WeChat*** Teacher in the circle (ID: g-why-), author: Teacher in the circle, original title: "There is a quarrel about the film arrangement, but the question is, who cares what movie the audience wants to watch?" The title picture comes from: Visual China's Spring Festival file has not started this year, but the audience seems to have no choice between what they want to see and what they can watch.
In the past two days, there have been many sources that several head films in this year's Spring Festival have issued mandatory scheduling requirements to theaters, and a single theater with more than 3 halls will be released at the beginning of the Lunar New Year.
The first and second days of the first and second films must reach a certain percentage, otherwise the key will not be opened to the theater.
According to the information currently circulating, "Flying Life 2" and "Article 20" both require a minimum schedule of 22%, "Hot and Hot" is suspected to also require 22% of the film schedule, and "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Bear Infested: Reversing Time and Space" require 12% and 10% respectively. If these figures are true, it means that only 12% of the space left for the first two days of the three films such as "Mr. Red Carpet" is left. (The above data is for reference only.) ）
Regarding this egalitarianism, theaters and filmmakers show very different attitudes.
Many theater practitioners complained that the filmmaker's behavior was too arrogant, which deprived the theater of the right to flexibly adjust the film schedule, and everyone didn't know the quality before the movie was released.
At the same time, some small and medium-sized theaters with less than 6 theaters can hardly meet the scheduling needs of all filmmakers no matter how they are arranged, and they can only give up some films.
In addition, some theaters are worried that if they fail to screen a certain movie this time and offend the filmmaker, will they lose their chances with the same company's movies in the future?
In the face of the theater's complaints, some distributors believedThe reason why the filmmakers reached such a scheduling alliance this year is because many theaters and film management have long-term requests for scheduling fees during popular schedules, which has harmed the interests of the filmmakers.
The so-called film scheduling fee is a common unspoken rule of large schedules. The competition for big schedules is fierce, and the filmmakers hope that their films can get as much ** as possible during the schedule, so they exchange for high-ranking films by giving concessions to theaters and film tubes.
Some filmmakers say that in the past two years, the asking prices of some theaters and film tubes have become higher and higher, and it is said that some theaters have opened a film schedule** that is almost the same as the filmmaker's direct charter, and many filmmakers can only reluctantly accept it for the sake of popularity; In order to seize the opportunity, some non-popular films are also taking the initiative to raise ** and take the initiative to give unreasonable scheduling fees. Seeing that there is a trend of getting out of control, the filmmaker can only use the key suspension as a means of counterattack.
At first glance, both sides have grievances, but behind this scheduled Rashomon, the author wants to say:Shouldn't the audience be the one who should shout grievances the most?
In the early years, the theater and the film company were able to reach a tacit agreement on the issue of film scheduling fees, because there were many people watching movies during the Spring Festival anyway, and people would watch everything - for example, in 2017, "Kung Fu Yoga", which scored 5 points on Douban, could still occupy 25% of the film schedule until the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, and achieved a single-day score of more than 100 million.
At that time, watching movies during the Spring Festival was still a random pastime after tea and dinner during the Chinese New Year, and everyone went to the theater to see what they wanted, and most audiences didn't care about word of mouth. Therefore, some theaters will think that they might as well sell scheduled films to maximize their own interests.
But in the next few years, with the improvement of the audience's sensitivity to word-of-mouth, and the Internet has accelerated the spread of word-of-mouth, the speed of word-of-mouth films in the Spring Festival file is getting faster and faster.
The word-of-mouth champion "Operation Red Sea" in 2018 did not top the single-day box office list for the first time until the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, and "Hello, Li Huanying", which had the best word-of-mouth in 2021, completed the counterattack on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year. Nowadays, movies like "Exchanging Lives" with a collapsed reputation will even fall behind completely on the first day of the Lunar New Year, and it is becoming more and more difficult for movies with poor reputation to dig gold in the Spring Festival.
In this case, the significance of the film scheduling fee has slowly changed, it is no longer a means for the theater to obtain an extra layer of income, but has become a way to guarantee the bottom line: in the case of ensuring the film scheduling, if the box office of the film is not as expected, at least the theater has taken money from the filmmaker, so as not to lose too badly.
This is why the asking price of some theaters is getting higher and higher, which can be regarded as a risk hedge in a sense. It wasn't until recent years that some filmmakers couldn't stand the sky-high prices of some theaters, and there were more and more conflicts: in 2019, "The New King of Comedy" stopped the keys of more than 70 theaters due to scheduling fees.
Theaters and filmmakers are scrambling, always taking film scheduling as a bargaining chip on the balance of interests, used to check and balance each other, and strive to maximize the interests of their own side, but ignore the most fundamental problem:Cinema is a cultural commodity, and in this deal, no one thinks about what the audience really wants to see, no one cares about the audience's New Year, bringing a family to spend hundreds of dollars into the cinema, whether there are enough movies to choose from, whether they have seen their favorite movies.
Even today's seemingly fair and open egalitarianism does not fully take into account differences in demand.
Taking "Bear Infested" as an example, according to the data of previous years, the box office proportion of the "Bear Infested" series in Shanghai is much lower than that of big cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, and the difference between cities in the north and south is also very large. If you have to arrange the same schedule in different cities, the result can only be that the theaters in Shanghai may be empty, and the theaters will lose money; In order to balance the film schedule, Tianjin Cinema was unable to give more performances of "Bear Infested", resulting in some audiences not being able to buy tickets, and the filmmakers made less money.
In the end, theaters, filmmakers, and audiences have not been able to benefit from this model, and the result of lack of marketization can only be a lose-lose situation.
But the problem is that it's not four or five years ago now, when the Spring Festival entertainment was limited, and many people would find ways to see their favorite movies. And now the movie no longer has the market dominance of the year in the face of offline entertainment such as games, short **, script killing, etc., if you still hold a kind of casual bullying of customers, and continue to be complacent about watching movies as a "new folk custom" for the New Year, it will only accelerate the loss of audiences.
In the past few years, due to high ticket prices, the number of moviegoers during the Spring Festival has been declining, and the film industry should not try to make choices for the audience in terms of what to watch. Only by returning the market to the market and allowing good movies to be seen during the Spring Festival will the audience have confidence in Chinese films, and let speculative movies pit fewer people, so that bad money will not drive out good money.
Please give back the right to vote for the market to the audience.
WeChat*** Teacher in the circle (ID: g-why-), Author: Teacher in the circle This content is the author's independent point of view and does not represent the position of Tiger Sniff. Do not do without permission**, please contact hezuo@huxiu for authorizationcom
People who are changing and want to change the world are all on Tiger Sniff app