule hitting a new high because of one more day, the most criticized by the public is actually the word-of-mouth "inflation" of Spring Festival films. Nowadays, the audience score of the ticket-buying platform "Double 9" actually does not have much reference value, but the Douban score is a relatively referential value. But this year's Spring Festival, the Douban score of many focus films is 79-8.0, the average score reached 76 points.
But has the Spring Festival film really reached the quality of the film with a score of 8 on Douban? Does this generally inflated rating really help the Spring Festival stalls?
Four of the eight films accounted for 97 percent of the box office8%, and the remaining four films finally decided to change files. What impact this will have on the future Spring Festival stalls is a question that needs to be answered.
Obviously, the Spring Festival stalls have once again completed an excellent "face project", but the real "lining" is not a healthy growth in a short period of time. The entire film industry does see a lot of positive hope, but there are still many worries about the Spring Festival.
The top four box office accounts for the Spring Festival box office hit a new high in recent years, and the last four chose to change gears.
In 2024, the Spring Festival stalls will give birth to two heads of more than 2 billion yuan and two explosive models of 1 billion yuan. But in addition, none of the films in the Spring Festival file exceeded 100 million at the box office.
According to the data of Maoyan Professional Edition, the top four box office accounts for 98%, and the proportion of film scheduling is 919%。For the top four, there is naturally a very loose market environment. But for the bottom four, it means that the remaining 8% of the film space is competing for 2% of the schedule box office.
Therefore, the Spring Festival stalls in 2024 are half heaven and half hell. Any film scheduled for the Spring Festival would never have imagined that the situation would be so tragic.
Take 2021, the second highest box office in the Spring Festival in film history, as an example, 2021 is a "two-strong competition" pattern. "Detective Chinatown 3" and "Hello, Li Huanying" teamed up to occupy 812% of the box office. But in addition, "Assassination of the ** Family", "Bear Infested: Wild Continent", and "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" all accounted for more than 3% of the box office, and even the worst "Crowded" also had 19% of the box office.
And from the perspective of the proportion of films, the third to seventh places are at 44% to 94%, the difference between each other is not large. Even aside from the top four, the bottom three can be at 147% of the film space is competitive.
Therefore, even if it was difficult to survive during the schedule, with the box office outside the schedule, the box office of "Assassination of ** Family" finally exceeded 1 billion, and "The Crowd" overtook from seventh to fourth place, winning 76.2 billion box office, "Bear Infested: Wild Continent", "New God List: Nezha Rebirth" and "Serving God Order" won 59.5 billion, 45.6 billion, 27.3 billion.
However, in the Spring Festival stalls in 2024, in addition to the top four at the box office, "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet" account for only 1 percent of the box office1% and 1%, the box office proportion of the films outside the six is less than 01%。Because the environment inside the file is too deteriorating, the hope of counterattacking outside the file is also getting smaller. Therefore, changing gears becomes a more rational choice.
In 2024, the proportion of the audience of a movie in the entire schedule will reach 84%, which is the same as the previous one, and to some extent, the Spring Festival file is still a "one-time gamble". **The audience share of the two and three films is 133% and 22%。This is higher than in the last two years, but lower than in 2019 and 2021.
You must know that this year's Spring Festival stall tickets are back, which means that the "admission ticket" for the Spring Festival stalls is even more expensive. However, the market space is narrow, and once there is no reversal momentum in the first three days, continuous investment in ticket compensation means higher losses. Especially like "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Mr. Red Carpet", the expectations for the market are by no means just about breaking 100 million.
Therefore, this year's Spring Festival file basically only accommodates four films, and what is the capacity of the Spring Festival file in the future still needs to be repeatedly tested by the entire market. But there is one point, the box office performance of this year's Spring Festival stalls may further hit the so-called "small fight big" dark horse stationing, and it is not known what kind of impact this will have on the diversity of content in the future Spring Festival stalls.
The overall quality has improved, but the reputation is also "inflationary".
In fact, the overall quality improvement of this year's Spring Festival stalls has been recognized by the public, there is no doubt about it. Jia Ling's "Hot and Hot" was purchased by Sony Pictures for global distribution early on, which is a landmark progress for domestic commercial genre films; After Han Han suffered a defeat in "Four Seas", "Flying Life 2" made significant progress; Zhang Yimou returned to ancient costumes last year, and after "Man Jianghong" dominated the Spring Festival file, this year's realistic "Article 20" also performed well; As the most stable "seed" of the Spring Festival file, "Bear Infested" went directly to the 2 billion super head.
However, the speed of improvement in the overall quality of Spring Festival movies has not caught up with the height of "inflation" in movie ratings. This year, the average score of the six main Spring Festival films on Douban reached 76 points, which is very rare.
The data so far shows that in 2021, the average score of 7 Spring Festival films on Douban is 632 points, the average score of the 8 Spring Festival films on Douban in 2022 is 66 points, the 6 Spring Festival films in 2023 are evenly divided into 6 on Douban85 points. Of course, this side-by-side comparison of data does not make much sense. It's just that from the actual word-of-mouth response and the overly "average" high score, it can be seen that this year's Douban score may have been over-maintained for some special reasons.
In the current movie scoring system, 8 points on the ticket-buying platform are considered passing, and 9 points are considered excellent, which basically does not have much reference value for the movie's reputation. And now the Douban score has also been added, 7 points are "passing", and 8 points are "excellent", which may make the movie's word-of-mouth reference more blurred.
The Douban score may not have reference value in the fan circle for a long time, but if any score has no reference value and collective inflation, then the movie's "word-of-mouth decision" will be more polarized.
The greater expectation for the Spring Festival stalls is to drive ordinary audiences through head movies, and they are still willing to enter the theater after the Spring Festival.
From this point of view, this year's Spring Festival files "Hot and Hot", "Flying Life 2", and "Article 20" have all achieved breakthroughs, especially "Bear Infested 10" and "Hot and Hot" have attracted a large number of zero-frequency users. In terms of age structure, the audience aged 40 and above accounted for 208%, more than in the last five editions.
This is a very positive factor for the Spring Festival stalls, but one thing that is worrying is that the Spring Festival stalls seem to have become a "special file" and a "special" for a very small number of top players
After "Hello, Li Huanying" became a dark horse in the Spring Festival file in 2021, "Hot and Hot" basically locked the Spring Festival file; "Flying Life", which was released during the Spring Festival in 2019, was Han Han's previous highest-grossing one, and after experiencing the failure of "Four Seas", Han Han chose to start filming the sequel to "Flying Life". And this film also naturally entered the Spring Festival file, and finally "Flying Life 2" surpassed its predecessor and became Han Han's highest-grossing film; Last year, Zhang Yimou's "Man Jianghong" finally counterattacked "The Wandering Earth 2" during the Spring Festival, and Zhang Yimou, who has always been prolific, locked the Spring Festival file in 2024 when he started filming "Article 20". And "Bear Infested" has cultivated the Spring Festival file for many years, and has long become the strongest "seed player" in this schedule, and the box office continues to refresh the new high of a single film.
According to the inverted production cycle, this kind of big Hollywood studio system is more conducive to the progress of the entire industry. However, the Spring Festival films are not only reversed according to the schedule, but because the special viewing atmosphere of the Spring Festival has a certain impact on the content of the film.
As the biggest winner of the Spring Festival stalls, "Hot and Hot" has indeed seen Jia Ling's sincerity and ability improvement. But a lot of the controversy and focus of this film is on Jia Ling's 100-pound dialectic. This makes a lot of the discussion of the film actually "non-cinematic".
Besides. Zhang Yimou's "Article 20" does have strong practical significance, but the "sketch-style" narrative structure of this film also weakens a deeper value**. Although the campus bullying narrative line allows the male protagonist to grow, it is too short for parents, and in the end, Han Ming's "big speech" also lacks certain realistic support.
When the creators know that the film will finally be released during the Spring Festival, they will better cater to the needs of audiences in the sinking market through deliberately designed emotions, which will cause the evaluation of the film to be more polarized and the environment more mixed.
The current film industry is undoubtedly the head king. Funds and resources are concentrated on the head creators, and in order to fulfill the "capital expectations", the head creators can only choose to roll up in the big period.
Now more and more head creators are preferring their works for the Spring Festival, which is certainly true. The Spring Festival file is indeed the first major schedule at present, but this year's Spring Festival file four films account for 98% of the box office, and four films choose to change files. So, how will the head creators squeeze into the Spring Festival stalls in the future, and will they increase the proportion of comedy and "emotional rendering" in the content because of the improvement of the competitiveness of the Spring Festival stalls?
These are all questions that need to be answered in the future Spring Festival stalls, and the audience is willing to go into the theater outside the Spring Festival stalls and get a sense of satisfaction, so that the Spring Festival stalls can truly achieve a hundred flowers. Otherwise, the Spring Festival file is still the king of comedy, and in order to tap the potential of the sinking market, the real "screen sketches" in content creation may not outweigh the losses.