19 9 yuan movie tickets reappear in the Spring Festival stalls, will the audience buy it?

Text|Leopard becomes Zhao Ruoci.

Edit|Liu Yang.

Compared with the sci-fi blockbuster "The Wandering Earth 2", which exceeded 4 billion at the box office last year, as well as the suspense comedy "Man Jianghong", the spy war film "No Name" and other rich viewing options, this year's Spring Festival blockbusters are obviously absent. The duel between Shen Teng and Jia Ling's king of comedy has become one of the few highlights, and animated films account for one-third of the entire schedule.

As of 10 a.m. on February 8, 2024, the cumulative total pre-sale box office of the Spring Festival stalls is 33.5 billion, the box office of "Hot and Hot" and "Flying Life 2" is comparable.

As the most important schedule of the film market throughout the year, theaters are looking forward to ushering in a "bumper harvest" during the Spring Festival holiday. Movie theaters are also doing their best to retain the audience - live broadcast movie tickets, special scene fancy work, and 19 9 movie tickets are also "back out of the rivers and lakes" ......

Who is the winner of the Spring Festival stalls where blockbusters are absent? The 2024 film market is quietly changing, will the audience pay for it?

01 Jia Ling, Shen Teng, who is the winner? From the "The Wandering Earth" series to "Changjin Lake", the industrial productions released during the Spring Festival in previous years have always achieved dazzling box office results. At the same time, at the New Year's reunion moment, from "Hello, Li Huanying", "This Killer is Not Calm" to "Man Jianghong", for three consecutive years, they have all been comedy blockbusters.

The absence of blockbusters in this year's Spring Festival and the accumulation of comedies have become a consensus. Among them, "Hot and Hot" is adapted from the Japanese movie "100 Yuan Love", with a Douban score of 83 points. After all, from past experience, nine out of ten domestic remakes have overturned, and some netizens even ridiculed and suggested that China, Japan and South Korea sign the "Mutual Non-Remake Treaty".

However, before the sale, "Hot and Hot" had already whetted the audience's appetite. With the foreshadowing of the popular Spring Festival movie "Hello, Li Huanying", the screen cooperation between directors Jia Ling and Zhang Xiaofei raised the expectations of the whole movie. The hot search on Weibo also changed from "Jia Ling is really hungry and tired this year" to "Jia Ling lost 100 pounds", which made many viewers want to go to the cinema to see Jia Ling's true face after weight loss.

Another movie that is expected to become a dark horse at the box office during the Spring Festival is "Flying Life 2" directed by Han Han and starring Shen Teng.

"Flying Life", which was released during the Spring Festival in 2019, received 172.8 billion box office. At that time, "content" was still an important indicator to measure whether a comedy was funny. In previous years, even if it was a cameo, the audience would walk into the cinema for Shen Teng, even if "The Sun Never Sets Hotel" only set up a Shen Teng humanoid KT board stand.

However, 4 years have passed from "Flying Life" to "Flying Life 2", and the "content" seems to be gradually becoming invalid.

From "Four Seas", which failed at the box office and word of mouth, to the tepid happy twist group variety "Twist is Happy", in the era of "cost-effective" in everything, the audience's requirements for the quality of films are getting higher and higher, which also means that fewer and fewer audiences will pay just because of the actors. From this point of view, it is not possible to conclude whether "Flying Life 2" can come out on top.

In addition, "Article 20" directed by Zhang Yimou also had different voices before the release. Some netizens said that they are looking forward to the masterpiece of "National Teacher + Xu Zheng + Realism", and some people think that "the former national teacher does not bend his waist for the box office, he grinds a movie in 3 years, and now Yimou can just build a book and form a game".

It is worth mentioning that "Let's Shake the Sun Together" is the final chapter of director Han Yan's "Life Trilogy", from previous works ("Send You a Little Red Flower", "Life Events", "Get Out!") Tumor Jun") and the trailer, "Let's Shake the Sun Together" is likely to continue the directorial style of the previous films, with tears in laughter, sensational endings, **life and death, and a gap between genre and several comedies.

In addition, this year's "Bear Infested" ushered in the tenth big movie, and this children's IP is still making a lot of money. In 2022 and 2023, "Bear Infested: Return to Earth" and "Bear Infested: Stay with Me "Bear Core", which will be released during the Spring Festival for two consecutive years, will be released with 97.7 billion yuan box office, 14The box office of 9.5 billion yuan has twice entered the top 10 of the annual box office.

This year, "Bear Infested" is still the first choice for bringing a baby, and "Leopard Change" found that in the "Buy One Get One Free Day by Day" activity where Taopiao ticket members' exclusive points are exchanged, the preferential tickets for "Bear Infested: Reversal of Time and Space" are always the first to be sold out.

02 Can low prices bring audiences into the theater? "This year's Spring Festival stalls have significantly more activities than in previous years, and the opening screen display page is 199 yuan to buy tickets, some discount pop-ups will appear on the ticket purchase page of a movie every time you enter, and most movies have a 'member buy one get one free' show. There is also a coupon grabbing event on the hour. A Taomai VIP black diamond user said to "Leopard Change".

According to CCTV News, during the Spring Festival, Beijing will hold the "Watching Movies for the New Year - Beijing New Year Movie Watching Benefiting the People Activity", combining 3 ticketing platforms and 6 cinema lines, and issuing a total of 20 million movie viewing subsidies to citizens, citizens can buy movie tickets from the first day of the first month to the fifteenth day of the first month through the Taopiao Ticket App and Maoyan App, and enjoy limited-time special offers.

The Shanghai Film Bureau will also cooperate with leading enterprises in the industry to host the 2024 Shanghai Spring Festival preferential movie viewing event, which will accurately subsidize the audience with a discount of 30 yuan per movie ticket.

In addition to the subsidy of real money, this year's Spring Festival "ticket supplement" is quietly coming, and many popular movies such as "Let's Shake the Sun Together" and "Flying Life 2" have adopted the ticket supplement strategy. The pre-sale stage, the first day of the Lunar New Year 19The low-cost ticket of 9 yuan has reappeared on the major ticketing platforms.

In 2015, due to the entry of Internet capital into the film market, ticketing platforms competed to grab market share through "ticket compensation", and movie ticket prices entered the era of 9 yuan and 9. Ticket compensation is usually used by the producer to take out part of the budget to do ** to drive box office growth. According to industry estimates, 2015 was the craziest year for "ticket compensation", when 3 billion to 5 billion yuan of the total box office of Chinese films of 44 billion yuan came from "ticket compensation".

Until the Spring Festival in 2018, the major film companies jointly proposed to limit the intensity of "ticket compensation", and the ticket price of theaters nationwide should not be less than 19$9. In the same year, it was reported that the relevant departments canceled the online ticket subsidy for third-party and cinema-owned channels.

Since last year, movie ticket prices have shown a downward trend. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the average pre-sale ticket price of the Spring Festival stalls in 2023 is 537 yuan, which is 2% lower than the average ticket price of the same stage of pre-sale during the Spring Festival in 20225 yuan, which is also the first decline since 2016 (except for 2020). Despite this, the voice of "expensive movie tickets" was still in full swing on the Internet last year.

Current data shows that the average ticket price on New Year's Day this year is $505 yuan, a decrease of about 7% over the same period last year. Low-priced tickets finally point to the box office, and the filmmakers and theaters all point to the Spring Festival stalls to get the New Year off to a good start. The effect of the subsidy was reflected on the first day of pre-sale, and as of 24 o'clock on the same day, the pre-sale box office of the Spring Festival stalls exceeded 70 million, far exceeding last year's more than 50 million.

However, most of this year's low prices are subsidized by tickets, and ticket prices need to be reduced by redeeming coupons, and the ticket price of 19 yuan 9 only exists in some movie theaters.

According to the statistics of "Rhino Entertainment", this year's "Flying Life 2", "Hot and Hot" and "Article 20" all fell below the 10 million mark in a single day on the fourth day after the popularity of "Flying Life 2", "Hot and Hot" and "Article 20" subsided in the first three days of pre-sale. Last year, "Man Jianghong" and "The Wandering Earth" continued to make efforts a few days after the pre-sale, and the box office doubled**.

Blockbusters are absent, the overall stamina is insufficient, and the film market is filled with a trace of anxiety.

03 Film marketing quietly "changed the sky" Looking back on the film market in 2023, 68 new films will break 100 million yuan throughout the year. In the three years before the epidemic, that is, from 2017 to 2019, there were 92, 82, and 88 new films that exceeded 100 million yuan throughout the year.

Corresponding to this is the decline in the number of moviegoers, the data shows that the number of moviegoers in 2023 will be 126.8 billion, compared to 17 in the first three years of the pandemic2.8 billion, 171.8 billion, 162.2 billion.

When "the audience abandons the cinema" has become a commonplace topic, how the theater "finds the audience" has also become a common topic in the film and television industry.

On New Year's Day in 2024, ritual marketing will enter the cinema, and "fancy revitalization" will become a highlight.

"Twinkle Twinkle Star", which created a high-box office myth during the pre-sale period, went out of the circle with "snow" after its release: when the audience saw the key plot, there were snowflakes falling on the scene, but the so-called snowflakes, some were snow machines, and some were staff spraying snow cans, in the final analysis, it was an "artificial 5D".

The so-called black and red are also red, "Zhang Wansen, it's snowing" has become a hot stalk on the Internet, and the strange snow fields in various theaters have exploded social **.

There are also theater activities such as orange delivery and beer delivery in the same schedule, most of which are played according to the content of the film. During the New Year's Day, the moldy movie "Taylor Swift Times Tour" "broke the wall" between the screen and reality for the first time, and many theaters held singing and jumping shows, which drove the "movie theater jumping" boom during the release.

In addition, the person in charge of a film viewing group in Beijing told "Leopard Change": "In previous years, the Spring Festival files were almost busy until all-night communication and docking, and this year's cooperation with film parties is very few, and it may be that the publicity and distribution funds are limited." ”

Advance viewing is generally used for the early warm-up and word-of-mouth publicity of the film, however, since the announcement of the key postponement of the Spring Festival "Man Jianghong" and "The Wandering Earth 2" during the Spring Festival last year, the long-term screening of the film has become more common.

For example, last year's highly discussed "All or Nothing", because it involved public social issues such as fraud, emotional resonance and social attributes were obvious, and the later marketing continued to make efforts. According to the data, the box office on the first day of release on August 8 was 18.5 billion, but under the discussion and fermentation of social platforms, by August 12, the single-day box office rose to 27.3 billion.

Compared with the advanced viewing group and post-screening marketing, this year's live broadcast has also become an important town for the promotion and distribution of Spring Festival files.

Although "Beneficiary" and "The Party at the Southern Station" entered Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi's live broadcast rooms as early as a few years ago, they did not have the high attention of Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room this year. In the Spring Festival marketing sprint stage, "Mr. Red Carpet" director Ning Hao, starring Andy Lau, and "Article 20" director Zhang Yimou successively walked into the "Walking with Hui" live broadcast room, and the two films sold 600,000 and 800,000 movie vouchers respectively.

The body of the little people at the bottom is the characteristics of the big era. In Dong Yuhui's live broadcast room, Zhang Yimou said so. is not only selling tickets, but also showing the creator's thoughts in front of and behind the scenes of the movie in the form of interviews and chats, which is the main reason why the movie vouchers are sold out in the live broadcast room of "Walking with Hui".

Live broadcast is undoubtedly the most important window for bringing goods on the Internet at present, and there will definitely be more movies "rolling" to the live broadcast room in the future.